A/HRC/34/63 the cases committed by police or soldiers – and that a staggering 75 per cent had been forced to watch someone else being sexually violated. In July 2016, in Juba, UNMISS documented 217 cases of rape, including gang rape, committed at government checkpoints erected across the city and during house-to-house searches by SPLA soldiers.6 On 16 January 2017, UNMISS and OHCHR published a report on the violations perpetrated during the fighting in Juba, in which they noted that sexual violence had been mainly perpetrated by SPLA, SPLM/A in Opposition and armed groups aligned to them, members of the National Security Services and the police.7 36. Women described to the Commission how they were attacked and in many cases raped when they went outside the UNMISS protection-of-civilians site in Juba. One survivor recounted to the Commission how she had witnessed the rape of a woman, who begged the perpetrators to kill her instead. After raping the woman, soldiers cut her genitalia and left her for dead as punishment for “being stubborn”. The same survivor told the Commission she had suffered anal rape in July 2016 that left her incontinent. When the Commission met her in December 2016, she still had not had access to medical attention. 37. SPLA soldiers and militia also raped foreign aid workers during the clashes in Juba in July 2016. One victim told the Commission how, on 11 July 2016, she and other women had been dragged from their hiding places in the Terrain Hotel, separated and taken to different rooms by SPLA soldiers and gang-raped. No-one responded to their calls for assistance; they were eventually rescued the following day. 38. Women continue to face enormous risk of sexual violence, including gang rape. The Commission heard testimony of rape and gang rape in the Greater Upper Nile and Equatoria regions, including how rape had become linked to robbery, looting and killing, and the destruction of property. One woman described how she and five others had been seized, dragged to the bushes, violently beaten and gang-raped by seven SPLA soldiers, who tied them to a tree during the ordeal. One of the women was five months pregnant at the time, and consequently miscarried three weeks later. 39. Post-rape medical assistance is grossly inadequate. Several women the Commission met had not received essential medical assistance for the injuries that they had sustained as a result of rape, gang rape, beating, sexual assault or other violence; many had suffered significant damage to their reproductive organs. Many women do not report rape or sexual violence out of fear of stigmatization, although some did out of fear that they might have contracted sexually transmitted infections. A number of rape victims had been accused of dishonouring their families, and therefore abandoned by their husbands and outcast by their communities once the rape became known. In some instances, their communities have forced them to leave their huts and live alone on the outskirts of the village because of the stigma associated with rape. Survivors of sexual violence also complained that they had received no psychosocial support or access to justice in the country. 40. Despite the commitment made on 12 October 2014 by the Government of South Sudan, in a joint communiqué with the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, to address conflict-related sexual violence no action has been taken. The Commission was informed that a focal point on sexual violence had been established within the Presidency, but no other steps appeared to have been taken to address this issue. 6 7 OHCHR and UNMISS, “Violations and abuses of international human rights law and violations of international humanitarian rights law in the context of the fighting in Juba, South Sudan, in July 2016”, January 2017. Ibid. 9