The United Nations is demanding an independent investigation into charges of rape and sexual assault committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine since the start of the invasion.
We speak with Pramila Patten, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, who is just back from Ukraine and told the Security Council Monday about multiple shocking reports of rape and assault — all of which Russia has since denied.
Pramila Patten, let’s begin with you. You’re just off your address to the U.N. Security Council. Talk about what you found in Ukraine.Well, you will all recall that it was only a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that the first reports of sexual violence began to surface. And as the conflict passes the 100-day mark, unfortunately, we continue to receive reports of sexual violence.
And as of the 3rd of June, only 124 reports of sexual violence are verifiable, are of a verifiable nature, and are being looked into by the human rights monitoring of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. And that verification process is ongoing. And you can imagine that we — due to security and access constraints, the verification process is taking time. But in 102 cases, perpetrators are reported to be Russian Armed Forces, and two cases from Russian-affiliated groups.
And this is precisely why I will be deploying, following the framework of cooperation that I signed on the 3rd of May — will deploy staff with expertise on sexual violence documentation, investigation, prosecution. They will be embedded not only in the Office of the High Commissioner’s human rights monitoring team but also in the Office of the Prosecutor General to support the investigation, to support the documentation, to support the collection of evidence before the evidence trail goes cold.
Of course, there are no war where there are one party of the war would be — I don’t know — will not violate international humanitarian law, and another part will. Of course, we have to face that, of course, Ukrainian army — I mean, we will find these evidences. But so far, we don’t have enough evidences to talk about it in legal terms. So we have to wait for liberation of occupied territories, come to the territory and just gather information, gather evidences there.