2019 Aurora Prize awarded to Yezidi activist Mirza Dinnayi

ERBIL, Kurdistan region—The fourth annual Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity was awarded to Mirza Dinnayi in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on October 19, 2019. Dinnayi is the Co-Founder and Director of Luftbrücke Irak (Air Bridge Iraq), an organization committed to helping survivors of ISIS atrocities. 

Granted by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Dinnayi “embodies the power of compassion, of personal commitment and a burning desire to save lives,” according to Vartan Gregorian, co-founder of the Aurora Prize and member of the selection committee. 

The Yezidi activist, who fled to Germany in 1994, has become a prominent figure in the community, aiding survivors of the genocide started in August 2014 and spearheading a program to bring survivors, including Sakharov Prize recipient Lamiya Bashar, to Germany. He also worked as an adviser to Iraqi Former President Jalal Talabani on minority rights, and met the first group of Yezidi survivors to escape ISIS. 

As the 2019 Aurora Prize Laureate, Dinnayi will receive a $1,000,000 grant which he has donated to charity. The beneficiaries of this year’s prize money, Luftbrucke Irak, SEED Foundation and the Shai Fund all work with survivors of the genocide, in which more than 6,000 were kidnapped and 300,000 displaced. 

Working on behalf of the Yezidi community, Mirza Dinnayi has dedicated his whole life to saving Iraqi victims of terror, evacuating women and children from territories controlled by ISIS and providing those tortured and violated with rehabilitation and support.

Tom Catena, Aurora Humanitarian Initiative Chair and 2017 Aurora Prize Laureate, praised Dinnayi as an “outstanding human being” who never wavered while facing “an unspeakable evil.” Injured in a helicopter crash while delivering aid to Yezidis stranded on Mount Sinjar in August 2014, the incident catalyzed his desire to aid his community.

 In an article published by The Independent in August 2019, Dinnayi lamented the lack of domestic support available for female survivors, especially in terms of mental health. “There is a striking disparity between how local and international communities focus on property assimilating genocide survivors,” he wrote. ‘We must empower survivors of the Yazidi genocide to successfully rebuild themselves and their communities so that their generation is not forgotten and lost.”

Home to a sizeable Yazidi community who are the country’s largest minority group, Dinnayi referenced Armenia’s Yezidi connections in his acceptance speech, and expressed appreciation for the country’s recognition of his people’s plight. He also spoke of the silence surrounding their historic persecution: “As a survivor of the Yezidi genocide, I should tell you 73 genocides have passed and nobody heard." His grandfather escaped fled the Armenian genocide to Iraq. “Three million people were killed at that time. Nobody spoke about that.”

The 2019 Aurora Prize Ceremony was part of the Aurora Forum, held in Armenia on October 14–21, 2019 which convenes leaders and change-makers from across the world to share knowledge, perspective and ideas.