Warning: This blog contains details some readers may find distressing.
‘They destroyed my life; they sold and bought me like a sheep.’
Kofan was 14 years old when Islamic State (IS) terrorists abducted her from her village in Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014.
Over the subsequent decade she was sold as a sex slave multiple times, and at one point she was ‘owned’, along with six other women, by an elderly man called Abou Jaafar. The group of women were all brutally beaten and repeatedly raped while in captivity.
Last month Kofan was rescued from the Al-Hawl Camp in northeast Syria, where thousands of former IS fighters and their families are held. She has a son and daughter, and had been forced to adopt a pseudonym to conceal her background as a Yazidi for fear of retaliation from other women in the camp.
There are thousands like her.
IS killed an estimated 5,000 Yazidi civilians for refusing to convert to Islam after it captured Mosul and the Nineveh Plains in 2014. Between 400,000 and 500,000 Yazidis were displaced, and 6,000 to 7,000, predominantly women and children1 like Kofan, were enslaved, with most sold or transferred to Syria.
Those belonging to other non-Sunni religious groups experienced similar horrors. Even after the 2017 liberation of their region it is estimated that over 2,800 abducted Yazidis remain unaccounted for.
Sadly, the use of abduction and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) as a means of inflicting trauma on religious, belief and ethnic communities during armed conflict is not unique to Iraq and Syria.
In Myanmar, there are credible reports that the military is responsible for widespread sexual and gender-based violence against civilian populations. The predominantly Muslim Rohingya community which was targeted in so-called ‘clearance operations’ in 2016 and 2017 has been particularly affected, with children under ten among the victims.
In a context of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands forcibly displaced by the violence it is impossible to estimate the number of women and girls who experienced conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), however an August 2023 report by the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) found that ‘such crimes were so pervasive in the context of the clearance operations that most witnesses interviewed to date have relevant evidence in this regard.’
This is the same military that seized power in the country in February 2021. No military or civilian official has been investigated, let alone prosecuted, for these violations; however, the IIMM states there is strong evidence that the military and its associated militias have increasingly committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in the three years since the coup took place.
Women and girls are similarly vulnerable in Sudan, where the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have been in conflict since April 2023. Both forces are responsible for egregious violations against Sudanese citizens, although it is the RSF that has been accused most frequently of committing SGBV. In February 2024, the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report that noted the RSF were named as perpetrators in 83% of cases of sexual violence reported to the agency between 15 April to 15 December 2023.
In November last year a group of UN experts raised concerns that such crimes were being used ‘as a tool of war to subjugate, terrorise, break and punish women and girls, and as a means of punishing specific communities targeted by the RSF and allied militias,’ adding that the scale and seriousness of violence committed against women and girls are also grossly underreported, as many survivors cannot come forward out of fear of reprisals and stigma.
Arriving at an estimate of the number of those affected is further complicated by the fact that the number of women and girls who have been subjected to enforced disappearance is also increasing, whilst some of those who have managed to return have serious injuries and horrifying stories of rape in RSF detention centres. There are also concerning reports of RSF soldiers forcibly marrying women in areas under their control and subjecting them to sexual slavery.
The resurgence of extreme and large-scale sexual violence in Sudan occurs in the immediate aftermath of events in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, where it was weaponised extensively and brutally against Tigrayan women and girls by Eritrean soldiers, government forces and Amhara militia, with assailants regularly boasting of ‘cleansing’ the bloodline of their victims.
Similar horrors continue elsewhere on the continent, including in central Nigeria, where an illegal armed faction primarily comprising men of Fulani ethnicity is responsible for violent attacks and kidnappings for ransom on an almost daily basis. Untold numbers of women and girls have suffered sexual violence. Few speak openly due to residual stigma and deep, but unwarranted, feelings of shame.
Sexual and gender-based violence continues to devastate the lives of women and girls in conflict arenas across the world. Although the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines it as a crime against humanity, perpetrators are rarely brought to justice, and are therefore emboldened by the seeming impunity.
This impunity must end.
The warring parties in Sudan must agree to a comprehensive and immediate ceasefire, and to urgent assistance for all victims, particularly for survivors of SGBV.
The military in Myanmar must cease its brutalisation of civilians and enable unhindered humanitarian assistance, prioritising survivors of sexual violence.
Authorities in Iraq and Syria must do all in their power to locate and rescue the thousands of women and girls who remain unaccounted for.
Crucially, there must be accountability.
Aware of the need to enhance the ICC’s ability to investigate and prosecute SGBV, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) launched a Policy on Gender Persecution in 2022, followed by a new Policy on Gender-based Crimes in December 2023.
The international community must ensure that justice is served on behalf of every woman and girl who has been a victim of conflict-related sexual or gender-based violence. This crime against humanity must no longer go unpunished or remain underreported. It is essential that survivors are not only granted protection and the psychosocial support needed to safely come forward and seek redress, but that any stigma that prevents them from speaking up is eroded once and for all.
By CSW’s Heads of Advocacy Anna Lee Stangl and Dr Khataza Gondwe
Featured Image: An Ethiopian woman who says she was gang-raped by armed men is seen during an interview with Reuters in a hospital in the town of Adigrat, Tigray region, Ethiopia. REUTERS-Baz Ratner
- Yazidi boys were enslaved not as sex slaves but typically as child soldiers who were trained to fight and perform suicide attacks and executions. ↩︎
FoRB in Full 