Trafficked into War. Investigating the case of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, how do women and girls continue to be disproportionately vulnerable to sex trafficking and systematic rape in periods of armed conflict and civil unrest?

Abstract

Regarded as one of the ‘great human rights issues of our time’, human trafficking, particularly the trafficking of women and girls, continues to capture the attention of politicians, non-governmental organisations, feminists, activists and the general public. Promulgated by global geopolitical instability and the humanitarian crises in Syria and Iraq, alarming rates of trafficked women and girls have occurred with little opposition, alerting us to the dangers of not reacting to, nor understanding the problem at hand. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) continues to commit monstrous crimes against women and girls, by means of trafficking, enslavement and sexual exploitation. By challenging the patriarchal assumption that men are the dominant victims of warfare, feminist research has attempted to explore the disproportional effects of conflict on women. This paper seeks to further the gendered perspective, guided by postcolonialism and conflict studies to better understand the full extent of women’s subjugation during war and peace. Focussing on hypermasculine discourse and the lack of attention paid to women’s agency allows a broader understanding of women’s wartime struggles beyond just the physical and statistical ‘realities’ of trafficking and gender-based violence. In attempting to ‘fill the gaps’ at the junctures of the theoretical disciplines, this thesis aims to illuminate the urgent need to widen and intensify our scholarly understanding of wartime gender inequalities.