Zainab Bangura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict interviewed dozens of sex slaves on her visits to various refugee camps in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The women had escaped after surviving horrific sexual assaults at the hands of IS fighters.
Bangura said that most of these girls were routinely stripped naked, paraded and traded at so-called slave bazaars in IS controlled cities in Iraq and Syria.
The girls and children were treated like cattle.They are categorized and shipped naked off to Dohuk or Mosul or other locations to be distributed among ISIS leadership and fighters.
One of the captive woman was forced to marry 20 fighters and even made to undergo hymen restoration surgery each time to restore her virginity. IS doctors were also performing illegal abortions on the young girls, some as young as 9, who were raped.
She fears that the children of raped women could become “a generation of stateless children, giving rise to future extremism.
Most of the victims belong to the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq. Around 40,000 of them were reportedly kidnapped by IS militants in August 2014.
The magnitude of the crisis is so large that Baba Sheikh, a prominent Yazidi cleric in Iraq had to issue an unprecedented statement to the community. It declared the women were victims who had suffered through no fault of their own and should be supported, not punished by the community where premarital sexual intercourse is usually frowned upon.
