\n Rape is widespread in Sudan's civil war, a United Nations investigation said Tuesday, accusing paramilitaries especially of committing sexual violence on a \"staggering\" scale.\n<\/p>\n
\n Children are not spared the abuse, with women and girls being abducted for sexual slavery, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said in a new report.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There is no safe place in Sudan now,\" the investigation's chair Mohamed Chande Othman said.\n<\/p>\n
\n 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.\n<\/p>\n
\n It has triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. More than 25 million people -- over half the population -- are facing acute hunger.\n<\/p>\n
\n - War crimes -\n<\/p>\n
\n The SAF, the RSF and their allied militias \"have committed large-scale human rights and international humanitarian law violations, many of which may amount to war crimes and\/or crimes against humanity\", the mission concluded.\n<\/p>\n
\n Both sides have engaged in torture amounting to war crimes and obstructed access to humanitarian aid, the mission said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The report accused both sides of sexual violence, but said the RSF was behind the \"large majority\" of documented cases.\n<\/p>\n
\n The mission said the RSF was responsible for \"sexual violence on a large scale\", including \"gang-rapes and abducting and detaining victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery\".\n<\/p>\n
\n It also said the RSF and its allies had indulged in \"abduction, and recruitment and use of children in hostilities\", amid systematic looting and pillaging.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Rape, terror and punishment -\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,\" said Othman, a former chief justice of Tanzania.\n<\/p>\n
\n Such abuses were \"part of a pattern aimed at terrorising and punishing civilians for perceived links with opponents,\" and suppressing any opposition to their military advances, the mission said.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the western Darfur region, sexual violence was committed \"with particular cruelty, with firearms, knives and whips\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The report said: \"First-hand sources informed of rape of girls as young as eight years and women as old as 75.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Victims were often subjected to \"punching, beatings with sticks and lashing, before and during the rape\", with sexual violence often occurring in the presence of the victims' relatives.\n<\/p>\n
\n The mission said they had received credible information \"about rape and gang-rape of men and boys\".\n<\/p>\n
\n UN rights chief Volker Turk said Tuesday that escalating hostilities in Sudan's eastern al-Jazira state were further exacerbating the risk of atrocities.\n<\/p>\n
\n Turk's office said it had documented at least 25 cases of sexual violence in RSF attacks on Sharq Al-Jazira villages, including an 11-year-old girl who died as a result, while women and girls were abducted.\n<\/p>\n
\n His spokesman Seif Magango told reporters that those responsible should be brought to justice \"to break this horrendous cycle of violence\".\n<\/p>\n
\n - 14 million displaced -\n<\/p>\n
\n UN migration agency chief Amy Pope said the situation in Sudan was \"catastrophic\" and deserved greater attention.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Sudan is easily the most neglected crisis in the world today,\" she told a Geneva press briefing, speaking from Port Sudan.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"All wars are brutal, but the toll of this one is particularly horrifying... A generation will live in the shadow of trauma.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Her agency's latest figures released Tuesday show that there are more than 11 million internally displaced people within Sudan -- 8.3 million of whom fled their homes since the conflict erupted.\n<\/p>\n
\n Some 3.1 million more people have fled the country since April last year.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"More than half of those displaced are women, and more than a quarter of them are children under the age of five,\" said Pope.\n<\/p>\n
\n More than 200,000 people have fled their homes since September, she added.\n<\/p>\n
\n Despite the scale of displacement, the UN migration agency's appeal for $168 million has only got a fifth of those funds.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"With the proper amount of funding, there is much we can do to alleviate the suffering,\" said Pope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rape is widespread in Sudan's civil war, a United Nations investigation said Tuesday, accusing paramilitaries especially of committing sexual violence on a \"staggering\" scale. Children are not spared the abuse, with women and girls being abducted for sexual slavery, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said in a new report. \"There is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-137717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n