Statement of Ilwad Elman at the Security Council Open Debate on Forced Labour, Slavery and Other Similar Practices

In the same way that we were blind to the signs of a drought and famine unfolding before us, we are still blind to what undignified contexts of such desperation do to the affected population. In 2011, the majority of those whom my organization was assisting were internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in hovels in makeshift camps in Mogadishu and its outskirts, primarily women with children in tow, or child-headed households — people who had tracked by foot for days to make it to the capital in order to receive some sort of humanitarian aid. On arrival and on route, they were sexually abused, tortured and extorted for what little they had in their possession. Some of their family members never made it, as they died along the way.

Within the IDP camps in Mogadishu, sexual abuse became rampant, and a culture of impunity created opportunities for it to remain so. Women and girls were forced into transactional labour, such as sex for food, sex for medical aid, sex for protection and sex to pass checkpoints and to reach distribution sites. A 14-year-old refugee from Yemen who ended up in an IDP camp in Mogadishu, along with her elderly father and younger siblings, is currently staying at one of our safe houses after escaping a forced marriage — one that was offered as a solution to the extreme poverty her family was living in. Her small dowry, of $20, became a lifeline for the rest of the family. She did not leave her family to be a wife, she became a sex slave. The house became a brothel. For three months, her father received $20 from the man he gave her to, without any contact with his daughter. He did not know that the man was charging other men to have sex with his daughter, or that the money he was receiving was a product of her enslavement. The abuse continued for nine months before she escaped. Human trafficking is severely exacerbated in situations of conflict and extremist groups like Al-Shabaab, Da’esh and Boko Haram survive off of the forced labour, domestic servitude and sexual slavery they inflict on the civilians living in chaos of conflict.

Another role that women play in human trafficking that is often overlooked is that of perpetrators, organizers and mobilizers of trafficking. We have worked on exposing numerous small organized operations led by women who prey on the most destitute segments of society — such as those living in IDP camps — and go to IDP communities with the promise of employment, food, clothing and anything else to draw in the desperate. The most worrisome part of human trafficking in Somalia is that, because of the conflict, people are not even aware of the real risk and how to protect themselves and their children from it. Because of weak governance, the south and central regions of Somalia are now used as transit routes for international trafficking, while other parts of the country are regions of destination, transit and origin for victims of international human trafficking, as well as local trafficking between the regions.