Sudan's deepening humanitarian crisis caused by nearly 16 months of war has left countless women and girls subject to sexual violence and rape and tens of thousands of children at risk of death from hunger, UN aid teams said on Tuesday.
Speaking from Sudan, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder described meeting a senior medical worker at a hospital outside Khartoum who had "direct contact with hundreds, hundreds of women and girls, some as young as eight years old, who have been raped. Many have been held captive for weeks on end."
The medic from Al Nao hospital in Omdurman also spoke "of the distressing number of babies born - born after rape - who are being abandoned now", the UNICEF spokesperson continued, during an update to journalists in Geneva via videolink from the wartorn country.
Countless horrors
He maintained that "countless atrocities" upon children had gone unreported, often as a result of very limited access.
He also warned that without action, tens of thousands of Sudanese children may die over the coming months, "and that is by no means a worst-case scenario…if there is a measles outbreak, if there is diarrhoea, or if there are respiratory infections, then the terrifying outlook for children in Sudan dramatically worsens.
"In the current living conditions, with the heavy rains and the flooding, these diseases will spread like wildfire."
Echoing that grim update, the UN migration agency, IOM, agreed that flooding had added to the daily challenges facing millions of people whose lives have been uprooted by a battle for control of the country by rival militaries beginning in April 2022, stemming from the overthrow of long-time President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
