UNITED NATIONS /GENEVA - An estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are being held as slaves in Iraq by Islamic State militants, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The Islamist group, which also controls large parts of Syria, is responsible for acts that may ‘amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide’, particularly against minorities, a report said. Iraqi security forces and allied groups including Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have also killed and abducted civilians, it said. ‘Some of these incidents may have been reprisals against persons perceived to support or be associated with ISIL (Islamic State),’ it added.
At least 18,802 civilians were killed in violence in Iraq in the first 10 months of 2015, half of them in Baghdad, and 36,245 civilians wounded, the report said, calling the figures ‘obscene’. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq and the U.N. human rights office estimated that 3,500 people were ‘currently being held in slavery’ by Islamic State, which seized mainly Sunni-populated areas in the north and west in 2014.
‘Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yazidi community,’ said the joint report issued in Geneva, referring to a non-Muslim minority in northern Iraq viewed by Islamic State as devil-worshippers. ‘But a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities.’
The Sunni Islamists, who claim responsibility for suicide bombings in Baghdad against Shia mosques and markets, should face prosecution for international crimes, said Francesco Motta, director of the U.N. human rights office in Iraq. ‘They use civilians as shields. They use children in armed conflict, they also directly target civilian infrastructure and that can amount to war crimes but they can also constitute crimes against humanity,’ he told a news briefing by telephone from Baghdad.
The group seeks to ‘basically eliminate, purge or destroy minority communities’, Motta said. ‘We've seen communities like the Yazidi in particular bear the brunt of this. Yazidi were basically given the option by ISIL to convert or to be killed.
‘The intent seems clear ... the international crime of genocide,’ he added. ‘The intention was to destroy part or the whole of the Yazidi people.’ The report detailed Islamic State executions by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off buildings. Doctors, teachers and journalists opposed to its ideology have been ‘singled out and murdered by ISIL’.
‘We have a lot of information on the recruitment of children, children as young as nine, to train them sometimes to use them as suicide operatives in their operations, but also forcing them to give blood and also take armed combat roles in other parts where conflict is taking place,’ Motta said.
Between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted for military and religious training, the report said. Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, was recaptured from Islamic State in late December, and the tide of fighting appears to have turned against the group. ‘We still have grave fears for civilians in areas under Daesh (Islamic State) control as the armed forces and those supporting the government move closer to those areas,’ Motta said.
Moreover, in figures it calls ‘staggering’, the United Nations said Tuesday at least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 wounded between January 2014 and October 2015 as a result of the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Another 3.2 million people have been internally displaced since during the period, including more than a million children of school age, according to a report compiled by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 
Of the total number of casualties, at least 3,855 civilians were killed and 7,056 wounded between May 1 and October 31 last year – the period covered by the report. According to the UN, the actual figures could be much higher than those documented, and about half of these deaths took place in Baghdad.
‘The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering,’ the report states. ‘The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.’
The report is based largely on testimony obtained directly from the victims, survivors or witnesses of violations of international human rights or international humanitarian law, including interviews with internally displaced people. ‘During the reporting period, ISIL killed and abducted scores of civilians, often in a targeted manner,’ the report notes.
‘Victims include those perceived to be opposed to ISIL ideology and rule; persons affiliated with the Government, such as former Iraqi security forces (ISF), police officers, former public officials and electoral workers; professionals, such as doctors and lawyers; journalists; and tribal and religious leaders.’
The report adds that ‘others have been abducted or killed on the pretext of aiding or providing information to Government security forces. Many have been subjected to adjudication by ISIL self-appointed courts which, in addition to ordering the murder of countless people, have imposed grim punishments such as stoning and amputations.’
In addition, it details numerous examples of killings by ISIL in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings. There are also reports of the murder of child soldiers who fled fighting on the frontlines in Anbar. Information received and verified suggests that between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted by ISIL for religious education and military training.
‘ISIL continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery,’ the report states. It also documents alleged violations and abuses of international human rights and international humanitarian law by the Iraqi Security Forces and associated forces, including militia and tribal forces, popular mobilization units, and Peshmerga.
The UN indicated that concerning reports have also been received of unlawful killings and abductions perpetrated by some elements associated with pro-Government forces. ‘Some of these incidents may have been reprisals against persons perceived to support or be associated with ISIL,’ the report explains. ‘Moreover, as civilians move around the country, fleeing violence, they have continued to face Government restrictions on their ability to access safe areas. Once they reach such areas, some have experienced arbitrary arrest in raids by security forces and others have been forcibly expelled. The conduct of pro-Government forces’ operations raises concern that they are carried out without taking all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects.’
Furthermore, the discovery of a number of mass graves is documented in the report, including in areas regained by the Government from ISIL control, as well as mass graves from the time of Saddam Hussein. One of them uncovered reportedly contains 377 corpses, including women and children apparently killed during the 1991 Shi’a uprisings against Saddam Hussein in the east of Basra.
The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, Jan Kubis, said ‘despite their steady losses to pro government forces, the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering.’
Kubis strongly reiterated his call to all parties to the conflict to ensure the protection of civilians from the effects of violence, while also calling on the international community to enhance its support to the Government of Iraq's humanitarian, stabilization and reconstruction efforts in areas liberated from ISIL, ‘so that all Iraqis displaced by violence can return to their homes in safety and in dignity and that affected communities can be re-established in their places of origin.’ ‘I urge the government to use all means to ensure law and order, necessary for the voluntary return of [internally displaced persons] to their place of origin - a task of primary importance given the recent wave of violence and killings, often of sectarian nature, notably in Diyala and Baghdad,’ the top UN official added.
Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein warned that the civilian death toll may be considerably higher, and called for urgent action to rein in the impunity enjoyed by the vast majority of the perpetrators of violence.
‘Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq,’ he underlined. ‘The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,’ the High Commissioner said.
‘This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands,’ he added. Zeid also appealed to the Government to undertake legislative amendments to grant Iraqi courts jurisdiction over international crimes and to become party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.