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Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights      United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq – Human Rights Office

 

Iraq – Report on Serious Concerns for Protection of Civilians in Iraq Armed Conflict – Women & Children

 

There are serious concerns for the protection and welfare of members of groups at-risk, in particular those displaced or living in areas under ISIL control or areas affected by violence. Of main concern are women, female-headed households, children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and members of diverse ethnic, cultural or religious groups.

 

Direct Link to Full 54-Page 2015 Report: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/UNAMI_OHCHR_4th_POCReport-11Dec2014-30April2015.pdf

 

Attacks on Women & Children

 

Gender-Based Violence Including Sexual Violence

 

ISIL continues to subject women and children to sexual violence. Following a visit to Iraq by Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, from 26 to 29 April 2015, which included discussions with women and girls who had escaped ISIL captivity, the Special Representative concluded that sexual violence is being used by ISIL as a deliberate tactic of war to advance key strategic priorities, such as recruitment, fundraising through the sale ofwomen and girls in slave markets, the payment of ransoms by their families, and the transfer of women among and between groups); to enforce discipline and order through the punishment of dissenters or family members; and to advance their radical ideology. UNAMI/OHCHR continued to receive reports that civilians in ISIL captivity were subjected to harrowing acts of sexual and physical violence.

 

As noted above, and as numerous witnesses have affirmed, after capture by ISIL men and women are usually separated. Women, including girls, who refuse to convert are frequently raped and are subjected to sexual slavery. One elderly Yezidi woman reported to UNAMI/OHCHR that after ISIL attacked her village in early August 2014, ISIL took their valuables including gold and money, and separated the men from the women. Men and boys were loaded into cars after which she heard shooting; she believes that her son and all of her male relatives were killed. Women and girls were raped, and some were later allotted to ISIL fighters or sold. An eighteen-year-old woman reported that she was captured by ISIL in August 2014 in the Sinjar district, Ninewa, along with 11 other family members. The men and women were separated, and about one hundred women were thereafter taken to Mosul. Once there, married women were separated from unmarried women. The victim pretended to have a mental illness in order to remain with her mother; three of her sisters were taken to Syria and sold. Another woman reported that, after her capture by ISIL, she was taken directly to Syria and kept in a big building with other women. Yezidi women were forced to clean the building. Four other survivors reported being taken to Syria after being sold to ISIL fighters.

 

Several women reported that, while in captivity, young women and girls were taken and raped on a daily basis by ISIL fighters. An elderly woman reported that the young women would come back after some hours or days in a ‘miserable condition’. A young woman recounted that, after her capture by ISIL in Sinjar in August 2014, she was taken to Tal Afar with about a hundred girls and young women. After several days, she and a thirteen-year-old girl were sold to ISIL fighters. The fighter who bought her raped her and if she tried to resist, he would beat her with his shoes. She reported to UNAMI/OHCHR: “I used to hear a lot of cries and screaming from the other girl in the house, as God knows what the man was doing to her. She was too young to understand and probably was very scared.”

 

Those girls who refused to convert or who did so but refused to be married to ISIL fighters were threatened and subjected to physical violence. Some were reportedly killed. For instance, on 23 February, following a decision by an ISIL self-appointed court, ISIL abducted 13 Sunni Arab women from various areas of Mosul, Ninewa, for refusing to marry ISIL fighters. On 13 March, ISIL killed nine widows in Qara Quean village, Ninewa, after they refused to marry ISIL fighters. The women were reportedly members of the Turkmen Shi’a community whose husbands had been killed by ISIL.

 

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http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=51396#.VaQhKvmqqko

 

Widespread Human Rights Violations Being Committed by All Parties in Iraq – UN Report

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Children in the Khanke Camp near Dohuk city, Iraq, which mainly houses Yazidis fleeing from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Photo: UNAMI

13 July 2015 – The ongoing conflict in Iraq continues to exact a “terrible” and deadly toll on the country’s civilians, particularly in the areas still under control by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), according to a new report released today by the United Nations.

The report – a joint effort compiled by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) – notes that the situation facing civilians in ISIL-controlled territory remains dire with many of those perceived to be opposed to the extremist group’s ideology being murdered, often in “grim public spectacles.”

Members of ethnic and religious communities, for instance, continue to be persecuted with as many as 3,500 members of the Yezidi community remaining under ISIL captivity enduring physical and sexual violence.

Others, meanwhile, are apparently being persecuted based on their perceived sexual orientation. On 8 March, the report says, ISIL beheaded two individuals accused of homosexuality and a third for blasphemy in the Bab al-Toob area of Mosul.

At the same time, the report cites examples of the continuing forced recruitment of children by ISIL forces across several Iraqi governorates, including Anbar and Ninewa.

“UNAMI continues to have grave concerns for the thousands of civilians subjected to human rights violations on a daily basis, particularly by ISIL,” UNAMI chief and the Special Representative for Iraq, Ján Kubiš, explained in a press release.

“Parties to the conflict are required by international human rights law and international humanitarian law to prevent such violations and abuses from taking place and to ensure that civilians are spared to the fullest extent possible from the ongoing violence.”

In another instance highlighted by the UN document and drawing on detailed interviews with 12 survivors, 1,700 Iraqi cadets were slaughtered by ISIL fighters in early June 2014 at a military base known as Camp Speicher.

According to the report, a significant number of the young Iraqi troops were taken to a location near the [Tikrit] Palace in a valley near the river and systematically shot as they lay in trenches that had been dug by bulldozers. Others were taken to a location near the river and were shot there, and their bodies subsequently thrown into the river. The report also cites one interviewee who claimed to have seen “a pile of decapitated bodies in a bathroom” in the former presidential palace in Tikrit, and others who said they were kept in “holes.”

“The magnitude and brutality of the Camp Speicher massacre was exceptional,” stated UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein in the press release. “It is important to recognize the plight of the survivors and the families of victims and their courage in refusing to let the issue of what happened be set aside.”

Although the report widely focuses on the crimes perpetrated by ISIL extremists, it also documents violations committed by the Iraqi Security Forces and affiliated forces, including indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling as well as actions of reprisal against civilians.

The High Commissioner has ensured that the terrorist acts and human rights violations committed by ISIL militants will not go unpunished and has also urged the Iraqi Government to join the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and ensure that international crimes defined in that Statute are criminalized under domestic law.

The UN report comes at a time of high stress for Iraq’s civilian population as it endures not only the daily threat of conflict but also a growing humanitarian crisis. In its latest situation report, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), in fact, has confirmed that an estimated 8.1 million people in the Gulf country remain in need of humanitarian aid, 3.1 million are displaced, and 4.4 million require critical food assistance.

The uptick in UN relief work in Iraq is being further hindered by a funding shortfall which, the UN agency has warned, risks causing cutbacks to food assistance unless $123.6 million are received over the next 6 months.