Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border, 10 August 2014. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

Ten years after Islamic State attempted to annihilate the Yazidi people, there’s increasing recognition of the genocide. Global Insight asks whether the Yazidis are now able to find justice.

Waheeda Omer was just 19 when she was forced to flee her home. She’d been living with her parents and siblings in Tal Banat, a Yazidi village in the northern Iraqi Sinjar region, close to the border with Syria and Turkey. But in August 2014, Islamic State (ISIS) fighters invaded the area, intent on wiping out the Yazidis, the religious group Omer is a part of. Terrified for their lives, her family fled, along with much of the 400,000-strong Yazidi population.

‘We were sleeping on the roof of the house, which is common here in the summer, and woke up very early in the morning to the sounds of bullets and mortars,’ says Omer, who’s now Protection Manager at non-profit organisation, the Free Yezidi Foundation. ‘The fighting continued until 8am, when my father decided we needed to leave. Me, my parents, two of my brothers and one of my sisters packed into a small car, but thousands of families were running or walking because they didn’t even have a car. On the same day we reached Kurdistan, where we were able to join my mother’s parents’. 

The attack came after ISIS, the terrorist organisation also known as ISIL and Daesh, began sweeping north through the country. Their intention was to restore the Caliphate of early Islam, with its strict – and exclusive – adherence to Sharia and Islamic law. The group set about obliterating ethno-religious minorities as it went and the Yazidis, who have faced persecution for their beliefs since the 13th century, were one of its key targets. An ancient monotheistic religion that originated in Kurdistan, Yazidism was reviled by ISIS, which dismissed its followers as polytheists and idol worshippers.

The Omer family was able to reach safety on that August day, but thousands of Yazidis were not. Men and older boys were segregated and killed, while women and younger children were forcibly removed from the area. The boys were kept and trained as child soldiers, and the women and girls were sold into sexual slavery. Though the full extent of the attack may never be known, the UN has estimated that more than 5,000 Yazidis were killed and 7,000 women and girls were enslaved. Omer’s aunt, uncle and their seven children, who were aged from just a few months to 12 years old at the time, were among those affected.

A handful of governments have recognised that what happened was an act of genocide. Meanwhile, the Yazidi Justice Committee, which the IBA’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) is a member of, has claimed that Iraq, Syria and Turkey, having not prevented the attack, should be taken to the International Court of Justice for allegedly failing to discharge their obligations under international law. At the time the report was published, Ümit Yalçın, then Turkish Ambassador to the UK, called the criticisms ‘baseless’, arguing that ‘starting from the early years of the conflict in Syria, [Turkey] played a key role in the protection of Syrian civilians and minorities, including Yazidis, in the region against the attacks and violations of terrorist groups’.

The governments of Iraq and Syria had not responded to Global Insight’s request for comment at the time of going to press.

The question of justice

Despite the increase in recognition of the genocide, it’s questionable as to whether justice for the Yazidi people has been achieved. A small number of ISIS fighters have faced prosecution for their role with the group, but no state has faced any kind of sanction. Meanwhile, around 200,000 Yazidis remain displaced from their homes in Sinjar and it’s estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 women and girls are still enslaved.

Against this backdrop, UNITAD – the UN investigative team set up specifically to ‘promote accountability for crimes committed by Daesh’ – is scheduled to be shut down in September 2024 and the Iraqi government is set to close the 23 camps currently housing displaced Yazidis in Iraqi Kurdistan by the end of July. There’s a fear, says Sareta Ashraph, past Co-Chair of the IBA War Crimes Committee and a senior legal consultant at Garden Court Chambers in London, that justice for the Yazidis will therefore never be achieved. ‘The space for justice and accountability seems to be narrowing’, she says. ‘The Yazidis are concerned that the path of justice is becoming more difficult to traverse’.

Part of the problem is that the recognition of what happened as a genocide has been so piecemeal. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum was the first organisation to call the ISIS attack a genocide, making its determination in 2015. A raft of national parliaments, including those of Australia, Canada, France, Lithuania, the UK and the US, were quick to follow suit.

Indeed, with around 900 British citizens having travelled to Iraq to join ISIS, the government’s declaration means there’s now a clear pathway for prosecuting the 450 or so who are thought to have returned. Despite that, not a single case has yet been filed.

‘We have the law and we have the perpetrators coming back’, Ochab says. ‘If we know they are involved in international crimes why are they not prosecuted for those crimes? It sends an horrific message – you can leave the UK, commit crimes then return and reintegrate. We owe it to the victims to deal with this issue. If we don’t, impunity will lead to Britons leaving the country and joining these organisations’. 

‘A very sad indictment’

There are many reasons for the lacklustre response, not least the fact that so many victims have been killed while thousands of women – witnesses, in other words – have still not been freed. At the same time, those that have been released may not be able to identify the men who captured and abused them. Even if they could, there’s no guarantee that the perpetrators themselves are still alive.

‘It takes a long time to build these cases’, Ashraph says. ‘It’s usually the identity of the perpetrators that’s a challenge. The victims might not know their names and a lot of the people are dead because of airstrikes’. This is a result of the military action taken by a US-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria in 2014, as well as various campaigns led by France, Iraq, Russia and, more recently, Turkey since. ‘There are challenges around locating defendants’, Ashraph explains.

Additionally, when it comes to the UK, responsibility for investigating such crimes lies with the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Unit, which, the Crown Prosecution Service says, ‘has the specialist skills to conduct an investigation or to decide that an investigation is not feasible’. There’s only a small number of staff working in the unit though – around 20 – and they also have to handle complex cases relating to conflicts in countries including Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Ukraine. Given the workload it’s perhaps unsurprising that between 2000 and 2023, the Unit made fewer than 20 arrests across all cases, from which no charges were brought.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has said the reason for the absence of prosecutions is that ‘investigations into alleged historical war crimes committed overseas are extremely challenging and complex, and building cases is often a lengthy process’. Ochab, however, calls for a better mechanism to be implemented to ensure ‘an adequate response’, given the number of Britons who travelled to join ISIS who are thought to have now returned.

Aarif Abraham, a barrister at London’s Doughty Street Chambers and founder of the Accountability Unit, a non-governmental organisation specialising in conflict resolution, agrees, noting that the global response to finding and prosecuting the perpetrators of the genocide has been disappointing at best. ‘It’s somewhat dispiriting to see where we are in terms of justice and accountability’, he says. ‘This was a genocide committed by ISIS in a very public way. It’s one of the few cases of genocide where we might say it’s uncontested, generally speaking, because it was live-streamed into our homes. I would have thought that accountability and justice would have been an open and shut case but if you’re looking at criminal responsibility we’re very far from that’.

Abraham explains that in terms of individual criminal responsibility, internationally there have only been ten successful prosecutions of ISIS members over the past decade. ‘Given the scale, extent and nature of the crimes the Yazidis faced in Syria and Iraq, both in 2014 but also looking back before then and well after to the present day, that’s a very sad indictment on our efforts’, he says.

The responsibility of states

Another part of the problem is finding agreement on what justice actually means or how it should be served. Leyla Ferman is co-founder of the Yazidi Justice Committee and Director of Women for Justice, a German-based group of lawyers, academics, doctors and social workers that supports Yazidi women who have escaped ISIS captivity. She says that those affected by the genocide are less interested in individual prosecutions because ‘it doesn’t give the whole picture of the atrocities committed by ISIS’. Yet any other kind of justice seems even harder to achieve.

‘Yazidis from the beginning were demanding and calling for an international tribunal, but a tribunal is not an easy issue’, Ferman says. ‘Now it seems they don’t think it’s possible […] when they’re talking about justice, most of the survivors are talking about legal justice. That refers to ISIS members but also those who supported ISIS and those who made it possible for ISIS to become ISIS, and that’s the responsibility of states’. She adds that it’s very difficult to bring any of the states accused of violating the Genocide Convention in this regard before a court.

Abraham is among a group of lawyers who in 2023 filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee against the Turkish state after its air force hit a Sinjar hospital in 2021. Though ISIS was deemed to be eradicated in 2017, fighting in the area continues, with Turkey classing the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and People’s Protection Units (YPG) – a Syrian-Kurdish group that was involved in the US-led coalition against ISIS – as terrorist groups. It regularly bombs their enclaves in Iraq and Syria, with the geographic location of Sinjar putting it at high risk of being hit. Turkey has described the airstrikes, including the one that hit the Sinjar hospital, as being intended to combat terrorist groups.

Eight civilians were killed and 15 more were seriously injured in the hospital strike, with the complaint, filed in the name of four Iraqi Yazidis, seeking redress and reparation for their loss. But such complaints are rare and court cases rarer still, with Abraham highlighting that, despite countries making declarations about genocide, none have yet shown themselves willing to hold to account those responsible for what happened to the Yazidis in 2014 and since.

‘There’s very little appetite to use the one mechanism that states can use to apply, fulfil and interpret the provisions of the Genocide Convention’, he says. ‘Disputes can be settled by the International Court of Justice [ICJ] but we haven’t found a state willing to take a case’. Abraham highlights the three states alleged by the Yazidi Justice Committee, using publicly available evidence, to have failed in their obligations – Iraq, Syria and Turkey – and says what’s needed is a state sponsor that has ratified the Genocide Convention and is entitled to bring a claim under the ICJ. ‘They have a duty to prevent, a duty to punish and a duty to implement the Convention, but there are geopolitical implications to bringing a case and that plays a role’, Abraham explains.

Among the ruins

Nevertheless, there have been glimmers of hope. Omer’s aunt is still missing, the family assumes her uncle was killed and two of their children are yet to be located, but five of the children that were captured by ISIS were rescued and reunited with their family. After living with their paternal grandparents in an Iraqi village, they have recently emigrated to Australia as part of the country’s official Yazidi resettlement scheme. Now living with their uncle and his family, they’re slowly adjusting to life after captivity.

‘It was really difficult when they were with their grandparents’, she says. ‘The [children] had ISIS views – that’s how they spoke – and their uncle, had to take a lot of time with them. It was not an easy journey to bring them back from where they were, but they have become really good kids and are doing really well at school’. Omer adds that because the children are still young, and have lost their parents and suffered a terrible experience, ‘it’s difficult to get used to a new life, a new language, but it is better [in Australia]’.

Sister Makrina Finlay, a Benedictine nun who assists Yazidi asylum seekers in Germany, says that this lack of safety is serving to retraumatise a community that has yet to have its ongoing trauma recognised in any meaningful way. The genocide may be seen as an event that happened in 2014, but without any closure – legal or otherwise – for the Yazidi people it remains an ongoing situation.

‘The towns are not completely decimated but there are no plans to rebuild in a way that makes sense’, she says. ‘But the trauma is ongoing. In Sinjar each of the times I’ve been there I’ve had people I’ve been with look up to the sky and say “that’s a Turkish plane up there”. They don’t bomb you every time, but they could. They are flying around and that’s traumatic’.

Ferman says the lack of justice will compound that further. ‘When you look at trauma theory and how people overcome trauma, justice is always very important’, she says.

Abraham agrees. ‘I work with the survivor community and I’m often surprised when you ask about their hopes that justice features at the top’, he says. ‘You forget that it’s not what justice means to us, which might be international court cases or prosecutions. This is ongoing and the people are displaced but there are other types of harm – there are ongoing Turkish airstrikes, there’s neglect by the state in Syria and Iraq in terms of giving any kind of reparative relief, they are discriminated against. There’s a compounding of harm upon harm. Justice is not just about a person being prosecuted, it’s about reparative relief and a future that’s secure’.

For Omer, the impact of this absence is all too real. With ten years passing since the genocide and with no concrete action being taken to hold those responsible to account, she says there’s a sense that justice will never be served. And, given attempts to return the Yazidis to Sinjar, without that justice she fears it’s only a matter of time before history repeats itself in the region.

‘Before the genocide, nothing was good for the Yazidi community but we were OK because we were not being killed’, she says. ‘The genocide put us back to the zero point. I’m Yazidi but I don’t feel like there’s a future in Sinjar; I don’t feel that there’s hope for me. Most Yazidis feel like that. It’s difficult to live in a country and feel that you don’t belong’.

Ochab says that by failing to take action against the individuals who carried out the attack or the states that failed to prevent it, the international community is saying that it has ‘moved on from the Yazidis’. Abraham warns that it does so at its peril. ‘The Yazidis have very little agency – they are not in the world, they don’t have connections to media and politicians – and that’s deeply problematic when you consider who the Yazidis are in terms of our common humanity’, he says. ‘They are the oldest surviving monotheistic tradition in the world. Without them you could say there would be no Jews or Christians or Muslims’.

Abraham adds that what happens to the Yazidis and the failure to obtain justice for them is a litmus test for our humanity. ‘If we can’t get redress for them in what is an ongoing genocide then when do we do it?’, he says. ‘What is the purpose of the Genocide Convention, which was drafted after the Second World War to prevent these harms?’

Margaret Taylor is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at mags.taylor@icloud.com