Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Poverty drives the unsuspecting poor into the
hands of traffickers Published reports & articles from 2000 to 2025 gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Iraq.htm
Iraq is both a
source and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for
the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude.
Iraqi women and girls, some as young as 11 years old, are trafficked within
the country and abroad to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, UAE, Turkey, Iran,
and possibly Yemen, for forced prostitution and sexual exploitation within
households in these countries. Some victims are sexually exploited in Iraq
before being sold to traffickers who take them abroad. In some cases, women
are lured into sexual exploitation through false promises of work. The more
prevalent means of becoming a victim is through sale or forced marriage.
Family members have trafficked girls and women to escape desperate economic
circumstances, to pay debts, or resolve disputes between families. Some women
and girls are trafficked within CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Iraq. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEB-PAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Human Trafficking are of
particular interest to you. Would you
like to write about Forced-Labor? Debt
Bondage? Prostitution? Forced Begging? Child Soldiers? Sale of Organs? etc. On the other
hand, you might choose to include precursors of trafficking such as poverty and hunger. There is a lot to
the subject of Trafficking. Scan other
countries as well. Draw comparisons
between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Focus
on Boys Trapped in Commercial Sex Trade UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, August 8, 2005 www.irinnews.org/report/25350/iraq-focus-on-boys-trapped-in-commercial-sex-trade [accessed 8 March
2015] A 16-year-old boy
has started a desperate new life since being forced into the sex trade in Rania Abouzeid, www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883696,00.html?xid=newsletter-weekly [accessed 13
February 2011] content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883696,00.html [accessed 29 April
2020] That underworld is
a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway, where impoverished mothers
sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach
the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price. The youngest victims, some
just 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, others for as little as
$2,000. "The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it's like the trade in
cattle," Hinda says. "I've seen mothers
haggle with agents over the price of their daughters." (See pictures of
Iraq since the fall of Saddam.) The trafficking
routes are both local and international, most often to Syria, Jordan and the
Gulf (primarily the United Arab Emirates). The victims are trafficked
illegally on forged passports, or "legally" through forced
marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions
if she's travelling with her "husband." The girls are then divorced
upon arrival and put to work. (See Iraq's return to "normalcy".) ***
ARCHIVES *** Human trafficking
has prospered in Iraq since end of Saddam era Middle East Monitor
MEMO, 5 August 2019 www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190805-human-trafficking-has-prospered-in-iraq-since-end-of-saddam-era/ [accessed 6 August
2019] A new report has
revealed that human trafficking in Iraq has prospered since the collapse of
the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, AlKhaleejonline.com reported on Sunday.
The report was prepared by the Iraqi Observatory for Victims of Human
Trafficking (IOVHT). According to the
independent IOVHT, at least 27 human trafficking networks have been
documented, in addition to six related kinds of violations in Baghdad and
other Iraqi governorates. The report found that most of the human trafficking
networks regard Iraqi Kurdistan as a safe haven for their crimes. It also
showed that the networks are using modern techniques to hunt their victims,
including social media, concentrating on prostitution, the harvesting of
human body parts and begging. They escaped ISIS.
Then they got sucked into Baghdad's sex trafficking underworld Arwa Damon, Ghazi Balkiz, Brice Laine & Aqeel
NajmBaghdad, CNN, 3 jULY
2019 www.cnn.com/2019/07/03/middleeast/iraq-sex-trafficking-isis-intl/index.html [accessed 8 July
2019] When they arrived
in a rundown Baghdad neighborhood, notorious for its drug gangs, the
unthinkable happened. The old man, who her friend had told her was a parliamentarian,
greeted them in a dilapidated building. "He said to me, 'You are mine now, you are mine now.'" He was the head of a
sex trafficking gang. Nadia was shocked.
The friend she had trusted all along -- with her money and with her fears --
had sold her into sexual slavery. "I started
fighting ... I started hitting them. They both beat me hard," she said.
She says they sedated her with an injection and everything went black. 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Iraq U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/iraq/
[accessed 10 June
2021] PROHIBITION OF
FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOR Employers subjected
foreign migrant workers–particularly construction workers, security guards,
cleaners, repair persons, and domestic workers–to forced labor; confiscation
of passports, cellphones, ATM cards, and other travel and identity documents;
restrictions on movement and communications; physical abuse, sexual
harassment, and rape; withholding of wages; and forced overtime. There were
cases of employers stopping payment on contracts and preventing foreign
employees from leaving the work site. Employers subjected
women to involuntary domestic service through forced marriages and the threat
of divorce, and women who fled such marriages or whose husbands divorced them
were vulnerable to social stigma and increased vulnerability to further
forced labor. Female IDPs, single women, and widows were particularly
vulnerable to economic exploitation and discriminatory employment conditions. PROHIBITION OF CHILD
LABOR AND MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT Data on child labor
was limited, particularly with regard to the worst forms of child labor,
which further limited enforcement of existing legal protections. Child labor,
including in its worst forms, occurred throughout the country. This included
forced begging and commercial sexual exploitation, sometimes as a result of
human trafficking, according to international NGOs The KRG Ministry of
Labor and Social Affairs estimated several hundred children worked in the
IKR, often as street vendors or beggars, making them particularly vulnerable
to abuse. The ministry operated a 24-hour hotline for reporting labor abuses,
including child labor, that received approximately
200 calls per month. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/iraq/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 29 April
2020] G4. DO INDIVIDUALS
ENJOY EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION? After the military
defeat of IS, many Yazidi women who had been forced into sex slavery remained
missing. Exploitation of children, including through forced begging and the
recruitment of child soldiers by some militias, is a chronic problem. Foreign
migrant workers frequently work long hours for low pay,
and they are vulnerable to forced labor. Human trafficking is also a problem,
and IDPs are particularly vulnerable. Thus far, the government’s efforts to
enforce trafficking laws have been inadequate. 2017 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor Office of Child
Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking, Bureau of International Labor
Affairs, US Dept of Labor, 2018 www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ilab/ChildLaborReport_Book.pdf [accessed 18 April
2019] www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/child_labor_reports/tda2017/ChildLaborReportBook.pdf [accessed 29 April
2020] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor [page 537] The UN reported
that Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) units recruited and used children in
militia activities and manning checkpoints or providing support at
checkpoints. (1; 2) A 2016 law had formalized the status of the Popular
Mobilization Committee (PMC), an umbrella organization for the PMF, within
the Iraqi state structure. In early 2018, the Prime Minister issued an order
further incorporating the PMC into the Iraqi defense forces. (30) Despite the
formal incorporation of the PMF into the security services, the government
struggled to assert control over all PMF units. (31) Research did not find
evidence that the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police used children in armed
conflict. (32) ISIS recruited
children, including girls, and used them in combat operations, for example as
suicide bombers and human shields. (1; 2) ISIS also continued to use children
in its propaganda materials online. (2) Armed groups, including Sunni tribal
forces, Yezidi Resistance Forces, Yezidi Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), and
the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which were outside the Iraqi Government’s
control and were engaged in combat against ISIS, also recruited and used
children. (1; 2) In Kirkuk, a militia group also provided a voluntary,
3-month training for 100 Shia Turkmen boys ages 15 and older on how to
participate in combat. (31) ISIS fighters
subjected girls, primarily from the Yezidi community but also from other
ethnic and religious groups, to sexual slavery, forced marriages, or forced
domestic work in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. (33; 34; 35; 3; 4; 5; 31)
Throughout the country, some girls were subjected to commercial sexual
exploitation through temporary marriages. (3) This practice involves a dowry
paid to the girl’s family and an agreement to dissolve the marriage after a
predetermined length of time. (36) ISIS sold boys who they considered too
young or too weak to engage in armed conflict into forced domestic work. (26;
27) Limited evidence points to trafficking of girls from Iran into the Iraqi
Kurdistan Region for commercial sexual exploitation. Some officials of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) were involved in the trafficking of
Syrian refugee girls for commercial sexual exploitation. (37; 3) Child
laborers were also exposed to sexual violence and abuse. (13). ‘I want a blue-eyed
Yazidi': Teen describes IS slave market Michel Moutot, AFP, 2 September 2015 [accessed 2 Sept
2015] Kidnapped, beaten,
sold and raped: the Islamic State group is running an international market in
Iraq where Christian and Yazidi women are sold as sexual slaves, a teenager
who escaped told AFP Tuesday. Jinan, 18, a
Yazidi, was captured in early 2014 and held by Islamic State jihadists for
three months before she managed to flee, she said on a visit to Paris ahead
of the publication Friday of a book about her ordeal. Seized as Islamic
State fighters swept through northern regions inhabited by the Yazidi
religious minority, Jinan was moved around between several locations before
being bought by two men, a former policeman and an imam. Once she was sold,
Jinan’s days were punctuated by men’s visits to the house where she was
imprisoned with other women. UN urged to
investigate ISIS's bloody trade in human organs after Iraqi ambassador
reveals doctors are being executed for not harvesting body parts John Hall for MailOnline, The
Daily Mail, 18 February 2015 [accessed 18
February 2015] The al-Monitor
report also claims the terror organisation has even
set up a specialist organ-smuggling division whose sole responsibility is to
sell human hearts, livers and kidneys on the lucrative international black
market. '[Al-Mosuli] said that lately he noticed unusual movement within
medical facilities in Mosul Arab and foreign surgeons were hired, but
prohibited from mixing with local doctors,' the report's author wrote.
'Information then leaked about organ selling.' The report went on:
'Surgeries take place within a hospital and organs are quickly transported
through networks specialized in trafficking human organs. Mosuli said that the organs come from fallen fighters who were quickly
transported to the hospital, injured people who were abandoned or individuals
who were kidnapped.' Most of the organs
are then smuggled out of Syria and Iraq into neighboring countries like Saudi
Arabia or Turkey where criminal gangs sell them on to shady buyers across the
globe, the Assyrian International News Agency reported. U.S. Investigates Firm
Building Embassy in Iraq Yochi J. Dreazen, The
Wall Street Journal/Business, online.wsj.com/article/SB118118318284127413.html [accessed 12 July
2013] Federal prosecutors
are investigating the Kuwaiti company building the U.S. Embassy in The Department of
Justice launched the probe of First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting
Co. after former employees alleged that workers at the company were told they
were being sent to Dubai, only to wind up in Iraq instead, people familiar
with the matter said. According to the allegations, First Kuwaiti confiscated
the workers' passports, so they were unable to depart Baghdad. Abuses Found in
Hiring at Cam Simpson, The
Baltimore Sun ( articles.baltimoresun.com/2006-04-24/news/0604240152_1_passports-iraq-trafficking-in-persons [accessed 4
September 2014] Gen. George W.
Casey Jr. ordered that contractors be required by May 1 to return passports
that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on Cry, the Beloved
Iraqi Women www.dailykos.com/story/2005/02/17/93262/-Cry-the-Beloved-Iraqi-Women [accessed 27 January
2016] "Freedom"
has become a cruel joke. Saddam's
regime was brutal, but it was secular, and women in Freedom or
Theocracy?: Constitutionalism in papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=758904 [accessed 12 July
2013] ¶ 113 Women suffered along with many other Iraqis
as a result of the war to oust Saddam.
A breakdown of law and order after the fall of IRAQ: Focus on
child labour UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report/41044/iraq-focus-on-child-labour [accessed 9 March
2015] Eleven-year-old
Mahmoud al-Obaidi walks seven km every morning to
get to work at a carpentry factory in More than a million
youngsters work often enduring hazardous conditions, as well as being
vulnerable to sexual abuse and violence, according to a report released at
the end of 2004. The report was based on a nationwide survey in which 19,610
Iraqis participated. Probe into Elise Labott, CNN State Department Producer, edition.cnn.com/2004/US/05/05/iraq.india.trafficking/ [accessed 13
February 2011] Indian press
reports said that Indian nationals in Forced Labor added
to charges of U.S. crimes in Iraq The NewStandard, May 5, 2004 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 6
September 2011] Four Muslim Indian
citizens say they and about 20 others were abducted by US military personnel
in Indians say they
were held against their will in V.M. Thomas,
Associated Press At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 6
September 2011] Faisal said the
four men paid $1,750 each to a travel agent, who arranged the Combating
Prostitution, Human Trafficking In Press Release:
Commission On Security And Coperation In www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0305/S00297.htm [accessed 13
February 2011] Eight Members of
the United States Helsinki Commission have written to Deputy Secretary of
State Richard L. Armitage requesting information about State Department
efforts to ensure that UNICEF wary of
post-war child trafficking in Iraq UNICEF Press Centre,
www.unicef.org/newsline/2003/03nn50iraqtrafficking.htm [accessed 13
February 2011] www.unicef.org/media/media_7325.html [accessed 29 April
2020] In the chaos of the
post-war environment, in Iraq normal community networks that protect children
are not fully functioning. That can leave children exposed to exploitation.
Hundreds of thousands of children are trafficked each year around the world
for brutal child labour and sexual abuse. While well-meaning
people around the world might think that international adoption is a
legitimate way to help some of these children quickly, UNICEF is concerned
that too often unscrupulous child traffickers will try exploiting the chaos and
trying to pass themselves off as legitimate agents of good. – htsc Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 9 October 1998 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/iraq1998.html [accessed 13
February 2011] [26] The Committee
notes with concern that the economic exploitation of children has increased
dramatically in the past few years and that an increasing number of children are
leaving school, sometimes at an early age, to work to support themselves and
their families. In this regard, the Committee is also concerned about the
existing gap between the age at which compulsory education ends (12 years
old) and the minimum legal age for access to employment (15 years old). The
Committee recommends that research be carried out on the situation with
regard to child labor in the State party, including the involvement of
children in hazardous work, to identify the causes and the extent of the
problem. Human Rights
Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/iraq [accessed 13
February 2011] ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/iraq/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 29 April
2020] G4. DO INDIVIDUALS ENJOY
EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION? IS’s market for
Yazidi slaves, both women and children, continued to operate for much of
2017. Other forms of human trafficking and exploitation remained problems
elsewhere in Iraq, with vulnerable populations including displaced people,
foreign migrant workers, children engaged in forced begging, and child
soldiers recruited by IS and certain militias. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61689.htm [accessed 9 February
2020] TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS
– Detection of trafficking was extremely difficult due to lack of information
because of the security situation, existing societal controls of women, and
the closed-tribal culture. There were reports of girls and women trafficked
within the country for sexual exploitation.
Five European countries successfully stymied a criminal network
trafficking Iraqi citizens to The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/iraq.htm [accessed 13
February 2011] Note:: Also check out this country’s report in the more recent edition DOL
Worst Forms of Child Labor INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Anti-government militias, such as Al-Sadr’s Mahdi
Army, exploit children as young as ten years old as child soldiers. CHILD
LABOR LAWS AND ENFORCEMENT - The Criminal Code, which predates the Iraqi conflict
but remains in effect, prohibits any form of compulsory or forced labor. Order 89 prohibits the worst forms of child
labor, which it defines as all forms of slavery, debt bondage, forced labor,
trafficking of children, compulsory use of children in armed conflict, child
prostitution, illicit activity, including drug trafficking and work likely to
harm the health, safety or morals, among others All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - |
