South Sudan – UN Experts Call for Special Investigation into Epic Sexual Violence, Rape, in South Sudan

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20979&LangID=E

NAIROBI/GENEVA (2 December 2016) – Sexual violence has reached epic proportions in the conflict in South Sudan and requires the urgent attention of the world, said the UN independent Commission* on Human Rights in South Sudan after a ten-day visit during which they met women survivors around the country.

“The scale of gang rape of civilian women as well as the horrendous nature of the rapes by armed men belonging to all groups is utterly repugnant and what’s worse is that there is no sense of outrage about this horror,” said the chairperson of the Commission, Yasmin Sooka. “There was justifiable uproar when international humanitarian workers were gang raped in July in the capital Juba but the fact of the matter is that it is happening to South Sudanese women on a daily basis and the world is just averting its eyes.”

The Commission intends to call for the establishment of a special investigative team to go to South Sudan to collect evidence of the rapes so as to form the basis of prosecutions for the future. The Commission urges the Government of South Sudan and those in control of opposition territories to give UN investigators unfettered access to all areas of the country.

While in South Sudan, the Commission interviewed a rape survivor whose case was mediated by village elders who ordered the perpetrator to pay compensation of a goat and a small sum of money. For many women this sort of informal mediation system is the only justice system available.

“It is mind boggling that a woman’s suffering and its lifelong impact has so little value, not to mention that serious crimes like rape must be tried in a court of law with due process,” said Commissioner Ken Scott.

In the capital Juba, a UN survey found seventy percent of women in Juba had suffered sexual assault since December 2013. In the outbreak of violence in the capital in July, hundreds of women reported rape. The Commission met several who had still not received the necessary medical treatment for terrible injures they sustained. An elderly woman who had left the camp to search for food thought her age would protect her from assault, only to experience beating and rape at the hands of soldiers who she said were young enough to be her sons. She explained the ethnic nature of the attacks by describing how the soldiers grabbed her cheeks, making derogatory references to her tribal markings. After the assault, her shattered body was transported back to the camp in a wheelbarrow by a passerby. Another woman who was five months pregnant described going out of the camp with four other women, all of whom were each gang raped by seven soldiers. She suffered a miscarriage afterwards but described how one of her companions died after being sexually mutilated. Rape survivors also suffer the stigma and shame of the rape with many indicating that their husbands had left them, blaming them for the rape. They are also ostracized by the community resulting in deep trauma. This has also raised concern about the longer-term psychosocial well-being of survivors.

In Bentiu in Unity State, the Commission heard of a number of women raped by soldiers outside the camp for displaced people on the day they visited. Despite the stigma, a woman in Bentiu described in a public meeting how she was raped and threatened with death by soldiers in Leer three days prior to the Commission’s visit and was still searching for her husband after the attack on their village. “There is no stigma around rape because for us it is normal; it is happening every day to us,” she said, “I am speaking out because I am someone who has been attacked but I want to say yes to life.” In Malakal in Upper Nile State, the UN Population Fund indicated that one in five women in the Protection of Civilian camp reported being sexually violated since the outbreak of the conflict. However conflict-related sexual violence mostly goes unreported.

The Commission also heard reports of women being abducted and subjected to sexual slavery by armed groups who move them from house to house resulting in the girls not being found. Women have also been raped inside displacement camps, and there are increasingly high levels of domestic violence.

“What concerns us is the pattern of sexual violence targeting women all over the country, the fact that rape is one of the tools being used for ethnic cleansing and the absolute impunity for these crimes,” said Ms. Sooka. All commanders at every level have an affirmative responsibility to prevent and punish rape and other sexual violence. The Commission believes the only way to curb the “normalization” of rape is to conduct investigations leading to prosecution for those in command.

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*The Commissioners are: Yasmin Sooka (Chairperson), Kenneth Scott and Godfrey Musila.

Video of the Mission to South Sudan is available at https://we.tl/gEkzl0yDL0 and https://we.tl/eWMjk96xX9

For more information, please contact Joseph Bonsu on jbonsu@ohchr.org and +41 79 109 6870 and Frances Harrison on francescsharrison@gmail.com and +44 794 648 8089.

For more information about the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, please see: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoHSouthSudan/Pages/Index.aspx

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southsudan-violence-idUSKBN13R1XV

South Sudan – Conflict – Civilian Women Subjected to Horrific, Brutal Sexual Violence

By Katharine Houreld – December 2, 2016

NAIROBI – South Sudanese soldiers brutally raped an elderly woman and a pregnant woman lost her baby after being gang-raped by seven soldiers, according to United Nations investigators.

The U.N. human rights investigators presented the testimonies on Friday, saying increasingly brutal attacks on women are an integral part of spreading ethnic cleansing. They said the violence could spill into genocide.

“The scale of gang rape of civilian women as well as the horrendous nature of the rapes by armed men belonging to all groups is utterly repugnant,” said the chairwoman of the U.N. independent commission on human rights, Yasmin Sooka.

“Women are bearing the brunt of this war along with their children … rape is one of the tools being used for ethnic cleansing.”

South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011 and had a brief period of celebration before ethnic tensions erupted amid allegations of widespread corruption.

In December 2013, fighting broke out months after President Salva Kiir, from the Dinka ethnic group, sacked vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer.

The sporadic fighting has increasingly taken on ethnic dimensions. Many of the smaller tribes accuse the Dinka of targeting them. Rebels have also targeted Dinka.

Women across the country were being subjected to sexual slavery, tied to trees and gang-raped or passed from house to house by soldiers, said Sooka, who said rebels were also committing atrocities.

Three in five women in U.N.-administered “protection of civilian” sites around the capital Juba experienced rape or sexual assault, according to a 2016 report by the U.N. Population Fund. The sites are meant to offer safe shelter for civilians.

Government officials and commanders on all sides had a legal duty to prevent their soldiers from preying on civilians, said Sooka’s colleague Kenneth Scott, a former prosecutor.

“Commanders, officers will be held accountable for failing to exercise command and control,” he said, warning failure to prevent atrocities could result in prosecution.

The shaky 2015 peace agreement that was supposed to end the latest round of fighting provided for a hybrid court to be set up with responsibilities divided between the African Union and South Sudan, but progress on setting it up was “very slow”, Scott said.

South Sudanese officials were not available to comment on the investigators’ findings, but on Thursday, Kiir told Reuters that no ethnic cleansing was taking place in South Sudan. The military has repeatedly denied targeting civilians.

Scott said the government had had almost “no reaction” to the commission’s findings.