U.N. details S. Sudan rights abuses

JUBA, South Sudan — The latest report on human-rights abuses in South Sudan’s five-year civil war, released on Friday by a United Nations commission, includes many horrific witness accounts, as the team collects evidence in the hopes of one day finding justice.

“I did not expect to be confronted with so much ritual humiliation and degradation deliberately done for multiple reasons. The suffering and cruelty was worse than anyone could have imagined,” said Andrew Clapham, a commission member and international law professor.

The new U.N. report is an account of gang rapes, castrations, ethnic violence and other abuses, based on 230 witness statements and other materials.

One South Sudanese woman told the commission that her 12-year-old son was forced to have sex with his grandmother to stay alive, the report says.

The findings, with “sufficient evidence” against both President Salva Kiir’s government forces and rebels, identify more than 40 senior military officials, including three state governors, “who may bear individual responsibility for war crimes.”

Tens of thousands have been killed in South Sudan since the conflict began in December 2013, just two years after independence from Sudan. More than 2 million people have fled the country, and millions who remain at home face hunger.