“The number of Yazidis living in the camps of the Kurdistan Region is over 280,000, and the number of displaced persons living outside the camps is unknown,” Khayri Bozani, advisor to President Nechirvan Barzani and former head of Yazidi affairs at the Kurdistan Region’s endowment ministry, told Rudaw.
Bozani added that over 5,000 Yazidis were killed by ISIS as the terror group swept through Iraq in 2014.
There are 15 camps for refugees and IDPs across the Kurdistan Region’s provinces - six in Erbil, four in Sulaimani, and five in Duhok. Together, they host over 650,000 people, according to statistics from the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Joint Crisis Coordination Center.
“Those who have immigrated abroad have moved to countries such as the US, Canada, and European countries. Germany has the lion’s share of Yazidi immigrants,” Bozani said.
In December 2022, Iraqi Minister of Migration and Displaced Evan Faeq Jabro said that the Iraqi government would close all IDP camps in Iraq within six months, but the issue remains to be addressed.
Many IDPs are reluctant to return home because of continuing violence in their hometowns, a lack of reconstruction following the destruction of their homes, and little in the way of basic services. Some who voluntarily left the camps to salvage their homes and livelihoods have been forced to return back to the camps, unable to piece together the basics.
Chief of Iraq’s most vulnerable communities is the Yazidis, who were subjected to countless heinous atrocities, including forced marriages, sexual violence, and massacres when ISIS captured their homeland of Sinjar (Shingal) in 2014, bringing destruction to many villages and towns populated by the minority group.
The Yazidis were forced to flee to displacement camps across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), around 80 percent of Sinjar's public infrastructure and 70 percent of civilian homes were destroyed during the years of the ISIS war from 2014 to 2017. Fundamental services such as electricity and water are not consistently available, and numerous health and education facilities are yet to be reconstructed after being destroyed during the war.
