(Washington) The United States imposed sanctions on Tuesday, for the first time, for sexual violence perpetrated during conflicts, against two officials of South Sudan, as well as two leaders of the group Islamic State (IS). ).
Joe Biden announced in a statement “historic sanctions targeting actors who commit these violations” of human rights, after the publication, recalling that he issued a circular last November to “strengthen our government’s use of financial tools , diplomatic and legal to combat conflict-related sexual violence”.
“The sanctions issued today build on this circular and identify two South Sudanese political and military targets who oversaw the rape and murder of civilians during the civil war, and two terrorists from the IS group responsible for the brutal rape and of the torture of Yazidi women and girls,” said the American president.
This action is part of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, organized every June 19 since 2015 by the United Nations.
In detail, the Treasury imposed economic sanctions against two South Sudanese officials who “abused their positions of political and military authority to commit acts of sexual violence against citizens of South Sudan” , the ministry said in a statement.
The two people targeted by these sanctions are James Nando, a military official from South Sudan, and Alfred Futuyo, a political official from that country.
“Abduction and Enslavement”
“The United States rejects all forms of sexual violence – of which women and children are the primary victims – in armed conflict,” Assistant Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in the statement.
The youngest country on the planet, South Sudan has been plagued by chronic instability and politico-ethnic violence since its independence from Sudan in 2011. The country fell into a civil war that killed nearly 400,000 dead and millions displaced between 2013 and 2018.
A peace agreement was certainly signed in 2018, but tensions remain and violent local armies continue to bloody this country, where the majority of people live below the poverty line.
The two South Sudanese officials are also targeted by State Department sanctions, along with two ISIS leaders, Arkan Ahmad’Abbas al-Matuti, nicknamed Abu Sarhan, and Nawaf Ahmad Alwan al-Rashidi, nicknamed Abu Faris .
The latter are accused of “sexual violence against Yazidis and are responsible for the abduction and enslavement of Yazidi women and girls. More than 2,700 women and children, mostly Yazidis, are still missing,” the State Department said in its statement.
Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority present mainly in northern Iraq and Syria, had fled Iraq en masse after being persecuted by IS when jihadists invaded large swathes of northern Iraq in 2014. country.