UN report: 2014 saw extremists use of rape, sexual slavery

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said 2014 was marked by harrowing accounts of rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage being used by extremists including the Islamic State group and Boko Haram.
In a report released yesterday, the UN chief expressed "grave concern" over sexual violence perpetrated by armed groups, including those promoting extremist ideologies in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Libya and Yemen.
"The confluence of crises wrought by violent extremism has revealed a shocking trend of sexual violence employed as a tactic of terror by radical groups," Ban said.
The secretary-general said efforts "to degrade or destroy" the Islamic State group, Boko Haram, al-Shabab, Ansar Dine and al-Qaida affiliates "are an essential part of the fight against conflict-related sexual violence."

The report focuses on 19 countries engulfed in conflict or trying to recover from fighting where sexual violence including rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and forced pregnancy occurs, mainly against women and girls but also against boys and men.
It lists 45 groups in Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Congo, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria as well as Boko Haram in Nigeria that are "credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape" in conflict 13 of them for the first time.

The report said "one of the most alarming episodes of 2014" was the April 14 abduction of 276 secondary students by Boko Haram from a school in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok.

Issued a day before the first anniversary of the girls' abduction, the report said Boko Haram often forces women and girls it seizes into marriages that entail repeated rapes.
"Forced marriage, enslavement and the 'sale' of kidnapped women and girls are central to Boko Haram's modus operandi and ideology," it said. "Abducted girls who refuse marriage or sexual contact within marriage have faced violence and death threats."
Since mid-2014, the report said, "there has been a significant increase in the number of reported cases of sexual violence perpetrated by terrorist groups," especially the Islamic State group which "uses sexual violence to spread terror, persecute ethnic and religious minorities and suppress communities that oppose its ideology."

The report singled out that group's abduction of hundreds of Yazidi women and girls in Iraq, some of whom were taken into Syria and "sold" in markets to be used as sex slaves. It said "three cases of forced abortion perpetrated because of the ethnicity of the victim were documented by the government" of Iraq.