Category Archives: Sexual violence

Women arrested by Taliban for begging report rape and killings in Afghan jails

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Draconian new laws allow mass incarceration of women and children forced to beg because of work ban

Destitute Afghan women arrested for begging under draconian new Taliban laws have spoken of “brutal” rapes and beatings in detention.

Over the past few months, many women said they had been targeted by Taliban officials and detained under anti-begging laws passed this year. While in prison, they claim they were subjected to sexual abuse, torture and forced labour, and witnessed children being beaten and abused.

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‘Carved on bodies and souls’: survivor tells of Russia’s use of male sexual torture in Ukraine

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Oleksii Sivak has set up a support group for others who have suffered widespread but unspoken abuse

Russian troops tortured Oleksii Sivak for weeks, applying electric shocks to his genitals in a freezing basement in his home city of Kherson in punishment for resisting their rule.

When Ukrainian troops freed the city in the autumn of 2022, Sivak was presented with a long list of medical specialists who could help his recovery and asked to tick the ones he needed.

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Sudan militia accused of mass killings and sexual violence as attacks escalate

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Experts fear reports of 124 dead in attack on villages south of Khartoum are significant underestimation

Sudanese militia have been accused of killings, sexual violence, looting and arson during eight days of attacks on villages south of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.

The UN said there were reports of “gross human rights abuses” linked to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group, which has escalated attacks on civilians in el-Gezira state since the area’s key commander was reported to have defected to government forces on 20 October.

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Four in 10 deaths in war zones last year were women, UN report finds

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UN Women says figure doubled in 2023 amid ‘blatant disregard’ of laws that left women and children unprotected

The proportion of women killed in conflicts around the world doubled last year, with women now accounting for 40% of all those killed in war zones, according to a new report by the United Nations.

The report from UN Women, which looks at the security situation for women and girls affected by war, says UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence also rose by 50% in 2023 compared with 2022.

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Haitian gangs recruiting starving children to fight security forces, rights group finds

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Hundreds of poor and desperate children targeted in anticipation of long and bloody battle, says Human Rights Watch

Haitian armed gangs are recruiting starving children to swell their ranks ahead of an anticipated long and bloody battle with international security forces, a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.

Armed groups – which control most of Haiti – are enticing hundreds, if not thousands, of impoverished children to take up arms with offers of food and shelter, the rights groups said.

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‘I constantly was saying no’: ex-Abercrombie & Fitch boss accused of abuse at global sex events

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Mike Jeffries, now 80, has been accused of exploiting young men for sex in cities around the world from 2009-15

The former chief executive of the American fashion brand Abercrombie & Fitch faces new allegations this weekend of exploitation and abuse at sex events held around the world.

One witness said he attended a sex event in Spain with the former fashion boss Mike Jeffries and his British partner Matthew Smith, believing it was going to be a photoshoot, the BBC reported. Young men were injected with liquid Viagra at other events, according to witnesses.

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Murdered Indian doctor’s father speaks out: ‘All I can do now is get her justice’

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The rape-murder of a trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital has caused outrage across India. Here, her father recalls her urge to help others and their struggle to support her studies

The father of the trainee doctor murdered during a rest break at a Kolkata hospital has spoken of his daughter’s love of medicine and the way her family had worked to support her vocation.

“We are a poor family and we raised her with a lot of hardship. She worked extremely hard to become a doctor. All she did was study, study, study,” he told the Guardian by telephone.

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Indian women march to ‘reclaim the night’ after doctor’s rape and murder

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Protests reflect anger at 31-year-old’s killing, as well as a failure to address the daily struggles faced by many women

At the stroke of midnight, thousands of women holding flaming torches and blowing conch shells began to march through dark streets across the state of West Bengal.

The processions in the early hours of the morning on Thursday 15 August, India’s Independence Day, were part of several days of protest against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor inside a hospital in the state capital, Kolkata, last week.

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Doctors strike in India after rape and murder of trainee medic at hospital

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Call for better safety measures as ‘civic volunteer’ arrested after attack on female trainee doctor in Kolkata

Doctors at government hospitals in several Indian states have gone on strike in a protest after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata on Friday.

The 31-year-old woman was attacked at the state-run RG Kar medical college, where she was a resident doctor, after she went to rest in a seminar room following dinner with colleagues. Her brutalised body was found with multiple injuries and an autopsy confirmed sexual assault and homicide.

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UN calls for foreign security forces to be deployed faster to quash Haiti gang wars

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Armed gangs control much of Caribbean country’s capital with reports of 40 rape victims a day in areas, UN reports

The UN has called for the deployment of international security forces in Haiti to be accelerated after a report that at least 1,379 people were killed or wounded in gang warfare and 428 people kidnapped in the country between April and June this year.

“Service providers report receiving an average of 40 rape victims a day in some areas of the capital,” warns the new report from the UN’s office in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

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Girls as young as nine gang-raped by paramilitaries in Sudan – report

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Human Rights Watch accuses RSF militia of ‘countless’ cases of rape and torture in Khartoum in 15-month civil war

Gunmen from a notorious militia roamed Sudan’s capital gang-raping “countless” women and girls, some as young as nine, according to an investigation documenting the shocking prevalence of sexual violence in Khartoum during the country’s civil war.

Some of the attacks by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were so brutal that women and girls died “due to the violence associated with the act of rape”, according to the research by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

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Video appears to show gang-rape of Afghan woman in a Taliban jail

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Exclusive: Activist claims she was threatened with release of the footage in order to silence her, amid multiple reports of sexual violence inflicted upon imprisoned Afghan women

The Guardian has seen video evidence of a female Afghan human rights activist being gang-raped and tortured in a Taliban jail by armed men.

There have been mounting reports that sexual violence is being inflicted on women and girls being held in detention in Afghanistan, but this video is believed to be the first direct evidence of these crimes occurring.

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India’s supreme court to rule on new penal code permitting marital rape

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Rights groups protesting at Modi government’s view that criminalising sexual assault violates ‘sanctity’ of marriage

Campaigners angry that marital rape is not to be criminalised under India’s long-awaited new penal code have been promised a ruling on the issue by the supreme court next month.

Human rights organisations, including the All India Democratic Women’s Association, have been petitioning India’s supreme court to make it a criminal offence. The court has in turn asked the government for a response.

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Yazidi survivors of Sinjar massacre alarmed by Iraq’s move to close camps

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A decade after tens of thousands of Yazidis escaped an Islamic State attack many fear return to a home in ruins

The Iraqi government has been accused of making the survivors of the Sinjar massacre fear for their future once more, almost a decade after the murderous Islamic State campaign that forced tens of thousands of people to flee from their homes.

In January, the Iraqi council of ministers set a deadline of 30 July to close 23 displacement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. The camps are home to about 155,000 internally displaced people (IDP), mostly Yazidis, who were slaughtered, kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery in their thousands at the height of the violence in northern Iraq in 2014.

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Peruvian soldiers found guilty of rapes committed during civil war in historic verdict

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‘Landmark’ case is first to deal with use of sexual violence in state’s conflict with Shining Path rebels four decades ago

Ten soldiers have been found guilty at a court in Lima of crimes against humanity for rapes committed four decades ago during Peru’s civil war.

In what is being hailed as a landmark verdict, a panel of three judges on Wednesday said the systematic use of rape by soldiers in the Manta y Vilca case – named after the communities where the abuses took place – qualified as a crime against humanity.

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Soaring number of migrants trapped in Yemen face abuse and starvation, say NGOs

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Urgent funding needed to help people return home as humanitarian crisis reaches critical levels, according to migration organisation

The number of African migrants stranded in Yemen, many of whom endure “horrifying and brutal” violence while trapped there, is reaching critical levels, according to international NGOs and civil society organisations based in the Arab state.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) put out a warning this week about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, leading a call for urgent funding to support the “safe and voluntary return of migrants to their countries of origin”.

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UK Foreign Office holding secret talks with Sudan’s RSF paramilitary group

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Exclusive: Rights groups denounce negotiations with Rapid Support Forces, accused of ethnic cleansing and war crimes

Foreign Office officials are holding secret talks with the paramilitary group that has been waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Sudan for the past year.

News that the British government and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are engaged in clandestine negotiations has prompted warnings that such talks risk legitimising the notorious militia – which continues to commit multiple war crimes – while undermining Britain’s moral credibility in the region.

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‘Deeply alarming’: sevenfold increase in sexual attacks at Darién Gap, says Médecins Sans Frontières

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More than half a million people made treacherous, weeklong trek in 2023, facing horrors including mass rapes by armed bandits

A sevenfold increase in sexual attacks against people crossing the Darién Gap is compounding the misery for people trekking one of the world’s most dangerous and underreported border crossings, said Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Complete impunity for armed gangs in the lawless stretch of jungle that links South and Central America meant one person became a victim of sexual violence every three and a half hours in December, the overstretched medical organisation said.

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UN condemnation of sexual violence by Hamas ‘too little, too late’, says Israel

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Israel says comments by Unicef chief were insufficient and came only as a result of international pressure

Israel has criticised the head of the United Nations children’s agency after she condemned acts of sexual violence committed against women during Hamas’s deadly assault on Israel on 7 October, as attention has focused on rapes and other atrocities in recent days.

Israel said the comments by Catherine Russell, the executive director of Unicef, were insufficient and were issued only as a result of international pressure.

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Rapists and kidnappers increasingly targeting migrants crossing Darién Gap

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As record numbers make the perilous journey between Colombia and Panama, Médecins Sans Frontières is treating far more survivors of sexual violence, including children

Armed bandits are exploiting the record number of people crossing the Darién Gap – a 100km stretch of jungle connecting Colombia and Panama – to kidnap and rape desperate migrants, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The organisation said it treated 397 survivors of sexual violence this year – many of them children – once they safely reached Panama. There have been reports of “group rapes in tents set up for that purpose in the mountainous rainforest and swampland”.

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