UN says mounting reports of rape, crimes against women in Ukraine

The United Nations said Monday that there has been an increase in reports of crimes against women and children in Ukraine that is raising “red flags.” 

Sima Bahous, executive director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, said allegations of rape and sexual violence against Ukrainian women fleeing the Russian invasion have emerged with increased frequency since the conflict began.

“The combination of mass displacement with the large pressure of conscripts and mercenaries and the brutality displayed against Ukrainian civilians has raised all red flags,” she added.

At the U.N. Security Council meeting Monday, Bahous said she recently returned from Moldova, where she witnessed “buses full of exhausted and anxious women and children arriving from Ukraine.”

According to the U.N. body, women currently make up 80 percent of all health and social care workers in Ukraine, many of whom it said have chosen not to flee. 

“Women parliamentarians, as well as Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, continue their work as bombs fall all around them,” Bahous noted.

As of April 10, the United Nations said it has verified that 142 children have been killed and 229 children have been injured, but said the numbers are likely much higher than reported.

Human rights organization La Strada-Ukraine’s President Kateryna Cherepakha told the security council that there, women in local administrations are increasingly vulnerable to the threat of kidnapping, torture and killing.

Cherepakha added that “women-prisoners of war have been exposed to torture, including sexual violence, while female journalists have been killed.”

“The cases already reported are just a small part of the iceberg,” she said.

She also told the U.N. Security Council that her organization’s emergency hotlines received calls accusing Russian soldiers of nine cases of rape, involving 12 women and girls, according to Reuters.

In prepared remarks, Ukraine’s permanent representative to the U.N., Sergiy Kyslytsya, accused Russia of disregarding the need to protect civilians in Ukraine and added that the national prosecutor’s office is launching a special mechanism to document sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian women.

Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the U.N., Dmitry Polyanskiy, however, rejected the claims as “the ongoing distortion of his country’s special military operation in Ukraine” and promotion of “fake” news by the West.