Survivor-mothers face judgmental treatment from service providers: RfP submits to UN report

Last Friday, Rights for Peace and SUNS (Survivors Network of South Sudan) submitted a report to the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls for the 62nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against mothers. 

Recognition of mothers

The Special Rapporteur’s report will be the first report ever presented to the UN Human Rights Council on the subject of violence against mothers. Our submission focuses on mothers who have become mothers as a result of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in South Sudan. This specific category is often forgotten, and not considered in legislation, despite facing systematic psychological, economic, physical and social forms of discrimination. UNICEF has reported that 65% of women and girls in South Sudan have experienced physical and sexual violence in their lifetime. SUNS, the Survivors' Network in South Sudan reports that over 1000 of their members have children born of conflict-related sexual violence.

Rights for Peace, in collaboration with SUNS, sets out the forms and manifestations of violence experienced by women and girls because of their status as mothers of children born of CRSV. These mothers face immeasurable violence, abuse and discrimination from their families and communities. The UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights has admitted that “patterns of discrimination and violence against mothers that are often overlooked”.

Stigma and discrimination 

Not only do these mothers face trauma and depression from the effects of CRSV, but they are often blamed by their communities and families for being raped. They are ostracised for giving birth to a child who is seen as ‘a child of the enemy’. Mothers often choose not to access critical antenatal and birth services due to this social discrimination.

As explained by one survivor in a Focus Group Discussion for our 2022 Study on CRSV and Reparations in South Sudan:

"she feared going to the health services due to the risk of being blamed by the community, who would say ‘she looked for it’.”

In a workshop with survivors in Juba in July 2025, one survivor explained that she has been subject to “judgmental treatment from health workers aware of their history”, referring to the CRSV which was committed against them. Another survivor stated that:

“They discriminate even at the health centre. When you are taking that child for treatment, they will ask where is the 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.”

Violence from within 

Many mothers of children born of CRSV report suffering domestic violence from their spouses, who may have returned from war or displacement to find that their wife is pregnant or has given birth to a child that is not theirs. In a 2021 Focus Group Discussion in South Sudan, one survivor-mother told us after she gave birth to her child born of CRSV:

“he treated me like a dog as he no longer cared for me”.

Some survivors have reported incidents of their spouses responding to the birth of a child conceived through rape with lethal violence against the infant. One participant of a Focus Group Discussion with survivors in Wedweil Refugee Settlement, South Sudan in November 2025 said that after her sister was raped and became pregnant, her father said that if she gave birth to the child, he would kill it. This forced the mother to flee to a refugee camp and take the child to the Red Cross to be raised. Another survivor, participating in a Focus Group Discussion in South Sudan in 2021 said that: 

“A neighbour was raped and had a baby. Her husband, a soldier, returned and took the lactating child and killed the baby. He is a free man walking around”.

This violence against mothers and their children is met with impunity. Other spouses choose to abandon the mother rather than accept a child born of CRSV, displacing her from her community and often taking away her other children who were born through their marriage. Displacement leads to a risk of re-victimisation and economic instability. These acts all inflict profound psychological harm on mothers. There is often little psychosocial support available for these mothers, either due to a lack of resources or stigma from the community that prevents mothers from accessing these services without fear of judgment.

The need for change 

Mothers of children born of CRSV are facing extreme and sustained patterns of discrimination and violence in South Sudan, because of their status as mothers. Current policy and practice in South Sudan does not protect mothers against stigma, discrimination or violence. These mothers should be provided with access to psychosocial services and economic support in order to ensure that they can work through the trauma and be supported in motherhood. 

SUBMISSION - violence against mothers FINAL.pdf

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