Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

Nadia Murad Receives Spendlove Prize

2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Nadia Murad was honored with the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance during a virtual ceremony on Wednesday. She is the 14th recipient to receive the award since it was first presented at UC Merced's grand opening Sept. 5, 2005

"Growing up in a rural town in Iraq, I never could have imagined award ceremonies like this," Murad said. "But the values of social justice and tolerance that this award recognizes have always been at the center of my life."

Murad, an advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence, recounted the difficulties she and her family endured in Iraq. She explained that her family was poor, but her mother worked hard on her own to provide for Murad and her siblings.

Because her older brothers and sisters worked on the family farm, Murad was able to receive an education. She said she will never forget what they sacrificed for her.

"I was determined to succeed not only in class but also in paying the opportunity forward," she stated. "My family's examples encouraged me to help others in any way I could."Nadia Murad is seen during the Spendlove Prize virtual ceremony on Nov. 3, 2021.

Spendlove Prize recipient Nadia Murad dedicated the award to her family.

In 2014, her village of Kocho and many others in the region of Sinjar came under attack by the Islamic State. ISIS militants undertook a campaign to ethnically cleanse the Yazidi ethno-religious minority in Iraq from existence because of their faith. In her New York Times bestselling memoir "The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State," Murad provides a harrowing account of the genocide against the Yazidis and her imprisonment by ISIS.

Approximately 400,000 Yazidis fled to the neighboring Kurdistan Region, and tens of thousands took refuge on the top of Mount Sinjar, Murad said. They faced starvation and extreme temperatures that claimed many lives.

"The rest of us, unable to flee, were killed or taken captive," Murad said. "More than 6,000 women and children were taken captive by ISIS, and over 2,800 are still missing today, including my nephew, niece and sister-in-law."

Murad always knew she wanted to help people. At a young age, she was passionate about hair and makeup. She dreamed of opening her own salon that would be accessible to women in her community — given that the nearest one was in a city hours away.

"I wanted to use these skills to empower women around me," Murad said. "Hair and makeup were not simply about beauty; it was an excuse to take a break and connect with other women."

A decade later, she admits, her plans have changed. But the goals remain the same. She has been speaking out on behalf of her community ever since escaping captivity.

"I still want to empower Yazidi women and am working to make important services accessible in my homeland," Murad said. "That's why I founded Nadia's Initiative after the Yazidi genocide."

Nadia's Initiative is a nonprofit organization dedicated to rebuilding communities in crisis and advocating for survivors of sexual violence. Its current work is focused on the sustainable redevelopment of the Yazidi homeland in Sinjar and pursuing holistic justice for survivors of ISIS atrocities.

Murad and her team have advocated for legislation that protects and promotes women's rights, as well as drafted and advocated for the passage of resolutions to expand the United Nations' commitments to end sexual violence in conflict. In 2016, she became the first UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. Two years later, Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize with Dr. Denis Mukwege and was appointed as a UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate in 2019.

During Wednesday's virtual ceremony, UC Merced Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Gregg Camfield recognized Murad for bringing about change and formally presented her with the 2021 Spendlove Prize.

The Spendlove Prize is made possible by a generous gift from Merced native Sherrie Spendlove, established in honor of her parents, Alice and Clifford. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Spendlove commended Murad for her work and welcomed her as the newest honoree.

"Nadia, the Spendlove Prize and UC Merced are truly honored to have you join our Spendlove Prize family," Spendlove said. "Your soulful work is important to us all. Your call for international justice for universal accountability for the atrocities that have been committed; Nadia's Initiative to the Murad Code; all those things to facilitate dealing with these terrible traumas are so insightful."

"We are delighted to have Nadia Murad join the growing number of recipients of the Spendlove Prize," School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Dean Jeffrey Gilger said. "Alice and Clifford Spendlove focused their careers on improving the lives of others — something that Nadia is working tirelessly to accomplish as well."

The Spendlove Prize recognizes a renowned scholar, author, artist or citizen who exemplifies, in their work, the delivery of social justice, diplomacy and tolerance in the diverse local and global society. The recipient serves as a role model and inspiration for students, faculty, staff and the community surrounding UC Merced.

Past recipients of the prize include Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, former President Jimmy Carter, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum, attorney and Professor Anita F. Hill, among several other high-profile figures.

The Spendlove Prize Selection Committee is chaired by the dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts and includes a representative from the Spendlove family or a designee, an undergraduate student, graduate student and representatives from the UC Merced community. This year, the award committee is chaired by Gilger and includes Sherrie Spendlove as family representative, Department of Literatures, Languages and Cultures Professor Nigel Hatton as a member of the faculty — who also served as host of the ceremony — and Lee Anderson and Charlie Bennet as community members.

https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2021/nob ... -spendlove

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Survivors await financial support

It was midnight when Vian’s phone rang. A person with a trembling voice on the other end of the line said, “I miss my mum so much!” and then burst into tears

The caller was Salwa Saido, 24, a survivor of the genocide carried out by ISIS. She hails from Tel Qasab village in Sinjar, a district in northwestern Iraq that is the ancestral home of Iraq’s Yazidi community.

Like thousands of Yazidi women and girls, Salwa was captured along with her mother and two siblings following ISIS's attack on Sinjar in August 2014. Although she is now free, after five years in captivity, the fate of her mother, brother and sister is unknown to this day.

Vian Darwish is an Advocacy and Outreach Officer with Yazda, an NGO that advocates for the rights of religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq, including in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and Syria.

The assistance provided to survivors so far has come primarily from humanitarian organisations and the international community, active in areas with a high concentration of internally displaced Yazidis.

The Iraq government has provided one-off financial support to address urgent needs through the Yazidi Survivors’ Grant, and social welfare payments to a limited number of survivors. Yet most remain without this type of support and continue to live in precarious conditions, which only deepens their trauma and vulnerabilities.

In March 2021, the Iraqi parliament passed a “Law on Support to Yazidi Female Survivors,” hailed as a landmark piece of legislation – the first of its kind in Iraq, whereby different acts of sexual violence in conflict are recognised as acts of genocide and put at the centre of legislation.

The law provides for reparations to be paid to the survivors of sexual violence, and several other categories of victims. It includes provisions to address many of their needs through support in areas including physical and mental health, housing, livelihoods, employment and resuming education, among others.

However, challenges to the law’s implementation are numerous, many stemming from the current tense political situation and a lack of budgetary allocations. The Directorate for Survivors Affairs, a body established to implement this law, is seeking resources to launch the application process that individual survivors must go through to benefit.

While waiting for justice and reparations in the aftermath of the genocide, everyday life for survivors is filled with painful memories and a lack of hope.

Link to Article - Photos:

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/ ... eparations

This photo gallery was provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

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Yazidi survivor seeks mother’s body

KHANKE CAMP, Kurdistan Region - A 22 year-old woman captured by Islamic State (ISIS) when she was fifteen, held for seven years and not freed from her captor until earlier this year has called on the German government to allow her to enter the country in order to say goodbye to her mother’s body, after she died of a stroke on Sunday

Sipan Khalil has endured an unbearable seven-year nightmare after being abducted by ISIS in August 2014, as the group launched their ethno-religious genocidal campaign against the Yazidis in the Sinjar region of Iraq. In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and 6,417 people were abducted. All twelve members of Sipan’s family were taken by ISIS militants, and the family was forced apart.

This summer, after her release from captivity, Sipan described the conditions she was forced to bear. “There was food deprivation and torture. We used to be locked in rooms and beaten up. Our condition was similar to that of the dead. There was no life at all, as if we were dead,” she told Rudaw.

Even as the caliphate collapsed, as ISIS was defeated in their last Syrian stronghold of Baghouz, Sipan’s captor continued to hold her hostage, forcing her to travel with him to the nearby town of Hajin, Deir ez-Zor province, and then to Daraa in southern Syria.

Three months ago, he tried to take Sipan across the border to Lebanon, but he was killed during the journey. After his death, Sipan was able to escape.

Sipan’s release from her ordeal was bittersweet, as she reunited with other relatives in August this year at Khanke Camp, where she now lives. Her father and brother are still unaccounted for, and her mother and four siblings managed to escape as ISIS lost ground, moving to Germany upon their release.

Sipan therefore has not seen her mother physically since the awful events of August 2014. On Sunday November 7, Sipan’s mother died of a stroke in Germany. She has not yet been buried, and Sipan is now urgently trying to secure a visa to the country in order to say goodbye to her body.

“I have been under the hands of ISIS for seven years now, suffering in my country even after being rescued”, Sipan told Rudaw on Tuesday. “I have requested access to see my mother for months. With my mother now deceased, I still am unable to see her. Just seeing her once again would have been enough for me.”

Sipan has attempted to obtain a German visa in Erbil several times to no avail, and is calling on authorities in charge to “have mercy in their hearts and help me to see my mother’s body.”

To date, the Duhok Institute of Psychotherapy and Psychotraumatology has sent over 1,000 rescued Yazidi women and children to Germany, but the German project has now come to an end.

Dr Memo Farhan, acting Dean of the Institute, has advised Sipan to contact the Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis, which is linked to the Kurdistan Region’s presidency. “They can prepare the paperwork and officially ask the [German] consulate to issue her a visa, explaining her situation and that she just wants to see her mother's body”, Farhan told Rudaw.

Over 120,000 Yazidis have left Iraq since the war against ISIS, according to the Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. Of the 6,417 people abducted by ISIS, only 3,550 have been returned to their families.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/11112021

[Anthea]

Thousands at Belarus-Poland border

Thousands of citizens of Iraq, including Yazidis, are stuck at the Belarus-Poland border, hoping to enter the European Union. Instability resulting from the conflict with the Islamic State and the Syrian civil war as well as poor economic prospects are compelling people to make the risky journey

Iraqi citizens began traveling to Belarus in eastern Europe last summer. The former Soviet republic is not in the European Union, but borders EU members Poland and Lithuania. Belarus is allowing migrants from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere to venture to Poland from Belarusian territory, but Poland is denying them entry. The EU is accusing Belarus of using the migrants as punishment for EU sanctions on the Belarusian government, a charge Belarus denies. There are also reports of Belarusian troops facilitating entry and even forcing the migrants across the border.

Many of those stuck at the border are Yazidis, a group long persecuted for its religious beliefs. Arshad Hassan is from the predominantly Yazidi region of Sinjar, also called Shingal, in Kurdistan. In 2014, the Islamic State attacked Sinjar, killing and enslaving thousands of Yazidis.

Sinjar was liberated in 2015 by the KRG’s Peshmerga forces. Many Yazidis have still not returned, however, and continue to live in displacement camps in the Kurdistan. Much of the city still has not been rebuilt. Hassan said Sinjar is uninhabitable.

“The situation in Shingal is not stable because of the destruction from the war. And there’s no security because of many illegal armed groups,” Hassan told Al-Monitor via Facebook Messenger.

A variety of armed groups operate in Sinjar, including the predominantly Shiite Popular Mobilization Units and the Kurdistan Workers Party.

Hassan is particularly concerned about the recent repatriation of Islamic State-affiliated families from prison camps to Iraq’s Nineveh province, where Sinjar is also located. “The return of Daesh families from Syria to camps in Nineveh is a major worry for us,” he said

Hassan described electricity and water services in Sinjar as “among the worst possible.” There are also few work opportunities in the camps, and he said he made only $7 a day working in a car repair shop.

“I worked to lift my family out of poverty, but unfortunately I did not succeed,” he said.

The British nongovernmental organization Human Relief Foundation found rampant poverty in Sinjar during a June assessment in the city.

Hassan flew to Istanbul in late October, then to the Belarusian capital Minsk and reached the border in early November. He planned to find work in Europe and send money back to his wife and children. But the conditions he found at the Belarus-Poland border are deadly.

“I haven’t eaten in three days,” he said on Nov. 11 and claimed that two children died that day. Al-Monitor was unable to independently confirm their deaths.

“Either Poland opens the border or we’ll all die of the cold,” he said.

Videos and photos he sent to Al-Monitor show hundreds of people in winter clothing living in tents and makeshift shelters and gathering around fires to keep warm. Barbed wire surrounds the makeshift encampment.

Iraq is relatively safer now than in the chaotic days following the 2003 US-led invasion. ISIS has been (temporally) defeated territorially but still carries out attacks and the Yazidi community is still living with what happened in 2014.

“The Yazidi community lost trust in everything due to genocide. That trust was not restored,” Murad Ismael, a Yazidi activist who founded the Sinjar Academy, told Al-Monitor. “People aren’t able to go home; they’ve been living in small tents for years. There’s a lack of economic opportunities and hope.”

In addition to Yazidis, thousands of Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Christians, Turkmens and Muslims were persecuted by the Islamic State. Calls for an international tribunal to try IS members have not yet yielded results.

There are also people of other ethnicities and faiths from Kurdistan at the border. The autonomous part of northern Iraq is relatively stable and safe, and the US military has a presence in the capital Erbil. However, some are dissatisfied with the KRG’s governance and protests against poor water and electricity services are common.

Many of the region's residents have left due to poor job prospects, particularly in rural areas where there has been little development. Other migrants are angry at the rule of the two largest parties in the region: the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, according to opposition media outlets. Corruption is also common in both federal Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.

The KRG has responded to the reports of its constituents fleeing to Belarus.

“This global crisis should not be used as a political tool against the KRG,” spokesperson Jotiar Adil said in a statement sent to Al-Monitor. “We assure our citizens that our government has been working to resolve salary shortages, improve the delivery of public services, and implement its reforms.”

Adil attributed the emigration to security issues in the surrounding area and the global economic downturn. He told the Kurdish news outlet Rudaw on Nov. 11 that 8,000 people from the Kurdistan Region were at the Belarus-Poland border. People from Yemen, Afghanistan and other countries are also there, also with an extra 3,000 Polish troops sent in this week.

The Iraqi Embassy in Moscow said Nov. 11 that it would organize an evacuation flight for citizens who want to leave Belarus.

People from northeast Syria are also among those seeking to reach the EU via Belarus. Boushra, who declined to give her full name, is from Amude, Syria, where she worked for an international humanitarian organization. After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, she feared the United States would similarly remove its forces from Western Kurdistan.

“There’s big concern for people in the Middle East about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Kurds only have one alliance,” she told Al-Monitor via WhatsApp.

The US military supports the Syrian Democratic Forces in Western Kurdistan in their continued fight against ISIS. The SDF is led by the Kurdish armed group the People’s Protection Units (YPG). In 2019, the Trump administration repositioned US forces in the region and Turkey attacked SDF territory.

Turkey is threatening to invade again, as it regards the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a separatist group that fights for greater rights for Turkey’s Kurds and is considered a terrorist organization by the Turkish and American governments.

The Syrian government also sent forces to help the SDF fight Turkey in 2019. Boushra’s former employer — like many local and international organizations — is not registered with the Syrian government and her work is therefore not legal.

Boushra expects Turkey to attack again and the Syrian government to take over Western Kurdistan.

“The threat to Kurds is still there. They know there is oil in Western Kurdistan,” she said. “Maybe not this year, but in the coming years, Syria will take it.”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly vowed to recapture all Syrian territory. His forces now control most of the country.

Boushra searched for scholarships, but determined the only feasible way to get out of Syria was illegally. She heard Belarus was a faster option than Turkey or Greece and flew from Damascus to Erbil in September and on to Dubai and Minsk. She made part of the journey to the border on foot, walking for several hours.

The first time she and a small group walked into Poland through the woods, Polish border forces sent them back to Belarus. They were successful the second time, walking six days to a rendezvous point in Poland, where a friend of one of her companions picked them up by car.

“It was the first adventure for me. In Syria, I never went out in the dark at all,” she said. “I overcame my fears.”

The group did not have internet access but was aided by one asylum-seeker’s family back in Iraq via phone. “A friend realized they could use their Iraqi SIM card. The family transferred credit. They directed us via SMS,” she said. Some of the migrants use power banks to charge their phones, but many are unable to communicate with the outside world.

Boushra reached Germany in October and applied for asylum.

In addition to push factors, there are pull factors bringing people in the Middle East to Europe. Many EU states have strong social welfare programs and Germany allows family reunification for individuals who are granted asylum.

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/20 ... and-border

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Singer Dua Lipa meets

Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad

DUBAI: British pop star Dua Lipa has taken to Instagram to share a photograph of her meeting with Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad, a survivor of sexual violence inflicted by Daesh members who kidnapped her from her home in Iraq in 2014

Dualipa:
I first spoke to @nadia_murad by zoom in February this year. After more virtual meetings, I felt so lucky to meet this incredible human being in person yesterday. Nadia told me about the horrors of the genocide of her Yazidi community at the hands of ISIS and the trauma suffered by survivors of sexual violence. We also shared stories of our families, our childhood and our love of Arabic food. I’m looking forward to sharing with you the amazing work she does and the work we will do together. Follow @nadiasinitiative to find out more about this extraordinary woman and her fight for her people. I am honoured to support her on her journey

“I felt so lucky to meet this incredible human being in person yesterday. Nadia told me about the horrors of the genocide of her Yazidi community at the hands of (Daesh) and the trauma suffered by survivors of sexual violence. We also shared stories of our families, our childhood and our love of Arabic food... follow @nadiasinitiative to find out more about this extraordinary woman and her fight for her people,” Lipa wrote on Instagram.

Founded by the Nobel Peace Laureate herself, Murad’s charity advocates for survivors of sexual violence and aims to rebuild communities affected by conflict. She is the co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1967056/lifestyle

[Anthea]

The Destruction of Yezidi Heritage

A joint investigation by a Yazidi rights organisation and international archeologists announced on Monday the publication of the final version of their report into the destruction of Yazidi cultural heritage by Islamic State (ISIS), calling on the deliberate annihilation of culture to be considered in future prosecutions of atrocity crimes, particularly genocide

The collaborative project between Yazda, a multi-national NGO founded in 2014 to support victims of the Yazidi Genocide, the archaeologist network RASHID International, and the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) Project, which itself is a collaborative response to the increasing threats to archaeological sites in the Middle East between the British Universities of Oxford, Durham and Leicester, may on the face of it seem irrelevant in comparison to the pain suffered by the Yazidi community in Iraq.

Over seven years after ISIS launched their ethno-religious genocidal campaign against the Yazidis in August 2014, resulting in the murder of 1,298 Yazidis alone on the first day ISIS attacked Sinjar, and the kidnapping of around 6,500 Yazidi women, about 3,000 of whom are still missing, around 400,000 members of the Yazidi community remain displaced today.

According to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis, over 120,000 Yazidis have left Iraq since ISIS waged their devastating campaign on the community, and tens of thousands of those who remain in the region live in Internally Displaced Camps (IDPS) such as Sharya, Khanke, Kabartu - and many more - in awful conditions.

Yet the value of cultural heritage, the report in the Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law sets out, goes deep into the psyche of communities, and the investigation - and presentation of it to the international community - is the first step towards ensuring that these deeds do not go unacknowledged and unpunished.

Sixty-eight Yazidi sites were destroyed by ISIS during their campaign against the Yazidis, according to the Department of Yazidi Affairs in the Ministry of Awqaf and the Department of Religious Affairs in theKRG , as the group targeted their spiritual and cultural sites they were so opposed to in an attempt to eradicate the religion completely.

In the publication edited by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Professor Javaid Rehman, “Cultural Heritage Destruction during the Islamic State's Genocide against the Yazidis”, the team closely considered 16 of the sites in the Bahzani area, and 8 in the Sinjar area, providing “original research, evidence and context on the destruction of Yezidi’s tangible cultural heritage” through satellite imagery analysis, data and access to the sites. An earlier 2019 report is available to download online.

In the preface, His Holiness the Baba Sheikh - the highest religious authority in Yazidism - recalled how, after the liberation of Bashiqa and Bahzani, “people refused to return to their homes before the reconstruction of their shrines, thus demonstrating the strength of the Yazidi faith and showing the world their resilience.”

Saeed Yazidkhani, 23, places a similar value on his community's culture. Saaed fled ISIS in August 2014 and spent nine days without food and water in the nearby Sinjar mountains. In 2015, he moved to Qadia Camp near Dohuk, where he works as a translator for an NGO and teaches English to other survivors of ISIS.

He is a frequent visitor to Lalish, which although not destroyed by ISIS, played a significant role in sheltering Yazidis who fled from the group. Yazidkhani told Rudaw English from Dohuk on Monday that, “Lalish temple is the holiest and most sacred place for all Yazidis around the world.”

“It’s the first temple that most Yazidis come to visit every year, and they visit it at least once a year.”

“It’s an incredibly peaceful place to visit, and important to our community. ISIS tried to destroy our community’s history, and Lalish is an important place for visitors to come and learn about our beliefs, for example during festival periods”.

The main festival takes place from October 7 to October 14 every year, and attracts many international tourists to the historical site. Indeed, the Yazidi religion counts among some of the oldest in the world. “Lalish temple was built 2,000 years ago”, Saaed boasts.

Protected by the KRG, the site has been awarded “Outstanding Universal Value” status by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and the report encourages UNESCO to award Lalish Temple and its surroundings to the World Heritage List.

The report concludes that “the destruction of the cultural heritage of the Yazidi people constituted a war crime, a crime against humanity (persecution) and compelling evidence of genocidal intent”, recommending that the destruction of cultural heritage be considered in the prosecution of atrocity crimes, the International Criminal Court and national prosecutors open investigations wherever jurisdiction allows, and that the international community assist with the reconstruction of Sinjar and Bahzani to prevent Yazidi culture from being lost forever.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/151120212

[Anthea]

Yazidi family abandons dream

Khari Hasan Kalo peered out of the window of the repatriation flight as it touched down in northern Iraq. It's a place he and his family had hoped never to see again after they left for Belarus two months ago, driven by dreams of a new life in Europe

Kalo, 35, had begged for loans and spent his savings on the ill-fated journey to the Belarusian capital of Minsk the first stop on a journey to the West.

His wife, 30-year-old Zena, had sold her few belongings on the gamble that left the family of six stranded for days in a cold forest on the border of Belarus and Poland In the end, they returned home, fearing they were endangering the life of Kalo’s ailing 80-year-old mother.

Yet they say they would do it all again to escape their hopeless life, spent in a camp for displaced persons for the past seven years. The Kalos are Yazidis a religious minority that was brutalized by Islamic State militants when they overran northern Iraq in 2014.

At the time, ISIS extremists rampaged through the Yazidi town of Sinjar and surrounding villages and destroyed religious sites. They kidnapped and enslaved thousands of women and children. Years after their lives were torn apart, Yazidis are still unable to return home or locate hundreds of women and children who had been snatched by the extremists. The Kalos' home lies in ruins.

“If it wasn’t for my children and my mother, I would never have returned, I would have stayed in that forest at all costs rather than return to this tent,” Kalo said Friday, speaking to The Associated Press from the Karbato camp in Dohuk province in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region of Iraq. His mother, looking frail, slept throughout the interview.

The Kalos, including three children ages 5, 7, and 9, had returned from Belarus a day earlier.

“It’s not even our tent; it’s his sister’s,” his wife interjected. “It’s no place to raise children, have a life.”

The region is considered the most stable part of conflict-scarred Iraq, yet Iraqi Kurds made up a large group among thousands of migrants from the Middle East who had flown to Belarus since the summer. Even in Iraq's more prosperous north, growing unemployment and corruption is fueling migration, and the Yazidi community has endured particular hardship.

On Thursday, hundreds of Iraqis returned home from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union. The repatriation came after thousands of migrants became stuck at the Poland-Belarus border amid rising tensions between the two countries.

Kalo's family was among 430 people who flew from Minsk back to Iraq, where 390 got off at Irbil International Airport before the flight continued to Baghdad.

The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns to destabilize the EU in retaliation for its sanctions imposed on his authoritarian regime following a harsh crackdown on internal dissent. Belarus denies engineering the crisis, which has seen migrants entering the country since summer, lured by easy tourist visas, and then trying to cross into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all EU members.

Kalo didn’t mind if a geopolitical game was being played at his expense if it got his family out of Iraq.

“So what if I was a pawn in someone’s hands if it gets me to Germany?” he said.

Since being displaced, the family had gotten increasingly desperate. Their tent burned down in an accidental fire in June that ravaged the Sharia camp, also in Dohuk. They tried to return to their original home in Sinjar but found their house uninhabitable.

Tensions also were simmering in the area between a patchwork of rival militia groups, Iraqi forces, and members of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, an insurgent group outlawed by Turkey. Turkish jets still targeted PKK members in northern Iraq.

Then he heard from friends about Kurds finding their way to Germany after Belarus eased visa requirements last spring. He begged his brother in Australia to wire him $9,000 to pay the smugglers' asking price for his wife, three young children and mother.

He also had saved money from his time as a policeman — cash that was hard-won because he endured discrimination as a Yazidi. Colleagues refused to eat or share a room with him, he said. He asked for a reassignment, but his superior said this would only be possible if he gave him half his income.

“What good is a job if its still not enough to feed your family?” he said of his decision to quit.

The Kalos took the land route to Istanbul in September, and boarded flights to Minsk the following month. There, they headed straight to the Polish border. With two other Iraqi families, the Kalos dug under the border fence, reaching the other side in darkness.

They walked for four days in search of a GPS point where they were promised a car would meet them and take them straight to Germany.

But that never happened

Instead, on the fourth day, Kalo’s family ran out of food as temperatures dropped in the dense and soggy forest.

Polish authorities found them and sent them back across the border. They were greeted by an encampment of hundreds of migrants. Belarusian authorities were handing out wire cutters and pushing the migrants back through the razor wire.

Polish authorities used water cannons to repel them. But this did not deter Belarusian authorities, who beat and threatened them, Kalo said. He said they shouted: “Go (to) Poland!”

Still, husband and wife fought to stay, agreeing that anything was better than their life in a tent.

But with his mother struggling to survive as conditions grew increasingly squalid, Kalo sought the pity of the Belarusian authorities. They allowed them to return to Minsk to seek medical help.

Kalo heard the Iraqi government had agreed to repatriate citizens free of charge. He turned to his wife and they considered their choices: Return to their desperate lives in Iraq, or bear the responsibility if his mother died.

Reluctantly, they put their names on the list

But their hope is not lost, Kalo said, as his 5-year old daughter, Katarin, dug her face into his chest at the Karbato camp.

“I have two priorities now," he said. "The first is to get a tent of our own. The second, to get back on my feet and leave this country. I will make it this time.”

He added: “If it was my last day on this Earth, I will spend it trying to leave."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/yazi ... 61118.html

[Anthea]

Return from Belarus
Wladimir van Wilgenburg

Around 430 would-be migrants arrived in the cities of Erbil and Baghdad in Iraq on Thursday evening, some covering their faces as their arrival was met by dozens of journalists at the Erbil International Airport (EIA)

Among them were mentally distraught Yazidi genocide survivors, who had been living in displacement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan before making their way to Europe.

An estimated 4,000 people were stuck on the Belarus-Poland border for weeks while attempting to cross into the European Union, until Minsk, in coordination with Iraqi authorities, moved to return a number of them.

At least 11 migrants have died due to the harsh winter conditions on the border, including a one-year-old Syrian boy.

Yazidis who returned to Erbil told Middle East Eye about their time in Belarus, years after surviving the brutal genocide carried out by the Islamic State (ISIS) group in the mid-2010s, during which thousands were killed, and thousands of women and children were brutally enslaved, with many still missing in Syria, Iraq or Turkey.

Naam Xelo, a 52-year-old Yazidi from the village of Tel Uzair, said 77 members of her tribe were killed by ISIS fighters in Sinjar in August 2014.

“Our situation was very terrible, we had our houses destroyed by ISIS,” Xelo told MEE, using another acronym for the militant group. “Our tents were also burnt [in the displacement camps]. We had nothing left, that’s why we left.”

After having gone through unspeakable hardship, Yazidis were left to face the fresh trauma of Belarus, and the return to Iraq empty-handed - with some deported families reportedly not even having enough money to pay for the taxi at Erbil airport.

Continued displacement and hardship

Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis are still living in displacement camps in Kurdistan, despite the defeat of ISIS in Sinjar by Kurdish forces in November 2015.

Many have chosen not to return to the area where there are few job opportunities, reconstruction is slow and local parties are locked in political disputes.

The unimplemented Sinjar agreement between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in October 2020 has so far failed to stabilise security and governance in Sinjar amid the continued presence of armed groups.

Poverty is on the rise in Iraq and Kurdistan, a situation that has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year Baghdad and Erbil imposed strict lockdowns that made it more difficult for displaced Yazidis to find jobs in restaurants or the construction sector.

We cannot ignore the refugee crisis any longer

Sozan Fahmi, the Iraq coordinator for the humanitarian organisation Khalsa Aid, told MEE that living conditions in camps such as Sharya were untenable.

“There are tons of reasons why Yazidi are leaving to go Belarus," she said. “NGOs are not able to do their work [due to the pandemic]... The Yazidi camps are not in the headlines right now, unlike in 2014 or 2015, when there were a lot of donors.”

Moreover, disputes with Baghdad over the Kurdistan region's share of the budget in recent years have led to repeated delays in salary payments and salary cuts for public employees, like teachers, health staff, and police officers.

To make matters worse, there have been several fires in the camps for displaced Yazidis over the last few years that have killed and injured civilians and destroyed many tents.

“These incidents terrify people and they do not want to stay in tents,” Fahmi said.

In June, around 400 tents burned down the Sharya camp that hosts Yazidis in Kurdistan’s Duhok province. The fire displaced 200 families, but no deaths were recorded.

“ISIS destroyed our houses, that's why we left houses and were displaced to Kurdistan and our tents were burnt in Sharya camp,” Dalya Xelaf, 24, told MEE.

“I want the Yazidis to leave the country, nobody is helping us, we have no rights.”

Cruel and criminal

These difficult circumstances played a large role in pushing an as-of-yet unspecified number of Yazidis to make the dangerous trek to enter EU member state Poland, in hopes of seeking a better life.

But the catastrophic situation at the Belarus border has brought many back to square one.

Nisreen Haji Qasim, a 74-year-old native from Sinjar, said she and other migrants remained for days without water and food at the border.

“We have some family members who left Sinjar since the ISIS attack, and they are in Europe.

We wanted to join our children already in Europe, but we were not allowed,” she told MEE.

“No one allowed us to move, neither the Polish authorities nor Belarus. It was 10 days we were stuck.”

Asked if she could return to her hometown, she said that her family had “nothing left in Sinjar”.

“ISIS burnt our house already,” she said.

Murad Ismael, the co-founder, and president of the Sinjar Academy, told MEE that he has mixed feelings about the returns.

“On the one hand, I am glad they are safe and didn’t freeze to death,” he said. “On the other hand, they suffered, spent all their money, and went back to an empty and hopeless life.”

In addition to the hardship & lives lost, migrants on the Belarus-Polish border lost some 50 million dollars, on average ~ $5,000 per person. They mostly sold their homes, land, & whatever they owned. Will Iraqi government or anyone help them financially upon their return?
— Murad Ismael (@murad_ismael) November 19, 2021

Some Yazidi families said they had spent around $20,000 for a family of four in order to make the long journey all the way to the Belarus border.

“With respect to the Yazidis, most feel their future in Iraq and Syria is uncertain and the slow recovery from the genocide just adds to the buildup of hopelessness,” Ismael added.

Pari Ibrahim, founder and executive director of the Free Yazidi Foundation, told MEE that the organisation has spent the last few weeks speaking to officials in the US and Europe about the crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border, particularly for Yazidis.

“While we fully understand Poland’s border concerns, it is important to understand who these migrants are,” she said. “These are genocide survivors who are desperate, traumatised, cold, and suffering. If you look at the services offered to Yazidis in Iraq, you can understand why they leave.”

Ibrahim added that countless Yazidis were out of work and had no means to make ends meet.

“The mental health of our people is deteriorating. The Yazidis are travelling out of suffering and desperation. Many of us are also furious with the smugglers and traffickers, in Iraq and in Belarus, who took advantage of the suffering. That is cruel and criminal,” she said, calling for migrants in Belarus to be provided with basics of shelter, food, water, and heating.

“Iraq and the KRG must bring to justice the criminals who took the money from these desperate families and left them in the cold forests of a foreign land, and make sure this criminal smuggling enterprise is stopped once and for all.”

KRG spokesperson Jotiar Adel told reporters during a press conference on Thursday that the regional government had formed a high committee with relevant agencies “to investigate the reasons people migrated to Belarus” in order to then “see what we can do for them in terms of rehabilitation”.

Adel told MEE on Saturday that the KRG was still working to collect data regarding where the Iraqis deported from Belarus were from.

“I don’t really know the number of Yazidis, but we are working on it,” he said. “We as the government know that migration is a natural phenomenon and exists in every country.”

He added that the KRG would take legal action against the human trafficking gangs involved in smuggling people to Belarus.

Ismael, meanwhile, hopes that “this wave of migration will invoke a national strategy to address the root causes of the problem”.

“I hope Europe will play a more active role in addressing economic and humanitarian issues for Iraq as a whole and especially for areas destroyed by war,” he said.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/yazi ... -kurdistan

[Anthea]

Could offend students

Canada school board cancels book club event with Yazidi Nobel laureate

New Delhi: Over three months after the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) began its crackdown on European children’s literature and destroyed 5,000 books for being “offensive” to indigenous people, the body has again sparked an uproar for having withdrawn its support for a book club event with Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, fearing it could “offend” Muslim students.

The event was supposed to carry discussion on two books in presence of their authors — Marie Henein’s ‘Nothing But the Truth: A Memoir‘ and Nadia Murad’s ‘The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State‘.

The board said it has withdrawn support to hold the October event with Henein, the daughter of Egyptian immigrants and one of Canada’s most prominent lawyers, because her book was “problematic” as she “defended” former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi when he was accused of sexual assault.

For Murad’s event, which was to be held in February 2022, the board said the book written by her could “promote Islamophobia” and “offend” their Muslim students

Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist, was 19 when she was taken as a sex slave in 2014 by the Islamic State militants who invaded her village in northern Iraq.

In another explanation from the board, TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird told The Globe and Mail, “There seems to have been a misunderstanding because the ‘fairness’ department does not review and approve books for book clubs”. He also explained that “the two books were nevertheless examined by the members of the council, as is the practice, in order to decide or not their distribution to the pupils”.
What writers say

Started by Tanya Lee, four years ago in 2017, the book club “A Room of Your Own”, invites young girls aged 13 to 18, from various secondary schools and allows them to read a book and then discuss it virtually with the author.

Speaking about the board’s decision, Lee told Helen Fisher, the superintendent of the school, responsible for informing Lee of the board’s decision, “This is what the Islamic State means. It is a terrorist organization. It has nothing to do with ordinary Muslims. The Toronto school board should be aware of the difference”.

Following this, Fisher sent her a copy of the board’s policy on selecting equitable, culturally relevant, and responsive reading materials.

This is the first time the board has ever rejected an event organised by her book club, Lee said.

Henein has expressed her disappointment with the board’s decision to disallow students from participating in the event. She wrote, “There are words to describe that kind of attitude. Misunderstanding is not one of them”.

Many Canadian writers and newspapers slammed the board’s action.

“…However, this case seems to be very much about the authors – women who have done extraordinary things, and whose lives could offer high-octane inspiration to young readers. The rejection of their books is effectively a rejection of complexity, and of the world as it is”, wrote Toronto-based writer Naomi Buck.

Canadian commentator Rex Murphy wrote, “For those with a cynical mind — and I am of course exempt from that failing — it might be concluded that equity departments actually hold existence for the sole purpose of contradicting their own purpose. And, in particular, those within school boards have honed that skill to supernal perfection.

https://theprint.in/world/could-offend- ... ad/769802/

[Anthea]

Yazidis long for way out

After spending three weeks in the freezing forests on the Belarus-Poland border, Hussein Khodr, his wife and his mother found themselves back at square one: an Iraqi camp for displaced Yazidis

But despite the "cold" and "hunger" of their arduous and fruitless journey, Khodr dreams of making the trip out once again.

The family was among 400 mostly Kurds, who returned home Thursday on a repatriation flight.

Between visas and daily costs, Khodr ended up spending over $10,000 in Belarus, without ever making it beyond the frontier into the European Union.

At the Polish border "we tried to cross the barbed wire. There were sensors that would send signals to the Polish police. They arrived and prevented us from crossing", he recounted from Sharya camp near Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The family spent 20 days camped out in the wet forest at the borders. "We were hungry, we were thirsty, we were cold," the 36-year-old said.

Seven fellow Yazidis managed to make it to Germany, but Khodr's mother Inaam, who suffers from rheumatism, could not walk the long hours necessary to make the crossing.

"We were not looking for luxury, we wanted to escape from our miserable living conditions," Inaam, 57, said.

Seated on a foam mattress in her sparsely furnished tent, she recalled a life punctuated by tragedies, bookended by the recent history of Iraq and its Yazidi minority.

Subscribing to an ancient monotheistic faith, the Yazidis were brutalised by the Islamic State group, who consider them heretics.

- 'We will leave again' -

Widowed at the age of 20 when her husband was killed in 1986 during the Iraq-Iran war, Inaam raised her son alone and said he miraculously survived two attacks in 2005 and 2007.

She also recounted how they fled in 2014 when ISIS fighters entered Sinjar and how they returned to find their house reduced to rubble.

Khodr said he went into debt to be able to leave Iraq and even sold his wife's and mother's gold.

For the last seven years, they lived in a tent, scorched by the heat of the summers and inundated by the torrential rains in the winter.

To survive, he did odd jobs and made some money repairing cell phones.

"As soon as we get some money we will leave again. I will not abandon the idea of emigrating."

But next time, Khodr said he will try to find another route because "we are banned from going to Belarus for the next five years".

- Social disparities -

The West accuses Belarus of bringing in would-be migrants -- mostly from the Middle East -- and taking them to the borders with EU members Poland and Lithuania with promises of an easy crossing.

Belarus has denied the claim and criticised the EU for not taking in the migrants.

Since the start of the crisis in the summer, at least 11 migrants have died, according to Polish media, while thousands -- mostly Kurds -- are still stranded at the border.

But many in Arbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, still yearn to leave.

"If I had the chance, I would leave today before tomorrow," said Ramadan Hamad, a 25-year-old cobbler who mends shoes on the side of a road for a lack of a shop.

"We have no future and the economic situation has become very difficult," he said.

"I know that with illegal emigration, I have a 90 percent chance of dying. But at least on arriving, I will live in a society that respects the individual."

The migrant crisis has "tainted" the image Kurdistan wants to portray of itself as the "most secure area of Iraq", said Adel Bakawan, the director of the French Centre for Research on Iraq.

The flux of migrants is due to economic difficulties, but also geopolitical uncertainty caused by the US withdrawal from Iraq, fears of a jihadist resurgence and the Turkish conflict with insurgents from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), he said.

In an unstable Iraq, Kurdistan always projected a facade of prosperity and stability, hoping to attract foreign investments to a region that boasts five-star hotels, luxury developments and private schools and universities.

But "there is only one social class that has access to any of this", Bakawan said.

"A young Kurd can't go on vacation, can't buy a house, can't go to a private school to complete his studies in English nor find a job that will give him any social status."

Link to Article - Photos:

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/23112021

[Anthea]

Yazidi Rights Activist On Trial

An Armenia court has opened a controversial trial against a human rights activist from the minority Yazidi community over comments he made in an interview, despite international concerns about his prosecution

Prosecutors accuse Sashik Sultanian, the head of the Yazidi Center for Human Rights, of "inciting ethnic enmity between Armenians and Yazidis," a mostly Kurdish-speaking religious group.

The probe against Sultanian was launched in October 2020 after he conducted an interview with the Yezidinews.am website in June that year. He has been restricted from leaving Armenia for six months.

In the interview, Sultanian said that Yazidis faced discrimination, their rights were not protected, and they were unable to develop their culture, language, or practice their religion.

He also claimed Yazidis were underrepresented in local government structures, that Armenians seized Yazidi property, and the community was not allowed to develop economically.

Prosecutors argue that Sultanian's statements don't fall under human rights advocacy and protected speech "since all allegations mentioned in the interview do not correspond to reality."

Sultanian says his comments were not directed against the Armenian people, but rather the government. The interview was deleted on the day of publication at his request.

Several international and national human rights organizations have denounced the proceedings against Sultanian as an assault on freedom of speech that will have a chilling effect on those who stand up for minority rights.

Armenian authorities have obligations to ensure human rights defenders can freely carry out their activities without any restrictions, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic said in a letter to Armenia's top prosecutor last week.

"This is all the more important when such legitimate speech addresses the treatment of minorities and is aimed at protecting and promoting their rights," she said.

In June, Human Rights Watch called on the Armenian authorities to drop the charges against Sultanian, saying his opinions were protected free speech.

UN special rapporteurs on human rights defenders, minority issues, and freedom of expression have also called on Armenian authorities to drop the case.

"It is not incitement to hatred or violence to raise human rights concerns about the treatment of minorities," the UN experts said in August. "We call on Armenia to drop these criminal charges, which appear designed simply to intimidate Mr. Sultanian and others who stand up for minority rights."

There are only an estimated 1.5 million Yazidis in the world, most of whom live in northern Iraq. There are smaller populations in Syria, Turkey, and in the European diaspora. There are about 40,000 Yazidis in Armenia, where they make up the largest minority group.

Sultanian's next hearing is scheduled for January 26.

https://www.rferl.org/a/armenia-yazidi- ... 78283.html

[Anthea]

ISIS member sentenced to life

A court in Frankfurt sentenced a former Islamic State (ISIS) member to life imprisonment on Tuesday, on charges of crimes against the Yazidis. The man’s wife was sentenced to ten years in prison earlier in October

Taha Al-Jumailly, 29, was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes and bodily harm resulting in death, after joining the so-called Islamic State group in 2013, AFP reported.

Prosecutors said the ISIS member and his wife enslaved a Yazidi woman and child. The child was then chained in the sun where she died of thirst in the heat of Fallujah in Anbar province.

His wife, Jennifer Wenisch, a German national, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in October. She was found guilty of “two crimes against humanity in the form of enslavement”, as well as aiding and abetting the child’s death by failing to offer help.

The special advisor to the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD), Christian Ritscher, welcomed the conviction on Tuesday.

“This conviction marks a significant moment in global efforts to deliver accountability for international crimes committed by ISIS, and in particular to achieving justice for the victims and survivors of the horrific acts they carried out against the Yazidi community. For the first time in a judicial judgement, we see these crimes called what they were: genocide,” Ritscher said.

“Victims have already waited so long but this provides hope of what can be achieved. I commend the work of the Office of the German Federal Prosecutor General, and all national prosecutors working towards this ultimate goal of pursuing accountability and achieving justice,” he added.

The Yazidi heartland of Sinjar was taken over by ISIS when they swept through Iraq and neighbouring Syria, imposing their so-called caliphate rule with extreme brutality and violence. They systematically killed men and older women, and enslaved younger women and children.

In the first days of the genocide, 1,293 people were killed and over 6,000 people were abducted, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. Over 2,000 remain missing. Hundreds of thousands fled their homes, seeking shelter on Mount Sinjar, and then later into camps in the Kurdistan Region or abroad.

UNITAD has previously said through their investigations they have “established clear and convincing evidence that genocide was committed by ISIS against the Yazidi as a religious group.”

Among the group’s recognized crimes are “executions, torture, amputations, ethno-sectarian attacks, rape and sexual slavery imposed on women and girls,” witness testimonies have revealed.

Iraq in 2017 asked the UN to help collect and preserve evidence of ISIS crimes. The UN Security Council in September renewed UNITAD’s mandate to investigate crimes committed by ISIS in Iraq for another year. The KRG welcomed the decision.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/world/301120211

[Anthea]

Yazidis, victims of genocide

Mainly living in remote corners of the north of Iraq, the Yazidis are followers of an ancient and unique religion

The Yazidis, which a German court found to be victims of genocide in a historic first on Tuesday, are a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority.

Islamic State jihadists carried out a horrific massacre of the community in northwestern Iraq in August 2014, killing men en masse and abducting thousands of girls and women as sex slaves.

An ancient faith

Mainly living in remote corners of the north of Iraq, the Yazidis are followers of an ancient and unique religion.

Their faith emerged in Iran more than 4,000 years ago and is rooted in Zoroastrianism. Over time it has also absorbed elements of Islam and Christianity.

Organised into castes, and with no holy book, Yazidis pray to God facing the sun and worship his seven angels - first and foremost Melek Taus, or Peacock Angel.

Their holiest site is Lalish, a serene stone complex of shrines and natural springs in Iraq's mountainous northwest where visitors must walk barefoot.

The faith is led by a five-member High Spiritual Council based in nearby Sheikhan, which includes both the worldwide "prince" of Yazidis and Baba Sheikh, their religious chief.

Yazidis discourage marriage outside of their community and even across their caste system.

Their usual beliefs and practices, such as a ban on eating lettuce and wearing the colour blue, have often been seen by other Iraqis as satanic.

Yazidis are organised into three castes - sheikhs, pirs, and murids - and cannot wed across them or outside the sect. Children are Yazidi only if both their parents are.

Yazidis in numbers

Of the world's nearly 1.5 million Yazidis, the largest number - 550,000 - lived in Iraq before being scattered by the ISIS offensive in 2014.

But since ISIS swept across Sinjar in 2014, around 100,000 have fled to Europe, the US, Australia and Canada.

Among the Yazidis who have found refuge in Germany are 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad who was captured, raped and forced to marry a jihadist before she was able to escape.

With the Lebanese-British lawyer Amal Clooney, Murad has been fighting for the ISIS to be put on trial for their crimes.

Only a few thousand Yazidis have been able to return home to Mount Sinjar.

Long persecuted

Their status as non-Arabs and non-Muslims has placed Yazidis among the most vulnerable minorities in the Middle East, where orthodox Muslims have often derided them as "devil-worshippers".

Yazidis say they have been subject to 74 "genocides", including the ISIS attack in 2014.

One of the worst, according to the High Spiritual Council, saw 250,000 Yazidis perish several hundred years ago.

They were also persecuted by the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s and more recently by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whose iron-fisted rule between 1979 and 2003 forced thousands of Yazidi families to flee.

The Iraqi Constitution of 2005 recognised the Yazidi right to practise their religion and gave them seats in the central and autonomous Kurdish parliaments.

ISIS and its aftermath

The Islamic State seized the Yazidi bastion Sinjar in August 2014, unleashing a brutal campaign that the United Nations has said could amount to genocide.

According to religious authorities, more than 1,280 Yazidis were killed by ISIS, leaving several hundred children orphaned. Nearly 70 shrines were destroyed.

Several dozen grave sites have been identified across Sinjar containing the remains of ISIS victims.

Some women who had been forced to bear the children of ISIS fighters have left them in neighbouring Syria, as they would not have been accepted by the minority.

In May, a special UN team said it had "clear and convincing proof" of a genocide.

A court in Frankfurt on Tuesday jailed an Iraqi ISIS member to life in prison for war crimes against the Yazidis, finding him guilty of genocide.

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/iraq ... s-genocide

[Anthea]

Celebrity Support

Can celebrity humanitarianism really help resolve the unmet needs of the Yazidi community?

A viral selfie between pop singer Dua Lipa and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad placed a renewed emphasis on the role celebrities can play in advocating for the less fortunate. But in the case of the Yazidis, will such exposure really make a difference?

This month, British pop singer of Albanian origin, Dua Lipa, met with Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad. After several virtual meetings via Zoom, both Lipa and Murad were able to unite and discuss a number of topics, including the indescribable horrors inflicted on the Yazidi community by the Islamic State group (ISIS).

Nadia Murad, a survivor of sexual violence perpetrated by ISIS members, was kidnapped in 2014 and sold into sex slavery during the armed conflict of 2013-2017. During her escape, she managed to cross into Iraqi Kurdistan and settle in camps with other Yazidis. She soon arrived in Europe and found refuge in Germany.

Since leaving northern Iraq where Nadia lived with her family, she has gone on to found Nadia’s Initiative, a non-profit organisation that provides support to survivors of sexual violence and seeks to restore neighbourhoods affected by conflict. Nadia is also the co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize and is currently an advocate for Sustainable Development Goals appointed by Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General of the United Nations.

"To this day, the majority of [sexual violence] survivors are living in perilous circumstances without access to various forms of financial support"

While most recognise Dua Lipa as the new leading princess of pop, the singer has recently been recognised for her philanthropic activities throughout the years.

Together with her father Dukagjin Lipa, she co-created the Sunny Hill Foundation in 2016 to raise money to assist civilians in Kosovo experiencing financial difficulties. In August 2018, for example, Dua Lipa coordinated a festival to raise money for that foundation, called the Sunny Hill Festival.

Then, in April 2019, she became a UNICEF supporter during a three-day visit to a camp for refugee children and youth in Beirut, Lebanon. The camp mainly comprised of civilians who, as a consequence of the Syrian conflict, were deprived of sufficient health care and education.

In an Instagram photo with Nadia Murad, Dua Lipa said: “I’m looking forward to sharing with you the amazing work she does and the work we will do together.”

Despite the unambiguity of what the collaborative work will involve, Dua Lipa’s determination to work closely with Nadia Murad will be significant in terms of improving the support currently given to the Yazidi community. According to a number of reports published this year, Yazidi survivors are facing a number of challenges, including beneficial support during the recovery from the war against ISIS.

With a specific focus on Covid-19, the pandemic has complicated support to the Yazidi community. Throughout the past two years, especially during the first half of the health crisis, countries have focused domestically on the pandemic.

11 young Yazidis took their lives during the first 16 days of 2021

However, those on the edge of protection – the displaced, conflict-stricken and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence – were shoved further into the borders. The impact that this neglect has had on the Yazidi community includes heightened vulnerability to contracting Covid and the rapid deterioration in mental health.

According to research carried out by the University of Duhok, 11 young Yazidis took their lives during the first 16 days of 2021. That being said, bundled cases of suicide have been evolving in IDP camps since the 2014 genocide inflicted by ISIS.

Despite the easing of lockdown and restriction measures in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Yazidi survivors of sexual violence are still awaiting financial support.

To this day, the majority of survivors are living in perilous circumstances without access to various forms of financial support. Over the past few years, the assistance provided to survivors has mainly come from humanitarian organisations and the international community, operating mainly in regions with a high number of internally displaced Yazidis.

This level of support, however, is not enough. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which receives funds from the federal government of Iraq, remains vital to the strength of Kurdistan. In response to the struggle and survival of Yazidis post-Islamic State, the Iraqi government provided one-time financial support to address the critical needs of the Yazidi community. The support provided was implemented via the Yazidi Survivors’ Grant and social welfare payments to a restricted number of survivors.

"Looking ahead in light of the challenges raised, support to the Yazidi community, whether its in the form of celebrity humanitarianism, political interventions, or NGO assistance, future policymaking must consider the unmet needs of the Yazidis"

As stated by Al-Jazeera, the reality of the support received by the Iraqi government is that survivors are not receiving the support needed while living in dangerous conditions. Under these circumstances, one can only imagine the heightened trauma and vulnerabilities amongst the community.

In March 2021, the Iraqi parliament passed a law aimed at heightening support to Yazidi female survivors. Viewed as a ground-breaking piece of legislature and the first of its kind in Iraq, the law considers different acts of sexual violence in conflict as acts of genocide to be put at the centre of legislation.

Key terms of the law include provisions to be paid to survivors of sexual violence, as well as other types of victims. It also includes provisions to address many of the survivors’ key needs through assistance in areas such as physical and mental health, housing, incomes, employment and restarting education.

While the law sounds promising, challenges to the law’s implementation are abundant. Thus far, challenges have included tense political situations and the lack of budgetary allocations to the KRG. In response to the challenges, the Directorate for Survivors Affairs, a body established to execute the law requested funds to introduce the application procedure that individuals must go through in order to receive the afore-mentioned benefits.

In the meantime, Yazda, a psycho-social support and women’s centre based in Duhok, Iraq co-facilitated a workshop with IOM Iraq, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq-UNAMI, and the Institute for International Law and Human Rights on 21 November 2021.

Participants discussed core components of the application form to be used by survivors to submit their reparation claims. Attendants spoke about the content of the application form and how to make it survivor-focused so that future applicants can comprehend and fill it out easily. Although the Directorate is not receiving applications yet, the application procedure is allegedly opening at the beginning of next year.

In light of recent events, the deportation of Kurds during the 2021 Belarus-European Union border crisis further demonstrates the extra support needed among the Yazidi community.

Of those being deported back to Kurdistan, the Yazidi community from the Kurdistan region were identified as vulnerable to the crisis. After leaving the trauma inflicted by ISIS, a recent Middle East Eye investigation found that Yazidis were being left to witness the new trauma of Belarus and return to their homes.

During the investigation, it was reported that some of the deported families could not afford a taxi to their homes from Erbil airport. The impact that the deportation crisis will have on the Yazidis is incredibly problematic, not only in terms of mental health deterioration but also in terms of resettling in spaces where there are few job opportunities and post-IS reconstruction is slow.

Looking ahead in light of the challenges raised, support to the Yazidi community, whether it's in the form of celebrity humanitarianism, political interventions, or NGO assistance, future policymaking must consider the unmet needs of the Yazidis.

This includes taking on the opportunity to rebuild from Covid-19 and paying particular attention to the intensified impacts of the pandemic on post-conflict areas. That said, further work must be implemented to encourage communities to develop a healthier, more thriving, and peaceful future.

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/features/ ... -community

Zainab Mehdi is a Researcher and Freelance Journalist specialising in governance, development, and conflict in the middle east and north Africa region.

Follow her on Twitter: @zaiamehdi

[Anthea]

Statue of Cîlan Berces erected in Shengal

A monument of Cîlan Berces has been erected in Shengal. Like thousands of other women, the young Yazidi woman was abducted by ISIS in 2014. When she was to be handed over to an ISIS emir, she took her own life. She would rather die than be enslaved

In the genocide and femicide of 3 August 2014 in Shengal, thousands of people were murdered by ISIS, and thousands of Yazidi women were abducted. One of those affected was Cîlan Berces.

Cîlan Berces was born in 1995 in the village of Til Izêr and was captured by ISIS in 2014. In captivity, she took her own life by opening her wrist with her fingernails and bled to death. She was to be handed over to an ISIS emir and wanted to die rather than be enslaved.

A monument to the young Yazidi woman has been erected in her birthplace, Til Izêr. Representatives of the Shengal Autonomous Administration and the Yazidi women's movement TAJÊ took part in the inauguration of the bust.

Yazidi women wore traditional dresses and held photos of Cîlan Berces and other murdered women during the inauguration of the monument.

Şemê Dêro referred in a speech to the numerous women murdered by ISIS and said that Cîlan Berces was only one of thousands who were abducted and enslaved: "From my family, 33 people have been killed, including Cîlan. Yet I do not feel alone. I feel pain, but I am not alone. My community has stood by me, supported me and shared my pain."