Country: Iraq

Group: Yazidi

Date Finalized: 10/26/22

Team: Jhanz Marco Garcia (lead), Vianney Mancilla, Zaida Arellano Reyes, Austyn Evans, Esha Kubavat,

Content Warnings: Sexual violence, forced marriage, forced religious conversion

Approximate Time Period: 2003-2022

Yazidis are a religiously distinct group inhabiting the mountainous Sinjar region of Iraq (Asher-Shapiro, 2014). In the Yazidi religion, one cannot become a Yazidi or marry outside the Yazidi community. Yazidis have faced regular persecution for their religious beliefs and practices (Minority Rights, 2015). This persecution continues to this day. In 1935, the Iraqi army killed 200 Yazidi and imposed martial law on the Sinjar region to crush a Yazidi revolt against the imposition of conscription (DBPedia, n.d.).Since 2003, numerous Yazidi women have been abducted and forced to marry members of the Kurdish Asayish (Minority Rights, 2015). In 2014, ISIS fighters abducted thousands of Yazidi women and girls and forced them into marriages and/or sexual slavery (Minority Rights, 2015). They also took hundreds of young boys, forcing them to go to camps where they were indoctrinated and turned into child soldiers for the ISIS army. Yazidi women and girls who have escaped from ISIS still must recover from the violence and trauma inflicted upon them. Meanwhile, Yazidi boys need to reintegrate back into the Yazidi community after being exposed to and trained to reproduce so much violence and trauma (Minority Rights, 2015).

Data Quality: Data quality for Yazidi forced labor in Iraq is rated a 2/3 due to coverage on the situation by reputable sources but a lack of specifics regarding the quantity of victims and survivors.

Sources

  1. DBPedia (n.d.). About: 1935 Yazidi revolt. Retrieved October 19, 2022, from https://dbpedia.org/page/1935_Yazidi_revolt
  2. Asher-Shapiro, A. (2014, August 11). Who Are the Yazidis, the Ancient, Persecuted Religious Minority Struggling to Survive in Iraq? History. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/140809-iraq-yazidis-minority-isil-religion-history
  3. Minority Rights. (2015, June 19). Yezidis. Minority Rights Group. Retrieved from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/yezidis/