Hillary Cliton Urges UN to do More on Halting Kidnappings

By Steven Hogg - 13 Sep '14 06:57AM

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has asked the United Nations to find a better strategy to deal with violence against girls and women by terrorists around the world.

Speaking at the Roosevelt Institute's Women and Girls Rising conference in New York, Clinton said that she was worried about the threat women face from terrorist organizations like Islamic State and Boko Haram , reports the Associated press.

Terrorists around the world are kidnapping girls and women as a war tactic, she said.

She cited the examples of hundreds of girls and women kidnapped and forced to become wives by the Islamic State militants to prove her point.

"What happened to the Yazidis in Iraq and the hundreds of girls and women kidnapped and forced to become wives, so to speak, of the ISIS terrorists is a tactic that is very ancient," she said. "We had reason to believe [the tactic] was not going to persist in the 21st century, and now it is.", she said, reports CBS news.

Another group which Clinton pointed at was the Lord Resistance army based in the Central African Republic which has been accused of many human rights violations. The Boko Haram of Nigeria has also indulged in practices like kidnapping young children, she said.

Acknowledging the U.N for passing a resolution that focuses on the violence against women and girls during conflicts, Clinton said that the organization should do more in this regard.

"I think we need the U.N. to come up with a unified strategy, out of the Security Council, and to try to provide technical and human resources to immediately be deployed to try to prevent this and to try to track down those who have kidnapped these girls," she said. "I think we need a process put in place very quickly that we can point to and rely on as we go forward," she said, reports Associated Press.

Lamenting that some governments have not dealt with kidnappings seriously, Clinton said that the tactic of the terrorists will be a major problem in the next few years.