For the Yazidi ethnic minority in Iraq, the genocide carried out by the Islamic State (IS) group in 2014 created adversity long before the COVID-19 pandemic did.
For more than six years, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis have been in camps for internally displaced people (IDP) staring at the same four walls of their tents.
They are unable to find work because IS razed their farms and businesses. They cannot reunite with relatives in IS captivity or attend the burials of family members, whose bodies remain in mass graves.
Photo: Reuters
The pandemic has made matters worse.
As countries turn inward to cope with the effects of COVID-19, those on the periphery of protection — the displaced, conflict-afflicted and survivors of sexual violence — are pushed farther into the margins. The consequences of this abandonment are likely to be just as deadly as the pandemic.
These consequences manifest in increased vulnerability to COVID-19 and a sharp decline in mental health. In the first 16 days of this year, 11 young Yazidis took their own lives.
Clustered cases of suicide have been surfacing in IDP camps since the 2014 genocide, but a precise picture of Yazidi mental health trends is muddled by a lack of resources for research and a failure to respond to the issue’s root causes.
There is no doubt that the atrocities perpetrated by IS — including massacres, enslavement, conscription and rape — have inflicted communal and individual trauma.
A study published in 2018 by BMC Medicine found that more than 80 percent of the Yazidi women aged 17 to 75 participating met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. The rates reached nearly 100 percent for women who had survived captivity.
In the absence of adequate support, IS’ violence continues to harm Yazidis, but this is not the only factor exacerbating the community’s vulnerability, as the trauma of genocide is continuously compounded by poverty.
Even before the Yazidi genocide, an International Organization for Migration report identified high rates of suicide in Sinjar, Iraq, which it partially attributed to the lack of economic opportunity, security and religious freedom.
Each of these root problems has been aggravated by genocide, displacement and the pandemic, but efforts to comprehensively address them by sustainably redeveloping Sinjar are deferred and deprioritized time and again by national governments and international agencies.
Non-governmental organization Nadia’s Initiative — founded by human rights advocate Nadia Murad, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize — earlier this month met a committee of Yazidis to discuss their needs.
Female survivors were unanimous in their priorities: Foremost was the desire for justice — for courts to try to sentence IS perpetrators for their crimes of sexual violence and genocide.
Trials would serve to hold these criminals accountable. Perhaps more importantly, they would provide a formal acknowledgment of the harm and trauma endured by survivors, and a recognition that the criminality of rape lies with the abuser, not the victims.
The second priority identified by the committee was livelihood support. A handful of organizations offer limited psychological care, but therapy is not a remedy for lack of income, clean water, education and healthcare.
Yazidi survivors see work as a form of therapy. It keeps hands and minds busy, puts food on tables and revitalizes communities. Livelihood opportunities generate hope.
Neither of these priorities is likely to be met until Yazidis can voluntarily and safely return home to a dignified living environment.
The governments of Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, have the ability to restore local governance, security and basic services in Sinjar, but political disputes have undermined durable solutions.
To governments and foreign actors, Sinjar is one piece on a political chess board, but for Yazidis, it is their home, dignity, livelihoods and mental health that are sacrificed for their strategic interests.
The international community must pair on-the-ground support with diplomatic pressure on Iraqi stakeholders for the sake of stabilizing the Sinjar region.
The needs of post-conflict communities have been deprioritized during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their pathways to recovery face insurmountable odds with an international community that often neglects to provide comprehensive support to those most marginalized.
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