Sexual violence against Ukrainian men in Russian detention is vastly underreported because of the “stigmatization and perceived alienation” attached to the crime, a UN agency has warned.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says the official Ukrainian figure of 114 men who have been victims of sexual violence since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 is likely an underestimate.

The Prosecutor General of Ukraine registered these cases, as well as the cases of 202 female survivors.

UNFPA says it is likely that for every incident recorded, there were another 10 to 20 cases that went unreported.

In September, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2022, revealed the systematic use of sexual violence as a torture method, often targeting men, in detention centers by Russian authorities.

The findings of its investigation included detailed testimony from detention centers in the occupied territories of Ukraine and Russia, with reports that senior Russian personnel “ordered, tolerated or took no action” against such treatment.

Men in prison are subjected to sexual torture

UNFPA told Al Jazeera that while the vast majority of victims of this crime were women and girls, this type of violence was also often used against men, boys and people of different gender identities.

All survivors of conflict-related sexual violence face significant barriers when seeking support, Massimo Diana, UNFPA Ukraine representative, told Al Jazeera.

This can include structural barriers such as limited resources and systems still evolving amid the ongoing war but also others that are “deeply personal, rooted in stigma, shame and fear,” Diana said.

“For male survivors, these barriers are often compounded by concerns about being stigmatized or misunderstood, including fear of being associated with sexual minorities,” he said.

Psychiatrists working with a UNFPA-supported center for survivors in Ukraine, which provides free, confidential services to frontline communities, say many victims are burdened with a sense of shame after being abused.

Psychologists have also faced challenges in building trust and securing survivor anonymity when digital tools are used to enhance images and photographs of sexual torture.

UNFPA, citing psychologists who work with victims, has reported that Russian forces have sent videos of male Ukrainian prisoners being raped to their relatives for blackmail or simply to humiliate them.

In July, Oleksandra Matviichuk and her Nobel Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties, a Kiev-based human rights group, told Al Jazeera that in interviews with hundreds of survivors of Russian captivity, many had told her and her colleagues that they had been mistreated. , raped and electrocuted.

Sexual violence and armed conflicts

In recent years, the world has seen increased levels of conflict-related sexual violence due to armed conflicts, according to the United Nations.

Al Jazeera has reported on the use of rape as a weapon in the ongoing war between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which broke out in April 2023.

In March, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said rape had been used as “a defining – and despicable – feature of this crisis since the beginning”.

There have also been reports of rape of male Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

In August, a video surfaced of a Palestinian prisoner being gang-raped by guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert, southern Israel.

In November, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most prominent doctors, was “likely raped to death” in Israeli detention.