Tonight, two days after the horrific attack, Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, Academic Director of the Rackman Center at Bar Ilan University and former Vice-President of CEDAW, and Prof. Francis Raday of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is also a former member of CEDAW, sent this email to the CEDAW Committee and to the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls.
The Dinah 7/10 Project was founded by a team of experts, consisting of senior female lawyers and experts from a wide variety of disciplines (including international law, criminal law, military law, crime victims, and feminism and gender), which was formed on an ad hoc basis, in light of the events since October 7th, and after identifying the need for assistance, advice and the treatment of various challenges arising from the situation.
The visit of the UN Under-Secretary-General was made possible by the initiative of Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari from the Dinah Project. Members of the project accompanied the visit and also met with the UN Under-Secretary-General and her team.
Pramila Patten stands in contrast to other UN officials, not least UN Women, who demonstrated a double standard in their attitudes towards Israel and Gaza. Patten was the first to issue a statement expressing deep concern over the reports of sexual abuse occurring in Hamas captivity, and unlike the UN Women statement given a week prior, she not only unequivocally condemned the Hamas attack but also expressed deep concern over the horrific reports of sexual violence and the atrocities committed by Hamas. In accepting the invitation to pay an official visit to Israel, she stated that such a visit would allow her to meet survivors of these events, as well as survivors of captivity, to hear from them first-hand, and to amplify their voices. In doing so, Patten expressed her trust in the reports coming from Israel, an attitude that was clearly reflected in the report she published.
We note that Pramila Patten should not be confused with the special rapporteurs Albenese (the Rapporteur for the Affairs of Palestine and the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem) and Al-Salam (the Rapporteur for the Issue of Violence Against Women and Girls), who have consistently published unilateral statements expressing sympathy solely for the suffering of women in Gaza, and who completely ignored the Hamas attack on October 7th, along with the atrocities and sexual crimes committed as part of it.
