As of 3 June, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights OHCHR had received reports of alleged acts of conflict-related sexual across Ukraine — mostly against women and girls — and a national hotline had received reports of crimes ranging from gang rape to coercion to watch an act of sexual violence committed against a partner or a child.
Against that backdrop, she urged humanitarian actors to prioritize support for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence as a life-saving component of their work and warned against waiting to act. The Russian Federation is using sexual violence and rape as instruments of terror to control civilians, she said.
Although the full scale of conflict-related sexual violence is not yet known, human rights activists and law enforcement agencies estimate that hundreds of cases have been committed not just against women and girls, but also men and boys and people of other gender identities, she said. Also briefing the Council was Sherrie Rollins Westin, President of the non-profit organization Sesame Workshop, who said her group supports children and caregivers affected by conflicts and crises around the globe.
Urging the international community to prioritize caregivers and young children in their humanitarian response, she said the latter have the most to lose, as their brains are developing faster than at any time in their lives. Exposure to traumatic events can have lasting impacts on their health, cognitive development and emotional stability.
Against that backdrop, she urged the humanitarian community to build interventions to support young children into their work — including mental health services, quality early childhood education and help for caregivers — and pointed out that less than 3 per cent of humanitarian funding currently goes to such crucial programmes. Also noting that human traffickers and criminal networks may be taking advantage of the conflict to exploit women and children, he said States have a duty to prevent predatory individuals and criminal organizations from profiting from the situation.
