Global InformationYazidi genocide information
| Yazidi genocide | |
|---|---|
| Part of the War in Iraq (2013–2017) and Syrian civil war | |
 Left-to-right from top: Yazidi refugees receiving support from the International Rescue Committee; American relief worker of USAID conversing with Iraqi locals near Sinjar; packaged bundles of water inside of a C-17 Globemaster III prior to an emergency airdrop by the United States Air Force. | |
| Location | Iraq and Syria[1] |
| Date | June 2014 – December 2017 |
| Target | Yazidi people |
Attack type | Genocidal massacre; genocidal rape and sexual slavery of women and girls; and forced conversion to Islam |
| Deaths | ~5,000 (per the United Nations)[2][3][4] |
| Injured | Unknown |
| Victims | 4,200–10,800 kidnapped or captive[5] and 500,000+ displaced |
| Perpetrator |  Islamic State |
| Defenders |
|
| Motive | Islamic fundamentalism[10] Anti-Yazidi sentiment |
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The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State throughout Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017.[1][11][12] It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. The Yazidi people, who are non-Arabs, are indigenous to Kurdistan and adhere to Yazidism, which is an Iranian religion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition. Over a period of three years, Islamic State militants trafficked thousands of Yazidi women and girls and killed thousands of Yazidi men;[13] the United Nations reported that the Islamic State killed about 5,000 Yazidis[5] and trafficked about 10,800 Yazidi women and girls in a "forced conversion campaign"[14][15] throughout Iraq. By 2015, upwards of 71% of the global Yazidi population was displaced by the genocide, with most Yazidi refugees having fled to Iraq's Kurdistan Region and Syria's Rojava.[16][17] The persecution of Yazidis, along with other religious minorities, took place after the Islamic State's Northern Iraq offensive of June 2014.[18][19]
Amidst numerous atrocities committed by the Islamic State, the Yazidi genocide attracted international attention and prompted the United States to establish CJTF–OIR, a large military coalition consisting of many Western countries and Turkey, Morocco, and Jordan. Additionally, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia made emergency airdrops to support Yazidi refugees who had become trapped in the Sinjar Mountains due to the Islamic State's Northern Iraq offensive of August 2014. During the Sinjar massacre, in which the Islamic State killed and abducted thousands of the trapped Yazidis, the United States and the United Kingdom began carrying out airstrikes on the advancing Islamic State militants, while the People's Defense Units and the Kurdistan Workers' Party jointly formed a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the rest of the Yazidi refugees from the Sinjar Mountains.[20]
In addition to the United Nations, several countries and organizations have designated the anti-Yazidi campaign of the Islamic State as a definite genocide. These include: the Council of Europe and the European Union, the United States, Canada, Armenia, and Iraq.[1][11]
- ^ a b c Labott, Elise; Kopan, Tal (17 March 2016). "John Kerry: ISIS responsible for genocide". CNN. Archived from the original on 17 March 2016. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
- ^ "4 years ago: the genocide against the Yazidis in northern Iraq (August 3, 2014)". Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker e.V. (GfbV). Archived from the original on 23 April 2019. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
- ^ Spencer, Richard (14 October 2014). "Isil carried out massacres and mass sexual enslavement of Yazidis, UN confirms". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 12 February 2019. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
- ^ Taylor, Lin (9 May 2017). "Nearly 10,000 Yazidis killed, kidnapped by Islamic State in 2014, study finds". Reuters. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
- ^ a b Cetorelli, Valeria (9 May 2017). "Mortality and kidnapping estimates for the Yazidi population in the area of Mount Sinjar, Iraq, in August 2014: A retrospective household survey". PLOS Medicine. 14 (5): e1002297. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002297. PMC 5423550. PMID 28486492.
- ^ a b Roussinos, Aris (16 August 2014). "'Everywhere Around Is the Islamic State': On the Road in Iraq with YPG Fighters". VICE News. Archived from the original on 24 September 2014. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
- ^ a b Pamuk, Humeyra (26 August 2014). "Smugglers and Kurdish militants help Iraq's Yazidis flee to Turkey". Reuters. Archived from the original on 18 October 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
- ^ a b Shelton, Tracey. "'If it wasn't for the Kurdish fighters, we would have died up there'". GlobalPost. Archived from the original on 2 September 2014. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
- ^ Watson, Ivan; Botelho, Greg (10 August 2014). "Yazidi survivor recalls horror of evading ISIS, death". CNN. Archived from the original on 7 February 2016. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
- ^ "Islamic State Killed 500 Yazidis, Buried Some Victims Alive". Huffington Post. 10 August 2014. Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
- ^ a b "UN accuses the "Islamic State" in the genocide of the Yazidis" (in Russian). BBC Russian Service/BBC. 19 March 2015. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
- ^ "The UN has blamed 'Islamic State' in the genocide of the Yazidis". Радио Свобода. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 19 March 2015. Archived from the original on 10 July 2015. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
- ^ Callimachi, Rukmini (16 August 2018). "Turkish Airstrike in Iraqi Territory Kills a Kurdish Militant Leader". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 October 2018.
- ^ Arraf, Jane (7 August 2014). "Islamic State persecution of Yazidi minority amounts to genocide, UN says". The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on 8 August 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
TT20140824was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "ISIS Terror: One Yazidi's Battle to Chronicle the Death of a People". MSNBC. 23 November 2015. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
- ^ Denkinger J.K., Windthorst P., El Sount C.R.-O., Blume M., Sedik H., Kizilhan J.I., Gibbons N., Pham P., Hillebrecht J., Ateia N., Nikendei C., Zipfel S., Junne F. (2017). "The 2014 Yazidi genocide and its effect on Yazidi diaspora". The Lancet. 390 (10106): 1946. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32701-0. PMID 29115224. S2CID 40913754.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Slater, Andrew (13 June 2014). "Kurdish Forces are Pushing Back Against ISIS, Gaining Ground Around Mosul". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
- ^ Phillips, David L. (29 November 2018). The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned the Kurds and Lost the Middle East. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781786735768 – via Google Books.
- ^ Phillips, David L. (5 July 2017). The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. Routledge. ISBN 9781351480369 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Vzlet i padeniye "Islamskogo gosudarstva"" Взлет и падение "Исламского государства" [The Rise and Fall of the Islamic State]. TUT.BY (in Russian). 14 November 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2021.