More than 370 million women and girls alive today – or almost one in eight – experienced rape or sexual assault before they turned 18, according to the first global estimates of the problem.
A new Unicef report describes sexual violence against children as an “overwhelming” human rights violation, with survivors carrying the trauma into adulthood. It says the scale of the violation is “abhorrent in its magnitude”.
If “non-contact” forms of sexual violence are included, such as unwanted sexual jokes or comments, exposure to pornography or exposure of sexual organs, the rate rises to one in five, researchers found.
The agency said that while girls and women were the worst affected, approximately one boy or man in 11 had also experienced rape or sexual assault during childhood.
Unicef’s executive director, Catherine Russell, said: “Sexual violence against children is a stain on our moral conscience. It inflicts deep and lasting trauma, often by someone the child knows and trusts, in places where they should feel safe.”
The report includes anonymised stories of individual cases, including 12-year-old Analyn, who was rescued from her home in the Philippines and taken to a government shelter. Aged 10, she had taken part in livestreaming of child sexual abuse after a neighbour approached her and offered money.
Xume, a 15-year-old shepherd from a village in Ethiopia, was ostracised by her community after being raped. She said: “The cows were dying because of the drought, but people said it was my fault because I am a bad person. That was because I was raped and didn’t tell anyone out of shame and fear.
“But when I turned out to be pregnant, I was excluded from the community and accused of the death of the cows.”
Most childhood sexual violence was inflicted on teenagers, with a particular spike between the ages of 14 and 17. The most likely abusers are family, friends or intimate partners.
Russell said children in fragile settings, such as those with weak institutions, UN peacekeeping forces, or a large number of refugees, were especially vulnerable. In those areas, one in four girls faced rape or sexual assault.
“We are witnessing horrific sexual violence in conflict zones, where rape and gender-based violence are often used as weapons of war,” she said.
Sexual violence against children occurred in all regions of the world, the report found. The highest rate was in Oceania, where 34% of women – 6 million people – had been victims. The highest number was in sub-Saharan Africa, where 79 million women and girls, or 22%, were affected.
However, Unicef said caution was necessary when comparing between regions, due to factors such as different levels of under-reporting and societal and cultural norms.
In 2015, the global community committed to ending all forms of violence against children by 2030 as one of the sustainable development goals. The report comes before an inaugural global ministerial conference on ending violence against children in Colombia in November.
Unicef said it had been hard to grasp the scale of sexual violence against children “because of stigma, challenges in measurement, and limited investment in data collection”. This was particularly true when looking at boys’ experiences, and non-contact forms, the UN agency said.
But it said that “since the start of the millennium, the widespread boom in access to the internet and use of digital and mobile technology at a global scale has created new forms of sexual abuse and exploitation”.
The report is based on surveys conducted between 2010 and 2022 in 120 countries and areas, while estimates for boys and men and of non-contact sexual violence “were informed by a broader range of data sources and applied some indirect methods”.
