In August 2014, "Islamic State" militants launched what the UN calls a genocidal campaign against the religious and ethnic minority in northern Iraq. Despite the ouster of IS, the Yazidis' ordeal is far from over.
"The genocide is ongoing and remains largely unaddressed, despite the obligations of States party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 to prevent and to punish the crime," the OHCHR commission wrote in a statement to mark the anniversary of IS launching an assault on the Yazidis of the Sinjar region in northern Iraq near the Syrian border.
The Yazidis, a religious community whose belief and practices span thousands of years, are reviled as infidels by IS. During the assault, their militants killed and kidnapped thousands of Yazidis, forcing many to flee their home region. The images of stricken survivors trapped on Mount Sinjar in its aftermath prompted the US to launch airstrikes against IS in Iraq.
New hope for Yazidi women tortured by IS fighters
A new psychological trauma institute for Yazidi women tortured by the so-called IS is being established at the university of Dohuk in Iraq. It is the first in the entire region.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Hoping for help
Perwin Ali Baku escaped the Islamic State after more than two years in captivity. The 23-year-old Yazidi woman was captured together with her 3-year-old daughter. "I don't feel right," she says, sitting on a mattress on the floor of her father-in-law's small hut in a northern Iraq refugee camp. "I still can't sleep and my body is tense all the time."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Tormenting flashbacks
When Perwin hears a loud voice, she cringes at the thought of her captors. She hopes for help at the newly established institute in Iraq, part of an ambitious project funded by the German state of Baden Württemberg that has already brought 1,100 women who had escaped Islamic State captivity to Germany for psychological treatment.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Kabarto refugee camp
Members of Germany's 100,000 strong Yazidi community reached out to help the women - and the Baden Württemberg state legislature approved a €95-million program ($106 million) over three years to bring women abused by the IS to Germany. Now, help is on the way on-site in Iraq.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
No trauma treatment - yet
As fighting rages between Iraqi forces and the IS in Mosul only about 75 km from Dohuk, the number of victims that make it to freedom increases daily. 26 psychiatrists work in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq with its population of 5.5 million and more than 1.5 million refugees and internally
displaced people. None specialize in treating trauma.
Hope on the horizon
German trauma specialist Jan Kizilhan, who has Yazidi roots but immigrated to Germany at the age of 6, is the driving force behind the new institute. The program will train local mental health professionals to treat people like Perwin and thousands of Yazidi women, children and other Islamic State victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Training psychotherapists
The idea is to train 30 new professionals for three years and then extend the program to other regional universities: in ten years' time, there could be more than 1,000 psychotherapists in the area. Students will receive a double master's degree in psychotherapy and psychotraumatology according to German standards, and training from both local and German professors.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Duty to help
Kizilhan has interviewed thousands of women in refugee camps - and more recently, prospective students for the program's inaugural class: "We are talking about general trauma, we are talking about collective trauma and we are talking about genocide. That's the reason we have to help if we can - it's our human duty to help them."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
7 images1 | 7
Boys missing, girls enslaved
Three years on, thousands of Yazidi men and boys remain missing and IS continues to subject about 3,000 Yazidi women and girls in Syria to horrific violence, including daily rapes and beatings, the commission said, adding that it had received reports of IS fighters trying to sell enslaved Yazidi women and girls as international forces close in on its stronghold of Raqqa.
Sinjar and the region surrounding it had been home to about 400,000 Yazidi people before the IS onslaught began. IS has been driven out of the area but only about 1,000 Yazidi families have returned to Sinjar city. That's because various groups including Kurdish and Shiite forces which drove out IS are vying for control of the area, making it difficult to guarantee security and advance reconstruction efforts.
"The lack of services and political problems are preventing families from returning," Jalal Khalaf, the director of the mayor's office in Sinjar, told Reuters.
