UNITED NATIONS – Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi has called for mechanisms to independently investigate and verify reports emerging from war-raved zones where sexual violence occurred.
Addressing an open debate on ‘Preventing Sexual Violence’ at UN Security Council in New York, she said, from Myanmar to our own neighbourhood, the world continues to watch in horror as several state and non-State actors employ rape and sexual abuse as a deliberate policy to coerce and oppress entire populations.
Lodhi urged the Council to focus on addressing the root causes of conflict in order to remove the grounds where such crimes bred.
Let it be known that the United Nations has included Myanmar Armed Forces on an annual blacklist of groups that are “credibly suspected” of carrying out sexual violence during conflict.
“The widespread threat and use of sexual violence was integral to [their] strategy, serving to humiliate, terrorize and collectively punish the Rohingya community as a calculated tool to force them to flee their homelands and prevent their return,” Secretary general Antonio Guterres said in a report on Myanmar’s military.
