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Josefine Paul, North Rhine-Westphalia State Minister for Children, Youth, Family, Equality, Asylum, and Integration, speaking to Rudaw on December 22, 2023. Photo: Rudaw/Screengrab
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia state has decided to suspend deportations of Yazidi women and children for three months as a stopgap measure, but a state minister told Rudaw that passage of a federal law is necessary to ensure Yazidis stay in the country.
Josefine Paul, North Rhine-Westphalia State Minister for Children, Youth, Family, Equality, Asylum, and Integration, in an interview on Friday with Rudaw's Zinar Shino, explained that they are doing what they can, but the ultimate power to guarantee the safety of members of the minority group in Germany lies with the federal government.
"I say it once again, our region's powers are limited and the maximum we could do is suspend deportations for a total of six months. What is necessary now is for their stay to be guaranteed according to law on the federal level," Paul said.
North Rhine-Westphalia is the only German state to impose a formal ban on deportations for members of the Yazidi minority. Individual states can decide to call a halt to deportations for three months, which can then be extended.
“We have reached out to the federal government to explain to them that we need a united solution on a federal level for this community. We understand what our responsibilities are towards them in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, and therefore we have stopped the decision to deport them,” Paul added.
In January, the German parliament recognized the Islamic State’s (ISIS) crimes against the Yazidi community as “genocide,” but the government has been stepping up efforts to send back asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected.
A recent investigation by German media found that Berlin has secretly struck a deportation deal with Baghdad and removals to Iraq have sharply increased in recent months.
In October, hundreds of Yazidis protested for days outside the Bundestag (Germany’s federal parliament) and other German government buildings against threatened deportations, with many going on hunger strikes.
The largest Yazidi diaspora community in the world is found in Germany where over 200,000 members of the ethnoreligious group live. ISIS attacked the Yazidi heartland of Shingal (Sinjar) in northern Iraq’s Nineveh province in the summer of 2014, killing and kidnapping thousands of Yazidis, with the fate of a large number of them still unclear years after the group’s military defeat.
More than 6,000 Yazidis were kidnapped when ISIS attacked Shingal, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. Over 2,000 remain missing.
A spokesperson from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior told Rudaw in August that Germany had rejected the cases of 31,000 Iraqi asylum seekers in recent years. They have been notified to leave the country.
A total of 256 Iraqis have been deported - 43 to Iraq and the rest to other countries - according to the ministry.
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