ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top diplomat at the United Nations has criticized a report on conflict-related sexual violence published by the world body for overlooking relevant incidents in Indian-administered Kashmir and Israeli-occupied Palestine.
The UN brought out a comprehensive report on the issue in June which documented about 2,500 verified cases of wartime rape in 2022. It also arranged a debate over the issue in the Security Council which was convened by the United Kingdom that currently holds the 15-member council’s rotating presidency.
“There is ample documented evidence that since 1989 Indian occupation forces have used rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war in occupied Kashmir,” Pakistan’s state-owned APP news agency reported the country’s envoy, Ambassador Munir Akram, as saying at the UNSC.
“The credibility of the Report is seriously eroded because of what looks like a deliberate decision not to report the crimes of sexual violence being committed in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir and in Israeli-occupied Palestine,” he added.
Akram maintained thousands of men, women, boys and girls had been detained and tortured in both the places.
“Since India’s unilateral and illegal measures of 5 August 2019, conflict-related violence and harassment and humiliation of women and girls in Kashmir has increased significantly,” he said while referring to New Delhi’s decision to revoke the special constitutional status of the only Muslim-majority state administered by it and integrate it with the rest of the Indian union.
“We would, therefore, urge the Secretary-General to rectify the Report’s omissions and include information on the incidence of sexual violence in foreign-occupied Kashmir and Palestine and list India and Israel amongst those parties perpetrating conflict-related sexual violence in future reports to the Security Council.”
