GENEVA: Pakistan has denounced a United Nations (UN) report onconflict-related sexual violence for not including the crimes of violencecommitted in Indian Illegally occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIoJK) andIsraeli-occupied Palestine, with a forceful call for its rectification.
“There is ample documented evidence that since 1989 Indian occupationforces have used rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war in occupiedKashmir,” Ambassador Munir Akram told the UN Security Council which met toexamine implementation of its resolutions on conflict-related sexualviolence.
The meeting was convened by the United Kingdom, which holds the rotatingpresidency of the 15-member Council this month.
Opening the debate, Pramila Patten, Special Representative of theSecretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said that risingmilitarisation and arms proliferation is bringing conflicts across theglobe to a boiling point, with gang rape, sexual slavery and other forms ofsexual violence being used as tactics of war, torture and terrorism.
Patten presented data from her latest report, published last month, whichdocumented 2,455 UN-verified cases of wartime rape committed during 2022.
Women and girls accounted for 94 percent, with six percent against men andboys, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) again accounting forthe highest number of cases– 701.
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Patten also detailed horrors committed in other countries, such as Haiti,Ethiopia and Iraq. Serious allegations of conflict-related sexual violencein Sudan have also surfaced since fighting erupted in April.
Reacting to the report, the Pakistani envoy said, “The credibility of theReport is seriously eroded because of what looks like a deliberate decisionnot to report the crimes of sexual violence being committed inIndian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir and in Israeli-occupied Palestine.”
Thousands of women and girls have been raped and gang raped, and subjectedto enforced incarceration, torture and abduction, Ambassador Akram said.
