{"id":28250,"date":"2019-01-08T02:23:30","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T02:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28250"},"modified":"2019-01-08T02:23:30","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T02:23:30","slug":"visits-to-israel-by-iraqi-officials-stir-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28250","title":{"rendered":"Visits to Israel by Iraqi officials stir controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"99\">\n<p>\nNEW YORK:\u00a0Human trafficking is becoming more \u201chorrific\u201d in conflict zones, where armed groups keep women as sex slaves and use child soldiers to spread fear, the UN said on Monday, warning of widespread impunity.<\/p>\n<p>\nFrom girls forced to wed to boys made to cook and clean, militants are using trafficking as a tool to boost their control in areas where the rule of law is weak, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe use of children as soldiers and suicide bombers in nations such as Colombia and Nigeria, and the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women by Daesh in Iraq and Syria, have grabbed headlines and sparked global anger in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>\nYet police and prosecutors are often not equipped to deal with the recruitment and exploitation of children by extremist groups \u2014 while global convictions of traffickers remain very low \u2014 according to the UNODC\u2019s annual report on human trafficking.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cTrafficking is found in connection with most armed conflicts,\u201d said Yury Fedotov, executive director of the UNODC. \u201cIn situations characterized by violence, brutality and coercion, traffickers can operate with even greater impunity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cChild soldiers, forced labor, sexual slavery \u2014 human trafficking has taken on horrific dimensions as armed groups and terrorists use it to spread fear and gain victims to offer as incentives to recruit new fighters,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\nFedotov said the award of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize to Nadia Murad \u2014 a former Daesh sex slave turned Yazidi activist and UN ambassador \u2014 was an \u201cimportant recognition\u201d and urged the world to stop the use of rape as a weapon of war.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe UNODC\u2019s report said that while countries are finding more victims \u2014 mostly women trafficked for sex \u2014 and convicting more traffickers, the total number of convictions remained very low in many nations \u2014 especially in Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cIn some countries &#8230; there appears to be hardly any risk for traffickers to face justice,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n<p>\nAbout 40 million people worldwide are living as slaves \u2014 trapped in forced labor or forced marriages \u2014 according to a landmark estimate by Australian rights group the Walk Free Foundation and the UN International Labour Organization (ILO).<\/p>\n<p>\nYet campaigners say more and better data is needed to track progress in pursuit of a UN target of ending modern slavery and human trafficking by 2030 as many victims around the world \u2014 including child soldiers \u2014 are going uncounted.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cSound information and a solid base of evidence for our policies are two of the most important things to fight this disgusting crime in the most efficient way possible,\u201d Karin Kneissl, Austria\u2019s foreign minister, said at the report launch.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cWe simply need to know what it actually is we are dealing with,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK:\u00a0Human trafficking is becoming more \u201chorrific\u201d in conflict zones, where armed groups keep women as sex slaves and use child soldiers to spread fear, the UN said on Monday, warning of widespread impunity. From girls forced to wed to boys made to cook and clean, militants are using trafficking as a tool to boost&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}