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Zainab Bangura, UN
Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, speaks during an
interview with AFP at the UN headquarters in New York on June 8, 2015 ©Kena
Betancur (AFP) Abducting girls has become a key part of the IS strategy to
recruit foreign fighters who have been traveling to Iraq and Syria in record
numbers over the past 18 months.
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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 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 IS fighters.
"This is a war that
is being fought on the bodies of women," Bangura told AFP in an interview.
The UN envoy spoke to
women and girls who had escaped from captivity in IS-controlled areas, met with
local religious and political leaders and visited refugees in Turkey, Lebanon
and Jordan.
Jihadists continue to run
slave markets for girls abducted during fresh offensives, but there are no
figures on the numbers enslaved by the fighters.
AFP report continues:
"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 IS leader, a sheikh aged in his 50s,
who showed her a gun and a stick and asked her "tell me what you
want."
"She said 'the gun'
and he replied: 'I didn't buy you so that you could kill yourself'" before
raping her, Bangura said.
- Foreign fighters get
wives -
Abducting girls has
become a key part of the IS strategy to recruit foreign fighters who have been
traveling to Iraq and Syria in record numbers over the past 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 over 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
IS 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 IS and
hopes to address the Security Council soon to discuss what can be done.
A UN technical team is due
to travel to the region soon to work out details of the plan to help victims of
IS sexual violence.
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