The need for gender-based violence-related services has increased 100 per cent since the crisis began in April 2023, the UN agency championing gender affairs reported, with up to 6.7 million people needing assistance by the end of last year.

Cases of conflict-related sexual violence, sexual exploitation, and abuse have been growing since then, especially in Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan.

Many cases of abuse perpetrated against displaced women and girls go unreported due to a fear of stigma from other community members and inadequate support.

Insufficient food and healthcare

With cases of acute food insecurity and abuse now at a record high in war-torn Sudan, female-headed households are being more affected than male-headed households.

Additionally, 1.63 million women of reproductive age lack access to adequate healthcare services, even though around 54,000 childbirths are expected over the next three months.

The alert explained that “women and girls also continue to be disproportionately impacted by the lack of safe, easily accessible, and affordable water, sanitation, and hygiene.”

“At least 80 per cent of the internally displaced women are unable to secure clean water due to affordability, safety concerns, and distance,” it continued.

Education crisis

Access to education for girls in Sudan is also a major concern as more than 2.5 million school-aged girls are unable to return to the classroom which increases the risk of “being subjected to harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation.”

“Women and girls in Sudan are facing unimaginable challenges, yet their strength and resilience continue to inspire us,” said Hodan Addou, acting Regional Director for UN Women’s East and Southern Africa office. “We cannot let Sudan become a forgotten crisis.”

Call for action

UN Women said urgent action is needed to protect women and girls in Sudan and secure their access to food, safe water, and sexual and reproductive health services.

The office is calling on the international community and humanitarian partners to support funding for women-led organizations that are prioritising protecting and empowering women and girls.

“Now, more than ever, the international community must rally together to support women in Sudan, ensuring they have the resources and protection they need to survive and rebuild their lives,” Ms. Hodan Addou.

UN Women is also demanding an immediate halt to the fighting but all international efforts to bring about a ceasefire between the RSF militia and Government forces have so far fallen short.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that failing to address the mental, sexual and reproductive health of adolescents will have “serious and life-threatening consequences for young people”. It will also come at a massive cost for society, which justifies a major public investment from governments worldwide.

Tedros noted that anaemia among adolescent girls remains “prevalent” and at levels similar to those in 2010, while close to one in 10 teenagers is obese.

STDs on the rise

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including syphilis, chlamydia, trichomoniasis and genital herpes that commonly occur among youth are on the rise too.

If left untreated, they could have “lifelong implications for health”, the WHO chief said, citing new data.

Tedros also spoke out against attempts to “roll back” young people’s access to sexual and reproductive healthcare and sex education in response to growing opposition to gender equality and human rights.

He said that any restrictive age of consent policies limit young people’s access to critical services, including those for sexually transmitted infections and HIV.

Adolescence is a unique and critical stage of human development, involving major physical, emotional and social transitions, and is a pivotal window for laying long-term foundations for good health, WHO notes.

“Promoting and protecting the health and rights of young people is essential to building a better future for our world,” said Tedros.

“Conversely, failing to address the health threats that adolescents face – some longstanding, some emerging – will not only have serious and life-threatening consequences for young people themselves, but will create spiraling economic costs.”

Gains are possible

The publication was launched at an event on the margins of the UN Summit of the Future.

“Adolescents are powerful and incredibly creative forces for good when they are able to shape the agenda for their wellbeing and their future,” said Rajat Khosla, executive director of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, which co-hosted the launch.

“Leaders must listen to what young people want and ensure they are active partners and decision makers,” she added.

Indigenous Peoples of Russia face ‘extinction’ from Ukraine mobilisation

Russia’s Indigenous Peoples face “extinction” because they have been subjected to “massive” mobilisation to fight in the war in Ukraine, a top independent rights expert said on Monday.

The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Russia, Mariana Katzarova, maintained that most of the mobilisation of minority communities had been forced.

“The mobilisation of Indigenous Peoples, particularly from small-numbered nations, is massive, and the death rate is massive, which is threatening them with extinction,” she said, citing civil society data.

‘Almost no Slavic faces’ on frontline

The independent rights expert, who does not work for the UN or receive a salary from the Organization, said that following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she saw “almost no Slavic faces” on images broadcast from the frontline, but rather those of Russia’s ethnic peoples.

“It was the Buryatians, it was the Kalmykians, it was the Chechens, it was the national minorities of Russia,” she insisted.

Speaking in Geneva, Ms. Katzarova said that Russian authorities had gone to the country’s “faraway places” to find war recruits.

“The mobilisation hasn’t been so brutal in Moscow and St. Petersburg…It’s the most sophisticated places where people know their rights.

“But, when you go 100 miles away on the train from Moscow and St. Petersburg and let alone in the far-away regions of Siberia…people don’t even feel they have a choice. They don’t even know their rights.”

The independent rights expert said she had documented cases where the military had gone “door to door” in their search for soldiers and “just drag out the men from Indigenous villages”.

Ms. Katzarova is due to present her report to the Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

Belarus authorities quell ‘all avenues of dissent’, UN Rights Council hears

Serious rights violations are continuing against civil society and critics of the Government in Belarus, the UN Human Rights Council heard on Monday.

Appointed by the Council in Geneva, the Group of Independent Experts on Belarus highlighted numerous grave abuses linked to protests at the disputed re-election of Presidential Alexander Lukashenko in 2020.

These include deaths, torture, gender-based violence and denial of the right to a fair trial, said Karinna Moskalenko, chair of panel of independent experts.

Climate of fear

She said the government “continues to instill a pervasive climate of fear by quelling all avenues of dissent, including in the digital space. New electronic intelligence equipment appears to have been pursued to increase the monitoring of online activities, ahead of the Presidential elections.”

Ms. Moskalenko, who as an independent expert does not work for the UN, further maintained that President Lukashenko’s government was “responsible for the near-total destruction of civic space and fundamental freedoms in Belarus”.

Most opponents of the authorities had been “either imprisoned or forced into exile since the 2020 elections”, she noted.

The alert from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine follows significant destruction to power plants and the worsening energy crisis that has affected access to electricity, clean water and heating, while also pushing up prices for consumers.

The strikes on the national grid included one coordinated attack on 26 August which the Mission described in a new report as one of Russia’s largest since the onset of the full-scale invasion, involving “more than 100 missiles and 100 drones across numerous regions in Ukraine, primarily targeting energy and other infrastructure. Power cuts were implemented nationwide to stabilize the grid.”

There have been “nine waves of long-range and large-scale coordinated attacks” on Ukraine’s electric power system between 22 March and 31 August 2024, the report noted. These have either damaged or destroyed “numerous power generation, transmission, and distribution facilities” and caused harm to the civilian population and the country’s electricity supply, water distribution, sewage and sanitation systems, heating and hot water, public health, education and the economy.

The report further cites estimates that the latest attacks on energy infrastructure have “put over 10 per cent of the population – 3.7 million people – at risk of consuming contaminated drinking water. Risks increase for infants and young children, older persons, immune-compromised individuals and those with important comorbidities,” it noted.

High-voltage hits

Since March 2024, Russian attacks have hit facilities in 20 of the 24 regions under Ukrainian control, including the capital Kyiv, according to the Mission. These included 36 recorded strikes on power plants in nine regions and at least 101 confirmed attacks on electricity distribution and transmission facilities in 17 regions. “Many energy facilities were struck repeatedly, some until the point of total destruction,” it said, noting that it will “take years to fully repair and restore”.

Before the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine had 44.1 gigawatts of available electricity capacity, via its nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric plants, as well as renewable sources, the report noted, citing data from the National Bank of Ukraine. But by April 2023, Ukraine’s national grid had lost nearly half of its available production capacity from occupation and destruction. Additionally, 42 of its 95 high-voltage transformers were damaged, disrupting electricity distribution to homes.

Forced displacement fears

According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 6.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the Russian invasion. Some 6.2 million are still in Europe and another 3.6 million remain internally displaced inside Ukraine. The UNHCR considers it “unlikely” that these numbers will decrease soon.

Border monitoring conducted by UNHCR and partners showed a slight increase in departures from Ukraine since April this year linked to a lack of access to electricity, water and heating. But “that rise then starkly increased” by June 2024 to one in four respondents as energy outages became more frequent. By July, nearly half of those contacted at the Ukrainian border said they were leaving because of difficulty accessing electricity, water and heating.

“Most of those departing for energy-related reasons are intending to stay abroad temporarily, but for unknown periods,” UNHCR said.

Education: Millions of classroom hours lost

Beyond the expected exodus of people from Ukraine, the attacks have seriously impacted education, too. In July 2024, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that between 78 and 311 million hours of study have been lost each month from power outages. 

After the initial waves of attacks in March 2024, the National Bank of Ukraine estimated that the national economy would shrink by 0.6 per cent. By June 2024, electricity prices rose by more than two-thirds. The country’s Government estimated that high electricity costs would add 1.2 per cent to consumer inflation and six per cent in additional costs for producers.

The UN Mission said that in view of the large number of regions affected by the coordinated attacks, “the high precision of the weapons involved, and the sheer scale of harm inflicted on civilians and interconnected civilian systems supplying the population with services essential to their health and survival…there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple aspects of the military campaign to damage or destroy Ukraine’s civilian electricity and heat-producing and transmission infrastructure have violated foundational principles of international humanitarian law.”