Persecution Prevention Project: report series on the Yazidi genocide
The Persecution Prevention Project (PPP) is a pro bono project supported by the IBA Human Rights Law Committee and Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program.
It was established in 2019 to provide impartial expertise on the question as to whether:
- certain groups or populations face a particular risk of persecution, based on an assessment as to the extent to which they are able to enjoy the protection of fundamental human rights, without discrimination; and
- the level of this risk suggests that the population or group in question might face a risk of being subjected to mass atrocity crimes, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The project is composed of international lawyers, investigators and subject matter experts with particular experience in documenting and analysing human rights violations and mass atrocity crimes.
In June 2019, the PPP team published its inaugural report, ‘Before It’s Too Late’, in which it assessed risk factors to help indicate the risk of persecution faced by Yazidis in Iraq following the military ‘defeat’ of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) caliphate and its loss of territorial control. The PPP team found that persecution against the Yazidi was ongoing and that there was a serious risk that atrocity crimes would continue to be committed against the Yazidi community in Iraq.
In November 2024, following the tenth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide, the PPP team published a follow-up report, ‘Pathways to Protection: A report calling for immediate solutions to the ongoing destruction of the Yazidi community of Sinjar’. This report both substantiates the efficacy of the 2019 report’s risk factor assessment and highlights the continuing persecution and suffering of the Yazidi community in Iraq, due to numerous factors, including ongoing human rights and humanitarian law violations, weak state structures, growing intergroup tensions, patterns of discrimination and impunity.
The report ultimately finds that neither the structural causes that led to the creation of ISIL nor the combination of actors that enabled ISIL to carry out the Yazidi genocide have been addressed, leaving the Yazidi vulnerable to threats from ISIL and other actors in Iraq. This leaves them in need of, and legally entitled to, safe refuge elsewhere. In detailing these findings on the persisting untenable conditions for the Yazidi in Iraq, the report highlights the crucial role of European countries in protecting the Yazidi community, namely through refugee policy. The PPP team calls on them to fulfill their commitments and obligations under international law.
The PPP team is currently working on its next report installment.