(IRIN) – After Amira’s husband was killed in the Syrian war, she found herself adrift in Lebanon. Barred from working and with two young children to feed, she resorted to marrying off her nine-year-old daughter and putting her 12-year-old son to work. Amira is not a real person but her story is increasingly commonplace. No one knows how many of the 60 million forcibly displaced people around the world have fallen victim to trafficking, slavery, and forced labour, but their number appears to be on the increase. As many as 7,000 women and girls have been taken as sexual slaves by Boko Haram; in Libya, armed groups regularly exploit migrants and refugees for forced labour or hold them for ransom; and in Iraq, more than 5,000 Yazidis have been enslaved by so-called Islamic State.
