The heaviest burden of war and extreme poverty falls on women: sex trafficking and other brutal consequences

This issue is at the top of my hit list: sex trafficking.

I write the following on behalf of Iraqi girls and women who have suffered terribly at the hands of sex-traffickers. They have been kidnapped, raped or gang-raped, ransomed against their families, forced into prostitution even as refugees, and due to social and cultural pressures have become the victims of honor killings for sexual crimes they could not protect themselves against.

Every time I read stories of rape, kidnappings and sexual slavery of Iraqi women by criminal gangs my blood boils and then cools to a sad and unsettling sense of sadness. I am unsettled and disturbed. Whether man or woman, you should be too. The stories are heartbreaking. Not only women, but girls as young as 11 years old have become victims of sex trafficking as a consequence of the insecurity in Iraq. Probably young boys too. Add that in addition to the suffering of thousands upon thousands of Iraqi women who have fled into Syria and other neighboring countries and have been forced into prostitution because they have no other means to feed their children. Or worse, women and girls that have been sold off as prostitutes by their own families. These women are socially stigmatized, ignored, and abandoned with the exception of humanitarian organizations, such as Women for Women International, and underground shelters, run by Iraqi feminist groups in cooperation with MADRE, who are making great efforts to help them though underfunded and underhanded. Even so, many of the victims remain silent over their ordeals weighed by a great sense of shame and trauma.

The war in Iraq should have never happened and under the Bush administration it was terribly mismanaged. The greatest toll has been on women and children. As per usual, they remain the invisible victims of the war.

In 2007, international women's rights group, MADRE, lashed out at the Bush administration for allowing for the erosion of women's rights in Iraq. According to a story published by We News, a women's e-news network:

After banning Iraq's secular Baath regime in June, 2003, the U.S. government set a tight deadline to establish a new Iraqi democracy to justify its military action in the country. To meet that self-imposed deadline, the U.S. government compromised its stated commitment to gender equality and negotiated with Islamic religious fundamentalists, who see women's subordination as a precondition to a traditional social order, according to the report. Since gaining power, those Islamist officials have cracked down on women's rights, leading to a wave of kidnappings, abductions, public beatings, death threats, sexual assaults, domestic abuse and so-called honor killings, again according to the report.

In regards to the recent developments little has changed since 2007 concerning the security of women in the country even as some political pressures against them are easing. As of 2010, NPR has gone as far as to label Iraq's women as 'forgotten.' According to NPR:

Girls have a high rate of illiteracy and often drop out of schools due to economic and security reasons. Domestic violence is increasing, as is trafficking in women, and the Iraqi government estimates there are up to 3 million widows in Iraq today.

Sex trafficking, in particular, has been a heavy consequence of war and insecurity in Iraq. Videos on Youtube and reports from 2006 onwards detailed the fate of many jobless Iraqi refugees to Syria and Jordan. Foreign Policy magazine stated in an article this past March: "Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the Iraqi exiles in Syria had turned to the sex trade for survival. In Damascus, refugees were not permitted to hold jobs. As resources dwindled, many were led into the underground economy. Female-headed households accounted for almost a quarter of the refugees registered with the U.N. refugee agency. Widowed, divorced, or separated from husbands by the war, many women had children or elderly parents to support. Sex was often their only marketable asset."

Even as recently as August 19th, Sebastian Swett and Cameron Webster wrote a scathing criticism in The New Republic of the US government for not having taken steps to secure and help women who have become victims of sex trafficking in Iraq and the State Department lagging in its efforts to protect women. The US government isn't the only accomplice in the problem according to Swett and Webster. Syria and Jordan have done little in terms or policy-making to protect Iraqi women and children who are refugees within their borders. "In fact, rather than finding shelter in Syria or Jordan, some Iraqi prostitutes find themselves arrested and deported to Iraq as criminals, where they are killed to preserve their family's honor." And let's not forget the other accomplices in the sex-trafficking issue: the men who exploit these women. The consumers. The men who pay to go to brothels and clubs and fund the pimps who run the business. They should be publicly shamed, arrested, and tried for participating in modern-day slavery.

The crisis facing Iraqi women in lieu of the Iraq war is a reflection of the greater crisis facing women and children around the world. Sex-trafficking and sex-tourism is big business. It is, in fact, slavery. Men who consume it are funding slavery and encouraging it. Globally, extreme poverty, corrupt government, and poor rule of law in addition to conflict fuel the illicit trade of human beings. This is a massive issue. So massive it should not go ignored and we should not be silent about it.

In Iraq, MADRE along with the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), have set up underground safe houses for women who have been victims of sexual crimes or are fleeing violence. "The Safe Houses project and the Underground Railroad for Iraqi Women provide emergency shelter for women in danger of 'honor killings', and other forms of domestic violence and sex trafficking," writes Dr. Judith Rich in The Huffington Post.

A new book by advocates against the sex trade, Half The Sky: How to Change the World, details ways in which individuals can get involved in the anti-slavery campaign and help rehabilitate the victims. One amazing woman, Sunitha Krishnan, a former victim of the sex trade herself, by the force of her own personality and sense of justice founded Prajwala and has succeeded in rescuing and rehabilitating more than five thousand women back into society in India.

The following is an impassioned appeal by Krishnan to people globally to stop sex trafficking and to stop the slavery of women and children as featured on TED. I urge you all to watch this clip of Krishnan's talk. Doing nothing is unacceptable.