DR Congo and Somalia top cases of conflict sexual violence in UN report
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia are two of the countries that a United Nations report said had the highest number of conflict-related sexual violence cases in 2024 according to Africanews via Associated Press on August 15th.
More broadly, the United Nations report stated the number of conflict-related sexual violence cases increased by 25% from the previous year, with Central African Republic, Haiti, and South Sudan also having the highest number of cases, according to UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
The report encompasses crimes including rape, gang rape and sexual slavery in armed conflict situations.
Dujarric also said that 63 state and non-state parties are listed in the annex of the report, credibly suspected of committing or directing patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in armed conflict.
Specifically, health workers in the Kivu region in DR Congo have treated more than 17,000 victims of sexual violence over a time span of just five months, as the conflict between DR Congo and the M23 militia group has escalated during the timespan of the report.
M23 rebels situated in the eastern DR Congo region have previously been accused of war crimes, with the U.N. report seemingly supporting the narrative that this particular conflict has provoked significant acts of terror and violence against civilians.
Somalia has been a scene of instability for a decade now, with the government struggling to contain the insurgency of jihadist militant group Al Shabab, linked to Al-Qaeda.
Al Shabab have relentlessly attacked the Somalian capital, Mogadishu, causing unrest and fears over civilian safety, recently culminating in a suicide bomb blast in May, killing several people.
The president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, has also been the subject of attempted attacks, recently surviving a blast to his convoy, as Al-Shabab tries to destabilise the Somalian government and other institutions in order to impose its interpretation of Islamic law.
Africanews via Associated Press, Maghrebi.org
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