United Nations experts have called on authorities in South Sudan to investigate officials accused of overseeing systematic gang rapes, some of whose victims were girls as young as 9.
The Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said on Monday that it had reasonable grounds to believe a county commissioner in the northern oil-rich state of Unity orchestrated gang rapes at a military camp.
The documented abuses also involved beheadings, rape victims forced to carry the severed heads, victims being burned alive, and days of brutal sexual assaults, the UN experts said in a statement, and that the abuses cut across all political affiliations.
Investigators say sexual abuse has been used as a weapon by all sides in South Sudan’s civil conflict, which erupted in 2013 and triggered Africa’s biggest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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Tags: Africa, South Sudan, Truth and Memory, Gender Justice
