The War Crimes Against The Yazidis “Shocked The Conscience Of Humanity”

August 3, 2014, is seared in the memories of the Yazidis worldwide as the day ISIS invaded the northern Iraqi region of Sinjar, home to predominantly Yazidi population and their ancient cultural, religious sites. Some 400,000 Yazidi fled to the neighboring Kurdistan Region of Iraq and thousands took refuge on Mount Sinjar remaining isolated and near starvation before world powers intervened.  

Some 3,000 to 5,000 Yazidi men and elderly women who couldn’t flee were slaughtered by ISIS (IS, Daesh). Weaponizing sexual violence, nearly 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, as young as nine, were enslaved, forcibly converted to Islam, married off to ISIS fighters and transferred throughout Iraq and eastern Syria. Those attempting escape were gang raped. The abducted boys, as young as seven-years-old, were converted into Islam and child soldiers. Following the Sinjar attacks, ISIS invaded the Nineveh Plains (northeast of Mosul), forcing over 120,000 people to flee. Finally, a coordinated rescue operation with Yazidi volunteer defenders, the Syrian Kurdish forces (YPG), Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and an  international coalition led by the U.S., opened a safe passage from Mount Sinjar to Syria for thousands of Yazidi.

In his briefing to the UN Security Council this May, Karim Asad Ahmad Khan QC, Special Adviser leading the Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) reported that independent, impartial investigations in compliance with international standards and UN best practices, show “clear and convincing evidence that the crimes against the Yazidi people clearly constituted genocide” and “shocked the conscience of humanity.”

On the 7th anniversary of the Yazidi genocide this year, Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab, co-founder of the Coalition For Genocide Response, together with partners, launched the #BringBackTheYazidis campaign on the opening of the UN General Assembly session. In a joint letter signed by nearly 100 organizations and experts, several world leaders were called to ensure the missing Yazidi women and children “are located and reunited with their families.” It urged the powers to “locate the 2,763 Yazidi women and children, victims of forced or involuntary disappearances…..missing for seven years.”

“We joined forces on the issue, taking further steps in our advocacy efforts,” Ochab says the idea for the campaign germinated during discussions with Knox Thames, Senior Fellow at The Institute for Global Engagement, former U.S. Special Advisor for Religious Minorities at the State Department, when both published articles on the topic “calling for the search and rescue of the Yazidi women and children.”

The #BringBackTheYazidis campaign has support from Free Yezidi Foundation and Nadia’s Initiative, founded by Nadia Murad, who after fleeing her captives became a global voice for her community and sexual violence survivors. As the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Murad is a leading advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence. Her international court testimonies against ISIS alongside her high-profiled attorney, Amal Clooney, captured world attention.

“Most of the world believes ISIS has been defeated and, with its defeat, a resumption of normalcy in Iraq and Syria. This is not true for the Yazidi community or the thousands of women and children still missing. Nadia’s Initiative continues to advocate for their search and rescue,” says Abid Shamdeen, Executive Director of Nadia’s Initiative, and a Sinjar native. “While others may have forgotten, it is impossible for the community to forget those missing. Their absence is an open wound that hasn’t healed.”

Nadia’s Initiative is developing its own programming and working towards the search and rescue of those still missing. But the work requires collective efforts from INGOs, the UN, and member states. In joining the #BringBackTheYazidis campaign as a leading partner, Shamdeen says they garner the support of powerful “global actors and push for the political will to act and create a task force to search for and rescue those still missing.” To create a global movement, first they must identify where the women and children are located. Working with partners, he says improves coordinated rescue efforts and more importantly attempts to provide a closure for families who need to know if their loved ones “are alive or not, or to bury those who have passed.”  

The October 18, U.S. State Department Statement on Missing Yazidi Women and Children joint statement with the Office of International Religious Freedom, advocated for the displaced and missing Yazidis, and continued support for the care of the survivors. The statement was signed by 17 states including U.S., U.K, Albania, Armenia, Australia, Croatia, Denmark, among others.

Mia Bloom, an International Security Fellow at the New America Foundation, and Professor of Communication and Middle East Studies at Georgia State University who studied Yazidi survival in the hands of ISIS says the Yazidi children were “forced into domestic servitude, conscripted into militant activities alongside ISIS child recruits called ‘Cubs of the Caliphate’ and engaged in a “variety of tasks that commensurate with modern day child slavery.” Yazidi boys aged 7-12, were trained as “frontline fighters, suicide bombers, car bombers, or guerrilla fighters, referred to as Inghemasi by ISIS.”

The Yazidi (Female) Survivors Bill, passed this March by Iraqi lawmakers, allows the repatriation of the surviving women victimized by ISIS as victims of Genocide and calls for compensation, rehabilitation, and education for the remaining survivors. But Bloom says it intentionally “avoided any discussion (or mention) of the children born to Yazidi women (forcibly) impregnated by ISIS fighters.” Virtually every Yazidi girl, ages 9 to 17, was “raped and many suffered from permanent physical damage” with many unable to bear children in the future. This, Bloom says, further proves that “wartime gender-based violence is intended to break the women’s spirit.”

The Yazidi Supreme Council’s decision to reject ISIS offspring born to the Yazidi women because of sexual violence is a point of contention for Bloom who feels the women will be separated from their children and that the “children should not have to pay the price.”

Who Are The Yazidis?

“The Yazidi are an ethno-religious group, a numeric minority community living predominantly in Iraq,” explains Ochab. 

The religious minorities in Iraq who call themselves Yazidi–which means “the servant of the creator” are concentrated in northern Iraq and are indigenous to the Kurdish regions. They emerged in the 12th-century by Sheikh Adi, who establishing his Adawiyya order, introduced his doctrines to the Kurdish population. Technically, as ethnic Kurds, the Yazidi speak the Kurmanji Kurdish dialect and practice a religion that predates Christianity and Islam but has elements of Christianity, Sufism, and Islam religions—with pre-Islamic mythology, symbols and traditions. Their belief in Tawûsê Melek (Peacock Angel) as an emanation of God entrusted to take care of the world, considers the Peacock Angel not a source of evil (as ISIS implies) but a leader of the archangels–not fallen or disgraced.

It is this story of a fallen angel as a worship figure that has led to the more than a century-long persecution of the Yazidi since in both Christianity and Islam the “devil” is presented as a fallen angel. ISIS used this perception to justify their brutalities against the Yazidi.

The Plight of the Missing Yazidi Women And Children

The exact number of the Yazidi killed by the ISIS is still unknown. Mass graves continue to be discovered. Nearly 300,000 Yazidi now live in refugee camps.

“We have done various advocacy to shed more light on the Yazidi situation, recognize the nature of the atrocities of Daesh, and ensure justice. With several such efforts, the missing women and children continue to be neglected in any domestic or international actions on the situation,” says Ochab. “We want to ensure that we find them. No negotiation here.”

With the world’s short attention span on various atrocities, the Yazidi story is now forgotten, says Ochab. But for the “women and children still enslaved–it is not over,” she says, hoping that the lesson learned is “to not ignore early warning signs of such atrocity crimes.” But she also admits that since the world has learned nothing over the last seven years, it’s critical to talk about similar atrocities “whether cases of genocide, or where sex slavery is used against women and children.”

 “The Yazidis are no strangers to marginalization and oppression. The community has been subjected to dozens of genocides throughout its history. ISIS is the most recent manifestation of targeted ethnic cleansing and systemic subjugation,” says Shamdeen. “Yazidis are peaceful people who want nothing more than the chance to thrive in life. Their history has forced the community to live in constant survival mode. It is the goal of Nadia’s Initiative to empower Yazidis not just to survive, but to thrive. This is a chance that all peoples across the world deserve. Yet too many are deprived of their basic human rights and resources needed to pursue a better life.”