Briefing prepared for UK parliamentarians
The Yazidis are a Kurmanji-speaking ethno-religious
minority whose heartland is Sinjar province, in northwest
Iraq, and who are also found in Syria, Turkey and Iran.
The monotheistic and endogamous community has faced
historical persecution1
on account of its non-Abrahamic,
pre-Zoroastrian religious belief, which was deemed heretical
by successive authorities as Islam established itself as the
predominant religion in the Middle East. During the 18th and
19th centuries, the Yazidis were reportedly subjected to 72
genocidal massacres.
In 2014 the Islamic State (IS), which viewed the Yazidis as ‘devil-worshipers’ and sought to convert or enslave all those deemed to be ‘non-believers’, swept across vast swathes of Iraq and Syria, including Sinjar province. 1,298 Yazidis were murdered on the first day of the IS attack on Sinjar. Men and boys over 12 were massacred; those under 12 were seized, brainwashed, and trained to fight their own people, while women and girls were forced into sexual slavery, being bought and sold like chattel. One study estimates that IS killed 3,100 Yazidis in a matter of days, and 6,000 were captured. Over 2,000 women and children are believed to still be in the hands of IS.
Genocide
‘Genocide’ is defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), as referring to any of the following acts that are committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group in whole or in part:
- killing members of the group;
- causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or
- forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The UK is party to several international agreements on the prevention of Genocide, the protection of potential victims and the punishment of perpetrators: the UN Genocide Convention; the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle; and the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency Group’s Code of Conduct.
However, all too often, a genocide is not addressed while it is underway, and early warnings are disregarded, because efforts to raise concerns become mired in international politic interests, militating against accountability and redress.