Sexual violence against Ukrainian men in Russian detention is significantly underreported due to the “stigma and perceived emasculation” attached to the crime, a United Nations agency has warned.

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

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office recorded those cases, as well as those of 202 female survivors.

The UNFPA says it is likely that for each incident that was recorded, there were a further 10 to 20 cases that went unreported.

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

The findings of its investigation included detailed testimonies from inside detention centres in the occupied areas of Ukraine and Russia, with reports that higher-ranking Russian personnel “ordered, tolerated, or took no action” against such treatment.

Men in detention face sexual torture

The UNFPA told Al Jazeera that although the vast majority of victims of this crime were women and girls, this kind of violence was also commonly used against men, boys and people of diverse gender identities.

Nadia Zvonok cries as she recalls her granddaughter Olesya Masanovec who was allegedly raped and killed by Russian forces in Bucha, Ukraine, in 2022 [File: Nils Adler/Al Jazeera]

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

This can include structural barriers such as limited resources and systems still being developed during 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 labelled or misunderstood, including fears of being associated with sexual minorities,” he said.

Mental health professionals working with a UNFPA-supported centre for survivors in Ukraine, which provides free, confidential services to communities along the front line, say many victims are burdened with a sense of shame after being abused.

Psychologists have also faced challenges in building trust and securing the anonymity of survivors when digital tools are used to amplify footage and photographs of sexual torture.

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

In July, Oleksandra Matviichuk and her Nobel Prize-winning Centre for Civil Liberties, a Kyiv-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 beaten, raped and electrocuted.

Sexual violence and armed conflict

In recent years, the world has seen heightened levels of conflict-related sexual violence fuelled by armed conflict, according to the UN.

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

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

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

In August, a video emerged of a gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner by guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert, southern Israel.

In November, 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.