Since 2014, the Yazidi people have made international headlines and attracted the attention of local activists and heads of state alike as the targets of an ethnic cleansing campaign led by the terrorist organization known as Da’esh, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), which will be referred to here as the Islamic State. While horrific violence has been inflicted upon Yazidis as a whole, women, as all too often happens during wartime, have borne the brunt. Victims of sexual violence range from eight-year-old girls to married, pregnant women - those women who are considered too old are killed and buried in mass graves. The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry for Syria found that the Islamic State showed “intent to destroy the Yazidislack, in whole or in part,”, and accordingly characterized the Islamic State’s crimes as acts of genocide.
But who are the Yazidi people? Little is widely known about them besides their current state of suffering. As much as the Yazidi genocide deserves attention - and indeed, for its magnitude, is not covered nearly enough in the media - failing to recognize, address, discuss, or celebrate Yazidi culture contributes to cultural genocide and the further erasure of the Yazidi people. Instrumental in any genocide or concentrated violence towards one ethnic or religious group is the erasure of their identity; in addition to telling the story of the Yazidi’s suffering, we must tell their whole story.
The Yazidi people are a religious minority of the Kurdish people, concentrated in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, and the Caucasus mountains. Depending on the region where the population is located, Yazidi is alternately spelled Azidi, Zedi, Yezidi, Izadi, Ezidi, or Yazdani. Yazidism is more of a religious than an
ethnic minority - the term “Yazdanism”, under which Yazidism falls, was coined by Dr. Merhad Izady as a blanket term for the pre-Abhrahamic religions of Kurdistan. The Yazidi people originated in northern Iraq, stemming from the last remnants of the Umayyad dynasty. There are records of a Yazidi community in what is now Mosul dating back to the twelfth century. Today, Yazidis number between 200,000 and 1,000,000. These staggeringly low numbers of these ancient people are not the result of the genocide carried out by the Islamic State: Yazidis have a long, bloody history characterized by hatred, persecution, and ethnic cleansing. First viewed as rivals for political power by other Muslims in the fifteenth century, then suffering severe casualties through massacres and conversions alike, many Yazidi people fled to Germany in the late twentieth century to escape the bloodbath that had become the Yazidi experience in their ancestral homeland. In more recent history, Saddam Hussein’s regime carried out a mass displacement of Yazidis around the turn of the century: carrying us to the genocide of today.
A central tactic that the Islamic State has utilized against the Yazidi people is dehumanization. Victims have reported being sold into sexual slavery, describing being bought and sold the same way people would buy or sell cars. The Islamic state has granted its members permission to “buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can be disposed of.” Their treatment of their captives reinforces their position of power over them, often transferring them more than ten times in under sixth months, and heightening their victims’ sense of fear and disorientation. Beyond pure sexual violence, this is particularly classified as genocide as they are stripped of their Yazidi identity - Islamic
State fighters marry them in order to “purify” them. These women are almost always forcefully converted to Islam, and Islamic State leaders “elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous”. The Islamic State puts out many of its communications through a publication called Dabiq, and victims have reported that it has been stated in here that if a captured woman is raped by ten different members of the Islamic State, she will become Muslim. As far as lineage goes, it is culturally held by the Islamic State that lineage is passed down through the father which is reiterated in Dabiq, which claims that that “the child of the master [man] has the status of the master”, meaning that if a child is born to a member of the Islamic State and a Yazidi woman, the child will not inherit the Yazidi identity - in this way, a new generation of Yazidis is being prevented from being born.
The magnitude of atrocities committed against Yazidis by the Islamic State is clear. But under what conditions can they be classified as genocide? The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court established in 1998 four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of agression. As per the ICC, “"genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Clearly, each of these acts have been committed against the Yazidi people, specifically, women and girls. In a March 2015 report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the perscution of the Yazidi people by the Islamic State qualified as genocide, and almost exactly one year later, the United States House of Representatives voted unanimously that violent actions performed by ISIL against groups such as Yazidis, Christians, and Shia were acts of genocide. Additionally, former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated shortly after the House of Representatives vote that the violence initiated by ISIL amounted to genocide. The violence has also been strongly condemned by Islamic scholars and Muslim organizations alike.
Since the term “genocide” was first coined in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer, it has been regarded as one of, if not the most atrocious crime possible. What, then, has the international response to the Yazidi genocide been? Iraq, where the majority of atrocities have occurred, has proposed a legislative solution. This draft law called for crimes committed against Yazidis, women in particular, to be classified as genocide, establishes a national day of remembrances, and demarcates processes for reparations. This law, however, has stalled several times in negotiations, with questions of who should be included being hotly debated. It has since been amended to include other minority groups suffering persecution by ISIL as well as children born of rape. In accordance with the bill, the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement has created a relief program for Yazidi female survivors, with a grant allocating roughly 2 million Iraqi dinars (which translates to about $1700 U.S. dollars) to each victim.
The difficulties faced by survivors expands beyond financial and humanitarian. For survivors, a powerful stigma remains. They are often unable to access trauma care, mental health support, or access to justice, either due to stigma or proximity. Nearly all survivors were converted to Islam, raped, or both - making it difficult for them to integrate back into the Yazidi community, regardless of location, as they are now seen as impure. The stigma surrounding survivors escalated until it was necessary for the Head of the Yazidi Supreme Spiritual Council to issue an edict, both welcoming Yazidi women back into their community and acknowledging their suffering at the hands of the Islamic State. However, no such welcome has yet been made for the children conceived out of rape.
Despite these recognitions and reparations, the international community is certainly not doing as much as it could for the Yazidi people. This opinion is shared by Nadia Murad, a Yazidi peacebuilder, activist, and UN Goodwill Ambassador. Murad launched the Murad Code in partnership with the United Kingdom, which is a protocol for collecting information from survivors on conflict-related sexual violence. Though this was undoubtedly a triumph, Murad has insisted that, considering that thousands of Yazidi women and girls still face sexual violence daily, a larger effort is necessay. Specifically, she has “called for a collaborative grass roots approach with international organizations, the United Nations, and governments working closely with local non-governmental groups to develop contextually specific approaches”, as well as the rebuilding of the Yazidi homeland, Mount Sinjar.
Ultimately, it is up to both Iraq and the international community to provide better recognition, reparations, and support for the Yazidi community, particularly Yazidi women and girls. One can only hope that apart from simply attempting to repair the horiffic damage done to the Yazidi community, it will be addressed at the root and the Yazidi genocide will be stopped before its final goal is reached.