A last-minute extension of the pause in fighting in Gaza between
Israel and Hamas on Thursday offered hope that UN humanitarians
and aid partners will be able to pursue their efforts to reach
the enclave’s most vulnerable people.
The latest update from UN aid coordination office OCHA indicated that two
hospitals in Gaza City, Al Ahli and As Sahaba, had received a
total of 10,500 litres of fuel, which is enough to operate their
generators for about seven days.
But humanitarians have warned that despite the pause in fighting,
much more aid is needed, urgently.
They also warned that has been almost no improvement in access to
clean water for residents in northern Gaza, after most of the
main water production facilities shut down through lack of fuel,
or damage from Israeli airstrikes launched after Hamas’s 7
October terror attacks that killed 1,200 and took another 240
hostage.
Sudan: UN rights experts ‘appalled’ at rise in sexual
violence
Independent UN Human Rights
Council-appointed experts expressed heightened alarm on
Thursday over the escalation in gender-based violence in Sudan,
primarily at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces militia.
According to UN sources, more than six million people have been
forcibly displaced inside and outside the country since fighting
began between the RSF and the national army, in mid-April.
“We are appalled by reports of widespread use of gender-based
violence, including sexual violence, as a tool of
war to subjugate, terrorise, break and punish women
and girls, and as a means of punishing specific communities
targeted by the RSF and allied militias,” the experts said.
The militia partnered with national forces up to the impasse in
April, and grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militia that
operated in Darfur in the 2000s.
Slavery, trafficking, rape
They stressed sexual violence has also been used against
non-Sudanese migrants, refugees and stateless persons, during the
brutal fighting for territory and control.
In August, the independent experts raised
concerns at reports of multiple serious violations
perpetrated by the RSF in particular.
This included reports of sexual exploitation, slavery,
trafficking, rape, and acts tantamount to enforced
disappearances, which in some cases may have been racially,
ethnically and politically motivated, including for expressing
opposition to the presence of armed groups.
Since then, reports of forced prostitution and forced marriage of
women and girls have also emerged.
“These serious acts are reportedly no longer concentrated in
Khartoum or Darfur, but have spread to other parts of the
country, such as Kordofan,” the UN experts said.
They called on the international fact-finding mission for Sudan,
established by the Human Rights Council last month, to
investigate these human rights violations and crimes with a view
to ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable.
End ‘repugnant’ chemical weapons use once and for all,
says UN chief
Thursday marks the day of Remembrance for All
Victims of Chemical Warfare – it’s also a day when
UN Secretary-General António
Guterres insisted that
we should resolve to end the use of these repugnant
weapons, once and for all.
In a social media post on X, the UN chief said that “in the name
and memory of all who have suffered, let’s consign chemical
weapons to history”.
“Ending this scourge means living up to the Chemical Weapons
Convention’s call to prevent the use of any chemical weapons,
and ending impunity for those who use them, especially against
civilians”, he wrote, in his official message marking the
international day.
He noted that it is now ten years since the deadly chemical
weapons attack in the Ghouta district of Damascus that resulted
in numerous casualties, many of them children.
International efforts to eradicate the illegal munitions are led
by the Organisation for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The Twenty-Eighth Session of the Conference of the States Parties
to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) on Thursday adopted
a decision on Addressing the Threat from
Chemical Weapons Use and the Threat of Future Use, brought
forward by 48 countries.
The Conference decided that the continued possession and use of
chemical weapons by Syria and its failures to submit an accurate
and complete declaration and to destroy all its undeclared
chemical weapons and production facilities, have
caused serious damage to the object and purpose of the Chemical
Weapons Convention.
In adopting the decision, States Parties condemned “in the
strongest possible terms the use of chemical weapons by anyone,
under any circumstances, emphasising that any use of chemical
weapons anywhere, at any time, by anyone, and under any
circumstances is unacceptable and contravenes international norms
and standards”.
The decision seeks to implement for the first time Paragraph 3 of Article
XII of the Convention, which refers to measures States
Parties can take in order to ensure compliance.
The OPCW meets in the Hague
to discuss progress in chemical weapons disarmament which emerged
as an issue more than a century ago, during the First World War,
when chemical weapons such as mustard gas were used on a massive
scale, resulting in more than 100,000 fatalities and a million
casualties.
