Pakistan for steps to end sexual violence in IHK

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has called for steps to end sexual violence taking place in conflict zones around the world in an obvious effort to highlight in the UN Security Council the atrocities being perpetrated on women and girls in Indian held Kashmir.

"From Myanmar to our own neighborhood, the world continues to watch in horror as several state and non-state actors employ rape and sexual abuse as a deliberate policy to subdue and oppress entire populations," Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, said during a Council open debate in preventing sexual violence in conflict. She voiced concern that complicated realities surrounding ongoing conflicts and divisions among Council members, some perpetrators of sexual violence crime to continue carrying out heinous atrocities with impunity.

"For far too long, sexual violence has remained a grim and inevitable reality of armed conflicts, which has often been employed systematically and with impunity, to coerce, punish, humiliate and instill fear in the targeted civilian population," the Pakistani envoy told the 15-member Council. "Even as the international community has come together to collectively condemn such acts of unimaginable horror, sexual abuse of women and girls continues to be used as a tactic of war in conflicts around the world.