Jihadists' slave markets sell girls at any price: UN envoy
June 09, 2015 03:50
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 has said.
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 yesterday.
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.
"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.
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