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Refugee women stand in the Gorom refugee settlement during Foreign Minister Baerbock's visit.
UN accuses Sudan militia of mass rape
The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan has just issued a new report accusing the Rapid Support Forces militia of using sexual violence to control civilians in their territory. The report follows one of the deadliest single incidents of the 18-month-old civil war: On Friday, RSF troops killed at least 124 people, injured nearly 200, and detained scores in a village southeast of Khartoum.
Activists told CNN that the RSF deliberately targets communication links, especially Starlink devices, so the true casualty and arrest figures are likely “significantly higher.” The number of detentions is extremely worrying, as the UN’s report found that the RSF routinely forces detained and abducted girls and women into sexual slavery, with victims ranging in age from 8 to 75.
The report also documents the use of gang rape to punish civilians for perceived support for the Sudanese Armed Forces, the old regime, or human rights activism. Victims suffer not only from the violence and trauma but from broader social isolation as many are shunned by their family and peers — or even killed.
What led to the massacre? Last month, the SAF launched an offensive against RSF-held areas in the capital, Khartoum, and pushed into surrounding states including El-Gezira, where Friday’s massacre occurred. As the RSF has pulled back toward its core base in Darfur to the west, its fighters have retaliated against civilians. Omran Abdullah, a senior RSF spokesperson, told Al-Jazeera the victims were fighting for the SAF, however.
The UN is calling for an immediate cease-fire, urgent distribution of food and medicine, a peacekeeping force to protect civilians, and an international judicial process to bring some small measure of justice to victims. As intense and deeply disturbing as the violence has proven, we are not holding our breath for a strong response from the international community.
A photo of a student using a chatbot.
Hard Numbers: Study buddy, Worst use of AI, Lobby it, Office space
4,700: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received 4,700 reports of AI-generated images depicting child sexual exploitation last year. This highlights one of the most nefarious uses for generative AI, one that lawmakers and private companies are still grappling with.
185: The number of companies lobbying on AI-related policy issues increased by 185% between 2022 and 2023, according to OpenSecrets. More than 450 organizations lobbied on AI last year.
3.6 million: AI companies leased 3.6 million square feet in San Francisco in 2023. That represents a 46% increase in a single year, and the number could hit 12.5 million by 2030 if trends hold.
Yael Richert speaks during special event to address sexual violence during Hamas terror attack on October 7 held at UN Headquarters in New York on December 4, 2023. During the event, speakers described their personal experience seeing women violated during terror attack and condemned women’s advocacy groups, specifically UN Women, to be silent on this.
Tensions between Israel and UN reach boiling point
As the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza, the Israeli government and the UN are locked in an escalating feud of their own. Israel has accused the UN of anti-Israel bias in the past, but the tensions have reached new heights in recent days. Here’s what’s going on:
Sexual violence on Oct. 7. Israel says the UN didn’t speak up quickly enough in response to harrowing accounts of sexual violence committed by Hamas against Israeli women and girls during the Oct. 7 attack. Hamas denies the allegations of rape and gender-based violence, but there’s a mounting body of evidence to back up the accusations – including photos and gruesome testimony from witnesses and first responders that points to widespread acts of sexual assault and genital mutilation.
UN chief António Guterres, along with the UN bodies responsible for women’s issues, human rights, and UNICEF, have all issued statements in recent days expressing alarm at the accounts of sexual violence and calling for investigations into the allegations. Israel’s view? Too little, too late.
“Sadly, the very international bodies that are supposedly the defenders of all women showed that when it comes to Israelis, indifference is acceptable,” Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said Monday on a UN panel. “Their silence has been deafening,” Erdan said.
Prominent women in the US – including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ex-Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) – attended the panel and echoed this criticism. President Joe Biden also called on international organizations to “forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists without equivocation.”
A UN commission investigating war crimes committed in the Israel-Hamas conflict has said it will also focus on the sexual violence allegations, but the Israeli government has refused to cooperate with the probe – accusing the commission of prejudice against Israel.
Article 99. Meanwhile, with concerns rising over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Guterres on Wednesday for the first time took the rare step of invoking Article 99 of the UN charter, which says the UN chief “may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
Citing extreme concerns over the situation in Gaza, the UN chief urged the UN Security Council to avert a “catastrophe” by implementing a humanitarian cease-fire.
Israel, which has called on Guterres to resign in recent weeks over allegations he isn’t critical enough of Hamas, hasn’t taken kindly to this move. Its UN ambassador said the action was further evidence of the UN’s bias against Israel, adding that Guterres hit a “new moral low.”
What’s next? The UNSC is set to meet on Friday to be briefed by Guterres on the Gaza war. The UAE, one of 15 members of the UNSC, has asked for a vote on a draft resolution endorsing an immediate humanitarian cease-fire. That said, the US, which has veto power as a permanent member of the UNSC, is likely to spike the resolution. Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood has signaled the US doesn’t back any actions by the UNSC at the moment.