South Sudan before the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Our focus on Children Born of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a UN treaty body responsible for reviewing how States Parties implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history - ratified by every UN member state except the United States of America.

South Sudan ratified the Convention and its optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict on 23 January 2015. It has not, however, signed the Convention’s other optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

Rights for Peace submitted an Alternative Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in early December 2025, ahead of the CRC’s 103rd Pre-Sessional Working Group on South Sudan, which has been tentatively scheduled to take place in February 2026.

Making Children Born of CRSV Visible

For the past decade, South Sudan has been the subject of an ongoing civil war, during which children have faced grave violations of their rights, including starvation, forced recruitment into armed groups, child labour, and child marriage. In addition, children born of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) remain especially overlooked and under-protected, due to stigma and a lack of visibility among competing child rights issues.

In July 2025, a group of survivors from SUNS and the Network of South Sudanese Survivors in Uganda (NoSSSU) participated in a workshop facilitated by Rights for Peace and the Centre for Inclusive Governance, Peace and Justice (CIGPJ), with the support of the Global Survivors’ Fund. Participants discussed the rights and lived experiences of children born of CRSV and released a statement advocating for legal reform in South Sudan.

Our submission to the CRC centres on survivor testimonies, bringing their direct experiences to the forefront and calling for practical and meaningful recommendations from the Committee.

Children Born of CRSV are rights-holders

There is a significant lack of data the scale and scope of children born of CRSV due stigma and protection concerns. The Survivors Network in South Sudan (SUNS) has identified over 200 children born of CRSV, though this just an indication of the scale.

Children born of CRSV often face violence, stigma, and discrimination within their families and communities. These harms can push them (and their mothers) to the margins of society and impede their rights to identity, belonging, and participation. International legal bodies, including the International Criminal Court, recognise these children as direct victims of sexual violence in war.

It is important to remember that not only do these children face discrimination, but so do their mothers, who are survivors of CRSV:

“They discriminate even at the health centre. When you are taking that child for treatment, they will ask where is father of that child. They will tell the mother, you get out of here, you are a prostitute. If you want to get a birth certificate, they will ask for the father. They may not give you a birth certificate.”

— Interviea with a key informant in Juba, aovember 2025.

As South Sudan’s culture is rooted in patriarchal traditions, the absence of a father can strip a child of essential social identifiers such as family name, tribal affiliation, and clan membership, which traditionally provide protection, shelter, economic support, access to schooling, social standing and the ability to marry as well as inheritence.

Patterns of Violence and Stigma

One of the most common issues raised by mothers of children born of CRSV is the violence which these children face. Because their birth is a direct result of sexual violence and war, often while a woman’s husband is away fighting, there have been instances of infanticide, or attempted infanticide, by the spouse when he returns. This often means that mothers are forced to choose between their original family and the child born of CRSV.

Mothers of children born of CRSV have reported having suicidal thoughts, along with infanticidal plans, as a result of the challenges they face. One survivor said;

“I planned to bring my son and burn my house with my son and me together inside”.

Along with physical violence, children born of CRSV face bullying, verbal abuse and struggles with their identity. This can start from infancy, when they are named using a moniker which represents the trauma that a mother has faced in conceiving this child. At a workshop in July 2025, survivors reported that names they had given to their children born of CRSV include:

“Abu Mafi” = without a father “Taabu Abau” = suffered, rejected “Takozi / Nazaa” = victim of conflict “Jerima” = crime “Malesh” = misfortune, sorry for what happened

Naming children in this way is not unique to children born of CRSV, but can perpetuate the stigma which they already face by highlighting the trauma involved in their conception, causing the child to question their identity and wonder who their father is.

Birth registration

One of the earliest and most serious challenges for children born of CRSV is birth registration. Current procedures require information about the father, which is often unknown or unsafe to disclose in cases of CRSV, to be filled out on a notification of birth form. Mothers often cannot fill out this information, leaving their child born of CRSV unregistered.

Without their birth registered, a child born of CRSV does not have a legal identity, and so they cannot access basic services: from school and medical treatment to humanitarian programmes that require documentation. This has a knock-on effect: social stigma develops into concrete exclusion that restricts children’s development and harms their rights.

Education

Education is a universal human right, and countries that are part of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, such as South Sudan, are legally bound to ensure that every child can access primary and secondary education without discrimination. But children born of CRSV experience difficulties in accessing school due to the financial barriers that their mothers face. Although primary education in South Sudan is technically free, parents are required to purchase school uniforms, materials and lunches for their children. Some spouses of mothers of children born of CRSV will discriminate against the child by providing these resources for the children that they produced with the mother, but not for the child born of CRSV. Moreover, in order to complete their final primary leaving examinations, students must have a birth certificate; this can present an obstacle for unregistered children born of CRSV.

These children’s uneven access to education entrenches long-term marginalisation. What starts as the wrongful denial of a universal right can affect children born of CRSV long into adulthood.

What needs to change?

In our Alternative Report, we made several recommendations o the Committee on the Rights for the Child based on survivors’ statements and wider research on how children born of CRSV could be better protected and supported in South Sudan.

Children born of CRSV are not explicitly referred to in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, its optional protocols or South Sudan’s domestic laws. We recommend that all of these legal documents recognise and inclusively mention, without singling out, children born of CRSV. For example, rather than the Convention’s current phrasing of “children affected by armed conflict”, the language should be widened to: “children affected by armed conflict, including children born of conflict-related sexual violence”. This would identify these children as direct victims of armed conflict who face additional challenges to their rights, without stigmatising their differences. This additional phrase should be embedded into the Convention, its optional protocols, and South Sudan’s own laws, such as the Child Act (2008) and the Commission for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing Act (2024). With explicit legal recognition, children born of CRSV can be better protected by legislation. However, more needs to be done to reduce social discrimination against them.

One of the most important recommendations mothers have requested is for the birth registration form in South Sudan to be revised. Rather than requiring the father’s name, tribe, and boma to be recorded, adding the simple phrase ‘if known’ next to these boxes would reduce trauma and stigma for the mother, and encourage registration: giving children born of CRSV access to services which they both desperately need, and have the right to. The birth registration form should be strictly confidential, so it does not directly identify the child as one born of CRSV, therefore reducing direct discrimination.

To reduce stigma against children born of CRSV, the Government of South Sudan should release a high-level statement recognising children born of CRSV as children of the nation, like any others, to condemn discrimination and promote unity. This recognition would facilitate the future acceptance and integration of children born of CRSV into society.

Children born of CRSV face layered legal, social and economic barriers, which ultimately lead to their exclusion and marginalisation from education. Therefore, children born of CRSV should be able to access educational bursaries, especially after primary school, when the higher costs of secondary education contribute to higher drop-out rates for these children.

RfP Alternative Report Children's Rights.pdf

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This alternative report was submitted in the context of the Global Survivors Fund project “Supporting Survivors’ Empowerment through Advocacy and Interim Reparative Measures.”