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	UN Rights Council condemns Darfur abuses by UN News / Reuters & agencies Geneva, Switzerland   Aug 2007   Darfur: UN accuses Sudanese military, allied militias of possible war crimes. (UN News)   The Sudanese military and allied armed groups abducted women and girls and kept many as sex slaves for a month after an attack on villages in Darfur near the end of last year, the United Nations human rights office reported today, saying the abuses may constitute war crimes before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and naming individuals who could be held responsible.   The Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Louise Arbour called on the Sudanese Government to set up an independent investigation into the events that followed the attack on Deribat and eight other villages in the East Jebel Marra region of South Darfur state in late December 2006.   In a report released today, issued with the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) as a follow-up to an April report on the same events, OHCHR recommended, among others, that anyone suspected of being responsible for the abductions, rapes or sex slavery “should be brought to justice in trials that meet international standards of fairness.”   Any member of the Sudanese armed forces suspected of committing or ordering the abuses should be suspended immediately pending an inquiry, the report stated, adding that the Government should also ensure full reparations – including compensation – for the victims and their families.   Khartoum “must protect women and children from sexual and gender-based violence,” according to a statement accompanying the report, which was based partly on testimony given by victims and eyewitnesses during a field trip by UNMIS human rights officers.   It said the Government was responsible for the actions of its armed forces and for other informal allied groups or militias that were involved, particularly the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) and the Sudan Liberation Army/Abu Gasim faction.   More than 200,000 people have been killed and over 2.5 million others forced to flee their homes since 2003 because of fighting between rebel groups, Government forces and allied militias. Last month the Security Council approved the creation of a hybrid UN-African Union force (to be known as UNAMID) to quell the violence.   The OHCHR report noted that after UN officials presented their initial conclusions to local authorities in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, no investigations were carried out, although authorities indicated they have sent the allegations to the Sudanese military.   Witnesses testified that several hundred armed men on horseback and camelback attacked Deribat on the morning of 26 December, joined by an aircraft and at least three vehicles. The attackers then rounded up many women and children from the town and took them to a nearby stream, where they camped and began to systematically rape the women and girls, often in front of the other captives.   One witness told UN investigators that the women were badly beaten if they did not comply. The abducted women and children were held for about a month, and some of the women became pregnant or experienced serious physical injuries as a result of the rapes in addition to the widespread psychological trauma suffered by victims. No formal medical treatment and little food were provided, and the women were forced to cook and serve food for their abductors.   The report stressed that the information obtained in the testimony indicated a series of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and possibly war crimes as well.   “If rape, sexual slavery or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against civilians… they can constitute a crime against humanity, and fall within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.”   27 July 2007   UN condemns "ethnic cleansing" in Darfur, by Stephanie Nebehay. (Reuters)   The United Nations Human Rights Committee on Friday called on Sudan to prosecute war crimes committed in Darfur and to ensure that no support is given to militias that engage in "ethnic cleansing".   It expressed concern that "widespread and systematic serious human rights violations including murder, rape, forced displacement and attacks against the civil population, have been and continue to be committed with total impunity throughout Sudan and particularly in Darfur".   The body of 18 independent experts voiced concern that Sudan had not carried out a thorough and independent probe into serious human rights violations in the country, especially in the western region of Darfur.   The committee, which monitors compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a cornerstone of human rights law, gave its conclusions on the records of three countries including Sudan after a three-week meeting in Geneva.   Referring to "war crimes or crimes against humanity committed in Darfur", the UN committee called on the Khartoum government to ensure that "state agents, including all security forces and militia under state control, put an end to such violations immediately".   Khartoum should also "ensure that no financial support or material is channelled to militias that engage in ethnic cleansing or the deliberate targeting of civilians", it said.   "This has been a major problem in Sudan, that more or less covert assistance has been given to certain elements that have been pursuing gross violations of human rights," committee vice-chairperson Ivan Shearer told a news briefing.   International experts estimate over 200 000 people have died and 2,5-million been forced from their homes in more than four years of revolt in Darfur.   The UN committee also expressed concern at payment of "diya", or blood money, for murder in Sudan, as well as reports of widespread torture in prisons, persistent discrimination against women, and the use of child soldiers.   "Serious crimes arising out of the situation in Darfur must be properly followed up and urgently prosecuted without amnesty," Shearer said.
	Violence against women "beyond rape" in Congo - U.N. by Robert Evans Reuters Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)   July 2007   Extreme sexual violence against women is pervasive in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and local authorities do little to stop it or prosecute those responsible.   Rape and brutality against women and girls are "rampant and committed by non-state armed groups, the Armed Forces of the DRC, the National Congolese Police, and increasingly also by civilians", said Turkish lawyer Yakin Erturk.   "Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal," she added in a report after an 11-day trip to the strife-torn country.   Erturk, special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against women, said the situation in South Kivu province, where rebels from neighbouring Rwanda operate, was the worst she had ever encountered.   The atrocities perpetrated there by armed groups, some of whom seemed to have been involved in the 1994 Rwandan massacres in which 800,000 people were killed, "are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape", she said.   "Women are gang raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters," she said.   After rape, many women were shot or stabbed in the genital area, and survivors told Erturk that while held as slaves by the gangs they had been forced to eat excrement or the flesh of their murdered relatives.   Widespread sexual abuse in the various conflicts racking the republic -- which last year held elections hailed as marking a new era -- "seems to have become a generalised aspect of the overall oppression of women", Erturk said.   Her report followed charges from U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour last week that soldiers and police used excessive force, including summary executions, in quelling opposition protesters in the west of the DRC earlier this year.   In the central Equateur province, the police and army often responded to civil unrest "with organised armed reprisals that target the civilian population and involve indiscriminate pillage, torture and mass rape", the report found.   Although the DRC parliament outlawed sexual violence in July 2006, "little action is taken by the authorities to implement the law and perpetrators continue to enjoy immunity, especially if they wear the state''s uniform," Erturk said.   Erturk said Congo''s justice system was corrupt and in "a deplorable state", while conditions in prisons were "scandalous".   Senior army and police officers shielded their men from prosecution, and when some were arrested they escaped easily, probably "with the complicity of those in charge".   In a few cases courts had ordered the state and individuals to compensate victims. But "to this day the government has not paid reparations to a single victim who has suffered sexual violence at the hand of state agents", said Erturk.
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