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

The fact-finding mission said Tuesday the war had resulted in thousands of killings, injuries, extensive displacement and the destruction of homes, schools and hospitals.

“The situation remains grim as the conflict rages on, causing civilians immense suffering,” it said.

About 11.3 million people have been uprooted from their homes by the war, among them nearly three million who have fled outside Sudan, according to the UN refugee agency.

More than 25 million people — more than half the population — are facing acute hunger.

War crimes

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.

Both sides have arrested and detained people arbitrarily, and have engaged in torture amounting to war crimes.

“Both obstructed access to humanitarian aid for civilians in need,” the mission said.

The report accused both sides of sexual violence, but said the RSF was behind the “large majority” of documented cases.

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”.

It also said the RSF and its allies had committed a range of other war crimes and crimes against humanity, including “abduction, and recruitment and use of children in hostilities”, amid systematic looting and pillaging.

Terror and punishment

“The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,” said Othman, a former chief justice of Tanzania.

“The situation faced by vulnerable civilians, in particular women and girls of all ages, is deeply alarming and needs urgent address.” 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.

In the western Darfur region, sexual violence was committed “with particular cruelty, with firearms, knives and whips”.

The report said: “First-hand sources informed of rape of girls as young as eight years and women as old as 75.” 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.

The mission said they had received credible information “about rape and gang-rape of men and boys”.

Civilian protection force

Chaired by Othman, the three-member mission was established in October 2023 by the UN Human Rights Council, charged with probing all alleged human rights and international humanitarian law violations in the conflict.

Tuesday’s 80-page report expands on the mission’s first report to the rights council, delivered in September.

The mission called for an immediate and sustainable ceasefire.

They repeated their call for the deployment of an independent force with a mandate to protect civilians.

The mission also said the arms embargo on Darfur, and the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over the region, should be extended to the whole country, while former president Omar al-Bashir should be surrendered to the ICC.