Sudan is in denial about the extent of rape in refugee camps in its traumatized Darfur region where fear and distrust of the government is pervasive, the United Nations' top human rights official said on Saturday.
Aid officials in Darfur say many women are raped or attacked when they leave the camps to collect firewood, vital to cook food and for trade.
"I think the government as a whole is in denial about the scale and the severity of the problem," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Louise Arbour said on Saturday after a week-long trip to the remote west of Sudan.
"I don't believe that it is credible to believe that the women who are coming forward are fabricating stories that would bring this amount of shame and stigmatization upon themselves. It's bizarre," she told reporters in Khartoum.
Government officials admit there is some rape, but deny a systematic problem, saying many women exaggerate their stories.
"There is a credible base of evidence that there is a severe, severe, serious amount of sexual violence that is not being properly addressed," Ms Arbour said.
"There is a serious gap or disconnect between the perception of the reality on the ground by the government and the perception of that reality by everybody else."
After years of low-level conflict between Arab nomads and non-Arab farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, African tribal rebels launched a revolt accusing Khartoum of neglect and arming marauding Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.