This week marks 10 years since the start of the Yazidi genocide, perpetrated by the so-called Islamic State (IS). It has been a full decade since the horrors began. The Yazidis’ historic homeland has still not been rebuilt, survivors are facing eviction from the camps where they live, women and children remain in captivity, and many people are still missing. These issues, alongside the lack of justice and accountability, are as pressing as ever to a community that has been through so much. It’s high time for national and international governments to take action.
IS began its genocide campaign in Sinjar – known as Shingal to the Yazidi people – on August 3, 2014. Out of the 350,000-450,000 people who were displaced by IS in 2014, an estimated 200,000 Yazidis remain in displacement, mainly in camps in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Iraq plans to close the camps, and while the order has been delayed, a number of internally displaced persons have already started to move back to Sinjar, but with very little to return to. For many Yazidis, returning to Sinjar is not an option, with no basic infrastructure or services to meet their needs.
Sinjar, still a war-war-torn area, has received insufficient political and budget support for reconstruction and rehabilitation since IS retreated from the region in late 2017. We estimate that it will cost no less than $1.5 billion to fully rebuild the area.
“In view of the current circumstances and in light of these political and military conflicts that threaten the security of Sinjar, I cannot be confident about the future, my future in Sinjar.”
In the meantime, many Yazidis who fled the crimes of IS are afraid to return, given that the government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have failed to tackle the root causes of the genocide, notably discrimination against and stigmatisation of the Yazidi community. Last April, during a rise in false rumours about Yazidi community members who had gone back to Sinjar, one NGO documented 334,000 incidents of hate speech against Yazidis in a single day, including comments spurring on violence.
These circumstances make return unthinkable for many. “In view of the current circumstances and in light of these political and military conflicts that threaten the security of Sinjar, I cannot be confident about the future, my future in Sinjar,” said one 27-year-old Yazidi survivor at an event commemorating the genocide, who asked that her name not be published due to security concerns.
She is a member of the Yazidi Survivors Network (YSN), which aims to bring together women who want to become advocates for female survivors and the Yazidi community. The network was established in 2019 by Yazda, a community-based organisation created three weeks after the beginning of the genocide to support survivors and document the crimes committed by IS.
The Iraqi and Kurdish governments need to prioritise the reconstruction and stabilisation of Sinjar, and the removal of all armed groups. They must also tackle the root causes of the violence and foster dialogue between communities to make sure crimes committed against minority and Indigenous communities will not be repeated. This means including everyone in co-designing a new Sinjar Agreement, which promised reconstruction and stability but was never implemented, in order to enable local governance and trusted security that will make survivors feel safe.
Rescue women and children in captivity
Since the first IS kidnappings, no national or international search-and-rescue task force has been established to safely return women and children in captivity; no dedicated government body has been charged with overseeing the efforts to locate and return the missing; and no consolidated database of the missing and their potential location has been established.
Rather, families have had to resort to their own private means to find and bring back their loved ones. For many, this has meant taking on debt or trying to raise funds to pay for smugglers.
“There is no serious campaign to search and find the kidnapped ones inside and outside Iraq,” said Yazidi activist Nasrin Hassan Rasho, a member of the YSN and the Survivors Voice Network (SVN) from Tel Banat, Sinjar, during the sixth official commemoration of the Yazidi genocide in 2020.
Some families have even received calls from IS militants requesting ransom for the women and girls they had kidnapped. Some 2,600 women and children are still missing – many are believed to be in al-Hol Camp in northern Syria. A rescue mission should be established to safely bring them back.
Exhume all mass graves, and identify the missing
Families of survivors and the disappeared are still not able to confirm the fate of their loved ones, and historic villages with unopened mass graves have become ghost towns.
Even before IS retreated from Sinjar, Yazda began collecting evidence of the crimes committed against Yazidis, gathering testimonies from survivors and documenting crime sites.
“I lost dear people to my heart in this genocide, and I miss them every single day, including my dear father and mother.”
UNITAD, the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by IS, joined this effort when it finally set up its team in Iraq in the fall of 2018.
To date, 61 of the 94 known mass graves in Sinjar have been exhumed. However, with the imminent premature closure of UNITAD, civil society organisations, survivors, and families of the victims fear that the exhumation process will be at risk and not be prioritised by the Iraqi authorities. According to the Iraqi Mass Graves Directorate (MGD), an additional 33 mass graves in Sinjar have yet to be opened.
“I lost dear people to my heart in this genocide, and I miss them every single day, including my dear father and mother. Until now, I do not know where they are, I do not know anything about their fate and whereabouts, I do not know if they are alive or not, I do not know if they were killed by IS in my village with the rest of the Yazidis,” Zinah Khallat Sulaiman, a 28-year-old Yazidi activist and member of the YSN from Hurdan, Sinjar, told us recently.
Her 16-year-old brother was also captured on 3 August, 2014. His remains were brought to the family this year. Meanwhile, her 11-year old brother is still under the control of IS supporters, in a camp where the family believes he is still undergoing re-education and indoctrination.
Achieving justice and accountability
There is still little justice or accountability for what happened. Without this, the hope for a successful transitional justice process in Iraq and the prevention of further violations are very slim.
The YSN and Yazda have been driving advocacy efforts around the world to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted for the crimes they committed.
“I believe that achieving justice and accountability is one of the highest priorities for victims, their families, and society in general,” Rasho said during a recent address to French senators in Paris. “I believe that achieving justice and holding perpetrators of crimes accountable are essential for restoring confidence to affected communities and perhaps fostering reconciliation among Iraq's various components,” she continued.
In a recent meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Yazidi activists, including Yazda’s executive director (one of the authors of this piece), renewed calls for urgent support to achieve justice and accountability.
The delegation underlined the need for Iraq to pass a law to incorporate core international crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide into its criminal code. It must ensure fair trials that include meaningful victim participation, and solid witness protection.
While many survivors and NGOs have called for an international or hybrid tribunal to prosecute IS perpetrators, a lack of political will makes this increasingly unlikely. As an alternative, Iraq and the international community should at least identify and prosecute those high-level IS members who are still alive.
Future Yazidi generations need to see that there was a collective response to the crimes committed by IS.
It is also important so that survivors can move ahead with their lives. As Shireen Khero, a 30-year-old Yazidi activist from Hardan, Sinjar, explained to French senators this June: “The survivors, male and female, do not feel safe enough to come forward because the perpetrators of those crimes are still free living their lives."
With UNITAD closing soon, civil society and survivor groups are calling for the establishment of an enhanced UN archive to hold the evidence UNITAD and others have collected over the years, so that it remains accessible to states and prosecutors for future investigations and prosecutions.
As Khero asked French senators: “Will the evidence and proof only be archived, or will it be used in the prosecution taking place outside Iraq currently, or will it also be used in the future? How can we access this evidence?”
So many survivors gave their testimonies, however painful, in the hope that it would support justice and accountability efforts. This evidence must remain accessible to prosecutors.
“I am that woman who seeks justice,” said a member of the YSN at an official genocide commemoration, who asked that her name not be published for security reasons. “I am that woman who can stand in the face of darkness and confront them and hold them accountable.”
For many Yazidis, this August marks a decade of political and humanitarian failures. Global and national inaction are setting the terms and conditions for their future. A safe and dignified life in Sinjar is becoming harder and harder to imagine and, for many, feels almost impossible.
The authors kindly thank Zoe Paris from Yazda and Dima Toubaji from the Zovighian Public Office for contributing to this piece.
