U.N. report blacklists Israel, Russia over conflict sexual violence claims

The United Nations placed Israel and Russia on its annual sexual-violence blacklist, a designation that carries diplomatic and legal weight far beyond the political fight over the allegations themselves. The 35-page report, dated April 21, 2026 and covering January through December 2025, listed 77 government and non-government parties in a dozen countries and said verified conflict-related sexual violence rose sharply from 2024.

Israel was added because of abuses tied to its armed and security forces’ treatment of Palestinian detainees, while Russia was listed for sexual violence against prisoners of war and civilians detained during the war in Ukraine. The report said the U.N. documented patterns of sexual violence against Palestinians held in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, including verified incidents involving 14 men, seven women, nine boys and one girl from Gaza and the West Bank. Thirteen of those cases occurred in 2025, with 18 more recorded in 2023 and 2024.

For both countries, inclusion on the roster amounts to more than reputational damage. The U.N. has now formally put them on notice, after warning them in the prior year’s report that they could be listed. The concerns, the report said, centered mainly on violations recorded in detention settings, where access for independent scrutiny is often limited and the risk of abuse is highest. Israel cooperated with the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict but did not grant access for fully fledged independent investigations. Russia did not cooperate.

The Russian section was especially expansive, citing credible evidence of abuses in 50 official and 22 unofficial detention facilities in Ukraine and Russia. The U.N. human rights mission in Ukraine documented 209 conflict-related sexual violence cases in 2024, underscoring how detention sites have become a central theater of abuse in the war. The report’s inclusion of Russian armed and security forces for the first time places the Kremlin alongside governments already under sustained international scrutiny.

The broader context is as consequential as the blacklist itself. Security Council resolution 1888 from 2009 recognized sexual violence as a threat to international peace and security, and the report said chronic underfunding, restricted humanitarian access and attacks on front-line responders were worsening survivors’ access to care. It also followed earlier U.N. findings that some hostages taken to Gaza were subjected to conflict-related sexual violence during captivity, and that sexual violence occurred during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, including rape and gang rape. Those conclusions were corroborated by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

The political response was immediate. Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, called the allegations “unfounded” and “absurd.” Russia’s U.N. envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, dismissed them as “unsubstantiated lies.” But once a country lands on the U.N.’s list, the burden shifts: the stigma deepens, the evidence trail hardens and the prospect of future accountability moves closer.