A man walks past a train on the Abuja-Kaduna night railway line in Abuja, on July 21, 2016. The rail line has been under attack by bandits and Boko Haram. (AFP via Getty Images) Jihadists and Bandits Working as One Force, Say Nigerian Officials 1,000-man gangs on motorbikes strike on the doorstep of the capital By Douglas Burton Officials in Nigeria acknowledged on April 13 that so-called bandits and the terrorists known as Boko Haram have formed a united front to attack trains and highways leading into the capital Abuja. Though the union of the two criminal groups has been suspected for a year the chief spokesman for the government, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and his defense ministry counterpart Gen. Bashir Magashi confirmed the suspicions at a press conference in the president’s compound in Abuja. “What is happening now is that there is a kind of unholy handshake between bandits and Boko Haram insurgents,” Mohammed said, according to media reports. “Preliminary reports of what transpired at the Kaduna train attack show that there is a kind of collaboration between the bandits and dislodged Boko Haram terrorists from the northeast. “We are fighting an asymmetrical war, a war in which the other side does not obey or recognize the rules of engagement, but where we are compelled to fight according to the rules of engagement. “What happened two Mondays ago shook the whole country, yes, but that is the modus operandi of terrorists,” Mohammed said. He was referring to a terrorist force that used an improvised explosive device to derail a passenger train on March 28 near Kaduna City. The terrorists, who killed nine people and kidnapped more than 168 are believed to be the same gang that attacked a train last year and shot down a Nigerian air force fighter in Zamfara state on July 18, 2021, according to Murtala Rufa’i, a historian at Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto and a recognized expert on bandits. The bandit leader who is responsible for these sophisticated attacks is Kachalla Ali, and his base of operation is Birnin Gwari, in Kaduna state,” Rufa’i told Burton News in an exclusive interview. Gunmen Attack Train Near Nigeria's Capital, Kill Some Riders Kachalla Ali’s high-profile attacks have established his position as the most powerful gang leader in the northwest, according to Rufa’i. His gang members are reputed to be “fearless fighters,” according to media reports. “I am happy that the Nigerian government has acknowledged that the Boko Haram insurgents and the bandits are allied,” said Dr. Gregory Stanton, an African genocide expert in Virginia and the Founder of Genocide Watch. “The U.S. government also needs to acknowledge that there is a connection between the bandits and the ethnic Fulani jihadists,” Stanton added. “It’s time for the U.S. government and other governments to wake up and realize this is already a genocide. This is not violence due to climate change,” he added. Bandit leaders pose with hostage release negotiators at a forest hideout in Niger state, early in 2021. (Courtesy of Bello Turji) The sophistication of the attack was evident in the planning and logistics of the operation. The use of Improvised Explosive Devices is not typical for bandits. In addition, the terrorists had arranged for a fleet of vehicles to take the 168 hostages quickly from the derailed train. A week after the train attack the bandits released a wealthy hostage, Alwan Hassan, acting CEO of the Bank of Agriculture, and posted a video in which three masked bandits spoke in Arabic and the Hausa language, according to media reports. Hassan reportedly paid a ransom equivalent to $225,000. Security analysts said that some bandits speaking in the video spoke with Fulani accents, but one spoke with an accent linking him to northeast Nigeria where Boko Haram has maintained a presence for 12 years. Some security analysts speculate that the jihadists behind the train attack are linked to the Ansaru insurgency that split off from Boko Haram and which has operated in Kaduna as a kidnapping gang. “The bandits who spoke in the video said they are not after ransom and that government knows what they want. Judging from their language and posture, these are not bandits,” according to a tweet from analyst Bulama Bukarti, a senior analyst in the Extremism Policy Unit of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. “They are likely members of the Ansaru faction of Boko Haram, and their demand is likely to be the release of their leaders who have been in detention,” he tweeted. Nigerian media reported April 12 that the bandits had announced that the train hostages could be released in exchange for the release of 16 of their top commanders. The bandits were killing and kidnapping in several villages on the border zone of the federal capital territory in the first days of April, according to conflict reporter Stephen Kefas. They travel on motorbikes in numbers approaching 1,000, he said. They have taken their hostages to their forest havens in Shiroro County in northeast Niger state, where they are confident the Nigerian army will not attack them, Kefas said. The emerging threat facing Nigeria is reflected in the trepidation of pastors in all parts of the country to travel by train or bus. The level of fear among the ordinary citizenry has reached a new level, according to Judd Saul, an Iowa-based missionary who has administered a non-governmental organization called Equipping the Persecuted in Kaduna state for 10 years. “We organized a conference in April for 200 clergy who came from all regions in Nigeria,” Saul commented. “What we learned is that no matter what state Nigerians live in, they are afraid for their lives if they have to travel from one town to another.” The invasion of Boko Haram into the Shiroro County of northern Niger state was reported in April of 2021 when Gov. Abubakar Sani Bello announced it in a press conference in which he pleaded with the federal government for assistance. Yet, until April 13 the Federal Government had not acknowledged the union of these two potent threats to civil order. The term “Boko Haram”, which means “foreign learning is forbidden,” is loosely applied to terrorist groups ranging from Ansaru, linked to al-Qaida, to the “Islamic State of West Africa”, (ISWAP) which has overshadowed Boko Haram since the suicide death of Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, on May 23, 2021. The number of organized bandits terrorizing villages and towns in the five sprawling states of northwestern Nigeria is believed to be at least 10,000 and may be as many as 30,000, according to James Barnett, a nonresident scholar at the Hudson Institute. Unlike most jihadists, bandit gangs tolerate the use of narcotics and alcohol, and they victimize both Muslims and Christians. "If the largest bandit gang of the Northwest really has made [an] alliance with Boko Haram, then God help us!" warned Rufa'i. Copyright 2022 Burton News

By Dr. Gregory Stanton & Nat Hill People stand near a mass grave in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (Rodrigo Abd/AP) The Russian armed forces, under Vladimir Putin, continue their brutal invasion of Ukrainian territory. There is now ample evidence that they are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, and they are also committing the crime of aggression. While Ukrainian forces have managed to push Russian forces back from Kyiv and other cities, the Russian forces are regrouping to continue their assault on Donbas and the Black Sea coast. Russian missiles, bombs, and artillery continue to ruthlessly bombard civilians. Authenticated evidence has emerged of a Russian massacre of civilians in Bucha in the suburbs of Kyiv. According to the Kyiv Regional Police from 150 to 300 civilians were murdered by Russian forces in Bucha and thrown into mass graves. Many victims had their hands tied behind their backs before being executed. Vladimir Putin has tried to deny the massacre at Bucha and other allegations of war crimes as “fake news,” borrowing a phrase from Donald Trump. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, after visiting the Bucha massacre site, has called the Russian invasion of Ukraine “genocide” and warned that Ukraine is being “destroyed and exterminated” by Russian forces. The EU, NATO, UK, and the United States have thus far been reluctant to call Russian crimes in Ukraine “genocide.” Perhaps they do not want to be subject to the Genocide Convention’s Article 1 obligation to “prevent” genocide. [ ICJ: Croatia v Serbia, 2015.] For a discussion of the use of the term genocide in Ukraine please see Alex Hinton’s article at: https://theconversation.com/is-russia-committing-genocide-in-ukraine-a-human-rights-expert-looks-at-the-warning-signs-180017 The Russian military’s actions in Ukraine are like their previous invasions in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria. While these conflicts are rarely referred to as “genocide,” the Russian military’s frequent use of mass murder, carpet bombing, terror, and mass rape are indicative of the genocidal intent to destroy in part a national or ethnic group. In Afghanistan, Russia destroyed Afghan villages with gunships and airstrikes regardless of their association with the Afghan mujahedeen. In their two wars in Chechnya, Russian forces bombed the city of Grozny into rubble, and in 1995 massacred the entire village of Samaskhi by incinerating hundreds of Chechen civilians with grenades and flamethrowers. In their 2008 invasion of Georgia, Russian forces again bombed civilians into submission. In Syria, the Russian and Syrian air forces bombed Aleppo and other cities into ruins, killing tens of thousands. Ukrainians walk through the ruins of the port city of Mariupol, Reuters 2022 Based on the Russian military’s past actions and their current actions in Ukraine, Russia has a long-standing policy of “urbicide,” the destruction of cities and their populations. “Urbicide” is the intentional destruction, in part, of a national group. It is genocide. Unless Russian forces are stopped, they will leave every Ukrainian city they can reach in rubble and murder scores of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine. Please find the PDF of the report below:

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Sri Lanka's unfolding tragedy is a warning for India By Mukul Kesavan | April 3, 2022 Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa brothers photo credit: Getty Images/AFP/L.Wanniarachchi When Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of Emergency in Sri Lanka on Friday, his stated reasons were public security, public order and the maintenance of essential services. His real purpose was to forestall a popular revolt against his government. The crowds gathered outside his private residence in Colombo shouting, ‘Lunatic, go home’, were there precisely because his government had failed catastrophically to maintain essential services. With thirteen-hour power cuts, empty petrol pumps, a shortage of staple food and basic medicines, spiralling inflation with no end in sight and the danger of sovereign default, the Emergency was not about sustaining the ‘life of the community’; it was about the preservation of a political dynasty. In a subcontinent that’s dense with political dynasties, the Rajapaksas are in a class by themselves. There’s a remarkable photograph that sums up their political monopoly: Basil Rajapaksa being sworn in as finance minister by his brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, watched by another brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the former president and current prime minister. Four Rajapaksa brothers and Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son, Namal, are ministers in the present government. The Rajapaksa clan reads like a family out of a Mario Puzo novel: the brothers’ late-Victorian ancestors were called, appropriately enough, Don David Rajapaksa and Don Mathew Rajapaksa. And, yet, to focus on the family is to be distracted from the true nature and scale of Sri Lanka’s tragedy. In the first twenty-five years after the decolonization of the subcontinent in 1947-48, Sri Lanka was the great South Asian success story. High literacy rates, a strong public distribution system, an early commitment to public healthcare and life expectancy much higher than the regional norm made Sri Lanka South Asia’s poster child. Growing up in Delhi in the 1960s, we were vaguely admiring of the fact that Ceylon had the world’s first female prime minister in Sirimavo Bandaranaike. The other Ceylon-related thing that I knew of as a child was Radio Ceylon’s Hindi service, which broadcast the Hindi film songs that All India Radio opaquely refused to air through the 1950s. In high school, geography lessons introduced us to place names like Nuwara Eliya and Ceylon remained in our imaginations a mildly exotic offshore island. And then it changed its name to Sri Lanka, which seemed both mysterious and odd. We had never encountered a country name with an honorific built into it; it felt a bit like India renaming itself Mr. Bharat. Many years later, as someone interested in the political history of modern South Asia, I learnt that Ceylon’s renaming coincided with its adoption of a republican Constitution in 1972. Unlike India, it had chosen to be a Dominion when it became independent in 1948 and till 1972, Queen Elizabeth II was Ceylon’s head of State. The change was more than nominal; it marked the country’s formal re-making of itself into a principally Sinhala-Buddhist republic. Besides renaming the country, the new Constitution gave Buddhism the ‘foremost’ place in the new republic. It is this majoritarian turn that reconstituted Sri Lanka. There is a direct line of descent from 1972 to the entrenchment of the Rajapaksa regime fifty years later. The majoritarianism it sanctioned led to the civil war that consumed the country for thirty years. This, in turn, led to the eventual routing of the Velupillai Prabhakaran regime and the genocidal violence against the Tamils of Jaffna. Mahinda Rajapaksa was president when the Tamil insurgency was crushed and Gotabaya was the defence secretary, widely known as the Terminator for his covert brutality towards political enemies. The Rajapaksas milked the victory in Jaffna for all it was worth, and their domination of Sri Lankan politics is entirely down to their successful polarization of Sri Lankan politics on religious and ethnic lines on the back of the civil war. When the Easter bombings by Muslim terrorists in 2019 traumatized the country, the Rajapaksas and their party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, were perfectly placed, as the principal avengers of the civil war, to take advantage of the ensuing outrage. Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the presidential election later that year defeating Sajith Premadasa of the United National Party by well over a million votes. In the subsequent parliamentary elections in August 2020, the SLPP consolidated its grip on power by winning a massive two-thirds majority. We have learnt over the past decade that explicit majoritarian bigotry can be a shortcut to electoral victories. We have seen this with Donald Trump, Imran Khan, Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath, Viktor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte and the Rajapaksas. Politicians elected on the back of these inflammatory campaigns develop a messianic belief in their political capacity to effect sweeping change. Unluckily, their genius for mobilizing voters is seldom matched by an ability to govern rationally. We have seen Imran Khan drive Pakistan to the brink with his genius for alienating every ally, from Saudi Arabia to the United States of America to Pakistan’s army establishment. The shock of Covid was a challenge to every state in the world, but the serial stupidities of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government that created the present catastrophe can only be explained by the delusion of omnipotence that majoritarian success brings in its wake. In late 2019, Rajapaksa slashed indirect taxes by half while also shrinking the income tax net. This led to a massive loss of revenue on the eve of the pandemic. Stuck with a balance of payment crisis, compounded by the loss of revenue from tourism, Rajapaksa decided to save hard currency by banning the import of chemical fertilizer and in the middle of a pandemic eccentrically pushed for an economy-wide transition to organic farming. Ignoring the desperate warnings about the likely hit to agricultural productivity, Rajapaksa pressed on. The inevitable happened. The paddy harvest failed, the price of rice rose steeply, and the government had to institute a billion-dollar food aid programme, provide two hundred million dollars in income support to devastated farmers, and import vast quantities of rice that, given its debt and meagre foreign exchange reserves, it couldn’t really afford. It’s not unusual for the modern majoritarian populist, drunk on his own Kool Aid, to offer flashy solutions to complex problems. The delusion that great changes can be instituted by drastic, spectacular policies is common to all of them. Trump’s wall, Modi’s demonetization, Rajapaksa’s organic revolution are classic examples of the majoritarian populist as conjuror, pulling rabbits out of his hat. The inevitable failure of these policies isn’t a disincentive because their success in mobilizing majoritarian passions makes them, in the medium term at least, seemingly immune to electoral defeat. Rajapaksa won a huge majority in the parliamentary elections after his disastrous experiment with organic farming. Modi won a general election despite the massive dislocation and suffering caused by demonetization. Adityanath was re-elected to office after his government’s epic failure in dealing with Covid’s Delta wave. The difference between Sri Lanka and India is that in a country as large as India, political dominance is never absolute. The word of the Leader is not always law and even when it is, as with Modi’s three agricultural laws, agitation and protest can lead to course correction. A large economy like India’s has the wherewithal to suffer incompetence and stagger on; the economic equilibrium of a tiny island nation like Sri Lanka is more easily overset. That said, size isn’t everything and there is a limit to how much megalomaniacal incompetence any economy can bear. The unfolding tragedy of Sri Lanka is, for all of us, a cautionary tale. mukulkesavan@hotmail.com Copyright Telegraph Online

Journalists stand by a mass grave in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) Washington Post Opinions April 5, 2022 By Eugene Finkel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, visibly shaken by evidence of the Russian military’s atrocities against Ukrainian citizens in the recently liberated suburbs of Kyiv, on Sunday condemned the slaughter as genocide. The Biden administration has been more cautious: On Monday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, “We have not yet seen a level of systematic deprivation of life of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide.” He promised to “continue to monitor” the situation. Yet genocide is unfolding before our eyes. Often called “the crime of crimes,” genocide is considered the absolute nadir of human behavior. Activists and politicians tend to apply this label to anything they deplore, even to the vaccination of children against the coronavirus. That degrades the crime, cheapening it. As a scholar of the Holocaust and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I am well aware of the need for caution, and in the past have criticized the governments of many post-Soviet states — including Ukraine, where I was born — for misusing the term. Not now. Contrary to popular perceptions, shaped by the Holocaust and Rwanda, perpetrating genocide does not require large numbers of victims. The intent and logic of targeting are the key. The 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” This definition is not without drawbacks. An updated version might expand protected groups to include those defined by gender, age or sexual identity. The document also does not define, in absolute numbers or percentages, when killings cross the line into genocide; “in whole or in part” is open to interpretation. And proving intent is difficult, especially if orders were given orally or were camouflaged by bureaucratic jargon. The violence in Ukraine has none of these issues. Bucha, near Kyiv, is just one town, but the horrifying murders there are a part of a broader pattern. Deliberate targeting of Ukrainian civilians, especially those who self-identify as Ukrainians, with bombardment, murder and abduction have been recorded in other parts of Russian-occupied Ukraine. The massacres near Kyiv are, according to Ukrainian authorities “just the tip of the iceberg,” and in the coming days, evidence of similarly appalling atrocities is likely to emerge as more areas are liberated. An isolated local massacre might be labeled a war crime; a series of massacres reflect a campaign intended to destroy Ukrainians as a national group, if not in whole, then certainly “in part.” Yet massacres alone are insufficient to meet the genocide criteria; an intent to destroy a protected group is required. The inflammatory rhetoric of Russian propaganda and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself rejecting the very idea of Ukrainian statehood do not on their own constitute proof of an intent to destroy a national group. Trying to engineer regime change in Kyiv or Ukraine’s reorientation from the West toward Russia would not constitute genocide. The Russian invasion almost certainly originally aimed to achieve these goals. But when Russian soldiers and leaders discovered, to their astonishment, that Ukrainian citizens had no desire to be liberated from the Western yoke and instead fought back ferociously, Russian thinking shifted from colonial to genocidal. Though evidence of this shift is abundant, one of the most explicit examples is an article, titled “What should Russia do with Ukraine,” published on April 3 by the Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti. Echoing the arguments made earlier by Putin and other Russian leaders, the article outlines a clear plan to destroy Ukrainians and Ukraine itself. After a Russian victory, it argues, Ukraine “is impossible as a nation state,” and its very name “likely cannot be retained.” The Ukrainian nationalist elite “need to be liquidated, its reeducation is impossible.” But a “substantial part of the populace” is “also guilty” and would require “reeducation” and “ideological repressions” lasting “at least a generation” and would “inevitably mean de-Ukrainization.” It is hard to imagine a more actionable template to destroy a national group. The text’s publication on a major state media platform would have been impossible without explicit approval from above. The combination of official statements denying Ukraine and Ukrainians the right to exist, and mounting evidence of deliberate, large-scale targeting of Ukrainian civilians, leaves little room for doubt. The threshold from war crimes to genocide has been crossed. What are the practical implications of applying the genocide label? In the longer term, it should prompt a more comprehensive approach for collecting evidence and holding perpetrators accountable, along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunals established for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But in the shorter term, acknowledging that a genocide is underway might shift perceptions in the West, encouraging much tougher sanctions on Russia and more advanced weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The Ukrainian people cannot wait for “monitoring” the grisly evidence that grows by the day. Eugene Finkel is an associate professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust.” Copyright 2022 The Washington Post

By RUMBI CHAKAMBA As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second month, attacks on religious freedoms and human rights abuses are reportedly escalating. Sam Mednick who is on the ground in Ukraine reports that religious leaders, local officials, civil society, and journalists are being disappeared or arbitrarily detained, and religious institutions are being destroyed. Maksym Vasin, the executive director of the Institute for Religious Freedom — which has been documenting Russian attacks on religious freedoms in Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 — tells Sam that the violence has never been as “cruel” as it is now. “If in 2014 the Russian invaders threatened to kill priests, now they are being killed,” Vasin says. “If previously they expelled believers from Ukrainian churches and prayer houses, now they are destroying them with bombs and missiles strikes.” IRF has documented the destruction or damage of at least 70 spiritual sites in eight regions as a result of Russian shelling and airstrikes — compared with less than a dozen over the previous eight years. Last week, the Drobitsky Yar Holocaust Memorial near the northeastern city of Kharkiv was reportedly shelled by Russian forces. Vasin says the Russian army has also killed, captured, or arbitrarily imprisoned at least nine priests and pastors and is particularly targeting religious leaders because they are influential in their communities. “Given that the church as an institution of society enjoys the greatest level of trust of the citizens of Ukraine, religious figures are one of the biggest obstacles for the Russian invaders,” he says. Spiritual war “We have entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance.” — Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill, a trusted adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin, described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a struggle “for eternal salvation” for ethnic Russians, during his sermon to usher in the beginning of the Orthodox Lent. Though Kirill received criticism for his religious justifications, the United States Institute of Peace says the conflict has “deeply rooted religious significance,” with religious narratives playing a role in the battle for Ukrainian national identity. Link to Original Article ©️ Devex 2022

Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv regions of Ukraine. These include a case of repeated rape; two cases of summary execution, one of six men, the other of one man; and other cases of unlawful violence and threats against civilians between February 27 and March 14, 2022. Soldiers were also implicated in looting civilian property, including food, clothing, and firewood. Those who carried out these abuses are responsible for war crimes. “The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Rape, murder, and other violent acts against people in the Russian forces’ custody should be investigated as war crimes.” Human Rights Watch interviewed 10 people, including witnesses, victims, and local residents of Russia-occupied territories, in person or by telephone. Some people asked to be identified only by their first names or by pseudonyms for their protection. On March 4, Russian forces in Bucha, about 30 kilometers northwest of Kyiv, rounded up five men and summarily executed one of them. A witness told Human Rights Watch that soldiers forced the five men to kneel on the side of the road, pulled their T-shirts over their heads, and shot one of the men in the back of the head. “He fell [over],” the witness said, “and the women [present at the scene] screamed.” Russian forces in the village of Staryi Bykiv, in the Chernihiv region, rounded up at least six men on February 27, and later executed them, according to the mother of one of the men, who was nearby when her son and another man were apprehended, and who saw the dead bodies of all six. A 60-year-old man told Human Rights Watch that on March 4, a Russian soldier threatened to summarily execute him and his son in Zabuchchya, a village northwest of Kyiv, after searching their home and finding a hunting rifle and gasoline in the backyard. Another soldier intervened to prevent the other soldier from killing them, the man said. His daughter corroborated his account in a separate interview. On March 6, Russian soldiers in the village of Vorzel, about 50 kilometers northwest of Kyiv, threw a smoke grenade into a basement, then shot a woman and a 14-year-old child as they emerged from the basement, where they had been sheltering. A man who was with her in the same basement when she died from her wounds two days later, and heard accounts of the incident from others, provided the information to Human Rights Watch. The child died immediately, he said. A woman told Human Rights Watch that a Russian soldier had repeatedly raped her in a school in the Kharkiv region where she and her family had been sheltering on March 13. She said that he beat her and cut her face, neck, and hair with a knife. The next day the woman fled to Kharkiv, where she was able to get medical treatment and other services. Human Rights Watch reviewed two photographs, which the woman shared with Human Rights Watch, showing her facial injuries. Many of the Ukrainian civilians we interviewed described Russian forces taking food, firewood, clothing, and other items such as chainsaws, axes, and gasoline. All parties to the armed conflict in Ukraine are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, and customary international law. Belligerent armed forces that have effective control of an area are subject to the international law of occupation. International human rights law, which is applicable at all times, also applies. The laws of war prohibit willful killing, rape and other sexual violence, torture, and inhumane treatment of captured combatants and civilians in custody. Pillage and looting are also prohibited. Anyone who orders or deliberately commits such acts, or aids and abets them, is responsible for war crimes. Commanders of forces who knew or had reason to know about such crimes but did not attempt to stop them or punish those responsible are criminally liable for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility. “Russia has an international legal obligation to impartially investigate alleged war crimes by its soldiers,” Williamson said. “Commanders should recognize that a failure to take action against murder and rape may make them personally responsible for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility.” For detailed findings, please see below. Kharkiv Rape On March 13, a Russian soldier beat and repeatedly raped Olha [not her real name], a 31-year-old woman in Malaya Rohan, a village in the Kharkiv region that Russian forces controlled at the time. Russian soldiers entered the village on February 25, Olha said. That day, about 40 villagers, mostly women and girls, were sheltering in the basement of a local school. She was there with her 5-year-old daughter, her mother, her 13-year-old sister, and her 24-year-old brother. At around midnight on March 13, a Russian soldier forcibly entered the school, Olha said: “He broke glass windows at the entrance to the school and banged on the door.” A guard opened the door. The soldier, who carried an assault rifle and a pistol, went into the basement and ordered everyone there to line up. The woman stood in the line holding her daughter, who was asleep. He told her to give him the girl, but she refused. He told her brother to come forward and ordered the rest of the group to kneel, or, he said, he would shoot everyone in the basement. The soldier ordered her brother to follow him to help find food. They left and came back an hour or two later. The soldier sat down on the floor. “People started asking if they could go to the bathroom and he let them, in groups of two and three,” Olha said. After that, people started settling down for the night. The soldier approached her family and told her to follow him. The soldier took her to a classroom on the second floor, where he pointed a gun at her and told her to undress. She said: “He told me to give him [oral sex]. The whole time he held the gun near my temple or put it into my face. Twice he shot at the ceiling and said it was to give me more ‘motivation.’” He raped her, then told her to sit on a chair. She said she was getting very cold in the unheated school and asked if she could get dressed, but the soldier told her she should only put on her top, not her pants or underwear. “While I was putting on my clothes, the soldier told me that he was Russian, that his name was [name withheld] and that he was 20. He said that I reminded him of a girl he went to school with.” The soldier told her to go to the basement and get her things, so that she could stay in the classroom with him. She refused. “I knew my daughter would cry if she saw me,” she said. The soldier got a knife and told her to do so as he said if she wanted to see her child again. The soldier raped her again, put a knife to her throat and cut the skin on her neck. He also cut her cheek with the knife and cut off some of her hair. He hit her on the face with a book and repeatedly slapped her. Photographs that she shared with Human Rights Watch, dated March 19 and 20, show cut marks and bruising on her neck and face. At about 7 a.m. on March 14, the soldier told her to find him a pack of cigarettes. They went downstairs together. She asked the guard to give the soldier some cigarettes. After the soldier got the cigarettes, he left. That day she and her family walked to Kharkiv, where volunteers provided her with basic medical assistance. They moved into a bomb shelter. “I am lucky to be alive,” she said. She said that the Malaya Rohan council authorities were in touch with her and her mother and that the authorities were preparing a criminal complaint, which they plan to file with Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office. Human Rights Watch received three other allegations of sexual violence by Russian soldiers in other villages in the Chernihiv region and in Mariupol in the south but has not been able to independently verify them. Summary Killings, Other Violence On February 27, Russian forces rounded up six men in the village of Staryi Bykiv, in the Chernihiv region, and summarily executed them. Tetiana, from Novyi Bykiv, which faces Staryi Bykiv, just across the Supiy River, spoke with the relatives of four of the men who were killed. She told Human Rights Watch that on February 27, the bridge between Novyi Bykiv and Staryi Bykiv was blown up, and Russian forces shelled both villages. A column of Russian armored vehicles then entered Staryi Bykiv. “Most people were hiding in their basements because of shelling, and soldiers went door to door,” Tetiana said the families from Staryi Bykiv told her. The soldiers took six men from their homes: They took six men from three different families. One mother had both of her sons taken [and shot]. Another young man was in his early 20s, his name was Bohdan, I know his mother well, she told me that the soldiers told her to wait near her house while they took her son … to question him. They said the same thing to other families. Instead, they led these six men away, took them to the far end of the village, and shot them. Viktoria, Bohdan’s mother, interviewed separately, told Human Rights Watch that on February 27: They took my son, Bohdan [age 29], and my brother-in-law, Sasha [full name Olexander, age 39]. We were in the basement [due to the shelling], so we didn’t see. They went out to smoke. Then our neighbor ran up and said he saw them taking Bohdan and Sasha away, and a few other guys. Viktoria ran to the street to ask Russian soldiers at the checkpoint what had happened. “They told us not to worry, that [soldiers] would scare them a bit and then let them go,” she said. “We walked away about 50 meters … and heard gunshots. It was about 6:20 p.m.” Viktoria said that the next day she and her sister went to the meadow and saw the bodies lying by a building there: Three were on one side of the building, but not my son and brother-in-law. We walked around to the other side and saw [Bohdan and Sasha, and one more]. They were laying there. There were gunshots to their heads. Their hands were tied behind their backs. I looked at my son’s body, his pockets were empty, he didn’t have his phone, or keys or [identity] documents. Viktoria asked soldiers at the checkpoint for permission to collect the bodies, but they refused. Heavy shelling continued the following days. On March 7, Viktoria said, they again asked the soldiers for permission to collect the bodies: “At the checkpoint they told us to go the cemetery, that they’d bring us the bodies.… Everyone [all the neighbors] came, like 75 people.... We buried all of them on the same day, in separate graves.” Viktoria said that the other four men buried that day were Volodymyr, 40, another Olexander, 40, and two brothers, Ihor, 31, and Oleh, 33. Tetiana said the soldiers also took all of the villagers’ wood, leaving them nothing for cooking or heating their homes. On March 4, Russian forces summarily executed a man in Bucha, 30 kilometers northwest of Kyiv, and threatened to execute four others, said a teacher who witnessed the killing. She said she heard shooting at about 7 a.m. and saw three Russian armored vehicles and four Kamaz [Russian brand] trucks driving down her street. She was sheltering in the cellar with her two dogs when she heard glass breaking, and then her front door being broken down. Voices outside said [in Russian]: “Come outside right now or we will throw a grenade.” She yelled that she was alone in the cellar and came out with her hands up. “There were three men outside, two [Russian] soldiers and a commander,” she said. “They took my phone and checked it, then told me to get my [identification] documents and come with them.” As she walked down the street with the soldiers, she saw that they were also rounding up her neighbors and ordering them to walk. She said: They took us to where the office of AgroButpostach [a rental storage company] used to be. Right next to the building, there is a parking lot and a small square. They gathered people at that square, mostly women but there were also several men among us, over 50 [years old]. There were around 30 military there and the commander had [paratrooper] insignia [on his fatigues]. He spoke with an accent from western or central western Russia…. I was born in Russia myself, so I pick up on such things. The soldiers were all thin and looked the worse for wear. She said that the soldiers brought about 40 people to the square, gathered everyone’s phones, checked documents, and asked who was in territorial defense, or local self-defense units: Two women asked to go to the bathroom. One of them was pregnant. I asked to go with them. A soldier showed us the way to the toilet, which was around the building, I think it was now their headquarters. The building was long. Along the wall on the other side, we saw a large pool of blood. She said they waited in the square for hours in the very cold weather: At one point they brought in one young man, then four more. The soldiers ordered them [to] take off their boots and jackets. They made them kneel on the side of the road. Russian soldiers pulled their T-shirts, from behind and over their heads. They shot one in the back of the head. He fell. Women screamed. The other four men were just kneeling there. The commander said to the rest of the people at the square: “Don’t worry. You are all normal – and this is dirt. We are here to cleanse you from the dirt.” She said that after several more hours the soldiers took the people back to their homes. The other four men remained kneeling when she left. She said that when she was able to leave the town on March 9, the young man’s body was still lying where he had been shot. Dmytro, 40, told Human Rights Watch that he and his family fled the heavily shelled city of Bucha on March 7. He said that they did not know of any safe evacuation routes, so they walked – wrapped in white sheets and waving white sheets in the air – for about five kilometers to the village of Vorzel. Once in Vorzel, they sheltered for two nights in the basement of a two-story building, with a group of local residents. Dmytro said that there was a woman with them in the basement who had chest and leg wounds. Other people in the basement told him that she had been shot the day before when Russian soldiers stormed that same basement and threw a smoke grenade inside. Several people panicked and ran outside, where Russian soldiers fired at them. The woman was wounded, and the people in the basement told him that a 14-year-old child was shot in the head and killed. Dmytro said that the woman died the next day, on March 8. He and several local residents buried her outside the bomb shelter. On March 4, Russian forces threatened to execute a man and his son in Zabuchchya, a village outside the city of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv. A village resident said that on March 4, Russian forces entered the village, where he was sheltering with 10 other people, including a family from Irpin, in the basement of his home. In a separate interview, his daughter corroborated his account. He said that 13 soldiers entered his house to search it: The soldiers asked about my son, 34, who is in the territorial defense. He came out to meet them. They asked who was in the house and then they searched the house and turned it upside down.… In the backyard, they found my hunting rifle and a bottle of gasoline, and they went ballistic. The commander who gave orders to others said: “Take them [me and my son] to the tree outside and shoot them.” They took us outside. One of the soldiers objected. They took us back inside and ordered my son to strip naked because they said they wanted to look for nationalist tattoos. Other soldiers also went to houses on our street, including the house of a judge – she had gone and locked the house – and the local council deputy. They broke the window in the judge’s house to get in. We saw them taking bags and bags of stuff out of the judge’s house. After that, they left.… I took my family and everyone who was in the basement, and we fled in two cars. My wife and my son and mother, 80, are now staying at my daughter’s house in Khodosivka [southwest of Kyiv]. Human Rights Watch (c) 2022

Christians mourn murders of family members by Fulani jihadists Credit: AP/Sunday Alamba By Lela Gilbert | 24 March 2022 (OPINION) For weeks, a shocked world has been transfixed by Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine. The killing and maiming of innocents by the thousands — unarmed women, children and the elderly — has been stunning. Resourceful Ukrainian soldiers have demonstrated enormous courage. And nation after nation has responded with rage, reprimands, armament, financial sanctions and threats of further recourse. Few members of the international community have remained unmoved. Yet, at the same time in another part of the world, brutal violence against similar innocents has not only continued for years but has dramatically increased in the past few months. Most recently, on March 20, Morning Star News reported from Nigeria, “Suspected Fulani herdsmen on Thursday (March 17) kidnapped 46 Christians and a number of their children in an attack in Kaduna state.” The heavily armed terrorists had attacked a predominantly Christian town, Agunu Dutse, shortly after midnight. “They trooped into our village in large numbers and began shooting indiscriminately at anyone on sight,” a local resident explained. The following Sunday night, March 21, a church service in a different Kaduna city was just ending when well-armed insurgents arrived. “Agban Kagoro is under heavy attack with sporadic gunshots, burning down of houses in Adan, Mararaba, and Tsonje,” a frightened witness told International Christian Concern. Another later recounted, “Twenty-five people were killed and over 100 houses burnt.” Although vastly underreported, Nigeria has endured terrible violence for decades. It was formally declared a “country of particular concern” by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in December 2020. However, inexplicably, the Biden Administration removed Nigeria from that important and useful listing less than a year later. Ever since, the violence has increased while international news coverage has nearly vanished. But then, on March 20, Britain’s Baroness Cox — a longtime observer and critic of Nigerian Christians’ tragic history — released Nigeria Visit Update, documenting recent carnage in Kaduna State. For a time, Boko Haram’s reign of terror in Nigeria’s north occasionally caught the eye of Western reporters. But this new account about the country’s Middle Belt provides shocking details in a less-recognized region. Following are a few highlights of what she and her Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust associates experienced on their visit. — They witnessed the ruins of homes, farmland, food stores, churches, pastors’ homes and an orphanage, all attacked by Fulani militia in the past seven months. — They heard detailed accounts of the deliberate targeting and slaughter of many children, a 98-year-old woman burned alive and people hacked by machetes as they ran from rapid gunfire. — They saw the cache of weapons employed by Fulani militia, including automatic weapons, laser sights, machetes, gasoline bombs and incendiary chemicals used to burn houses. — They learned that Fulani militia encroach upon and sometimes occupy villages, asserting their right to the land by renaming the villages and threatening anyone who seeks to return. — They were informed that, in addition to mass attacks, kidnappings for ransom have become rampant in the Middle Belt, as elsewhere in Nigeria, and appear to have an ethnoreligious dimension: Muslim vs. Christian. — They found that those targeted villages receive little to no military or police protection from the attacks; security forces usually arrive on the scene after the attack has ended, while perpetrators are rarely, if ever, brought to justice. By 2018, the International Crisis Group reported that six times as many people were being killed in Nigeria’s “herder-farmer conflict” as in the Boko Haram insurgency. Yet Boko Haram is more easily recognized as a terror group, at least partly thanks to the group’s 2014 Chibok School kidnappings and Michelle Obama’s #bringbackourgirls campaign. At the same time, the religious nature of the herder-farmer conflict is often attributed, instead, to climate change and ethnic tensions. These explanations from diplomats ignore the anti-Christian nature of the violence, which is clearly indicated by the torching churches, kidnapping of “infidel” pastors and priests, and cries of “Allahu Akbar” that accompany massacres. And, as the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust report points out, “Fulani ‘herders’ have launched multiple and frequent attacks on Christian farming communities in the area, while (locals have) pointed out that the overwhelming majority of Muslim farming communities in the area have gone untouched.” And lest we underestimate the suffering of Nigeria’s Christians, perhaps eyewitness reports — gathered by Baroness Cox — from those who have survived Fulani attacks will help us remember them and their decades-long struggle for survival. Listen to their voices: “I returned in the morning, but everything was burned. I went to my home and saw my mother and siblings butchered and burnt.” — Beatrice, aged 25, Plateau State. “The kidnappers took me to the place where they ‘waste’ people and showed me the bodies of other people they had killed. They handed me the phone and told me to call whoever I could to try to get a ransom.” — Lazarus, a pastor in Jos, Plateau State. “I found my husband had been killed. I cannot go back to my village. It has been burnt. We are barely managing.” — Janet, mother to four children, Plateau State. “Fulani militia hit (my son) in the head with a machete. He raised his hand to block the attack, and they hacked his hand. My two daughters started screaming, and they attacked them with machetes too.” — Yakubu, father of four, Miango, Plateau State. The tragic and little-known story of Nigeria’s misery continues to unfold as lives and livelihoods are ruined and lost every day. And meanwhile, shockwaves of violence emanate from deadly Chinese prisons, from Afghanistan’s bloodstained streets and back alleys, and in other flashpoints across the globe. And, of course, we cannot forget Ukraine’s besieged towns and cities. So, while scenes of persecution and bloodshed ebb and flow around the world, may we continue to remember those who are mistreated and persecuted — including the silent slaughter of our Nigerian sisters and brothers. May we keep in mind those who suffer — “as if we ourselves were suffering with them.” © Religion Unplugged

As the CCP subjugates Hong Kong’s churches and their schools, no political space to object remains. By Nina Shea | 20 March 2022 Bishop Stephen Chow at his episcopal ordination in Hong Kong, China, December 4, 2021. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters) At Beijing’s insistence last October, Hong Kong’s Bishop-elect Stephen Chow and 15 senior Catholic priests met with the mainland’s state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. As the government watched on Zoom, the Hong Kongers were lectured on the fine points of President Xi’s religious policy of “Sinicization.” While no directives were issued, priests knowledgeable about the unprecedented conclave reported that “Xi was the elephant in the room” and saw that this was “just the first step” in what the CCP calls their “reeducation.” The clear takeaway was that Hong Kong’s churches, historically independent of the CCP, are having their wings clipped. Sinicization is a strategy to absorb China’s religious communities into the party’s United Front, to help the CCP indoctrinate, surveil, and ensure ideological conformity. Since 2018, Sinicization regulations have restricted mainland churches in their preaching and practice of Christian teachings that are not authorized by the atheistic CCP. Moreover, they require them to actively support the party leadership and promote “values of socialism” and Xi’s thought in sermons and “learning sessions.” In December, Xi exhorted officials to double down in their effort to “rally” the “vast” number of “religious believers around the Party and government,” according to Xinhua, the official news agency of the Chinese government. Standing in their way has been Hong Kong, an oasis of learning, information, training, and conferencing for all Chinese Christianity. Chinese Christians would go to the semi-autonomous territory to study theology and attend conferences, and Hong Kong clergy visited them to help in clergy formation. Since the 2018 religious restrictions on the mainland, the churches have had to turn to online meeting platforms. This month, new cyber laws ban this too, unless the meetings are specifically licensed by Beijing. On the mainland, the registration of Christian priests and pastors, managed by branches of so-called patriotic religious associations and other oversight bodies, has been key to CCP efforts to control both Catholic and Protestant churches since the 1950s. To create a similar bureaucratic infrastructure in Hong Kong, Legislative Council member Peter Koon, an Anglican priest, is now advocating a new religious-affairs bureau. Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, a Catholic, floated the idea herself in the campaign for the 2017 election. Reverend L, a visitor from Hong Kong who requests anonymity, is a keen observer of church developments at home. In an email to me, he stresses the implications of registration. “It’s not like you just sign up and then that’s it,” he writes. “Registration means, the cleric submits to never ending CCP surveillance and reeducation to learn about Christianity according to the CCP.” Resisters are targeted with incarceration for reeducation and punishment. For example, earlier this year, Pastor Hao Zhiwei, a woman leader of an unregistered house church in Hubei, was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. Since May, Bishop Joseph Zhang of the Catholic Diocese of Xinxiang in Henan Province has been detained without due process in a secret (or “black”) jail. Independent Christian schools, which are banned on the mainland, present problems for the CCP in Hong Kong. The government reports that 60 percent of K–12 schools there are run by churches, though Christians constitute only 15 percent of its population. In addition to their religious curriculum, the schools have a culture that conflicts with the CCP’s. Reverend L, a graduate of one, writes that “they have instilled the ideals of academic freedom, human dignity, and democracy in generations of Hong Kongers.” Bishop Chow, who headed a Jesuit boys’ school there, earned his doctorate of education at Harvard and wrote his dissertation on the “moral culture” in Hong Kong’s schools. “I find it unacceptable for human dignity to be ignored, trampled upon, or eliminated entirely,” he said in an interview with the website Mondo e Missione in February. While acknowledging that the “main job” of the schools was “to protect students,” he hoped that they could “develop independent thinking, and not just within a pre-established framework.” Such educational approaches are anathema to the CCP. In January, it issued directives to place party cells within primary and secondary schools on the mainland, despite the CCP’s seven decades of control over them. A pseudonymous reporter in the online magazine Bitter Winter describes the party’s perspective: “Some still believe that students are educated to find a good job. This opinion should be corrected: students are educated ‘for the Party and for the Country.’” According to the directives, the cells will, in addition to cultivating “love for the party,” run the schools, be “strong fighting fortresses” of CCP ideology, and “deeply integrate the . . . inheritance of red genes into school education.” Hong Kong’s Christian schools don’t just lack for party fervor. Many of their students have protested against the CCP. Protest leader Joshua Wong and former legislator Martin Lee, Hong Kong’s “father of democracy,” both convicted for political activism, are Christian-school alumni. In January, Ta Kung Pao, the Chinese government’s newspaper in Hong Kong, ran articles angrily blaming the Christian schools for nurturing the movement against the party’s oppressive measures. All Hong Kong schools are now legally required to provide the CCP’s compulsory “national-security education.” Baptist University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, together with its important divinity school, are set to begin next fall. More-drastic educational changes are sure to follow. As the CCP subjugates Hong Kong’s churches and their schools, no political space to object remains, even for Cardinal Joseph Zen, the territory’s towering bishop emeritus. In January, the threat of harsh National Security Law punishments was dangled over him and the churches when he was accused in Ta Kung Pao of abusing his position to “disrupt Hong Kong” with past criticisms. Church leaders in the free world are mostly quiet. An exception is Bishop Javier Herrera Corona, the Vatican’s recently transferred Hong Kong representative. Last month the respected Union of Catholic Asian News reported that he derided those who, like Zen, were alarmed that “the Vatican and the communist government are collaborating in appointing bishops.” He was reported to have scoffed at their “psychological barrier,” which he attributed to rigid thinking. The Biden administration is rightly concerned by the imprisonment of Hong Kong’s dissidents and by the shutting of its free presses. It also must speak out against the incipient crackdown on religious freedom, among the last remnants of the territory’s “one country, two systems” model. Under Sinicization, the CCP’s inexorable exertion of control over Hong Kong’s churches is, in Reverend L’s words, “soul-crushing.” © 2022 National Review

By Deng Machol | AP There has been widespread ethnic violence in South Sudan since December 2013 [Sumy Sadurni/AFP] Fresh fighting broke out between rival soldiers in South Sudan, threatening a fragile peace agreement forged with the help of outsiders including the United States. Sporadic fighting was reported Thursday in Upper Nile state, according to spokesmen for the rival groups. Army Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang, spokesman for South Sudanese government troops, charged that rival forces - known officially as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army In Opposition - had “declared war” in attacking their positions in Longechuk County. Col. Lam Paul Gabriel, a spokesman for the rival forces, said government troops attacked first. His group’s political bureau on Tuesday had approved the suspension of its participation in meetings of the security mechanisms holding together the peace deal between President Salva Kiir and his rival Vice President Riek Machar. The decision came after government forces were accused of carrying out unprovoked attacks on their rivals’ military bases, including cantonment sites, in the states of Upper Nile and Unity. In a statement Wednesday, the U.S., the U.K. and Norway - the troika supporting South Sudan’s peace deal - said they were concerned that the fighting threatens to undermine the government’s unity. “With less than a year left of the transitional period, whole-hearted commitment is critical to get us past the finish line,” the statement said. “Unfortunately, recent events signal the opposite.” There were high hopes for peace and stability once oil-rich South Sudan gained its long-fought independence from Sudan in 2011. But the country slid into civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to Kiir started battling those loyal to Machar. The rivals reached signed a peace agreement in 2018, with Machar returning as Kiir’s deputy. But challenges remain, including the government’s failure to implement promised reforms including completing the unification of the army command. A group of United Nations experts warned in a report last year that “the stability of South Sudan has remained at risk” as a result of missed deadlines and political gridlock on key issues in the unity government’s agreement. © The Washington Post, 2022

Action taken days before key donor pledging conference. By Heather Barr | Associate Director, Women's Rights Division Women, teachers and students demonstrate inside a private school to demand their rights and equal education for women and girls, during a gathering for National Teachers Day, in Kabul, Afghanistan, October 5, 2021. © 2021 AP Photo/Ahmad Halabisaz On March 21 the Taliban promised to reopen all schools in Afghanistan, ending their seven-month de-facto ban on girls attending secondary school. Two days later, as many girls were preparing for the first day of the new school term, the Taliban reversed this decision, announcing that girls’ secondary schools were to remain closed – indefinitely – until the Taliban put in place policies they say are compliant with “principles of Islamic law and Afghan culture,” including further restrictions on schoolgirls’ dress. The reversal is cruel, and feels provocative, coming days before a March 31 international donor conference that aims to raise US$4.4 billion to help alleviate the desperate humanitarian crisis gripping the country. The humanitarian crisis has partly been driven by the United States and other donor governments, which have cut off most non-humanitarian support and revoked the Afghan central bank’s credentials. The consequences have been devastating; the economy can’t function, people cannot work, and most families are struggling to feed themselves. The United Nations says that 95 percent of Afghans, and almost all female-headed households, are now going hungry. The donor conference could be an important step toward ending this crisis. But donors are also looking to the Taliban to make concessions in return for aid and recognition. Donors have focused much of their attention on whether the Taliban would reopen girls’ secondary schools, and the issue has gained huge symbolic importance. By doubling down on their ban on secondary school-aged girls studying, the Taliban are sending their own message. Donors hoped that the reopening of girls’ secondary schools would be an important indication that the Taliban were willing to compromise. These hopes now feel too optimistic. The Taliban seem determined to continue their wholesale rollback of virtually all rights of women and girls. To progress, Afghanistan desperately needs girls and women to be educated. The Taliban should immediately reopen all girls’ secondary schools and end their many violations of women’s and girls’ rights. Donors should keep the pressure on the Taliban to end human rights violations while remembering that their assistance is desperately needed; not by the Taliban, but by Afghans who are hungry and children who are dying of malnutrition. Balancing these competing priorities is hard but not impossible, and a commitment to doing so is owed to Afghans, whose desperate situation has largely been shaped by decisions in foreign capitals. © Human Rights Watch, 2022

Widespread sexual violence against women and girls in conflict is being fueled by systemic impunity, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said on Monday. © UNICEF/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin | A quarter of reported cases of conflict-related sexual violence in South Sudan are against children. The Commission’s new report, based on interviews conducted with victims and witnesses over several years, describes a “hellish existence for women and girls”, with widespread rape being perpetrated by all armed groups across the country. According to the UN Commission, sexual violence has been instrumentalized as a reward and entitlement for youth and men participating in conflict. The goal is to inflict maximum disruption of the fabric of communities, including through their constant displacement, the report continues. Rape is often used as “part of military tactics for which government and military leaders are responsible, either due to their failure to prevent these acts, or for their failure to punish those involved”, the Commission advanced. Bodies reduced to ‘spoils of war’ “It is outrageous and completely unacceptable that women’s bodies are systematically used on this scale as the spoils of war,” declared Yasmin Sooka, Chair of the UN Commission. Calling for urgent and demonstrable action by authorities, Ms. Sooka said: “South Sudanese men must stop regarding the female body as 'territory' to be owned, controlled and exploited.” Sexual violence survivors have detailed “staggeringly brutal and prolonged gang rapes” perpetrated against them by multiple men, often while their husbands, parents or children have been forced to watch, helpless to intervene. Women of all ages recounted being raped multiple times while other women were also being raped around them, and a woman raped by six men said she was even forced to tell her assailants that the rape had been “good”, threatening to rape her again if she refused. The resultant traumas “ensure the complete destruction of the social fabric”, the UN Commission said. Horrific assaults “Anyone reading the details of this horrific report can only begin to imagine what life is like for the survivors. These accounts are unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone, inside and outside governments, should be thinking what they can do to prevent further acts of sexual violence and to provide adequate care for the survivors,” said Andrew Clapham, member of the Commission. A woman described her friend being raped by a man in the forest who then said he wanted to continue to ‘have fun’ and further raped her with a firewood stick until she bled to death. Teenage girls described being left for dead by their rapists while bleeding heavily. Medical personnel also report that many survivors have been raped multiple times throughout their lifetime. Traumatized for life The report also describes women often bearing children as a result of rape, and notes that in many cases, survivors have contracted sexually transmitted infections including being infected with HIV. Following rape and pregnancy, women are often abandoned by husbands and families, and left destitute. Some of those raped while pregnant, have suffered miscarriages. Husbands searching for abducted wives and daughters often spend years not knowing their fate, with some learning they were abducted by men from rival ethnic groups and forced to bear multiple children – one such man was so traumatized, he wanted to take his own life. The Commission reported that these attacks were not random opportunistic incidents, but usually involved armed soldiers actively hunting down women and girls, with rape carried out during attacks on villages, systematic and widespread. © UNICEF/Albert Gonzalez Farran | A South-Sudanese woman who was beaten by her husband seeks refuge in her brother’s house. Accountability versus impunity The Commission said the failure of political elites to deal with security sector reform, and to provide for the very basic needs of armed forces on all sides, continues to contribute to a permissive environment in which South Sudanese women are regarded as currency. With near-universal impunity for rape and sexual violence, perpetrators avoid accountability. Calling on the Government of South Sudan and its obligation to end impunity for serious crimes, the Commission noted the recent Government initiatives to address sexual violence in conflict, including establishing a special court and holding military justice proceedings. While welcoming such measures, the Commission also said, “they remain woefully inadequate given the scale and extent of crimes”. Gender inequality context "It is scandalous that senior officials implicated in violence against women and girls, including cabinet ministers and governors, are not immediately removed from office and held accountable. To address this pervasive violence in conflict and other contexts, those in positions of command and other authority must promptly and publicly adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards sexual and gender-based violence.” said Barney Afako, member of the Commission. To grasp the full impact of conflict-related sexual violence, it is also necessary to understand the social and cultural context in which sexual violence occurs, under patriarchal systems based on domination and gender discrimination. Half of all South Sudanese women are married off before they reach 18, and the country has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. Sexual and gender-based violence is also common outside of conflict, affecting women and girls amongst all segments of society. The Commission is calling on the authorities in South Sudan to take the necessary steps to stop sexual violence against women and girls, by addressing impunity and the drivers of conflict and insecurity. Work of the Commission The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan is an independent body mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. It was first established in March 2016. The Commission is mandated to investigate the situation of human rights in South Sudan, and to determine and report the facts and circumstances of human rights violations and abuses, including by clarifying responsibility for violations and abuses that are crimes under national and or international law. © UN News