The United Nations Human Rights Chief urged South Sudan’s leaders to investigate the latest evidence of widespread rape in the Upper Nile region.
Michelle Bachelet in a statement on Friday called on the government to try perpetrators and tackle the persistent impunity.
Rupert Colville, Bachelet’s spokesman, told journalists in Geneva that the attacks appeared to be organized, the investigators said in their report.
He said the investigators observed that ‘the ruthlessness of the attackers appears to be a consistent feature of the sexual violence documented.’
The spokesperson explained that one survivor cited in the report said she and others were raped repeatedly on three different occasions.
A military court last year sentenced ten soldiers to prison for raping five foreign aid workers at Terrain Hotel in Juba in 2016, but that case is seen as unusual, he noted.
‘The number of people tried and convicted for sexual violence in South Sudan is extremely small,’ Colville said.