ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani facilitated the transfer of more than 1,100 Yazidi women and girls who survived persecution by the Islamic State (ISIS) to Germany for psychological treatment, a conference on combating sexual violence held in the northern Duhok province of the Region revealed.
President Barzani, who was serving as regional prime minister at the time in 2014, spearheaded a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) decision “to send 1,100 Yazidi women and girls to Germany to receive psychological treatment,” said Dawood Sulaiman Atroushi, President of the University of Duhok (UOD), during a speech he delivered at an event marking the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict.
The conference, organized by the Gender Equality Research Center and the High Council of Women and Development (HCWD), both operating under the KRG, discussed the long-term impacts of sexual violence committed during conflict and the continuing needs of Yazidi survivors more than a decade after the ISIS assault on Shingal (Sinjar).
In June 2014, ISIS seized large parts of northern and western Iraq. By August, the group launched a brutal campaign against the Yazidi community in Shingal, killing an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 Yazidi men and older women, and abducting 6,000 to 7,000 women and girls for sexual slavery and human trafficking.
The United Nations officially recognized the campaign against the Yazidis as a genocide.
Atroushi explained on Wednesday that the broader need for support for Yazidi survivors led to the establishment of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Psychotraumatology (IPP) at the UOD, in cooperation with the KRG.
“More than 10 years have passed since the genocide committed by ISIS against the Yazidi community and other components. Despite efforts to rescue the victims, a large number of them still live in difficult psychological, social, and economic conditions,” he said.
President Barzani in October 2014 established the Office for the Rescue of Abducted Yazidis, which operates directly under his office.
“As of May, 3,595 abducted Yazidis have been rescued, while around 2,500 remain missing,” Hussein Qaidi, head of the Office, told Rudaw on Wednesday.
For her part, Khanzad Ahmed, secretary-general of the HCWD, noted that under the Kurdish president’s pledge, “We have made the decision to continue until the rescue and determination of the fate of the very last abductee.”
