Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

We welcome the reports of the Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence (S/2016/361and S/2016/361/Rev.1) and on the implementation of measures to counter trafficking in persons (S/2016/949). We especially note the nexus between conf lict- and post-conf lict-related sexual violence and human trafficking. In that context, trafficking takes many despicable forms, from sexual slavery to labour exploitation or organ removal.

Indeed, the terrorist organization Da’esh abducted over 6,500 Yazidi women and children. For two years, four months and eighteen days, our women and girls have been sold in slave markets and have been subjected to sexual slavery and the slave trade in the worst phenomenon of modern history, because Da’esh has taken us back to the age of slavery and the slave trade, where a twelve-year- old girl is sold for a pack of cigarettes.

When I was here in December 2015, I testified about crimes of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham (ISIS) committed against me and the Yazidi community. I told the Council about how ISIS attacked my village of Kocho, how they rounded up all the men and killed more than 700 of them in a single day, including six of my brothers. I told the Council that my mother was killed along with other older women.

Trafficking is a global problem, but the most vulnerable people are those caught in conflict: women, children, internally displaced persons and refugees. War provides oxygen to terrorist groups. It gives them space to flourish. the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and others are using trafficking and sexual violence as weapons of terror and an important source of revenue.

The use of victims of trafficking in combat, sexual exploitation and forced labour has very much become a hallmark of armed conflict and humanitarian crises. The link between sexual violence and trafficking is plain to see. We have watched with horror how armed groups use sexual violence, the commercialization and the enslavement of girls and women as a tool of terrorism and a source of financing.

It must be underscored that human trafficking has recently become more acute along migration routes, where vulnerable communities and individuals continue to be subjected to sexual violence, degrading treatment, organ harvesting, murder and kidnapping for ransom.

The conflicts in the Central African Republic, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and, more recently, South Sudan continue to expose the most vulnerable sections of our population to the criminal networks that traffic in them for mainly cheap labour, sexual exploitation and, in other cases, slavery.

We have seen it in horrific cases involving the trafficking and sexual abuse of women by the so-called Islamic State and Boko Haram.

Every year, millions of men, women and children are victims of human trafficking for exploitation, which includes prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor and services, slavery and similar practices, involuntary servitude, and removal of organs and other forms of exploitation.

We believe that it is critical and mandatory to train all peacekeeping and other personnel deployed in conflict and post-conflict zones to respond effectively to trafficking in persons, with training in gender sensitivity and prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, especially those perpetuated by peacekeepers.