Sexual violence is being committed in Sudan on a "sickening scale," while fighting in the Darfur region is reopening "old wounds of ethnic tension" that could engulf the country, United Nations officials told the Security Council on Wednesday.
"The alarming accounts of sexual violence that are heard from people who have fled to Port Sudan are just a fraction of those being repeated at a sickening scale from conflict hotspots across the country," said senior UN aid official Edem Wosornu.
War broke out on April 15—four years after the overthrow of former President Omar al-Bashir during a popular uprising. Tensions between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which jointly staged a coup in 2021, erupted over disagreements about a plan to transition to civilian rule.
The current war has seen more than 4 million people flee their homes, of which 3.28 million are internally displaced and over 900,000 have crossed the borders into Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, and other countries, according to the International Organization for Migration.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters after the council meeting that both sides were responsible for ethnic and sexual violence, adding: "There are no innocents here."
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