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Sudan sees sexual violence on ‘staggering’ scale amid civil war: UN

Children are not spared the abuse, while women and girls are being abducted for sexual slavery

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Armed police officers patrol a public area controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces in Omdurman, Khartoum. Children are not spared the abuse, while women and girls are being abducted for sexual slavery, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said. Photo: Xinhua
Rape is widespread in Sudan’s civil war, a United Nations investigation said on Tuesday, accusing paramilitaries especially of committing sexual violence on a “staggering” scale.
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Children are not spared the abuse, while women and girls are being abducted for sexual slavery, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said in a new report.

“There is no safe place in Sudan now,” the investigation’s chair Mohamed Chande Othman said in a statement.

War has raged since April 2023 between the Sudanese army (SAF) under the country’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The civil war has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Civilians who fled war-torn Sudan arrive at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees transit centre in Renk. Photo: Reuters
Civilians who fled war-torn Sudan arrive at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees transit centre in Renk. Photo: Reuters

UN chief Antonio Guterres said on Monday that Sudan was enduring a “nightmare” of hunger, violence, illness and “unspeakable atrocities”.

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