CIJA Senior Advisor Stephanie Barbour contributes to symposium on conflict-related sexual violence

CIJA Senior Sexual and Gender-based Violence Advisor Stephanie Barbour has contributed to a symposium on conflict-related sexual violence jointly hosted by the UN Team of Experts on Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict and OpinioJuris. Drawing on her recent article in the Journal of International Criminal Justice, Barbour discusses CIJA’s investigative and analytical approaches to Islamic State enslavement practices.

Part I of the blog post explores innovations, lessons learned, and good practices from CIJA’s investigation into the IS slave trade. Barbour addresses the challenges of investigating the slave trade of women and children by IS in Northern Iraq and Syria and outlines the elements of CIJA´s large-scale situational investigation model, which enabled the collection of critical multi-layered, corroborative evidence of IS enslavement practices.

In Part II, Barbour discusses CIJA’s approach to the legal characterisation of IS enslavement practices and the importance of these labels for capturing the multiple harms that have been inflicted on victims. Barbour follows with an appraisal of recent prosecutorial approaches to SGBV charging in extraterritorial cases concerning IS and Syrian Regime crimes, including in the Al-Khatib trial in Koblenz, Germany. The two-part post closes by emphasising the importance of continued exchanges between investigators and prosecutors working across jurisdictions on how to make the best use of available evidence and find appropriate legal qualifications for the multiplicity of SGBV-related crimes observed in the Syria and Iraq conflicts.

The symposium builds on a recent discussion hosted by the UN Team of Experts held in January 2021 and entitled “The importance of a label: understanding the impunity gap for conflict-related sexual violence crimes associated with slavery and trafficking”.

Read Part I here:  Innovations, Lessons Learned, and Good Practices From CIJA’s Investigation Into the Slave Trade

Read Part II here:  Key findings of CIJA’s Investigation into the IS Slave Trade