ISIS Enslaving Yazidi Woman – Intro to International Relations

By: Brendan Coniker

News on ISIS continues to grow as countless Yazidi woman are enslaved and raped in Iraq. These woman and young girls ages range from 7-25 years old. In August 2014, more than 3,000 woman and girls were taken captive when ISIS attacked Yazidi villages around northwestern Iraq’s Sinjar Mountains. The woman and children were held in a school where guards would come at night and take away woman and rape them. They were also being sold for money, weapons, or even as little as 10 cigarettes. The woman who end up in ISIS stronghold in Syria, tend to be trade or sold three or four times as fighters move to different locations and leave the woman behind. To make matters worse, ISIS fighters would send pictures of the beaten up woman and girls to their families to taunt them or demand ransom. They would ask up to $30,000 for their freedom. I rare cases, the government of semi-autonomous Kurdistan will pay for the release of woman or girls. However, most of the captive woman are reliant on a small network of underground activists, or sympathetic guards or even other wives to smuggle them with.

Today, around 2,000 woman and girls are still being bought and sold in ISIS-controlled areas. The young become sex slaves and older woman are beaten and used as house slaves. Fortunately, more than 1,000 Yazidi woman and girls have escaped ISIS control, but are struggling to recover once they get back. A lot of them suffer from psychological trauma and many have physical injuries. The regional government offers basic medical check-ups and psychological support for their escapes, however there are challenges to convince woman to attend the treatment in the first place. In conservative Yazidi culture, rape victims often are stigmatized and shunned by their families and communities, which is why the woman don’t want to tell their families because they feel ashamed.

ISIS is continuing to spread evil in any way they can, but in the darkness of evil there will always be light. After a tragedy like these woman gone through, love always flourishes. Countless woman including 16 year old Reem escaped ISIS in 2014 and is now happily married to her 22 year old husband enjoying their new life together.

Becca Berg says:

December 1, 2015 at 12:49 am

This is disgusting, but unfortunately, it is emblematic of a larger problem. Critical feminists might see ISIS’s actions here as proof that exogenous threats lead to the disenfranchisement of marginalized groups. I don’t disagree, but I’d like to point out that violence against women is an international crisis even without ISIS’s help.

Sex slave trade in the 21st century is bigger than the transatlantic slave trade of the 19th century. In India, a man can legally rape his 15-year-old wife. (Sound crazy? Marital rape wasn’t punishable in England until 1991). Over 100 million women have undergone female genital mutilation. One third of women worldwide face beatings in the home. And globally, women aged 15-44 are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

ISIS’s violence against women is despicable, but it’s not isolated. Trafficking even occurs in America. 21,434 cases of human trafficking have been reported in the US over the past 8 years, and many others have gone unreported. In fact, VA was the last American state to pass a trafficking law, doing so only this April. The truth is that plenty of non-terrorists engage in this behavior, although maybe not on ISIS’s scale.

Thanks for bringing this up!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape-india/
http://www.unfpa.org/female-genital-mutilation
http://www.ungift.org/doc/knowledgehub/resource-centre/2013/GlobalSlaveryIndex_2013_Download_WEB1.pdf
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?151+sum+SB1188
http://www.traffickingresourcecenter.org/

Victoria Noles says:

December 1, 2015 at 11:46 am

Great comment Becca. ISIS’s trafficking of women sadly is a microcosm of the larger problem of slavery that exists everywhere in our world today. There is a campaign called “Dressember” that I am taking part of this month, in which women around the globe where dresses every day of December to stand for the dignity and ethical treatment of all women. It raises awareness about human trafficking and men’s violence toward women, as well as raising money for the International Justice Mission. You should check it out! http://www.dressember.org