IS has institutionalized sexual violence: UN special representative

The Islamic State (IS) has institutionalized sexual violence against women by kidnapping and selling women and girls to raise funds, UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict said here Wednesday.

"So they've created the structure, the policies, the institutions to make sexual violence part of their ideals and they are using sexual violence to recruit young men," Zainab Bangura said.

Bangura, who has recently interviewed victims and witnesses in Iraq and Syria, said she believed that sexual violence and forced marriage have become institutionalized in these countries, with no regard for international law.

She was particularly concerned about how minority groups, including the Yazidi ethnic minority, were being targeted, she said.

"They are sold four or five times before they are finally ransomed to their families," said Bangura. "I met a 21-year-old girl who has been sold into sexual slavery 21 times."

Bangura said she has seen the consequences of sexual violence in many countries -- including her home country of Sierra Leone where over 65,000 women were raped during the conflict -- but that the Middle East was the most challenging region she worked in.

"I've done a lot of work with the Democratic Republic of Congo, with Somalia, with the Central African Republic, with Cote d'Ivoire, with Colombia," said Bangura. "My biggest problem I'm dealing with now is the Middle East."

"Violence against women has traditionally been treated as a second class crime against second class citizens which has led to a culture of denial of what's happening ... silence and invisibility," she said.

"People have to realize, it's a tactic of war, it's deliberate, it's planned and therefore we need to recognize this and we need to raise the cost of it ... so that when you commit this crime you are going to pay for it," she said. Endit