UN News Today 13 August 2024 |

Sexual violence and famine stalk Sudan’s displaced

Sudan’s deepening humanitarian crisis caused by nearly 16 months of war has left countless women and girls subject to sexual violence and rape and tens of thousands of children at risk of death from hunger, UN aid teams said on Tuesday.

Speaking from Sudan, UN Children’s Fund spokesperson James Elder said “countless atrocities” upon children have gone unreported. 

“Yesterday in Khartoum, I spoke to a senior medical worker who gave an insight into the magnitude of sexual violence during this war. She explained she has had direct contact with hundreds, hundreds of women and girls, some as young as eight years old, who have been raped. Many have been held captive for weeks on end. She also spoke of the distressing number of babies born – born after rape – who are being abandoned now.”

Mr. Elder warned that unless action is taken soon, tens of thousands of Sudanese children may also die over the coming months from hunger, malnutrition and disease.

That outcome is not even the “worst-case scenario”, the UNICEF official said, noting that many more will die if measles or diarrhoea strikes, which is likely given the heavy rains and flooding happening in Sudan.

‘Incredible brutality’ prevalent in battle for Myanmar

Conflict in Myanmar between the military junta and opposition forces is increasingly brutal, with both sides likely responsible for international crimes including summary executions, top independent rights investigators said on Tuesday.

In a call to regional bloc ASEAN to help end the violence and support efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, the head of the Human Rights Council-appointed probe into the Myanmar emergency Nicholas Koumjian, described an increasingly “desperate” junta whose devastating military tactics are being matched by opposition fighters acting with total impunity.

“Aerial bombings have increased very substantially in this last year; in Kayah state in February of this year, four children were killed and around 10 injured when fighter jets dropped bombs and deployed machine gun fire on the school.”

Investigators have also seen a video “that showed resistance forces beheading two captured soldiers in Loikaw in Kayah state in November, December of last year”, Mr. Koumjian said, along with another video posted on social media of two young men being burned to death in Magway region.

In a direct appeal to the regional bloc ASEAN, Mr. Koumjian urged it to respond to “substantial evidence” that the Myanmar military was committing war crimes and crimes against humanity “at an alarming rate”, by putting pressure on the junta to halt the conflict.

Mpox is still being transmitted across the world, says UN health agency

Mpox has been confirmed in Burundi, one of four countries in Eastern Africa where the disease has surfaced for the first time, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

In an update, the WHO said that an outbreak of mpox was declared in Burundi on 25 July, at around the same time that Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda also confirmed their own cases.

The UN health agency noted that all of these infections – where patients’ symptoms included fever, joint pain and a widespread rash – were linked to the “expanding outbreak” in East and Central Africa.

Every infection was identified after genetic sequencing as clade Ib – one of three recognized variants of the virus, said WHO, which added that 934 new laboratory-confirmed cases of mpox and four deaths were reported in 26 countries in June.

This indicated “continuing transmission of mpox across the world”, the UN health agency noted.

Music composed and produced by Joachim Harris. All rights reserved