Subject: Re: UN - confidential
From: Zachary Allen <[email-masked]>
To: Alice B Mahoney <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 09:06:49 -0700

[email-masked]

More to come, just wanted to get this to you ASAP

From:  "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date:  Monday, May 2, 2016 at 9:05 AM
To:  Zachary Allen <[email-masked]>
Subject:  UN - confidential

Hi Zach,  it was so nice speaking with you.  This is a a rough draft of what I am planning to send to Tina for Flotus

I do hope Tina will have a positive response. Cross your fingers.  I was also going to reach out to Jane Stetson because I know she and Flotus are friends you think this is a good idea?

Thank you for your help Zach.

Alice x

As you know from your prior engagement with the #BringBackOurGirls movement, in many armed conflicts around the world today, women and girls are tragically targeted for kidnapping, enslavement and trafficking. Global norms against human trafficking and slavery are today facing a major challenge from Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh), both active sponsors and promoters of enslavement, organizers of large-scale human trafficking and generators of massive population displacements that leave people vulnerable to human trafficking by criminal networks.

Over 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are thought to be currently enslaved by ISIL, which is organizing slave contract registries and markets, advocating for the revival of slavery through official policy and media outlets, and even issuing official ‘how-to’ manuals. The United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Ms Zainab Bangura, recently warned that ISIL has institutionalized slavery and sexual violence to increase recruitment by promising male fighters access to women and girls, to populate a new “caliphate” through forced pregnancy, to terrorize communities into compliance, displace populations from strategic areas and generate revenue through trafficking, slave trade and ransoms. ISIL’s systematization of sexual slavery reportedly even extends to the promotion of the use of birth control drugs to prevent pregnancy interfering with enslaved women and girls’ sexual availability to their captors. 

Likewise, the ‘emir’ of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, has publicly stated that Boko Haram intends to “enslave” civilian populations that it attacks, and to “sell” women and girls—perhaps several thousand women and girls have been kidnapped to date. The US State Department 2014 report on Trafficking of Persons suggests that some of these women have been “subjected to domestic servitude, forced labour, and sex slavery through forced marriages to its militants”.

Fortunately, there is a growing global movement to combat human trafficking in conflict. In an historic first, in December 2015, US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Samantha Power presided over the first ever thematic UN Security Council debate on Trafficking in Persons in Conflict. The Security Council adopted a Presidential Statement that “condemns in the strongest terms reported instances of trafficking in persons in areas affected by armed conflict”, and notes that human trafficking may form part of terrorist groups’ use of sexual and gender-based violence as part of their strategic objectives.

The Security Council is likely to discuss this issue again in December 2016, when it will consider a report of the UN Secretary-General on these issues. Ahead of that discussion, the United Nations University – a UN thinktank created by the General Assembly – is convening a discussion at Grace Farms in Connecticut on 30 June and 1 July 2016, to think about how the Security Council can encourage law enforcement actors – and the global financial sector – to shape and strengthen new tools to disrupt trafficking in conflict.

This conference will bring together a select group of approximately 100 senior diplomatic, law enforcement, academic, financial sector and UN experts and officials, for one and half days of in-depth discussion. The conference is also supported by the Permanent Mission of Liechtenstein to the United Nations, and Thomson Reuters.

We would be honored, Mrs Obama, if you would consider giving the Opening Keynote Address to this conference. We believe that your leadership and vision will help inspire participants to deliver concrete, targeted recommendations that will strengthen the UN Security Council’s response to this terrible scourge. 

Following your Opening Keynote Address, we would also invite you to join a short panel of women leaders working on these issues. This would include senior UN representatives, the Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations (Amb. Samantha Power) or the US Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council (Amb. Sarah Mendelson), and possibly also Ms Nadia Murad Basee, the young Yazidi survivor of ISIL enslavement who spoke so powerfully and movingly before the UN Security Council last December. The panel would be moderated by a senior female journalist, to be cleared with you and your staff.

Kindness Starts with You

www.bkind.today