Isis fighters force sex slaves to take birth control so they can continue to rape them

Birth control pills and injections are forced on captives in order to stop them from becoming pregnant so they can repeatedly raped and sold between their captors

Laurence Rossignol, French minister for family, children and women's rights said: 'It is because they are women and they are Yazidis that they are sold and murdered [by Isis]' (Getty)

Isis fighters are forcing their sex slaves to take birth control to allow them to continue raping them.

Birth control pills and injections are forced on captives in order to stop them from becoming pregnant so they can repeatedly raped and sold between their captors.

The practise emerged to circumvent a ruling in the Islamic law used by Isis which states a man cannot rape his slave if they are carrying a child.

Another ruling says a man must ensure his newly-bought slave is not carrying another man's child by abstaining from having sex with her for a month, in a process known as Istibra.

One of 37 former sex slaves interviewed by the New York Times said: “Every day, I had to swallow one in front of him. He gave me one box per month.

"When I ran out, he replaced it. When I was sold from one man to another, the box of pills came with me."

When some slaves were sold between fighters, their owners provided the box of birth control as proof they were not pregnant.

At least one pregnant woman was forced to take abortion pills.

Another pregnant slave was repeatedly punched in the stomach after refusing to have an abortion.

Most Isis sex slaves are from the thousands of Yazidi women captured when Isis overran Mount Sinjar in Iraq in 2014.

Yazidi women who escaped from Isis have said as many as 3,400 Yazidi women and children are still being held hostage by the group.

Isis leaders previously issued a fatwa detailing how and when its fighters could rape female sex slaves, which described the practise as "one of the inevitable consequences of jihad".