A year on from Iraq’s Yazidi Survivors Law, nothing has changed for those who return

KHANKE, Kurdistan Region - A little under two months ago, from her home in the village of Khanke in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, Khansa Khder Khadida received a phone call informing her of the discovery of her eldest grandchild, 18-year-old Roza Ameen Barakat, by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the Syrian town of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border. On February 16, after returning to her hometown of Shingal the previous day, Roza was reunited with her two sisters, youngest brother and grandmother for the first time in almost eight years.

Among the most irredeemably grotesque acts of the Islamic State (ISIS) was its attack upon the Yazidi homeland of Shingal, northern Iraq, on August 3, 2014, setting into the motion the killing of thousands, and capture of thousands more, as it irreparably fractured the religious minority’s community. Over seven years later, thousands of Yazidis remain unaccounted for and there is little provision for survivors who live in Iraq, existing below the poverty line despite warm words.

Mostly women and young children, over 6,417 Yazidis were kidnapped, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. In recent years, some have been found in Turkey, Yemen, and even Halabja, and hundreds more have returned to ruptured families as a result of uncomfortable bribes and people smuggling operations, chiefly in Syria.
 
In 2022, the fate of almost 3,000 of the abducted is unknown.
 
Figures issued by the same office, approved by the United Nations, put the number of those left in the hands of ISIS at 2,763: 1,293 women and girls, and 1,470 boys and men; many of whom were children at the time of capture.
 
Until last month, Roza was among the missing.

Just over a week later, dressed in jeans and silver jewellery, she pushes open the gate outside the stone building she lives in, ushering a curious journalist into the courtyard. Her grandmother - clothed in a traditional white dress and headscarf, with a black sweater and cardigan for warmth - brings tea.
 
In this outhouse of survivors, Khansa looks after four of her grandchildren: Roza and three siblings; a brother, 11, and two sisters aged 14 and 16. Almost immediately, as she introduces the family, Khansa explains how the youngest sister spent ten months in ISIS captivity, and the middle child was held for just under four years. Listening, the three young women touch each other gently as they settle onto doshaks (mattresses) in a bare stone room.

The following day, under the tree in the courtyard, a relative recounts a story of how, heavily pregnant, Khansa once stood in front of US military tanks on the outskirts of Mosul in 2003, requesting access to the city to give birth. She is a tough woman. The youngest daughter she birthed after the tanks passed is now one of the missing.

Of Roza’s family of 14, seven are still unaccounted for. The children haven’t seen their mother, Hazu Murad, and father since August 2014, and they long to know their fate. A further three sisters remain in captivity, along with an older 13-year old brother. Nobody knows where they might be, so nobody can actively search for them.

The youngest child was released from Mosul only after his extended family paid $9,000 to a smuggler three years ago as the so-called caliphate fell. He sits politely, engrossed in playing a Lego game on a borrowed smartphone. None of the rescued have yet received support. 

“Just imagine that someone has to buy their children,” Roza says, describing how relatives and friends contributed to securing his freedom. They have received nothing to date from the Kurdistan Region’s Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis, affiliated to Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani, nor as a result of last year’s groundbreaking Yazidi Survivors Law, passed by the Iraqi parliament on March 1, 2021.

Around 200,000 displaced Yazidis live in the Kurdistan Region, and there is rampant confusion as to what the law might mean for their community; so far, it has not been implemented, so reparations and support have not been delivered.

The Yazidi [Female] Survivors Law
 
The legislation formally recognises that genocide was committed against the Yazidi, Turkmen, Christian, and Shabak communities by ISIS, promising a number of reparation measures, including financial, medical, and psychological support, the provision of land, housing, education, and a two percent quota in public sector employment to women survivors, Yazidi children abducted and released, and members of these four communities - both women and men - who survived mass killings.
 
Under the auspices of Iraq’s ministry of labour and social affairs, the General Directorate of Yazidi Female Survivors' Affairs was established, headed by Sarab Alias, with an office opened in Mosul in August 2021 in a ceremony attended by survivors, and Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

The directorate has responsibility for providing support and searching for the missing; the first in the list of survivors’ priorities. Under Article 3, it may open branches in locations with high numbers of survivors; a Shingal branch is planned, as well one in Duhok and Tal Afar. Many survivors were not happy with the headquarters being based in Mosul; the location where many women had been held captive and sold into slavery.

Among the Yazidi community, there is understandably little faith in the system, compounded by fake information circulating on social media. As time passes, trust wanes.

There is still no application process, but there are hopes for an online portal, allowing survivors to directly seek the support the law promises in as burdenless a way as possible. Monthly salaries will be provided, it says, no “less than twice the minimum pension salary stipulated in the Unified Pension Law No. 9 of 2014 and its amendments.” The law itself is yet to be costed. An alliance of 31 Iraqi civil society organisations, the Coalition for Just Reparations (C4JR) are pushing a survivor-centred approach to implementing the law. 

It also needs the funding to function. “Apart from the preliminary emergency funding allocated in 2021, no financial means have, as of yet, been envisaged to support sustainable and thorough implementation of the law in 2022,” they say.
 
With political chaos continuing in Baghdad, and a new government still to be formed following Iraq’s October election, the Iraqi Federal Budget for 2022 has been kicked down the road meaning there is nothing for survivors to access.
 
Head of Program for Rights and Justice at Jiyan Foundation for Human Rights, Bojan Gavrilovic, explained to Rudaw English that a renewed commitment from political stakeholders and the international community is necessary to deliver on the law's promises.
 
“Let us not forget that delayed and ineffective implementation of the Yazidi Law prolongs the agony of survivors, many of whom still linger in IDP camps or live under the poverty line, traumatised, without access to services and recognition,” he said.

Reflecting on the anniversary of the law’s passage, barely a week after Roza’s arrival in Khanke, the Kurdistan Region’s SEED Foundation called upon the Iraqi government to act on its obligations to survivors and to ensure the allocation of sufficient funding in the budget. But while the KRG is not mandated to contribute to funding the law, it can provide information to the committee tasked with processing claims (Article 10 of the Survivors Law). 

Roza's story

Half a dozen children from Khanke’s sprawling camp, just down the hill, run around the courtyard, occasionally peering through the door. Birds chirp, a cockerel cries, electricity flickers.
 
Speaking in a mix of Arabic and Kurmanji, Roza begins to explain how she was abducted in August 2014, aged just 11. She lived at first with an ISIS family from Tal Afar who treated her terribly. After attempts to escape, she was moved to Raqqa; the de facto capital of the caliphate.
 
As the years passed and the coalition bore down on ISIS, Roza found herself in Baghouz, where she endured heavy bombing and limited information about what was happening in the outside world. Her foot and back were injured in two airstrikes. The ISIS fighter she had been forced into marriage with was killed.

Following his death, and before the liberation of ISIS’ last-stand in March 2019, she says she was smuggled out of Baghouz by a Lebanese family. The majority of her next three years were spent in Deir ez-Zor, as well as a period in Idlib. 
 
From there, towards the end of 2021, Roza attempted to reach the town of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border when the SDF set in motion the process of her return to Iraq last month.
Distant relatives - neighbours, visitors - frequently sit next to us as we talk, stunting Roza’s flow and subtly changing the depth of conversation. Later, Roza notes the date - December 24  - that she was brought to a Yazidi safe house in Hasaka. From now on, she says, she will mark her birthday on this day. 
 
While it has been good to return to her community, her happiness is not complete. “Many of my Yazidi friends and relatives remain in captivity.”
 
Roza is calm and strong. She doesn’t want to think about the things she experienced, she says. She thought about the past when she was in Syria; now she is in Iraq, it must be forgotten.

Contemplating the future 
 
Asked about the future, she says she wants to complete her studies. It would be nice to make friends, and she audibly contemplates what it might be like to return to school like her sisters, and how much effort it will take to register to attend. 
 
If she can, she would like to be a psychiatrist. Along with her siblings, Roza has not received any psychological support herself.
  
There’s shattered faith in what one naively assumes might have been provided by the international community, federal government, or Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
 
“If they wanted to help us, they would have helped us before,” Roza says. “Since returning, I have not received any support, but maybe this will change in the future.” 

Farhad Ali, 24, also from Shingal, agrees. If there was genuine support for these survivors, he told Rudaw English, assistance would be available already and immediately. In an effort to help his community, Farhad founded an NGO, Progress in Peace. Unsurprisingly, they do not receive government funding of any kind, relying solely on donations.

Roza continues. The main thing she says her community wants is the release of the thousands of others in captivity. “Still there are so many Yazidi women suffering from persecution at the hands of ISIS.”

“The other thing that is so difficult for us is our financial situation,” Roza says, stressing the point throughout the conversation, lamenting the limited income opportunities for her household. “It is so bad, we are a house of women and an eleven-year-old boy.”

The family have little savings, and will be unable to live without support for much longer, Khansa frets. The rent for the bare, ramshackle building is $100 a month, not including water and limited electricity; a cost covered by a distant taxi-driving uncle. With no men in the home, there is no income, and it is difficult to live without the support of Roza’s father, Amin Barakat. “We need financial support, and someone to tell us they are with us,” she says; something her family have asked for many times.
 
Later, in a corrugated shed structure in nearby Khanke camp, home to around 20,000 Yazidis, a neighbour of Roza’s family from their time in Shingal explains how hard the situation is for the matriarch of the family. Avoiding the need to ask directly, the women estimate that she is at least in her late 60s.
 
“She [Khansa] only had one son, Roza’s father. Now he is gone, there is no one to support her, and she has all of these grandchildren.”
 
Outside, as the sun sets overlooking the Tigris river, children dressed in tatty clothing run around, keen to try out their English. For Rondik, 8, Khanke camp is the only home she can remember. Slightly older, her cousin, Shahira, asks questions about countries she wants to visit.
 
The great narrative of Yazidi suffering is essentially just this; children, teenagers, young adults across Iraq with stunted lives, wondering who they are and how to pick up the pieces.
 
As the conversation with Roza closes, a group of distant, desperate relatives and neighbours from the days of her Shingal childhood arrive at the house to ask about their own missing relatives; some have returned to Shingal, others live in Duhok and nearby camps. They hope that during her time in Raqqa, Baghouz, Deir ez-Zor and Idlib, she may have seen a glimpse of someone; a lead on their whereabouts, perhaps, or confirmation of a final moment. 
 
The chances of this seem slim. Earlier, Roza said she hadn’t seen another Yazidi woman since she left Baghouz just over three years ago. Yet even in this futile attempt, in this one moment, an eighteen-year-old woman is perhaps doing more to help find Yazidis than entire governments.
 
In passing the Yazidi Survivors Law in 2021, Iraqi decision-makers laid the groundwork for a bearable future for a broken and traumatised community. Until it is implemented, however, for the thousands of missing Yazidis yet to return, and young women like Roza and her siblings, there is little to come back to.