Statement of the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery at the March 15 Debate on Forced Labour

Nevertheless, as we have heard this morning, slavery and related practices continue to occur on an unprecedented scale, affecting millions of men, women and children. In conflict situations, terrorists and non-State armed groups have reverted to the most extreme forms of slavery, in which young girls and women are owned, exploited, sold and traded in markets and on the Internet. Boys have been forced to carry arms and commit acts of violence against their own communities.

One year ago, I and the Special Rapporteur on the right to health and Special Rapporteur on the human rights aspects of the victims of trafficking in persons, especially women and children, conducted a joint country mission to Nigeria, where we met with young men who had been forced by Boko Haram to carry arms, engage in combat, destroy their own villages and perform forced labour in the form of cleaning and construction work during captivity. We met girls in internally displaced persons camps, barely children themselves, who have had babies as a result of forced marriage and sexual slavery.