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STORY: UN / UKRAINE
TRT: 4:16
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 06 JUNE 2022, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior UN Headquarters
06 JUNE 2022, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, Security Council
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Pramila Patten, Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, United Nations:
“Yet, as the conflict in Ukraine passes the 100 day mark, we are faced with mounting allegations of sexual violence. Due to active hostilities, mass internal displacement, the breakdown of referral pathways for services and stigma associated with sexual violence, alleged victims have often been unable or unwilling to report to law enforcement authorities or service providers. Referral pathways for relevant services are not functioning in many places, especially in eastern Ukraine.”
4. Wide shot, Security Council
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Pramila Patten, Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, United Nations:
“For example, prior to 24 February, 20 medical service delivery points and maternity hospitals were providing assistance to survivors of gender-based violence, with the support of UNFPA. As of 18 April, only nine such facilities were operational due to damage from hostilities and staffing shortages. In the current context, many allegations of conflict-related sexual violence are difficult if not impossible to verify, making it challenging to assess prevalence.”
6. Med shot, Security Council
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Pramila Patten, Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, United Nations:
“From our experience of conflicts the world over, we know that sexual violence is the most consistently and massively under-reported violation, and that available data only represents the tip of the iceberg. An active battle-ground is never conducive to accurate ‘book-keeping’. But if we wait for hard data and statistics, it will always be too late. This is why we must mobilize immediately on the basis of our common conviction that even one case of sexual violence is unacceptable.”
8. Close up, Security Council President
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Pramila Patten, Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, United Nations:
“From the outset of this conflict, heightened risks of trafficking in persons including for purposes of sexual exploitation and prostitution have been alarmingly evident.”
10. Close up, Security Council President
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, United States:
“There have been multiple reports from survivors of Russia’s soldiers breaking down doors to basements where women were sheltering and raping them. These terrible acts were done in front of their children, and they were filmed by the Russian soldiers. These are bone-chilling accounts. And we know for every account we hear, many more are unknown.”
12. Close up, Security Council president
13. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Vasily Nebenzya, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Russian Federation:
“We all recall how in Ukrainian and Western media – and also in this room – our soldiers were repeatedly accused of sexual violence, with reference to certain reports containing allegedly reliable data. However, no evidence was provided, just like today. We've not heard a single example from the briefers and those who've taken the floor. Similar allegations fit very well into the image that was meticulously created by Western political scientists of Russian soldiers as barbarians, just like Goebbels did towards the end of the Second World War.”
14. Med shot, Security Council
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Sergiy Kyslytsya, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ukraine:
“Putin’s Russia must be defeated. For the sake of international peace and security. For the sake of the Ukrainian people who pay the ultimate price. For the sake of people throughout the world, in particular those depending on grain supplies from our region. And for the sake of people of Russia, that should return to the family of democratic nations following the ‘deputinization.’”
16. Wide shot, Security Council
A UN top official warned the Security Council that, as the conflict in Ukraine passes the 100 day mark, there are mounting allegations of sexual violence.
Pramila Patten, the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told Council Members on Monday (6 June) that, due to active hostilities, mass internal displacement, the breakdown of referral pathways for services and stigma associated with sexual violence, alleged victims have often been unable or unwilling to report to law enforcement authorities or service providers.
According to Patten, “referral pathways for relevant services are not functioning in many places, especially in eastern Ukraine.”
For example, the Special Representative informed, prior to 24 February, 20 medical service delivery points and maternity hospitals were providing assistance to survivors of gender-based violence, with the support of UNFPA. As of 18 April, only nine such facilities were operational due to damage from hostilities and staffing shortages.
“In the current context, many allegations of conflict-related sexual violence are difficult if not impossible to verify, making it challenging to assess prevalence,” Patten said.
According to the UN official, the international community knows, from experience of conflicts the world over, “that sexual violence is the most consistently and massively under-reported violation, and that available data only represents the tip of the iceberg.”
“An active battle-ground is never conducive to accurate ‘book-keeping’,” Patten said. “But if we wait for hard data and statistics, it will always be too late. This is why we must mobilize immediately on the basis of our common conviction that even one case of sexual violence is unacceptable.”
As of 3 June, the Human Rights Monitoring Team of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has received reports of 124 alleged acts of conflict-related sexual violence, occurring against women, girls, men and boys in Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Zakarpattia, Zhytomyr regions.
Women constitute most of the alleged victims (56 of 124 allegations concern women and girls).49 of the allegations are against children (41 against girls,7 against boys, 1 gender unknown). 19 of the allegations are against men, including rape, attempted rape, forced public stripping and threat of sexual violence.
Verification of cases is on-going.
Speaking for the United States, Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield noted “multiple reports from survivors of Russia’s soldiers breaking down doors to basements where women were sheltering and raping them.”
According to the ambassador, “these terrible acts were done in front of their children, and they were filmed by the Russian soldiers.”
“These are bone-chilling accounts. And we know for every account we hear, many more are unknown,” said Thomas-Greenfield.
The Russian Permanent Representative, Vasily Nebenzya, said that the same allegations have been made in the past but so far “no evidence was provided”.
“We've not heard a single example from the briefers and those who've taken the floor. Similar allegations fit very well into the image that was meticulously created by Western political scientists of Russian soldiers as barbarians, just like Goebbels did towards the end of the Second World War,” Nebenzya said.
Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Permanent Representative from Ukraine, told the Council that “Putin’s Russia must be defeated.”
“For the sake of international peace and security. For the sake of the Ukrainian people who pay the ultimate price. For the sake of people throughout the world, in particular those depending on grain supplies from our region. And for the sake of people of Russia, that should return to the family of democratic nations following the ‘deputinization’,” Kyslytsya concluded.
