النهار

Lynn Zovighian – Founder, Zovighian Public Office

I have been dreading the coming of this day. Serving the Yazidi people for more than nine years, this ten-year commemoration of their genocide, perpetrated by Da’esh, is not one that celebrates victories of justice, accountability, and rebuilding of homes. After spending time with our Yazidi friends and survivors just a couple of weeks ago, I feel their immense sadness and disappointment that the world has moved on. They are stranded in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps or attempting to return to their destroyed homes in Sinjar or have already packed and traveled far away from their homeland with no prospects to ever come back.

What has the world achieved for the Yazidi people in the last ten years? Sinjar, known as Shingal to the Yazidi community, is far from safe and secure. The genocidal campaign by Da’esh displaced over 360,000 in 2014, and yet, in 2024, an estimated 200,000 Yazidis remain displaced. 2,600 women and girls are still being held in captivity with no search and rescue task force in place to save them. There are barely any services in the IDP camps, and there are no services in Sinjar for those who have dared to return.

The need for security and political representation

Many of the historic villages of Sinjar have become ghost towns with no less than 33 mass graves that have still not been opened and exhumed, according to the Iraqi Mass Graves Directorate (MGD).

With the delayed but still imminent foreclosure of the IDP camps, Yazidis are being forced to return to a region that is so unsafe, that no diplomat or government official will be attending the community’s commemorative events at the Sinjar Genocide Memorial Site today. And yet, they are being asked to return and make it work.

With a dozen armed groups peppering the region, and hate crimes on the rise, how is it safe to be Yazidi? How is it safe to live in Sinjar?

My partners and friends at Yazda, the largest Yazidi community institution in Sinjar and around the world have spent extensive time developing blueprints and policy recommendations so that the Central Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government jointly succeed in bringing security and prosperity to Sinjar, because a peaceful Sinjar is a peaceful Iraq.

Justice and accountability

Ten years in, and only nine Da’esh members or their wives have been prosecuted. The Yazidi survivors whom I know and cherish are all ready to see their day in court and are demanding that their right to justice be honored.

In Paris last month, I had the honor of co-presiding a special session at the Palace of Luxembourg, with Senator Nathalie Goulet and Yazidi leader and dear friend Natia Navrouzov, to address French senators and survivors. One incredible survivor, 27-year-old Manal Lukman Khalaf, who is a member of the Yazidi Survivors Network (YSN) and the Survivors Voice Network (SVN), from Tel Qasab, Sinjar, exclaimed in her keynote: “We feel that our case has been forgotten, even though it is ongoing. Justice has not been achieved, the perpetrators of crimes among Da’esh members and those who supported them have not been held accountable, and there are no deliberate plans to rebuild Sinjar and restore life to its areas.”

The Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government hold immense responsibility to establish and empower legal avenues for justice. This is especially because Iraq has not ratified the Rome Statute, and so crimes that were committed in Sinjar cannot be presented at the International Criminal Court. A national legal framework to prosecute Da’esh members for crimes of genocide is far overdue. Until that day comes, Da’esh wins. The risks that the Yazidi people see a genocide once again are dangerously high, not only because they have never been so vulnerable, but because the criminals that established Da’esh and its so-called caliphate are still free.