U.N. adds Israeli and Russian forces to sexual violence list

The United Nations on Friday added Israeli and Russian security forces for the first time to an annual report documenting sexual violence in conflicts, including allegations of rape and sexual abuse against Palestinian detainees and Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The report lists dozens of countries and nonstate groups “credibly suspected” of patterns of rape and sexual violence. The list includes Hamas, which led the October 2023 attack against Israel that started the war in the Gaza Strip; the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary troops accused of atrocities in Sudan; and rebel groups in Congo, where fighting has displaced thousands.

The list was released a day after Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations called his country’s inclusion on it “disconnected from the facts and reality.” The ambassador, Danny Danon, said Thursday that Israel would cut ties with the U.N. secretary-general over the report.

The Russian mission to the United Nations did not immediately comment. Russian officials have repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses and dismissed evidence collected by international investigators since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The U.N. investigators documented nearly 10,000 cases of conflict-related sexual violence around the world in 2025, more than double the number they verified the year before.

That figure “represents the very tip of the iceberg,” a U.N. special representative, Pramila Patten, told reporters Friday. She attributed the increase to the large number of global conflicts “and the fact that perpetrators are feeling emboldened by a context of impunity where this crime is almost cost free.”

U.N. investigators, the report said, verified “multiple incidents of conflict-related sexual violence, including as a form of torture, inflicted against 14 men, seven women, nine boys and one girl from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”

Thirteen cases took place in 2025, the report said, and 18 others in the two preceding years.

“Rape and gang rape, in some cases repeated, were perpetrated against nine victims, the majority from Gaza,” the report said, adding that the cases took place primarily during detention and interrogation.

“Violations consisted of rape, including with objects, gang rape, attempted rape, physical violence to the genitals, instances of targeted shooting of the genitals, touching of breasts and genitals, strip and cavity searches conducted without apparent security justification, forced nudity and threats of rape,” the report said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday said it had “comprehensively, thoroughly and unequivocally refuted these allegations.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.