A report issued by UNICEF investigators described horrific abuses, affecting children as young as 1 year old, in the civil war in Sudan.

Armed forces in Sudan’s civil war are perpetrating systematic sexual violence against young children, with one-year-olds the youngest survivors of rape, according to a new report from UNICEF, the United Nations’ (UN) children’s agency.

The U.N. children’s agency says children in conflict-ravaged Sudan as young as a year old have been raped since the beginning of 2024 and that sexual violence is being used as a tactic of war.

Armed men are raping and sexually assaulting children as young as one during Sudan's civil war, says the UN children's agency, Unicef. So traumatised are the survivors that some say they have attempted to end their lives. Mass sexual violence has been widely documented as a weapon of war in the country's nearly two-year conflict.

Children under five, including babies, are among victims of sexual violence in the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to findings shared on Tuesday by U.