Armed men are raping and sexually assaulting children as young as one during Sudan's civil war, says the UN children's agency, Unicef. Mass sexual violence has been widely documented as a weapon of war in the country's nearly two-year conflict.

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.

UNICEF said the scale of child rape in war-ravaged Sudan was far more widespread than just the documented cases and urged all sides to end sexual violence as a war tactic.

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.