Switzerland – Global conflicts killed three times as many children and twice as many women in 2023 than in the previous year, as overall civilian fatalities swelled 72 percent, the UN said Tuesday.
Warring parties were increasingly “pushing beyond boundaries of what is acceptable — and legal”, United Nations rights chief Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
They are showing “utter contempt for the other, trampling human rights at their core”, he said. “Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence. Destruction of vital infrastructure a daily occurrence”.
“Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities. All along with hateful, divisive, and dehumanising rhetoric.”
“We must urgently find our way back to peace,” says @UNHumanRights chief @volker_turk as he presents his global update to the 56th session of the @UN Human Rights Council.
Full STATEMENT to #HRC56 ➡️https://t.co/CtfXLvCs1n pic.twitter.com/8ToYpOsuDD
— United Nations Human Rights Council 📍 #HRC56 (@UN_HRC) June 18, 2024
The UN rights chief said his office had gathered data indicating that last year, “the number of civilian deaths in armed conflict soared by 72 percent”.
“Horrifyingly, the data indicates that the proportion of women killed in 2023 doubled and that of children tripled, compared to the year prior,” he said.
In the Gaza Strip, Turk said he was “appalled by the disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law by parties to the conflict” and “unconscionable death and suffering”.
Since the war erupted after Hamas’s unprecedented attack inside Israel on October 7, he said “more than 120,000 people in Gaza, overwhelmingly women and children, have been killed or injured … as a result of the intensive Israeli offensives”.
BREAKING!
Palestine at the UN security council:
“The world saw Palestinian children burnt alive. It is unbearable to see a loved one killed before your eyes, but imagine the pain to see them burnt alive. There is no red line that Israel has not crossed.” pic.twitter.com/VooM0OHoQ1
— sarah (@sahouraxo) May 29, 2024
“Since Israel escalated its operations into Rafah in early May, almost one million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced yet again, while aid delivery and humanitarian access deteriorated further,” he said.
Dwindling funds
Turk also pointed to a range of other conflicts, including in Ukraine, the Democratic republic of Congo and Syria.
And in Sudan, in the grips of a more than year-long civil war, he warned the country “is being destroyed in front of our eyes by two warring parties and affiliated groups … (who have) flagrantly cast aside the rights of their own people”.
Sudan’s civil war has now displaced over 10 million people internally in just over a year, according to the latest UN figures. An additional two million have been forced to flee the country.
The siege of El Fasher by the UAE-backed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against… pic.twitter.com/Pdd644Cxls
— red. (@redstreamnet) June 11, 2024
Such devastation comes as funding to help the growing numbers of people in need is dwindling.
“As of the end of May 2024, the gap between humanitarian funding requirements and available resources stands at $40.8 billion,” Turk said.
“Appeals are funded at an average of 16.1 per cent only,” he said.
“Contrast this with the almost $2.5 trillion in global military expenditure in 2023, a 6.8 percent increase in real terms from 2022,” Turk said, stressing that “this was the steepest year-on-year increase since 2009”.
“In addition to inflicting unbearable human suffering, war comes with a hefty price tag,” he said.
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Source: AFP
Picture: X/@volker_turk
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