Crime barricade tape. | Courtesy.

At least 14 of 200 survivors of gender-based violence in Juba and Wau are boys who experienced physical and sexual violence between 2023 and 2024, according to UNFPA.

Shruti Upadhyay, the Gender Specialist of United Nations Population Fund in the country said boys below the age of 12 years constitute 7 percent of the survivors.

In an interview with Eye Radio on Sunday, she added that many male victims of GBV remain silent about the vice.

“Since 2023, if you see the number of boys that we have had, we have seven percent of the residents in Juba and Wau who are boys below twelve years,” Shruti said.

“We are talking about around 200 survivors who have had support and of that, we have had about seven percent of them who are boys, largely boys who have had issues of physical assault, and sexual assault.”

“We come from a society where women and girls are still overwhelmingly more victimized than men and boys and there is also the issue of silence.”

“One message for the entire community is that, they need to beat silence around gender-based violence, be it women, be it men,” she stated.

For her part, Esther Ikere, Undersecretary in the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare  said the number GBV victims could be much higher due to inadequate reporting.

She attributed the hesitance in reporting the vice to cultural norms in the country.

“Violence is not only against women and girls but also, we now have survivors of boys and men, but one of the challenges in this country is that, there is a lot of silence around men and boys reporting GBV because of the culture.”

“Within the context of South Sudan, if a man has reported that he has been abused for example, people look at him as not a real man and, in this context, men used to hide incidents of Gender Based Violence.”

“So, the reporting is very low. In any case, you find that, the number of men and boys being reported as survivors is very rare.”