WUNRN
Zainab Hawa Bangura,
UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict
http://www.un.org/sg/management/senstaff_details.asp?smgID=174
Isis
Slave Markets Sell Girls for “As Little as a Pack of Cigarettes,” UN Envoy Says
UN envoy on sexual
violence says abducting girls has become a key part of Isis strategy to recruit
foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria over the past 18 months.
An image from a YouTube video showing Islamist fighters, who claim to be British, appearing in a recruitment video for Isis. Photograph: YouTube/PA
Agence
France-Presse – 9 June 2015
Teenage girls
abducted by Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria are
being sold in slave markets “for as little as a pack of cigarettes”, the UN
envoy on sexual violence said on Monday.
Zainab Bangura
visited Iraq and Syria in April, and has since been working on an
action plan to address the horrific sexual violence being waged by Isis
fighters.
“This is a war
that is being fought on the bodies of women,” Bangura said.
The UN envoy spoke
to women and girls who had escaped from captivity in Isis-controlled areas, met
with local religious and political leaders and visited refugees in Turkey,
Lebanon and Jordan.
Jihadists
continued to run slave markets for girls abducted during fresh offensives, but
there were no figures on the numbers enslaved by the fighters, she said.
“They kidnap and
abduct women when they take areas so they have – I don’t want to call it a
fresh supply – but they have new girls,” she said.
Girls are sold for
“as little as a pack of cigarettes” or for several hundred or thousand dollars,
she said.
Bangura described
the ordeal of several teenage girls, many of whom were part of the Yazidi
minority targeted by the jihadists.
“Some were taken,
locked up in a room – over 100 of them in a small house – stripped naked and
washed.”
They were then
made to stand in front of a group of men who decided “what you are worth”.
Bangura gave the
account of a 15-year-old girl who was sold to an Isis leader, a sheikh aged in
his 50s, who showed her a gun and a stick and asked her “tell me what you
want”.
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“She said ‘the
gun’ and he replied: ‘I didn’t buy you so that you could kill yourself’,”
before raping her, Bangura said.
Abducting girls
has become a key part of the Isis strategy to recruit foreign fighters who have
been travelling to Iraq and Syria in record numbers over the last 18
months.
“This is how they
attract young men: we have women waiting for you, virgins that you can marry,”
Bangura said. “The foreign fighters are the backbone of the fighting.”
A recent UN report
said close to 25,000 foreign fighters from more than 100 countries were
involved in conflicts worldwide, with the largest influx by far into Syria and
Iraq.
The envoy likened
the jihadists’ abuse of women and girls to “medieval” practices and said Isis
wants “to build a society that reflects the 13th century”.
Despite the
monstrous violence, communities like the Yazidis are welcoming the girls back
and offering them support to pick up the pieces of their broken lives, said
Bangura.
She praised Yazidi
religious leader Baba Sheikh for publicly declaring that the girls need
understanding, but noted that no such pronouncements had come from the Turkmen
leaders.
Bangura returned
from a tour of European capitals to discuss the plight of women and girls under
Isis and hopes to address the UN security council soon to discuss what can be
done.
A UN technical
team is due to travel to the region to work out details of the plan to help
victims of Isis sexual violence.