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Iraq
Yezidi women at the exhumation of a mass grave in Shingal on March 15, 2019. Photo: Farid Abdulwahed/AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s Yezidi community remains overlooked by the international community and Erbil and Baghdad authorities six years on from the genocide, Yezidi survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad said in a conference with UN officials on Monday.
“We have repeatedly pleaded to the governments in Erbil and Baghdad, as well as the international community to rebuild our hometown [Shingal],” Murad said. “But after so many years we feel that the international community and governments in Erbil and Baghdad abandoned us.”
In the summer of 2014, Islamic State (ISIS) extremists swept across swathes of Syria and Iraq. In August that year, they attacked the Yezidi homeland of Shingal in Nineveh province, committing genocide against the ethno-religious minority. Hundreds of thousands of Yezidis fled from the militants, but not everyone escaped. More than 1,000 were killed and 6,417 were captured by the militants, with women and children sold into sexual slavery.
Murad criticized the international community for ignoring the Yezidis, reminding them that the international community is helping ISIS reach its “goal” in failing to help survivors.
“We know Iraq is facing economic challenges,” Murad said. “But there are tangible and sustainable actions that can be taken into consideration to help Yezidis.”
“I ask the governments in Erbil and Baghdad to solve the security issues in Sinjar [Shingal], and keep helping the missing Yezidis,” Murad added. “Yezidis deserve support to rebuild, as they cannot wait for another six years to recover.”
As of this month, 3,530 Yezidis have been rescued or escaped ISIS, and 2,887 are still missing, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s office documenting the genocide.
Six years later, the vast majority of Yezidis continue to live in a protracted state of displacement. An array of armed forces, including the Iraqi army, Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi) and PKK-affiliated groups have vied for control of Shingal, and many deem it too unsafe to return home.
"ISIS was responsible for this devastation but the rest of us are responsible for what we did or did not do since we knew about it" human rights lawyer Amal Clooney added on Monday.
Clooney also explained that “no progress” has been made in seeking international justice for the crimes committed against the community, with no state offering to host international trials.
“Survivors tell me that they cannot understand how six years after the genocide, the vast majority of ISIS fighters can simply go on with their lives,” Clooney added.
“Doing nothing is not only wrong, it dangerous because these fighters are not going anywhere and their toxic ideology continues to spread,” she added.
Although Baghdad announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq in December 2017, remnants of the group have returned to their earlier insurgency tactics, ambushing security forces, kidnapping and executing suspected informants, and extorting money from vulnerable rural populations, particularly in the disputed territories.
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