Care and support systems are failing women and girls by UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women   June 2025   A new report by the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls warns that global care and support systems are failing women and girls, exacerbating human rights violations and deepening gender inequalities.   Released ahead of the 59th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the report presents a bold call for urgent public investment and structural reform to recognise, redistribute, and properly reward care and support work.   “Despite care and support work being essential for the health, wellbeing, and sustainability of societies, it remains largely invisible, undervalued, and unprotected,” the Working Group said.   “Women and girls shoulder 76% of unpaid care responsibilities globally, amounting to 12.5 billion hours of unpaid work each day, worth an estimated $10.8 trillion annually if monetised,” the experts said.   The Working Group called for counting the unpaid care into the GDP of states.   “Care and support systems are failing women and girls under demographic pressures, economic inequality, and persistent gender norms,” the Working Group said. “Without immediate and transformative action, millions of women and girls will continue to sacrifice their rights, health, education, and economic opportunities to fill this systemic gap.”   The report highlights how fragmented and insufficient care and support policies amount to systemic gender discrimination, affecting rights to education, health, employment, political participation, and other human rights of women and girls.   From rural women and girls denied healthcare and schooling, to migrant domestic workers facing exploitation and violence, the care crisis is both global and intersectional.   “Particularly alarming is the impact of conflict and climate change,” the experts said. “In armed conflict zones such as Gaza and Sudan, the deliberate destruction of care infrastructure, coupled with the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, dramatically increases care and support needs and responsibilities of women and girls.”   They noted that climate-induced scarcity of resources also forces women to work longer hours under harsher conditions, further undermining their wellbeing.   The report calls for the creation of gender-responsive, human rights-based care and support systems anchored in the principles of equity, dignity, and sustainability. It urges governments to increase investments in public services, eliminate harmful gender norms, and implement policies to promote shared caregiving responsibilities by engaging men and boys.   The report also calls upon the international community, including financial institutions and corporations to prioritise gender-responsive resource redistribution and recognise care and support related skills in recruitment and employment policies. The Working Group has developed a “CREATE” framework to offer a concrete roadmap for this transformation.   “Care and support are not charity—they are the foundation of human rights, economic development, and ecological sustainability,” the experts said. “States must act now to protect both those who provide and those who receive care and support, and to build a future where care and support are shared, supported, and valued.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/06/un-working-group-calls-urgent-overhaul-global-care-and-support-systems
	Sexual violence in Conflict by Medecins Sans Frontieres, UNFPA, agencies   28 May 2025   Women and girls in Sudan’s Darfur region are at near-constant risk of sexual violence, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned today. The true scale of this crisis remains difficult to quantify, as services remain limited, and people face barriers in seeking treatment or speaking about their ordeal.   Yet all the victims and survivors who speak with MSF teams in Darfur and across the border in Chad share horrifying stories of brutal violence and rape. With men and boys also at risk, the extent of the suffering is beyond comprehension.   “Women and girls do not feel safe anywhere. They are attacked in their own homes, when fleeing violence, getting food, collecting firewood, working in the fields. They tell us they feel trapped,” says Claire San Filippo, MSF emergency coordinator.   “These attacks are heinous and cruel, often involving multiple perpetrators. This must stop. Sexual violence is not a natural or inevitable consequence of war, it can constitute a war crime, a form of torture, and a crime against humanity. The warring parties must hold their fighters accountable and protect people from this sickening violence.   Services for survivors must immediately be scaled up, so survivors have access to the medical treatment and psychological care they desperately need.”   Sexual violence has become so widespread in Darfur that many people chillingly speak about it as unavoidable.   “Some people came at night to rape the women and take everything. I heard some women being raped at night. The men were hiding in toilets or in some rooms where they could close the doors. The women didn’t hide because it was just beating and rape for us, but the men would get killed,” a woman told MSF’s team in West Darfur.   It is not only during attacks on villages and towns or during the journey to safety that people have been raped and beaten. Limited humanitarian assistance is forcing people to take risks to survive.   People are walking long distances to meet their basic needs and taking work in dangerous places. Others decide against taking the risk but are then cut off from their sources of income, further reducing their access to water, food and healthcare. This itself is no guarantee of safety, as people can be attacked at home as well.   MSF provided care to 659 survivors of sexual violence in South Darfur between January 2024 and March 2025:   86% reported that they were raped. 94% of survivors were women and girls. 56% said they were assaulted by a non-civilian (by a member of military, police or other security forces or non-state armed groups). 55% reported additional physical violence during the assault. 34% faced sexual violence while working in, or travelling to, the fields. 31% were younger than 18, with 7% younger than 10 years old and 2.6% younger than 5 years old.   These disturbing statistics are likely an underestimate of the true scale of sexual violence in South Darfur.   The situation is similar in other places where MSF is able to provide care for victims and survivors such as eastern Chad, which currently hosts over 800,000 Sudanese refugees. In Adre, almost half of the 44 victims and survivors treated by MSF since January 2025 were children. In Wadi Fira Province, 94 victims and survivors were treated between January and March 2025, 81 under the age of 18. The testimonies of patients and caregivers in both eastern Chad and Sudan’s Darfur region bear this out.   “Three months ago, there was a little girl of 13 years old who was raped by three men…They caught her and raped her, then they abandoned her in the valley... They called some people to carry the girl to the hospital. I was one of them,” one man told MSF’s team in Murnei, West Darfur.   Many survivors report being raped by more than one person. In Metche in eastern Chad, 11 out of 24 victims and survivors treated between January and March 2025 were attacked by multiple assailants.   “When we arrived in Kulbus, we saw a group of three women with some RSF [Rapid Support Forces] men guarding them. The RSF also ordered us to stay with them,” says a 17-year-old survivor. “They told us, ‘You are the wives of the Sudanese army or their girls.’ … Then they beat us, and they raped us right there on the road, in public. There were nine RSF men. Seven of them raped me. I wanted to lose my memory after that.”   In some cases, the attackers directly accused the survivors of supporting the other side.   “I have a certificate for first aid nursing. [When they stopped us], the RSF asked me to give them my bag. When they saw the certificate inside, they told me, ‘You want to heal the Sudanese army, you want to cure the enemy!’ Then they burnt my certificate, and they took me away to rape me,” says one woman. “They told everyone else to stay on the floor. I was with some other women, including my sister. They only raped me, because of my certificate.”   It is vital that victims and survivors access services after the attack, as sexual violence is a medical emergency. The immediate and long-lasting physical and psychological consequences which can be life-threatening.   Yet survivors struggle to access medical care and protection because of a lack of services, limited awareness of the few services that exist, the high cost of traveling to facilities, and a reluctance to speak about the abuse due to shame, fear of stigma or retaliation.   “I cannot say anything to the community because it will be a shame for my family. So, I didn’t say anything about what happened to me before today. I’m only asking for medical help now,” says a survivor in eastern Chad. “I was too afraid to go to the hospital. My family told me, ‘Don’t tell anybody’.”   Where services exist, survivors need clear and accessible referral pathways to get the help they need. In South Darfur, the state with the greatest number of displaced people in Sudan, in late 2024, MSF added a community-based component to our care for survivors of sexual violence.   Midwives and community healthcare workers were trained and equipped to provide emergency contraceptives and psychological first aid to survivors. They also supported survivors’ referral to clinics and hospitals where MSF teams work for comprehensive care. Since the addition of this community-based model, we have seen a steep increase in women and adolescents seeking care.   MSF teams continue to see new survivors of sexual violence. In Tawila, where people continue to arrive after attacks on Zamzam camp and in El Fasher, North Darfur, the hospital received 48 survivors of sexual violence between January and the beginning of May, most of them since the start of fighting in Zamzam camp in April.   “Access to services for survivors of sexual violence is lacking and, like most humanitarian and healthcare services in Sudan, must urgently be scaled up. People – mostly women and girls – who suffer sexual violence urgently need medical care, including psychological support, and protection services,” says Ruth Kauffman, MSF emergency medical manager.   “Care must be tailored from the outset to mitigate against the many overwhelming barriers survivors face when seeking medical care in the aftermath of sexual violence.”   Brutal attacks and rapes must stop, warring parties must ensure that civilians are protected, respecting their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians, and medical and humanitarian services for victims and survivors of sexual violence must be scaled up urgently in Darfur and eastern Chad.   http://tinyurl.com/mpbyba67 http://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/sexual-violence-sudan-they-beat-us-and-they-raped-us-right-there-road-public-enar http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1164621 http://www.unfpa.org/news/widespread-guns-and-bullets-sexual-violence-used-terrorize-sudans-women-and-girls   Sexual violence poses growing threat in eastern DRC   The UN Office for the Coordinations of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that sexual violence is on the rise in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   Across the country, humanitarian partners have reported more than 67,000 cases of gender-based violence between January and April of this year. This represents a 38 per cent increase compared to the same period in the previous year.   Only 58 per cent of the victims of the documented cases received appropriate medical care within the critical 72-hour timeframe.   More than 90 per cent of the reported cases nationwide are in the conflict-affected eastern provinces, where the response is further hindered by insecurity and aid cuts.   According to partners working in health, several health facilities in South Kivu province are facing shortages of post-exposure prophylaxis kits, mainly due to security constraints. In addition, several partners involved in responding to gender-based violence in South Kivu have closed their programmes since March due to aid cuts.   In South Kivu’s Uvira territory alone, local authorities have documented more than 100 cases of sexual violence from February to April 2025, with further attacks being reported in May.   http://www.unocha.org/news/todays-top-news-occupied-palestinian-territory-yemen-democratic-republic-congo-sudan http://www.msf.org/sexual-violence-eastern-drc-persistent-emergency   UN urges for immediate action as sexual violence surges amid gang violence in Haiti   The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC), Ms. Pramila Patten, expresses grave concerns over the escalating levels of sexual violence being inflicted upon women and girls amid the worsening gang violence in Haiti.   The situation has reached a breaking point. Since the beginning of the year, reports of sexual violence – particularly rape and gang rape – have surged at an alarming rate.   “These heinous crimes are overwhelmingly concentrated in areas under gang control, where State presence is virtually nonexistent. In many instances, sexual violence is being used deliberately and systematically to assert dominance and punish communities,” stated Special Representative Patten.   Women and girls are increasingly subjected to sexual violence alongside other grave crimes, including kidnapping and killings during gang attacks. Survivors are often assaulted in their own homes or public spaces.   Alarmingly, the past eight months have seen a dramatic rise in documented cases of sexual slavery, further exemplifying the brutal oppression of women and girls.   “I condemn the widespread atrocities perpetrated by armed gangs, including conflict-related sexual violence and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Concrete and immediate measures are essential to enhance the protection of Haitians, prioritizing those most at risk”.   The full deployment of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to reinforce Haitian national security forces, alongside the enforcement of UN Security Council sanctions aimed at crippling gang operations – particularly the illicit arms flow fueling these crimes – has never been more urgent.   Widespread insecurity and the broader humanitarian crisis are unraveling the social fabric, displacing thousands and pushing many into overcrowded and unsafe shelters. Access to essential services, including medical and psychological support for survivors, remains severely limited.   The closure of critical health facilities due to insecurity has further strained an already fragile system while impunity for these crimes emboldens perpetrators. Urgent and decisive action is required.   Ending impunity is a fundamental step in breaking the cycle of violence and restoring dignity and safety to Haiti’s women and girls.   * Guardian News: Tens of thousands of Tigrayan women report brutal wartime abuse by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers, such as gang-rape and the insertion of objects into their uteruses. But justice seems a distant prospect. Warning: this article contains distressing testimony and images.   http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/30/sexual-violence-tigray-women-abuse-gang-rape-ethiopia-eritrea http://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/press-release/un-special-representative-patten-urges-for-immediate-action-as-sexual-violence-surges-amid-gang-violence-in-haiti/ http://www.savethechildren.net/news/sexual-violence-against-children-conflict-surges-50-5-years-worst-level-ever http://www.unfpa.org/press/ending-sexual-violence-conflict-breaking-cycle-healing-scars-and-building-world-peace http://www.unfpa.org/dont-let-the-lights-go-out http://www.unfpa.org/emergencies Visit the related web page
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