Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege on Wednesday warned that the scourge of sexual violence and rape in all conflicts is now “a real pandemic,” and without sanctions and justice for the victims, the horrific acts will not stop.
The Congolese doctor told the UN Security Council in a video briefing that “we are still far away from being able to draw a red line against the use of rape and sexual violence as a strategy of war domination and terror.”
Mukwege appealed to the international community “to draw a red line against the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war.”
Photo: AFP
The “red line” must mean “blacklists with economic, financial and political sanctions, as well as judicial prosecutions against the perpetrators and instigators of these egregious crimes,” he said.
Mukwege founded the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and for more than 20 years has treated countless women who were raped amid fighting between armed groups seeking control of some the central African nation’s vast mineral wealth.
He said that sexual violence and impunity continue.
He shared the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with rights avocate Nadia Murad, who in 2014 was kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery by Islamic State militants along with an estimated 3,000 Yazidi girls and women.
Mukwege said that there has been progress in international law, and the greatest challenge today is to transform commitments into obligations and council resolutions into results.
Accountability and justice “are the best tools of prevention,” he said.
Without punishment and sanctions, rapes and sexual violence in conflicts will continue, he added.
Mukwege spoke at a council meeting on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ latest report on sexual violence in conflict, which said that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in gender-based violence last year.
It focused on 18 countries where the UN said it has verified information that 52 warring parties are “credibly suspected” of patterns of “rape and other forms of sexual violence” in conflicts on the council agenda.
The majority of the parties are opposition, rebel and terrorist groups — so-called “non-state actors” — and more than 70 percent “are persistent perpetrators,” the report said.
In the latest example, UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten told the council that in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where fighting continues between the government and the region’s fugitive leaders, “women and girls are being subjected to sexual violence with a level of cruelty beyond comprehension.”
“Healthcare workers are documenting new cases of rape and gang-rape daily, despite their fear of reprisals and attacks on the limited shelters and clinics in operation,” Patten said, adding that the report records allegations of more than 100 rape cases since fighting began in November last year, but it might take months to determine the full scale and magnitude of the atrocities.
The report documents “over 2,500 UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence committed in the course of 2020,” she said.
“Each of these cases cries out for justice,” Patten said.
“It is time to write a new social contract in which no military or political leader is above the law, and no woman or girl is beneath the scope of its protection,” she added.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not