UN Calls for Investigation into Violence Against Women in Ukraine 

The United Nations has increasingly heard accounts of rape and sexual violence in Ukraine and has called for an investigation of violence against women in Ukraine. 

The UN Women executive director Sima Bahous told the UN Security Council that brutality against Ukrainian civilians has “raised all red flags.”

Bahous said that sexual violence and human trafficking were being committed against both women and children in the context of mass displacement and ongoing fighting. 

In Ukraine, the country’s ombudswoman for human rights said that she had recorded horrific sexual assaults and sexual violence being committed by the Russian military in Bucha and elsewhere. 

In one case, women and girls were held captive by Russian troops in a basement for 25 days. Nine of these victims are now pregnant. 

Bahous, the Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), recently returned from a trip to the Republic of Moldova. There, she witnessed refugee busses of women and children arriving from Ukraine and heard first-hand accounts of extreme violence. 

The U.S. representative to the United Nations said that when men like Russian President Vladimir Putin begin wars, women, and children get hurt, displaced, raped and killed.

On April 8, Russian forces fired rocket attacks at a rail station in the eastern Ukraine city of Kramatorsk, where the building had been clearly marked for civilian evacuations. At least 50 were killed, including 5 children, and nearly 100 wounded, many in serious condition. The U.S. representative to the U.N. highlighted this missile attack as an example of brutality against civilians. 

Ireland’s representative to the U.N. also sounded alarms over “bone-chilling” allegations that children are among those being abused in Ukraine, including sexual violence. 

Poland’s representative to the U.N. said that nearly 2.6 million Ukrainian refugees have already come to Poland, and the vast majority of women and children find themselves at risk of human trafficking and abuse.