On 16 December, the UN Security Council held a thematic debate on trafficking in persons in conflict situations by terrorist and armed groups such as ISIL, Boko Haram, and the Lord’s Resistance Army. H. E. Ambassador Katalin Bogyay, Permanent Representative of Hungary to the UN participated in the meeting and met Nadia Murad Basee, an Iraqi woman of the Yazidi faith, who was held captive by ISIS and shared her story in the UN.
The first ever UN Security Council meeting on human trafficking was organized on the initiative of the US Presidency of the Council. In his briefing, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson highlighted that human trafficking is the slavery of the modern age. As of today, millions live in slavery or under slave like conditions and most of the victims are women and children. Thousands of Yazidi women were abducted by ISIS and kept as slaves which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Nadia Murad Basee, an Iraqi woman of the Yazidi faith shared her story of being trafficked by ISIS following the 2014 assault on her hometown in Iraq. She witnessed women and girls being sold into sexual slavery and young boys being forced to convert to Islam and to fight for ISIS forces.
Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), highlighted that there was a strong international legal framework dealing with the fight against human trafficking which needs to be implemented more effectively by Member States.
A presidential statement was adopted during the briefing. The statement condemns in the strongest terms reported instances of trafficking in persons in areas affected by armed conflict and deplores all acts of trafficking in persons undertaken by ISIS and other terrorist or armed groups, including Boko Haram. The statement also requests a report from the Secretary-General within a year on progress made in better implementing existing mechanisms for countering trafficking in persons.
H.E. Ambassador Katalin Bogyay, Permanent Representative of Hungary to the UN participated in the meeting and met Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad Basee at a dinner hosted by the Honorable Michele J. Sison, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations.
