Recovering from Genocide: The Yazidis’ Return to Sinjar

USCIRF Spotlight Podcast
November 4, 2022

Transcription

[LZ]: Lynn Zovighian
[SB] : Susan Bishai

[LZ]: Please listen to what the communities have to say. The Yazidi people are the most important experts in their lived experience. Please consult with them.

 
[Introduction] Hello and welcome to the Research Spotlight Podcast, a podcast series by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where we take a deep dive into religious freedom conditions around the world. Breaking the situation down for you. Each episode, we focus on a different country, region or topic. Not only do we analyze and explain the religious freedom situation to our listeners, but we also make policy recommendations to the United States government in order to address the immense challenges we bring to light here.


[SB]: Welcome to USCRIF Spotlight. I'm Susan Bishay, policy analyst here at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.Today USCRIF focuses on the ongoing struggles of the Yazidis, a minority ethno-religious group within the Kurdish majority areas of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey, as well as in Armenia. The survival of the Yazidis of Iraq's Sinjar region became a global priority for the international community when the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS, targeted them for ethnic and religious cleansing via mass murder, mass rape, sexual slavery, forced conversion and other atrocities. A campaign which began in 2014 and which the United Nations, United States and others have since declared a genocide. The United States remains deeply invested in helping stabilize the Sinjar region and making it a viable home again for the hundreds of thousands of Yazidis displaced within Iraq and in other countries such as Syria. As USCIRF has consistently reported, in recent years, Sinjar is not yet a hospitable environment for the Yazidi people, and the United States and wider international community have a role to play in encouraging all stakeholders, including Yazidis and authorities in both the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi federal government, to rebuild a Sinjar that is safe for this vulnerable religious minority. Today, we're pleased to welcome Lynn Zovighian, Co-founder and Managing Director of The Zovighian Partnership, a social investment platform for socio economic advancement and sustainable collective impact in the Middle East. The Partnership's team has been at the forefront of research and reporting on the challenges. The Yazidi community and Sinjar continue to face as new stages of the genocide continue to unfold. Lynn, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:03:02:01]

[LZ]: Thank you so much, Susan, for having me.

And thank you to you, USCIRF, for always standing by our Yazidi friends as an institution.You have been amplifying multiple voices on the ground in Sinjar and beyond over the last few years.

[SB]: Thank you, Lynn.

We really appreciate having you here. And the Yazidi community, I know it's very close to you, by heart both personally as well as your organization, which has done such great research. So let's dive in. Our first question is some people in our audience may not be familiar with the Yazidis as an ethnic and religious community indigenous to parts of several Middle Eastern countries.

Can you please tell us a little bit about who they are and how they and their religion are unique?

[00:03:52:19]

[LZ]: Absolutely, Suzanne, because that is such an important starting point to also understanding why this community continues to be subjugated to campaigns of genocide and community wide elimination. The Yazidi people come from an ancient belief system that predates even Christianity and Islam and the other religions of our region.

The Yazidi people are not just an ethno-religious community, they are also endogenous. And what that means is that they marry among themselves and they keep their religion and their belief systems close to each other. And so it's very important to appreciate that this is a religion that is has a very beautiful, symbiotic relationship with nature. It has a very strong insistence. It bears the responsibility of being peacebuilding. And, in fact, in a recent documentary that we co-created  with our Yazidi friends in Sinjar, our documentary begins in Lalish, their most important temple for the Yazidi faith. And when you watch the scenes and when you feel the energy in Lalish, you realize how peaceful and concretely peaceful this religion is.

And as a result, because it is a religion and a community that is close knit and a religion that might not be understood by all. Clearly, over the centuries, it has therefore been a religion and a community that has been misunderstood and has been subjugated to atrocities and multiple genocides. The one that the people are currently going through is not their first.

[00:05:54:03]

[SB]: Thank you, Lynn.

It does sound like a fascinating and unique ethno-religious community that a lot of people don't know about. Now USCIRF wants to shed further light on this community and we remain deeply concerned for the human rights and religious freedom of the survivors of the Yazidi genocide. Earlier in 2022, Yazda, which is a local community institution that you, Lynn and your organization have been supporting since 2015, reported that 2760, that almost 2800 Yazidi women and girls are still missing following their reported abductions, sex trafficking, and enslavement. What obstacles exist to all these women returning or being found and being returned to their communities? Lynn?

[00:06:48:19]

[LZ]: Susan, that is such an important question, and it's one of those problematic stories, chronic challenges that the communityis facing today that often makes them wonder, why is the world not listening? We are still in the midst of a genocide campaign, and these women and girls and children are the epitome of that ongoing campaign. The reality is, Susan, is there has been no political will to find them and rescue them, neither at the national level with the Iraqi central government or the Kurdistan Regional government, nor, frankly, with the international community. What that means is that girls and women are only being found through private smuggling missions where their families spend months raising money, taking on debt, borrowing from friends and loved ones, and then hiring smugglers to take on an incredibly dangerous journey to find and safely rescue and bring back those girls and women home.So unfortunately, until now, despite the many, many requests by Yezidi women survivors who have been saved and have been brought back to their community because they are such crucial ambassadors of the women who are still being held in captivity, these survivors have been saying for years now. Can you please go and find our sisters, our daughters, our mothers, our cousins, our loved ones?

I'd like to come back to a point when I said all these women coming back home, Susan, it's so important to appreciate that they aren't actually coming back home. Home implies that you're in your homeland, safe and sound and not at risk of being hurt again. But those, that sense of home no longer exists. And most of those homes have been pillaged, damaged or destroyed in the early days of Da'esh as a genocidal campaign in Sinjar. And so when these girls and women come back, they're coming back to tents in IDP camps, in abhorrent conditions.

[00:06:51:13]

[SB]: It's a really good point.

Thank you for highlighting that that, you know, even when they are returned, you know, even when the obstacle to getting back across the border or wherever it was they were doesn't exist anymore. They are going into a camp. So thank you for highlighting that, Lynn. And speaking of camps, actually moving to our next question, according to the International Organization for Migration, before 2014, there were over half a million Yazidis in Iraq in Iraq alone. We're focusing on Iraq because of Sinjar today. And almost all of those 500,000 estimated have suffered displacement, ISIL displaced 360,000 in the Sinjar area alone. And today there are more than 200,000 Sinjar Yazidis still living in Iraq's internally displaced or IDP camps. And when we add to that, those displaced in camps across the border in Syria and in other places displaced in other places, those numbers rise even further. So Lynn, can you share with us some of the struggles that these IDPs and refugees face? So both in Iraq and outside of Iraq, what sort of struggles do they face?

 
[00:10:45:22]

[LZ]: Thank you so much for asking that important question, Susan. You know, for some reason in the world that we live in today, being a refugee, being a displaced person, it almost become normalized. We've gotten so used to, as a global community, learning and hearing about refugee camps and internally displaced persons camps. But there is nothing normal about camp life. And one important starting point here is to see that these camps are not meant to be long- term settlements where communities get to come back and rebuild their lives. They are transitionary. But what happens is when that transition is is delayed because not enough is being done to rebuild their homeland when that transition takes so long.And there are many years of not providing services and relief and empowerment to these communities. Those camps don't just become a transitionary phase. They become purgatory. So let me describe to you what's purgatory is like for our Yazidi friends who are still stuck in these camps. And we know this from Yazda, a local Yazidi institution, that, as you said, that my family and I and my team at The Zovighian Partnership have been supporting since their incubation in 2015.But we also noticed from families living in the camps who Yazda takes care of and we know this of a new network of survivors that Yazda has also incubated, called the Yazidi Survivors Network. The YSL whom I'm very close to and I deeply appreciate their wisdom and what they teach us. And that's key, Susan, is to understand that everything I'm about to talk about comes from deeply listening. It comes from understanding what are the right questions to ask, because we've been taught how to think by the very people who are living through these atrocities until today. And so this is not an IOM report. A UNHCR report. This is their voices from the ground up. So what is a day in a life in one of these camps to begin with?

These camps really challenge the Yazidi identity an identity that has a very strong, strong sense of hygiene. And as I mentioned earlier, a very deep closeness to nature and the environment around them. So when you are in these camps, you don't get to be as hygienic and as clean and have access to sanitation and water the way you would want to, the way your culture asks this of you, the way you want this for yourself.

And so already being in an environment where we do not have sufficient clean water and sanitation and hygiene has become a further permutation of the Yazidi genocide today because their identity is challenged day in, day out. And what that also means is when you don't have the basic sanitation water, you are a very ripe ground for for health conditions, for disease, for which you do not have enough health services and medical attention. Sinjar has always been a place that didn't have a strong water infrastructure and never had enough access to medical clinics and hospitals. This is an environment, Susan, that has always been home to minority communities, that have been isolated and persecuted politically, economically and socially over decades. But what happens when you are a community facing genocide, you are being isolated and physically contained within camps, both formal camps and makeshift camps, more informal settlements where the  the infrastructure never even existed for you to have a starting point to deal with this new life that you now are living. So what that means is, for example, when we were running a medical program with Yazda in 2016 and we were welcoming very young children with, with, with tremendous cardiac challenges and disease. The doctors with whom we were working with were telling us time and time again, these are cardiac disease cases that we learn of in our medical books. We don't get to experience these in our careers because the degree to which that does those disease, those those conditions are rapidly degrading with no access to medical care, with no access to nourishment, and with no access to to to clean water and sanitation. These conditions just move at a speed of light faster than any top-notch doctor and medical team can control. And so you have these camps, as I said, with poor water, sanitation and with no access to medical support, except for just Yazda mobile medical clinics, which alone are insufficient to take care of this community.You also don't have services. You don't have schools. These children are living in these camps and staying in these camps.We are hurting their ability to develop, to become their highest potential adults because we are not giving them a chance in those precious early years of their early childhood development. We are not giving their brains the nourishment they need, the stimulation that they need, and as a result, they are suffering from motor development delays, emotional and cognitive development delays.

This genocide, Susan, it's scientific markers, are only going to be really understood when these children become adults.And we see how devastating the genocide not only was and is on their childhood, but on the adults they will never get to become because we also, as an international community, did not get to look after them the way we should have when they were young and they still had a chance at brain development. What this also means, Susan, is that this community has so much in its hands and so much to take care of. There are emergencies across the board. When we talk with humanitarians and humanitarian aid agencies, the hardest part is agreeing on a starting point. The hardest part today is saying yes to A and B, because we know that when we say yes to that, we will have to say no to something else, because funding remains limited and terribly constricted. And that all of that, Susan, is without the additional pain. But joy as well of receiving and bringing back women and children who were being held captive by Da’esh. But when these women and children come back, Susan, they come back in conditions that need so much support. And they need to come back to a community that is able to take them in, not only with the love with which they already do, but also with the mental, emotional and spiritual capacity to kickstart and enable their healing journeys. And those healing journeys are very long term. And so what we are asking of this community in these camps with insufficient funding, lack of political will and frankly, devastating global inaction, is we're asking them to take care of themselves from A to Z. And that is what it is like to wake up in a camp as a Yazidi citizen in Sinjar and to go and trying to attempt to sleep at the end of a devastating and very long day where you feel more alone than ever, where you wonder, where is the world? And you think, why me? Why couldn't I have had a better life? Life? What did I do to deserve this? This, Susan, is what our survivors have taught us over the years. It's what Yazda and their incredible team have taught us over the years. And it's what the families whom we've had the privilege of meeting and working with have also taught us over the years. Eight years into a genocide that is simply not ending.

[00:20:43:14]

[SB]: Wow. You just conveyed such a sense of urgency that may be lost over as with each successive year of this unfolding genocide. So thank you for painting that vivid picture of conditions for those who are in displacement camps. And I want to go back to something you said earlier when you were talking about Sinjar. You said that conditions in Sinjar were neverideal to begin with. And so focusing now and moving forward to look at Sinjar going forward today, what would you say is the state of Sinjar today in 2022? We understand there's a lack of information on exact numbers of returnees and there might be political reasons for that. You can address that. And also, if you could address what is preventing the many other genocide survivors from returning to Sinjar.

[00:20:48:18]

[LZ]: Yes, you're absolutely right, Susan. Sinjar has been a difficult place for the Yazidi people and other communities, other Sinjaris over the last decades being.

I want to begin by addressing your important point about poor data. You're right.

Today one of the faces of genocide is the dearth of data. And the concern is that that dearth of data is really beginning to feel political, intentional. When we do not have data, how are we going to be in the best position to think with the Yazidi people and others still living in the camps? How are we going to be thinking with these communities and making the right decisions alongside them on how to re-enable and build back sustainable and thriving, historic villages in this entire area,in this entire Sinjar district? Without data, we will never know what we do not know. And we are deeply as a as a community of friends to the Yazidi people and as the Yazidi people themselves. We are all deeply disempowered by the lack of data. It is almost I hate to use the this language lightly, but it almost feels like a new face of the genocide, which so without this lack of data, however, there is a lot that we do know. And so let me walk us through a couple of important points.

Number one.

One has to look at the at Sinjar as as a district that is a disputed area between the Iraqi central government, on the one hand, and the Kurdistan Regional government on the other hand. And this has been a disputed area for decades. Recently, we had the Sinjar agreement come to light between both governments. However, very unfortunately, without the consultation and meaningful inclusion of any of the Sinjar communities on the ground. And so an agreement was sentwithout the voices of the communities. Decisions were made on them, without them being able to educate and inform this political negotiation process and be able to step in with recommendationson how best to implement. And so today, the Sinjar Agreement has not even initiated its first steps of implementation because firstly, the agreement does not reflect the realities on the ground. It doesn't reflect the complexities that that are necessary for political players and advocates and community builders to have a viable roadmap on how to implement, collaborate actively with shared vision and shared values and shared interest. And so that agreement did not end up being a mediation ground on which stakeholders could come closer and learn and appreciate how they could actually join forces together. What that means is that some chronic challenges, such as Yazidis and other communities not being represented in the public administrationand in the municipalities and largely in the law enforcement and local political forces, sorry, local police forces. Those continue to perpetrate those continue to be conditions that exist. And so you can appreciate, Susan, that if we are not addressing if we've not built a framework to address these challenges, if we have not created the political will to include the communities and empower local stakeholders to implement and address those challenges. If we are politicizing Sinjar and continue to politicize Sinjar, all of the communities end up being bate and the Yazidis because they are the ones who are still the majority of the Yazidis are still living in the camps, Susan. Whilst other communities, thankfully, have been able to largely return, the Yazidis remain isolated and constricted in the camps and with no voice politically and in the public administration. What are we asking of the Yazidis? How on earth do we expect them to be able to safely and sustainably return back to their historic villages? In fact, Susan, many, many families who returned have been re-displaced. We don't have the numbers, as you said, but many families have been re-displaced back into the camps becausewhen they go today to the villages,what do those villages look like? There are no basic services. There are over a dozenarmed groups on the ground. There is no safety. There is no human security like I said earlier. There is no water. There's barely any safe schooling. And and on top of that, we still have villages who still have mass graves that have not yet been exhumed. And we have no no chances at the moment, no baseline for socio- economic transformation or even early stage re-development. This is why, Susan, when we're talking about Sinjar, we have to appreciate this is still a conflict zone.This is still a zone that has been disempowered and disabled by genocide and various crimes against humanity. This is not a post-conflict environment where we can just now start to think about, let's rebuild. Let's fund rebuilding. Yes, we all want to rebuild. And yes, we all need to fund that rebuilding. But there are very important prerequisites that need to come first.

[00:28:06:20]

[SB]: Thank you, Lynn. Now, you just spoke to one of the two legal instruments and laws that I wanted to ask you about. The first one was the Sinjar Agreement. So thank you for discussing that and some of the problems with the implementation of that. And how about the Yazidi survivors law? I understand the Iraqi parliament passed that in 2021. Now, what provisions or reparations does that law make? And have those actually been implementedor distributed respectively? We all know there's been a a year long-political deadlock in Iraq, in the federal government,and that has just started to become resolved in the past few weeks. In October of 2022, could that have had anything to do with any potential stalling of the implementation of the Yazidi Survivors Law or also the Sinjar Agreement and you can speak to both. Go ahead.

[00:29:06:13]

[LZ]: Okay. Yes.Thank you so much for that, Susan. And I'll begin by by definitely addressing the delays of of of the effective implementation of both Sinjar Agreement and the Yazidi Survivors Law. Indeed, not having a a trusted government or a government with confidence in Iraq over the last several months has certainly contributed to the non-implementation of both the agreement and the YSL. However, the reality is, if forces if political forces did wish to implement it, they could have. Susan, let's begin by talking about the Yazidi Survivors Law, the YSL. I'd like to begin by explaining why this law was so important. The Yazidi genocide is recognized by the Iraqi parliament, and that's an example, incredibly important stepping stone for transitional justice for survivors and the community at large. I'd like to also add that whilst this important law is called the Yazidi Survivors Law, it also is a a legislative backbone for women of other communities, such as, for example, the Turkmen and other Christian communities. And so the the YSL is important for any woman who was kidnaped and hurt by Da’esh at any point in their invasion of Sinjar, in their genocidal campaign,and in the war crimes and crimes against humanity that they were conducting. So today, the Yazidi Survivors Law , like the Sinjar Agreement, have been victim to non-implementation, largely because, yes, there is an Iraqi government that has lost the confidence of parliament and has and has and has not been in a position politically to push for the implementation of the YSL. And this Parliament as well has also been under significant political pressure and we've seen that over the last several months because the reality is that Iraq is falling victim to the devastating geopolitical challenges between, sandwiched really between Iran and Turkey and as well, Syria. So the reality is that the Iraqi political system has not been empowered to effectively implement the YSL and the Sinjar agreement. But the reality also is that is not an excuse for not implementing because 6000 or the 6000 Yazidi women and children, Susan, were captured by Da’esh. Over 3000 have returned. The law is giving reparations and benefits and getting a grants scheme that these women can benefit from post captivity. It's not a lot of women. It's not an excuse to not have the funding in place, to not have the implementation mechanisms in place. In fact, many of these Yazidi women survivors are not even aware that they are eligible for that grand scheme. And there's a very important paper written by Yazda. It is called the Survivors’ Grant Scheme in Practice and Recommendations for its improvement. It was published in 2021 with the support of the International Organization for Migration. It is available on the Yazda website. I highly encourage all of our listeners dialing in today, listening today to to read it. And there are other reports also available on the the Yazda website related to most recently a report on the women still in captivity, their unknown fates. So the reality is that if political forces wanted it, it could happen. And the Yazidi women today could be receiving the grand scheme that they deserve and could be having a an easier time socioeconomically to rebuild their lives. But the reality is, none of that implementation has been kickstarted. The funding has not been provided. And the former President of Iraq, Dr. Barham Saleh, who is someone who was a patron of this law, is today no longer holding the presidency. And so we now have a new president. We have a new prime minister. We will have a new a new Iraqi government that now needs to learn and relearn what the Yazidi cause is about, why it is so important, and why time is of the essence, because their predecessors were not able to execute what should have been executed long ago. Thanks for explaining those limitations and obstacles to the implementation of the Survivors Law.

[00:34:56:01]

[SB]: Lynn, I want to close our final question. It's kind of a big one. USCIRF over the past several years has made recommendations to other parts of the U.S. government for steps the United States can take to support rebuilding efforts in Sinjar and aid the Yazidi community in its efforts to recover from the ongoing, as you've pointed out, ongoing genocide. What recommendations does The Zovighian Partnership make to the administration and Congress for how the United States specifically can support the Yazidis? And we know that the international community has a role to play. But for USCIRF, if we just want to focus right now on the United States.

[00:35:42:22]

[LZ]: Absolutely. And that is a big but very significant question. Susan, step one, please listen to what the communities have to say. The Yazidi people are the most important experts in their lived experiences. Please consult with them in all of the policies and decisions that you are looking to make as a government and friend of this community for many years. Please make sure that you are partnering with the Yazidi people and joining forces hand in hand to make the right decisions, co-design the necessary interventions, and not delay any further the absolutely urgent and multidimensional interventions that are required for the Yazidi people in the internally displaced persons camps and in the historic villages where some returnees have begun to come back to. That is step one.

Step two is appreciate that, because so much time has passed of inaction. The complexities of this genocide and the requirements needed to address and and end this genocide are more complex than before. But that should not hold you back, because the reality is that this is a small community. We can all look after them. It is a community if we can just take care of all of the Yazidis. It's not a big ask in terms of population size, but also the Yazidi people have so much to give back to other communities and the rest of Iraq and the Kurdistan region. When we empower this community, it allows them to to to establish themselves as productive citizens and contributors and collaborators with, other communities, other Sinjaris, and both governments. The Yazidi people are a hardworking people. And so when we empowered them, we are also empowering all of Iraq and all of Kurdistan, because the Yazidi people will be in the best position to become socioeconomic changemakers and and and and help address a lot of the preconditions of conditions of genocide and crimes against humanity that still exist in the entire Sinjar area. And step three is to say that the Yazidi situation, the Yazidi Cause today is so interconnected with the geopolitical realities of the Middle East, it will not be enough to implement step one, which is co-create and co-decide with the communities and bring them in as partners. It won't be enough to just do step two, which is urgently and strategically deliver funding and empowerment  to the necessary interventions on the ground. We need step three as well, which is to make sure that the United States and this is only the United States that can do this, Susan. It's only the United States that can tell Turkey to stop bombarding Sinjar,that can help Turkey to stop its expansionist imperial policy into Iraq and other parts of Sinjar and the rest of the region as well. It is also the only country that can look Iraq in the eye and not allow Iran to to continue to infiltrate that Sinjar areaand and further fund and further support armed groups and political interests on the ground. All three steps are necessary. Susan, one or two will not be enough. That is my ask as a friend of the Yazidi people to the United States government today.

[00:39:55:00]

[SB]: Lynn, you speak with such intensity about an intense subject genocide. And I, I thank you so much on behalf of USCIRF, for sharing this sense of urgency and for sharing this essential information that you and Yazda and other Yazidi groups have brought to the fore of this discussion. Thank you so much. I also want to tell the audience you can find more information on USCIRF reporting on Yazidis and Sinjar. Amid our reporting on Iraq and our related policy recommendations to the U.S. government on our website, uscirf.gov. And please also take a look at the The Zovighian Partnership's recent report, very recent report on Sinjar, co-authored with the Yazidi Organization we discussed: Yazda. It's available on the website of the publisher, the Wilson Center. And there's also another report, too, which I'd like you to direct you. The Zovighian Partnership and Yazda collaborated on a report on transitional justice and the Yazidi genocide.And we encourage you to take a look at that online as well. As always, I want to thank our audience for tuning in today.And we'll see you next time on USCIRF spotlight. 

Thank you.

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