Children as young as one year old have been reported among survivors of rape during Sudan’s ongoing violent conflict a revelation that has shaken the global conscience. In a world that often looks away, these are the haunting echoes of war that refuse to be silenced. According to recent reports by UNICEF, over 221 cases of sexual violence against children were recorded across nine Sudanese states, including Darfur and Khartoum, with at least sixteen of those survivors under the age of five. The youngest among them were infants just beginning to speak or walk. These are not just numbers. They are children whose first memories may be rooted in unspeakable pain, and whose lives are permanently altered by violence that should never touch a child’s world.

What is happening in Sudan is neither isolated nor new. Across the African continent, sexual violence against women and girls, particularly Black women and Black girls has become a systematic tool in both war and peace. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rape has long been used as a weapon of war. In Sierra Leone’s civil war, it is estimated that over 250,000 women were victims of sexual violence. In Rwanda’s genocide, more than 500,000 women were raped, often mutilated, in what international courts later recognized as acts of genocide. The scars of these atrocities run deep, and they are emotional, spiritual, generational. And most of all, they are enduring.

The silence surrounding rape in conflict zones is deafening, especially when the victims are Black women and girls. These women often face double invisibility first as victims of war, then as Black bodies in a global system that rarely centers their pain. Reports show that in sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 79 million girls and women have experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18. Many never speak out. Fear, stigma, cultural norms, and institutional failures all conspire to protect the abuser and imprison the survivor in silence. In South Africa as per 2016 statistics, a country not at war, a woman is raped every thirteen minutes, yet only about 15 percent of these cases are ever reported to authorities. Across the continent and the diaspora, Black women live with an unspoken truth: that their pain is often normalized, their suffering seen as collateral, and their survival demanded without justice.

Globally, Black women and girls are disproportionately affected by sexual violence. In both war and peace, their bodies are often politicized, exoticized, dehumanized. Their pain, when expressed, is met with disbelief or indifference. Their healing is often their own burden to carry. And yet, in the face of this violence, Black women have been the frontline defenders of dignity, resilience, and truth. They are organizing community shelters, creating safe spaces, pushing for legal reform, and speaking truths that the world is often unwilling to hear.

In Sudan, the conflict that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has created a humanitarian catastrophe. In this chaos, sexual violence has not just been incidental but strategic. UNICEF and international rights groups warn that rape is being used deliberately, as a tool of war. In many cases, survivors are denied access to healthcare, and support centers are often non-existent in the hardest-hit areas. For survivors who are children, the situation is even more dire. Physical injuries are severe, and the psychological trauma is unfathomable. For infants and toddlers, this trauma begins before language. It etches itself into their earliest understanding of the world.

The story of these young girls and boys in Sudan is a reflection of the global state of Black girlhood and womanhood in crisis. In conflict and peace alike, Black women are too often caught in systems that commodify their bodies, dismiss their voices, and ignore their suffering. Yet they are also the authors of resistance. In Ethiopia, Mali, Congo, Nigeria, and right here in Sudan, they are building movements, documenting abuse, and daring to speak where silence has long ruled. Their work is often unrecognized, but it is revolutionary.

Some of the documentaries include;

• War on Women: Sexual Violence in Sudan – The Stream” (YouTube)
  A discussion panel where Sudanese survivors and activists share firsthand accounts of rape used as a weapon during the country’s conflict  .
• “Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War in Sudan” (DW Documentary, YouTube)
  Features compelling interviews with women and girls who endured paramilitary sexual violence during Sudan’s civil war  .
• “Sudanese Women Confronting Rape and Violence in Conflict” (YouTube)
  Graphic testimonies from female survivors in Sudan, detailing rises in gender-based violence amid the humanitarian crisis  .

• “The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo” directed by Lisa F. Jackson (2007)
  An award-winning feature with intimate interviews from survivors and even perpetrators, showing rape as a strategic war tactic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo  .
• “Heroic Bodies” (dir. Sara Suleiman, premiered Cairo)
  A Sudanese feminist documentary documenting both the horror of repression and the resistance of women under systematic oppression  .
• “Cahier Africain” (Heidi Specogna, 2016)
  Records testimonies of over 300 victims of war crimes—including rape—by mercenary forces during Central African Republic conflicts  .
• “475: Break the Silence” (Hind Bensari, 2013)
  A Moroccan short highlighting the tragic aftermath of a statutory rape law—the victim then forced to marry her rapist—and sparking legal reform  .
• “Sisters in Law: Stories from a Cameroon Court” (Ayisi & Longinotto, 2005)
  Follows courtroom battles in Cameroon, where judges and prosecutors defend a 10‑year-old rape survivor, offering a rare portrayal of legal recourse  .
• “Mama Colonel” (Dieudo Hamadi, DRC)
  Centers on Colonel Honorine Munyole and her work in the DRC’s anti-sexual violence police unit, illustrating a frontline fight for justice

At this moment, the world has a choice. To continue turning away, or to see clearly what is happening to these children and women in Sudan not as an African issue, not as a women’s issue, but as a human issue that demands collective outrage, policy, funding, and above all, action. There is no justice without accountability. No peace without safety. No humanity without the protection of our most vulnerable.

For Czarina Magazine, this is more than a report. It is a call. A call to believe survivors. A call to center Black girls and women in conversations about justice and healing. A call to build a world where no child, no woman, no girl, ever has to carry the weight of such violence again. The world must listen not just with sympathy, but with responsibility. Because what is happening in Sudan is not far away. It is part of a global story that, until we change it, will continue to write itself in the blood and tears of the innocent.