UN Envoy Pramila Patten in Israel to ‘Learn’ About Hamas’ Sex Crimes

Pramila Patten (center) meets with President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog (credit – President’s Spokesperson)

The UN is finally doing something about the rapes committed by Hamas as part of the October 7 massacre the terrorist organization enacted on innocent Israeli civilians. It has dispatched Under-Secretary Pramila Patten, who serves as the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, to Israel to “investigate” what happened.

What happened was numerous women – and men – were raped on October 7. Even the bodies of the dead were defiled. And more information is coming out every day about the mistreatment of the hundreds of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. And the world has largely ignored this aspect of the Hamas attack. However, the UN says it is now doing something about it.

On Monday, Israel’s First Lady, Michal Herzog, today met at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem with Pramila Patten, who was visiting Israel with a team of senior UN legal and medical experts on a fact-finding mission investigating the wide-spread and systematic sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7.

Ahead of the meeting, the First Lady and President Isaac Herzog held a private meeting with Under-Secretary Patten.

President Herzog said, “The scenes we saw on 7th October continue to reverberate. They must be told and must be investigated, and most of all, the victims must be cared for.” And First Lady Herzog said, “As a woman to a woman, I want to thank you very much for coming to Israel with an open heart and open mind to listen and to see, and to help the survivors.”

Israeli citizen kidnaped by Hamas

“Sexual violence is one of the most heinous crimes with devastating consequences that echo across generations,” said Pramila Patten. “Sexual Violence used as a tactic of terrorism, as a tactic of war, is intended to destabilize, to instil fear, to humiliate, to dehumanize not only the victims, but also the families, the societies, the nation, or the perceived enemy. And it is the silence of survivors, who out of shame and stigma do not report, that makes sexual violence so potent and cheap and effective: Cheap because perpetrators are under the belief that victims will not report and they will walk free in total impunity, and effective because they do shatter lives and livelihoods of the victims, their families, and societies.”

“I just want to say that survivors and victims, we owe you more than solidarity. We really want to ensure that you have justice so that we put an end to this to this heinous act,” she added.

But as the saying goes, “Words are cheap.”

Now let’s see what, if anything, will be done.

Pramila Patten is a practicing barrister-at-law, having served since 2003 as a member of the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Since 2014, she has been a member of the High-Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on Implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) on women, peace and security, and since 2010, a member of the Advisory Panel for the African Women’s Rights Observatory within the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Between 2012 and 2014, Pramila Patten was a member of the Advisory Committee of the Due Diligence Framework Project, having previously served as an adviser in her country’s Ministry of Women’s Rights, Child Development and Family Welfare from 2000 to 2004; a member of International Women’s Rights Action Watch from 1993 to 2002; and a Commissioner appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General to the International Commission of Inquiry into the Massacre in Guinea Conakry, in 2009. She was a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Mauritius between 1987 and 1992, serving also as a District Court Magistrate from 1987 to 1988.