Zana also added that human trafficking has recently affected Syrian refugees and foreign workers from different nationalities coming to work in Iraqi Kurdistan. Therefore, there is an imperative need to draft a law against human trafficking in Iraqi Kurdistan.
For her part, Joan Ismail Aziz, a member of parliament for the Kurdish Movement for Change told Al-Monitor that during the current session, parliament ought to discuss and adopt a law against human trafficking and impose severe penalties on perpetrators. She also added that the absence of a law to curb the growing phenomenon of human trafficking in the country “is a serious flaw in the government’s performance at the level of Iraq in general and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in particular.”
In 2013, the US State Department released a report on human trafficking in the world, revealing that countries from Morocco to Iraq witness the worst cases of human trafficking, namely prostitution.
According to the US report, Iraq was categorized as a hotbed of human trafficking and smuggling from all over the world. This is not to mention that the Iraqi government has yet to fully comply with the law against human trafficking, but is exerting efforts to do so in the future. Moreover, the report mentioned the states that are still experiencing an increase in the number of cases of human trafficking and have failed to demonstrate that they are making a concerted effort to limit this phenomenon. Therefore, they must remain under the microscope.
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