UN expert reports systematic dehumanization of Palestinian women and children
Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur for violence against women and girls, says that over the past year, women in Gaza have gone through “the most bloody chapter” of inhumane Israeli mistreatment.
This includes “collective punishment, incarceration, sexual violence and deliberate extermination”, she told Al Jazeera.
“Women and children have been systematically dehumanised – where children are seen as not innocent and where women’s wombs are seen as something that has to be attacked and exterminated,” Alsalem said.
This is being carried out through large-scale violence, attacks on health infrastructure amounting to reproductive violence, “and forcing women to leave their babies behind” when Israeli troops forcefully evacuate hospitals, in addition to starving lactating mothers.
