United Nations – The UN Human Rights Office says it recorded more than 1,300 reported cases of rape in the oil-rich Unity State of South Sudan.
The new report on South Sudan, published on Friday by the UN Human Rights Office, showed that the cases were recorded between April and September
2015.
It noted that the report was the outcome of an assessment team sent by the High Commissioner to South Sudan from October 2015 to January 2016, in accordance with a resolution by the Human Rights Council in July 2015.
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primarily focused on the worst affected Unity and Upper Nile States, as well as Western and Central Equatorial, where the conflict spread.
While building on earlier reports of the African Union Commission of Inquiry and the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the new report placed special emphasis on violations that took place during 2015.
It said credible sources indicated that groups allied to the government were being allowed to rape women in lieu of wages, but opposition groups and criminal gangs preyed on women and girls.
The report added that all parties to the conflict had committed patterns of serious and systematic violence against civilians since fighting broke out in December 2013 and that state actors bore the greatest responsibility during 2015, given the weakening of opposition forces.
It said that the human rights situation in South Sudan had deteriorated dramatically since the outbreak of the crisis in December 2013, noting that more than
two million South Sudanese had been displaced and tens of thousands killed.
The report indicated that the parties to the conflict had yet to establish the Transitional Government of National Unity they promised in the peace agreement last August, noting that since 2013, all parties to the conflict had conducted “attacks against civilians, rape and other crimes of sexual violence, arbitrary arrest and detention.”
It stated that both sides in the conflict perpetrated abduction and deprivation of liberty, disappearance, including enforced disappearance, and attacks on UN personnel and peacekeeping facilities.
It emphasised that “given the breadth and depth of the allegations, the gravity, consistency and recurrence and the similarities in modus operandi, there were reasonable grounds to believe the violations may amount to war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.
“The overwhelming majority of civilian casualties appeared not to be the result of actual combat operations but of deliberate attacks on civilians because in
towns and strategic countries, the pattern of the conflict had been one of attack, withdrawal and counter attack.
“Each time an area changed hands, those in charge would try and kill or displace as many civilians as they could, based on their ethnic identity.”
The report stated that some of the most serious abuses took place in the Spring of 2014 in Bentiu and Rubkona in Unity State when armed groups allied to opposition forces entered the towns and killed hundreds of civilians trying to shelter from the fighting.
It added that places of refuge, more often than not, turned into veritable traps for civilians, while Churches, Mosques and hospitals were not spared from attacks.
“Killings, sexual violence, displacement, destruction and massive looting continued unabated throughout 2015.” (NAN)