(MENAFN- Emirates News Agency (WAM)) United Nations officials have reiterated the need to bring perpetrators of last year's tragedy, in which militants from the ISIL attacked as many as 200,000 civilians € most of them from vulnerable communities € causing them to flee to Sinjar, to justice as well as to increase protection for women and girls from conflict-related sexual violence.
It was a year ago that the attacks took place on members of the Yezidi community, as well as members of the Shi'a Turkmen, Shi'a Shabak and Christian communities, causing them to flee to Sinjar.
"In the days that followed, amidst horrific killings, ISIL hunted down and caught hundreds of women and girls from ethnic and religion minorities, instituting a pattern of sexual violence, slavery, abduction and human trafficking that continues to this day," the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, said in a statement on the first anniversary of the tragedy.
She noted that first-hand accounts from internally displaced persons and refugees, some of whom she met during a visit to the Middle East in April, confirm systematic sexual violence, particularly against Yezidi women and children aged between 8 and 35 years.
She reiterated her calls on the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL to include protection and empowerment of women and girls in their strategies to counter terrorism.
Also speaking out was the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Iraq, Jan Kubis, who strongly condemned ISIL's continuous and deliberate terrorist strategy to target and exterminate entire communities on the basis of their ethnic background, religious beliefs or faith.
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