UN flags systemic sexual violence in conflict, spotlighting impunity in occupied territories and global accountability gaps
Original framing: “Israel 'added to UN blacklist' for sexual violence in conflict zones” — Middle East Eye
Sexual violence as a tool of war has been documented in every major settler-colonial project, from Belgian Congo to Algeria, where French forces used rape to 'pacify' resistance. The UN’s 2014 report on Gaza explicitly cited Israel’s 2009 offensive, where 100+ Palestinian women reported sexual violence—yet no prosecutions followed. This pattern mirrors the impunity granted to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, revealing a global architecture of denial.
The UN’s blacklist, while a rare acknowledgment of systemic sexual violence, is trapped in the same colonial logic it seeks to challenge: a Western legal framework that centres punishment over healing, and states over survivors.
The selective outrage—where Israeli officials decry the UN as 'political' while their own legal system is built on apartheid—reveals the absurdity of 'neutral' institutions in a world where power dictates whose pain is legible. Indigenous and Global South feminists have long framed this violence as a rupture of communal harmony, yet their wisdom is sidelined in favour of adversarial courts. The path forward requires dismantling the impunity networks that protect Israel (and other states) while building restorative justice models rooted in Palestinian agency. Without this, the blacklist will remain a performative gesture, another layer of trauma for a people already erased by history.