Latest news with #Yazidis
Shafaq News
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Shafaq News
Yazidi community in Iraq urges to act on UN genocide recommendations
Shafaq News/ Yazidi MP Sherif Suleiman Ali on Wednesday called on Iraq to implement UN recommendations addressing the enduring impact of the 2014 ISIS genocide. His appeal followed a UN Security Council briefing where UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Iraq Mohamed Al Hassan praised Iraq's recognition of Yazidi land rights as a 'significant milestone,' citing over 1,300 ownership letters and nearly 100 title deeds issued this year, while cautioning that paperwork alone won't restore lives, urging a national strategy that includes reparations, security guarantees, and efforts to locate thousands of missing Yazidis from the Sinjar attack. In a statement, Ali endorsed Al Hassan's remarks as an 'accurate' reflection of the crisis, pushing for action beyond symbolic recognition. 'Genocide, abductions, and displacement persist. Many Yazidi women remain missing, and families can't return.' He demanded a comprehensive plan ensuring safe return, legal acknowledgment of losses, compensation, and prosecution of ISIS through specialized courts, emphasizing, 'Justice requires accountability and lasting protection.'
DW
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- DW
The Yazidis - Life After the Genocide – DW – 06/10/2025
The group calling itself Islamic State has killed, enslaved or displaced thousands of Yazidis in northern Iraq. Four siblings who survived this genocide tell of violence and captivity, but also of courage and new beginnings. Image: German Dream Productions GmbH August 2024 marked the tenth anniversary of the IS genocide against the Yazidis. The terrorist militia tried to wipe out the religious minority in 2014. Image: German Dream Productions GmbH The film follows four siblings of Yazidi origin who sought refuge in Germany after the events in Iraq. Image: German Dream Productions GmbH Their personal stories provide deep insights into the traumas they suffered and their struggle for a new life. Image: German Dream Productions GmbH Between hope for return, the longing for peace, the fight for justice and the celebration of life, the film also deals with the essence of being human: the urge for freedom and autonomy, and the importance of individual dignity. Broadcasting Hours: DW English Part 1 THU 19.06.2025 – 01:15 UTC THU 19.06.2025 – 04:15 UTC FRI 20.06.2025 – 09:15 UTC FRI 20.06.2025 – 16:15 UTC FRI 20.06.2025 – 21:15 UTC SAT 21.06.2025 – 19:15 UTC SUN 22.06.2025 – 02:15 UTC MON 23.06.2025 – 12:15 UTC Part 2 THU 26.06.2025 – 01:15 UTC THU 26.06.2025 – 04:15 UTC FRI 27.06.2025 – 09:15 UTC FRI 27.06.2025 – 16:15 UTC FRI 27.06.2025 – 21:15 UTC SAT 28.06.2025 – 19:15 UTC SUN 29.06.2025 – 02:15 UTC MON 30.06.2025 – 12:15 UTC Lagos UTC +1 | Cape Town UTC +2 | Nairobi UTC +3 Delhi UTC +5,5 | Bangkok UTC +7 | Hong Kong UTC +8 London UTC +1 | Berlin UTC +2 | Moscow UTC +3 San Francisco UTC -7 | Edmonton UTC -6 | New York UTC -4
Winnipeg Free Press
31-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Operation Ezra going strong
Ten years have passed since Michel Aziza met with Nafiya Naso, a young woman from Winnipeg's small Yazidi community, and offered to help her raise awareness about the plight of the Yazidi people in Iraq and arrange support for their sponsorship to Canada. The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking ethnic minority who follow an ancient monotheistic religion that combines aspects of different faiths. Concentrated primarily in the Sinjar region of Northern Iraq, they have been the victims of persecution by their neighbours for generations. That persecution culminated in August 2014 when ISIS invaded the Sinjar region, displacing, killing, kidnapping and enslaving thousands of Yazidi men, women and children. Nafiya and her sister Jamileh Naso had arrived in Winnipeg as children when their parents were accepted to Canada as refugees in 1999, long before the events of that terrible summer. But when the sisters learned about the terror being wrought on the Yazidis remaining in Iraq, which included many of their extended family members, they were spurred into action. That action led Nafiya to her first of many meetings with Aziza and a small group of Jewish community members. 'We ended the meeting by agreeing to help rescue as many refugees as we could by raising funds and also helping Nafiya continue on with her advocacy work and her efforts to raise awareness,' Aziza explains. That agreement was formalized with the creation of an initiative called Operation Ezra. 'For me personally, it was simply an opportunity to do the right thing and help people who at the time were being persecuted,' Aziza says. 'I had always wondered how and why some people decided to help Jews during the Holocaust while others stood by. This was my opportunity to engage with another community with no other motive than to help.' Operation Ezra's first order of business was to complete the documentation and raise the funds to privately sponsor Nafiya's uncle, aunt and their six children to Canada. When that family descended the escalator at Winnipeg's airport in July 2016, Nafiya's father rushed to embrace his brother. They had not seen one another for 26 years! After making that initial reunion possible, Operation Ezra continued its fundraising and sponsorship efforts, reaching out in the process to other local faith communities for assistance in increasing awareness and financial support, completing sponsorship documentation, and, often after years of waiting, welcoming the newcomers to Winnipeg and helping with their resettlement. To date, Operation Ezra has privately sponsored 11 Yazidi families, representing 67 people, to Winnipeg, and has applications in process for another 20 people. 'Operation Ezra became one of the largest private rescue efforts for Yazidis in the world,' Jamileh says. 'Jews, Yazidis, Christians, and allies came together to save lives, reunite families, and help survivors rebuild. What began as a local sponsorship effort, quickly grew into a powerful, multi-faith movement rooted in justice, solidarity, and shared humanity.' That spirit of activism, Jamileh adds, led her to found the Canadian Yazidi Association as 'a survivor-led voice for the missing, the displaced, and the resilient.' In 2016, the Yazidi association and Operation Ezra successfully lobbied the Canadian government to establish its own rescue operation to bring Yazidis to Canada. 'The intense lobbying at the federal level,' Aziza explains, 'resulted into the sponsorship of approximately 1,200 Yazidis to Canada, 250 of whom came to Winnipeg.' Those 250 individuals, mostly women and children, were, and continue to be, supported by Operation Ezra in the same way as those who were privately sponsored by the group. Operation Ezra helped find housing and employment for the new arrivals, enrolled children in school, provided translators, organized adult English classes, ran a kids' soccer league, and developed innovative programs to enable the newcomers' integration and self-sufficiency. One of these programs is the Healing Farm, where Yazidi volunteers harvest thousands of kilograms of seasonal produce annually that they then distribute among their community and to local food banks. Most of the Yazidis who arrived in Winnipeg in the last decade have adapted well to Canada. They are working, studying, raising families, and volunteering, and are grateful for the safety and stability of their new home. For some, however, the terror and trauma of their past endures. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. 'I sit with mothers who haven't heard from their daughters in over a decade,' Jamileh says. 'I walk beside youth once held in ISIS captivity, now rediscovering their language and sense of self. I fight for access to culturally competent mental health care … and for justice that has been far too long denied.' With close to 3,000 Yazidis still considered missing and thousands more living in refugee camps, the work of Operation Ezra and the Canadian Yazidi Association is not done. 'We have a list of thousands of families who regularly reach out, pleading for help,' Nafiya says. A decade after Operation Ezra was created, Nafiya, Jamileh, Michel and the group's many other volunteers remain determined to rescue, reunite and resettle Yazidi refugees in Winnipeg — a city that has become a sanctuary for a long beleaguered people. swchisvin@ The Free Press is committed to covering faith in Manitoba. If you appreciate that coverage, help us do more! Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow us to deepen our reporting about faith in the province. Thanks! 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Iraqi News
28-05-2025
- Health
- Iraqi News
The forgotten boys: ISIS's Yazidi child soldiers demand urgent global action and tailored healing
Washington D.C. ( – While the world rightly recoiled at the horrific enslavement of Yazidi women and girls by ISIS during its 2014 genocidal assault on Sinjar, Iraq, another profound atrocity has remained dangerously overlooked: the systematic militarization and indoctrination of Yazidi boys. A comprehensive report, 'They Who Have Seen Hell,' by Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies, now casts a stark light on these forgotten child soldiers, arguing that this neglect represents a failure to confront the full scope of ISIS's strategy to annihilate the Yazidi people and poses a ticking security and social time bomb. ISIS did not treat these boys as mere collateral damage. Instead, they were deliberately targeted, forcibly assimilated, and indoctrinated to perpetuate the genocide. Stripped of their names, language, and faith under threat of death, boys as young as seven were re-programmed through chanting ISIS slogans, and being taught that their Yazidi beliefs were devil worship. The aim was total identity erasure. As one 16-year-old survivor recounted being told: 'You are Yazidis and you are infidels. We want to convert you to the true religion so you can go to heaven.' The success of this brutal indoctrination is chillingly evident in accounts of rescued boys initially rejecting their families, unable to speak their native Kurmanji, or even viewing ISIS as their new family, as detailed in the report. The psychological and physical trauma inflicted is immense. Nearly 2,000 Yazidi children who escaped ISIS face an unprecedented health crisis. Clinical studies cited in the report found nearly half of former ISIS child soldiers (mostly Yazidi boys aged 8-14) met criteria for PTSD (48.3%), with similarly high rates for depression (45.6%) and anxiety disorders (45.8%). Many endured extreme violence, malnutrition, and war injuries, including lost limbs. Without robust, specialized support, experts like renowned clinical psychologist Jan Ilhan Kizilhan warn that untreated trauma can fuel future cycles of violence. Reintegration is a torturous path. These boys return as strangers to communities that may fear them as ticking time bombs. Compounding this, Iraq's 2021 Yazidi Survivors Law, while providing crucial reparations for female survivors, critically fails to meaningfully include boys in its eligibility or programming, leaving them largely excluded from state-sponsored psychological, educational, and reintegration aid. While girls faced horrific sexual slavery, boys were turned into instruments of violence, creating different but equally profound scars and distinct reintegration needs. The 'They Who Have Seen Hell' report issues urgent calls to action. Firstly, it demands the expansion of specialized, culturally sensitive, trauma-informed mental health services, like those provided by NGOs such as the Jiyan Foundation, to reach these children consistently. Secondly, deradicalization and identity restoration are presented as strategic imperatives, requiring tailored religious counseling by Yazidi leaders, community-led rituals, and an educational response that promotes critical thinking and reconnects them with their heritage. Most crucially, the report calls for legal recognition and justice through the amendment of the Yazidi Survivors Law. Its language must be changed to explicitly include male survivors, followed by creating mechanisms for their registration, assessment, and compensation via stipends, educational scholarships, or healthcare subsidies. Leaving this generation of deeply traumatized youth in an ideological limbo, alienated and unsupported, risks their permanent marginalization and could destabilize the fragile Yazidi community further. The international community and the Iraqi government must heed this call to transform these victims of terror into agents of recovery and resilience for a more stable future.
Shafaq News
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Shafaq News
KRG: No forced returns for displaced Iraqis
Shafaq News/ On Tuesday, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) reiterated its opposition to the forced return of internally displaced persons, especially to former ISIS-controlled areas. Dindar Zebari, the KRG Coordinator for International Advocacy, announced during the Conference on Missing Persons in the Middle East and North Africa that 'the people of Kurdistan have borne the brunt of atrocities—from the notorious Anfal campaign to the crimes committed by ISIS against Yazidis and other minorities,' reaffirming the KRG's deep commitment to uncovering the fate of the missing and ensuring accountability for crimes of enforced disappearance. Zebari recalled the disappearance of over 182,000 civilians during the Anfal operations, including 8,000 Barzani men, noting that the remains of victims have been recovered from 75 mass graves across Iraq, with 3,659 victims identified and returned to their families. The KRG has worked to rescue victims of ISIS. Out of 6,417 documented cases of Yazidi abductions, 3,587 individuals have been freed, while 2,830 remain missing. The official backed international recommendations on addressing enforced disappearances, including criminalization, investigative reforms, and better protections for vulnerable groups—measures already incorporated into the region's 2021–2025 Human Rights Action Plan focused on justice and survivor support. He also called on the international community to fulfill its humanitarian responsibilities and provide the technical, financial, and logistical support needed to accelerate investigations into enforced disappearances. Zebari highlighted cooperation with the United Nations Investigative Team (UNITAD), which led to the preservation and digitization of more than 408,000 pages of investigative files—documents he described as essential for future legal proceedings against ISIS perpetrators. He pointed to the KRG's rehabilitation and support initiatives, including the Psychological Treatment Institute in Duhok, a center documenting genocide-related sexual crimes, and a facility dedicated to assisting liberated women. 'These institutions have collectively provided psychological and legal support to over 1,278 survivors,' Zebari pointed out. He also showcased the KRG's use of advanced forensic tools, including DNA analysis, as a vital means of identifying remains and offering closure to victims' families.
