Ten Years After the Yezidi Genocide, Yezidi Women Are Still Fighting for Justice

Yezidis are a small, insular, ethno-religious minority community from the Middle East. Our ancient religion is not associated with Islam, Christianity, or Judaism, and we have been subjected to persecution and violence over many centuries. Still, somehow, we have endured.

In August 2014, ISIS launched a genocidal campaign against the Yezidis. Atrocities by Islamic extremists were nothing new to us, but the scale and systematic nature of ISIS’s crimes were staggering. But what shocked me the most was the dithering and inaction of the international community. In August, I personally interacted with European officials, and one leading official told me that action would not be taken because authorities could not formally declare whether genocide was taking place. 

I was dumbfounded that the European response to the mass execution of Yezidi men and enslavement and systematic rape of Yezidi women was to consider studies to determine whether genocide was occurring rather than to intervene and protect the innocent. It was one of the darkest months in our community’s history, and in that time of horror, I created the Free Yezidi Foundation (FYF). 

I was then a law student in the Netherlands, a country with a strong tradition of attaching value to the rule of law and human rights, partly due to the aftermath of World War II. I grew up mostly in the Netherlands, and I am proud to share this worldview.

In the days after the ISIS attack, many of our people were stranded on Mount Sinjar in Iraq without food or water, surrounded by ISIS militants seeking to kill them. Many died. Eventually,  U.S. military forces attacked locations held by ISIS, and Syrian Kurdish forces, known as the  YPG, forged a pathway for those Yezidis to escape. 

I wanted to see our people escape the stranglehold on the mountain and for those kidnapped to be free from ISIS captivity. This is why I named my organization the Free Yezidi Foundation. In our community, we assess the Yezidi Genocide perpetrated by ISIS as the 74th such attack against our people. But this time, we raised our voice to the world, and we were finally heard.

When I arrived in Iraq in those early months, I spent time with Yezidi survivors who managed to escape after days, weeks, or months in ISIS captivity. Their stories were harrowing; see here and here. I had initially hoped to raise funds in Europe to bring some relief to survivors and their families. But when I saw the magnitude of the devastation, I knew that years of work lay ahead. I estimated that we would need at least ten years to help the community rebuild. Now, a decade later, so much remains to be done. 

FYF has several strategic priorities. The most agonizing issue for the Yezidi community today is the fate of the missing. ISIS abducted approximately 6,500 Yezidis in August 2014. Their methodology was planned and codified. They checked young boys for hair under their arms —and if they had any, they were executed alongside the men and dumped into mass graves. Women were divided by age. Those deemed too elderly to be sold into sexual slavery were also executed. The rest—women and children—were put on buses and driven deeper into ISIS territory. The women were gifted to ISIS fighters or sold as property through a codified enslavement system. Many Yezidi children were forced into ISIS’s “Cubs of the Caliphate” program or trained as child soldiers.

Yezidis were frantic to bring back the many abducted, and in the first couple of years, about half of those abducted were rescued or managed to escape. Yet more than 2,600 remain missing or unaccounted for. Their families remain trapped in a horrifying limbo, unsure if their loved ones are alive, enslaved in Syria, Turkey, or Iraq, or if they were killed. Each time a Yezidi is rescued, families cling to the hope that this is their missing relative, and invariably, most are disappointed.

We do everything possible to locate and bring home the missing — whether from the Al-Hol detention camp in Syria, captivity in Turkey, or elsewhere. But it is grim, heartbreaking work. Despite our pleas, there has been no international mechanism dedicated to rescuing missing Yezidis.

The absence of justice and accountability is another glaring failure.

Although a handful of ISIS members have been prosecuted in Europe for their crimes against Yezidis, unfortunately, the vast majority have escaped justice. FYF and others have called for a Nuremberg-style tribunal where ISIS leaders would be formally held accountable for the horrors they have inflicted upon our people, but to no avail. Still, we have seen glimmers of hope. 

Last fall, I provided expert witness testimony in Sweden’s first-ever genocide case, resulting in the conviction of a female ISIS member for her role in the Yezidi Genocide. We continue working with law enforcement and prosecution offices around the world to advance justice for Yezidis. But the fact remains: most ISIS criminals have gotten away with their crimes.

Due to entrenched and ongoing discrimination against our community, we are plagued by a lack of educational and economic opportunities. At FYF, we work on this at the local level. 

Yezidis in one town came to me and suggested that FYF open a bakery because a local bakery funded by Canadian donors was managed by non-Yezidis, and the business refused to eat products made by Yezidi hands. In response, FYF opened the Sugar is Sweet bakery training center, which provides Yezidi-made products by and for our community. The bakery has recently begun to sell its products to non-Yezidis in Duhok and Erbil. FYF has also trained dozens of Yezidi women to make stuffed animals, such as the FYF Chonky Animal line, which we market in Iraq and abroad. In this way, we challenge the discrimination against our people and provide economic empowerment to members of our community.

Finally, we want fair treatment in Iraq. The government’s annual budget is $153 billion, yet little of the country’s wealth reaches our community. Yezidis are politically disempowered and marginalized, so it is extremely difficult for us to pressure Baghdad to allocate resources for our community’s recovery. FYF and other civil society organizations and activists request our allies around the world — in Washington and elsewhere — to pressure Baghdad to be more equitable with its resources. In 2023, FYF campaigned for 1 percent of the Iraqi budget — just for one year — to be allocated to reconstruct the Yezidi city of Sinjar. Even this modest request has gone unmet. 

Yezidis are the original inhabitants of this land. No community has suffered more. And yet, we remain at the margins, forced to fight for even the smallest fraction of resources. Ten years after the Yezidi Genocide, the fight for justice, recovery, and dignity is far from over.