UN: Over 79 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa raped, sexually assaulted

October 10, 2024 | 08:45 AM ET |

The United Nations Children’s Agency reports that one in eight young women and girls worldwide have experienced sexual abuse and rape, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for the largest number of victims.

In its first-ever worldwide estimate of sexual violence against minors, UNICEF found that one in five girls, or 79 million, in sub-Saharan nations plagued by insecurity and conflict had been sexually assaulted or raped before turning 18.

It’s terrifying,” said Nankali Maksud, a child violence specialist at UNICEF based in Nairobi, Kenya. “It is generations of trauma.”

Girls who had suffered the trauma of sexual abuse were often unable to learn at school, she said.

Globally, UNICEF estimates that sexual violence has affected some 370 million – or one in eight – girls and young women.

The number rises to 650 million, or one in five, when taking into account “non-contact” forms of sexual violence, such as online or verbal abuse, according to the agency’s report published on Wednesday.

Girls and women were the most impacted, according to the research, but between 240 and 310 million boys and men, or around one in eleven, had been raped or sexually assaulted as children.

Sexual violence against children is a stain on our moral conscience,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

It inflicts deep and lasting trauma, often by someone the child knows and trusts, in places where they should feel safe,” she said.

Numbers were highest in “fragile settings”, including those with weak institutions, where UN peacekeeping forces are present or where there are large numbers of refugees

We are witnessing horrific sexual violence in conflict zones, where rape and gender-based violence are often used as weapons of war,” said Russell.

However, the data showed that sexual violence against children is pervasive, cutting across geographical, cultural, and economic boundaries.

At 79 million, Sub-Saharan Africa was the region with the highest number of victims, followed by Eastern and Southeastern Asia (75 million), Central and Southern Asia (73 million), Europe and Northern America (68 million), Latin America and the Caribbean (45 million), Northern Africa and Western Asia (29 million), and Oceania (6 million).

According to UNICEF head statistician Claudia Cappa, the release of this figure is the first of its kind and was determined using both national data and international survey programs from 2010 to 2022.

She claimed that some countries’ underreporting and unavoidable gaps in the data were present.