A new report by the United Nations has revealed that rape and sexual attacks have turned into a tactic of war in the hands of Takfiri terror groups such as ISIL and Boko Haram.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in the world body’s annual report released on Monday that the year 2014 saw “harrowing accounts of rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage being used by extremist groups, including as a tactic of terror.”
According to the review, sexual assaults in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria do not occur incidentally, but are “integrally linked to strategic objectives, ideology and funding of extremist groups.”
The UN report listed ISIL and Boko Haram Takfiri terrorists along with 11 other groups as the parties that resort to sexual violence.
Boko Haram, which controls part of the northeastern Nigeria, recently declared allegiance to the ISIL Takfiri group, which is perpetrating heinous crimes against humanity in areas under its control in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
The study comes ahead of the anniversary of the abduction of 276 girls from their secondary school in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok by Boko Haram militants in 2014. Reports say 57 of the girls managed to escape, but 219 are still missing.
The UN report denounced the kidnapping as “one of the most alarming episodes of 2014,” adding, “forced marriage, enslavement and the ‘sale’ of kidnapped women and girls are central to Boko Haram’s modus operandi and ideology.”
It further noted that the ISIL terrorists purportedly held captive and forced into sexual slavery young women, particularly those from the Izadi minority group, after capturing Iraq’s northern city of Mosul last June.
Over the past several months, some 1,500 civilians may have been forced to become sex slaves in Iraq, the report said, while pointing to a “significant increase” in the number of cases of sexual violence in Syria where abductees from Iraq are being sold in markets in areas under the control of ISIL.
The UN covered 19 nations in the report and listed 45 groups engaged in sexual violence.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of Nigeria since the beginning of its operations in 2009. The insurgency has left over 13,000 people dead and 1.5 million displaced.
