A/HRC/32/CRP.2
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Human Rights Council
Thirty-second session
Agenda item 4
Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention

“They came to destroy”: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis*
Summary
ISIS has committed the crime of genocide as well as multiple crimes against
humanity and war crimes against the Yazidis, thousands of whom are held captive in the
Syrian Arab Republic where they are subjected to almost unimaginable horrors.
The present report, which focuses on violations committed in Syria, is based on 45
interviews with survivors, religious leaders, smugglers, activists, lawyers, medical
personnel, and journalists. Considerable documentary material was used to corroborate
information collected by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the
Syrian Arab Republic.
ISIS has sought to destroy the Yazidis through killings; sexual slavery,
enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing
serious bodily and mental harm; the infliction of conditions of life that bring about a slow
death; the imposition of measures to prevent Yazidi children from being born, including
forced conversion of adults, the separation of Yazidi men and women, and mental trauma;
and the transfer of Yazidi children from their own families and placing them with ISIS
fighters, thereby cutting them off from beliefs and practices of their own religious
community, and erasing their identity as Yazidis. The public statements and conduct of
ISIS and its fighters clearly demonstrate that ISIS intended to destroy the Yazidis of
Sinjar, composing the majority of the world’s Yazidi population, in whole or in part.
In the present report, the Commission has made wide-ranging recommendations to
the United Nations, the Governments of Syria and Iraq, and the wider international
community concerning the protection of and care for the Yazidi community of Sinjar.
While noting States’ obligations under the Genocide Convention, the Commission
repeated its call for the Security Council to refer urgently the situation in Syria to the
International Criminal Court, or to establish an ad hoc tribunal with relevant geographic
and temporal jurisdiction.

*

Reproduced as received.

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Over 3,200 Yazidi women and children are still held by ISIS. Most are in Syria
where Yazidi females continue to be sexually enslaved and Yazidi boys, indoctrinated,
trained and used in hostilities. Thousands of Yazidi men and boys are missing.
The genocide of the Yazidis is on-going.

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I.

Introduction
1.
In the early hours of 3 August 2014, fighters from the terrorist group, the Islamic
State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS),1 flooded out of their bases in Syria and Iraq, and swept
across Sinjar. The Sinjar region of northern Iraq is, at its nearest point, less than 15
kilometres from the Syrian border. It is home to the majority of the world’s Yazidis,2 a
distinct religious community whose beliefs and practice span thousands of years, and
whose adherents ISIS publicly reviles as infidels.
2.
Within days of the attack, reports emerged of ISIS committing almost
unimaginable atrocities against the Yazidi community: of men being killed or forced to
convert; of women and girls, some as young as nine, sold at market and held in sexual
slavery by ISIS fighters; and of boys ripped from their families and forced into ISIS
training camps. It was quickly apparent that the horrors being visited upon captured
Yazidis were occurring systematically across ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq.
3.
In this report, the independent international Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian
Arab Republic3 examines the crimes ISIS is committing against Yazidis, thousands of
whom are now held in Syria. While the report analyses a range of international crimes, it
specifically seeks to determine whether ISIS has committed the crime of genocide.
4.
This report, which focuses on violations occurring in Syria, is based on 45
interviews with survivors, religious leaders, smugglers, activists, lawyers, medical
personnel, and journalists. Considerable documentary material was used to corroborate
the information collected by the Commission. This includes hundreds of statements,
photographs, satellite images, and reports, as well as the factual findings of the OHCHR
Fact-Finding Mission on the human rights situation in Iraq.4 ISIS has not sought to hide
or reframe its conduct. Where the Commission was able to determine provenance,
materials disseminated by the terrorist group and/or its individual members have also
formed part of this analysis.

1

2
3

4

In its Resolution 2249 (2015), the UN Security Council determined that ISIS “constitutes a global
and unprecedented threat to international peace and security”.
In Kurdish, referred to as Êzîdi or Êzdî.
“The Commission”. The commissioners are Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (Chairperson), Karen Koning
AbuZayd, Vitit Muntarbhorn and Carla Del Ponte.
A/HRC/28/18, Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights on
the human rights situation in Iraq in the light of abuses committed by the so-called Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant and associated groups, 13 March 2015. (“OHCHR Iraq Report” or
“A/HRC/28/18”). The Commission also took note of the Statement by Adama Dieng, Special
Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, and Jennifer Welsh, Special
Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Responsibility to Protect, on the situation in Iraq, 12
August 2014. Secondary sources of information also included UNOSAT reports, the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum’s report “Our Generation is Gone: The Islamic State’s Targeting of
Iraqi Minorities in Ninewa” (“US Holocaust Memorial Museum Report”) and various inputs
provided by the Kurdish Regional Government’s Genocide Committee, the Sinjar Local
Administration, and notably, documentation provided by Yazda.

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II.

Mandate
5.
During its investigations of violations committed in Syria, the Commission
determined that ISIS has forcibly transferred – and continues to forcibly transfer –
thousands of Yazidi women and children into Syria.
6.
It is estimated that at least 3,200 Yazidi women and girls remain captives of ISIS,
the majority of them held inside ISIS-controlled areas of Syria. It has not been possible to
estimate the number of Yazidi boys who have been or are being trained with ISIS forces,
though it is clear that many such boys are trained and then forced to fight during ISIS
offensives in Syria. Much more limited information is available concerning the fate and
whereabouts of captured Yazidi men and older boys who survived the August 2014 ISIS
onslaught.
7.
In accordance with its mandate, the present report focuses on violations committed
against Yazidis in Syria. As the initial attack occurred in northern Iraq, however, it is
necessary to set out ISIS conduct in Iraq in order to understand the context in which ISIS
forcibly displaced Yazidi civilians into Syria, and the architecture of the system, initially
set up by ISIS in Iraq, which allowed these crimes to take place as they did.
8.
While the Commission’s mandate is limited to violations committed in Syria, its
analysis of ISIS conduct demonstrating relevant intent, as well as of information
evidencing the criminal liability of ISIS fighters, their military commanders, and their
religious and ideological leaders, is not geographically limited.

III.

Applicable Law
9.
Article II of the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide,5 to which Syria and Iraq are parties, states that the crime of genocide is
committed when a person commits a prohibited act with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. Prohibited acts are (a) killing
members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This definition is replicated, without amendment, in Article 6 of the Rome Statute.
10.
The crime of genocide requires that the perpetrator have a special intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a protected group. The genocidal acts must be committed against a
person because of their membership in a particular group and as an incremental step in the
overall objective of destroying the group.6 This special intent is also distinct from motive.
It is not a contradiction, however, that perpetrators who have the special intent to destroy
the protected group may also be fuelled by multiple other motives such as capture of
territory, economic advantage, sexual gratification, and spreading terror.
11.
The jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been
instrumental in deconstructing the definition of genocide, and is referred throughout the
Legal Analysis section below.
5
6

4

Hereinafter, the Genocide Convention.
Prosecutor v. Rutaganda, ICTR Trial Judgment, 6 Dec. 1999 (“Rutaganda Trial Judgment”), para.
59; Prosecutor v. Jelisić, ICTY Trial Judgment, 14 December 1999 (“Jelisić Trial Judgment”), para.
66.

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12.
Article IV of the Genocide Convention obliges contracting States to punish not
only persons committing genocide, but also those who conspire to commit genocide,
directly and publicly incite the commission of genocide, attempt to commit genocide,
and/or who are complicit in genocide.7
13.
It is worthy of note that “genocide” as it exists in the public imagination often
departs from the legal definition. The colloquial use of the term “genocide”, steeped in
images of the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, has tended to signify the organised
extermination of masses of civilians, regardless of the specific intention behind the
killings. This is not, however, the legal definition of the crime of genocide.8 Whether a
genocide has occurred, by a mass killing or not, hinges upon the existence in the
perpetrator’s mind, at the time of the commission of the prohibited act, of a specific intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group by one of the specified methods,
alongside the intent to commit the specified act.9
14.
Crimes against humanity include a wider range of offences. There is no
requirement that the perpetrator intend to destroy a prohibited group: it is sufficient that
the criminal acts be committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed
against any civilian population. Underlying criminal acts, as enumerated in Article 7(1) of
the Rome Statute, which may constitute a crime against humanity and which are relevant
to this paper include murder; extermination; enslavement; imprisonment or other severe
deprivation of liberty; torture; rape; other inhumane acts; sexual slavery; and sexual
violence.
15.
War crimes, committed in the context of a non-international armed conflict,
include murder; rape; sexual slavery; sexual violence; cruel treatment; torture; outrages
upon personal dignity; using, conscripting and enlisting children; and attacking civilians.
16.
The conduct underlying genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as set
out above are, in and of themselves, abuses of international human rights, including of the
right to life, liberty and security of person; the prohibition against slavery; and the
prohibition against torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

IV. Factual Findings
A.

The Sinjar Region of northern Iraq
Before ISIS attacked, I was happy. My husband adored me, loved our children.
We had a good life. ISIS held me for over a year. I haven’t seen my husband
since the day of the attack. I dream of him.
Woman, held for 18 months, sold twice
17.
The Sinjar region is located in northwest Iraq, close to the Iraqi-Syrian border.
Hundreds of villages are spread out around the base of Mount Sinjar, with one main town,

7
8

9

See Article III, Genocide Convention.
While this has not historically been the case, theoretically the crime of genocide could be
committed without any killings taking place. Only Article 6(a) of the Rome Statute requires the act
of killing another person for the actus reus of the crime of genocide to be committed.
In its Commentary on the 1996 Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind,
the International Law Commission qualified genocide’s specific intent as “the distinguishing
characteristic of this particular crime under international law.”

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Sinjar town, huddled at the base of the southeastern side of the mountain.10 Mount Sinjar,
an arid 100-kilometre-long mountain range, forms the region’s heart.
18.
Prior to the 3 August 2014 attack, the region’s population was predominantly
Yazidi, with a smaller number of Arabs who followed Sunni Islam. Yazidis and Arabs
lived together in some villages and in Sinjar town, with many families enjoying friendly,
neighbourly relations spanning generations.
19.
The Yazidi faith requires that a child have two Yazidi parents. With conversion to
Yazidism theologically impossible, mixed marriages were strongly discouraged.
Additionally, the widely-held but wholly incorrect view of the Yazidi faith as a religion of
“devil-worshippers” appeared to be a powerful disincentive for members of non-Yazidi
communities who wished to marry someone of the Yazidi religious group.
Misunderstandings of Yazidism have underpinned cycles of persecution of this
community, at least as far back as the Ottoman Empire. There has been widespread
discrimination against the Yazidis throughout modern history. The historical persecution
of the Yazidis by their neighbours further strengthened the community’s proscription
against “marrying out” of the faith.
20.
While intermarriage between the Yazidis and Arabs of Sinjar was rare,
interviewees recalled many friendships and working relationships across the two
communities, underlining the nuanced nature of the relationships in Sinjar prior to the
attack. In its aftermath, while some individual relationships have survived, the two
communities have become deeply estranged.
21.
In June 2014, ISIS seized Mosul, rattling the Sinjar region that then lay in between
ISIS-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria. In the months prior to the attack on Sinjar, ISIS
began to take control of increasingly large areas in Syria and Iraq, culminating in sizeable
offensives in August 2014. The Iraqi Kurdish forces, the Peshmerga, maintained bases
and checkpoints throughout the Sinjar region and were the only security force in the
region on 3 August 2014.
22.
On 2 August, the day before the attack, the Yazidis of Sinjar – farmers, teachers,
doctors, housewives, and school children – spent their day like any other. Within 24
hours, their lives would become unrecognisable to them. The date of 3 August 2014
would become a dividing line, demarcating when one life ended, and – for those who
survived – when another, infinitely more cruel, existence began.

B.

The 3 August 2014 ISIS Attack
When ISIS attacked Sinjar, they came to destroy.
Yazidi religious authority
23.
In the early hours of 3 August 2014, ISIS fighters attacked Sinjar from Mosul and
Tel Afar in Iraq, and Al-Shaddadi and the Tel Hamis region (Hasakah) in Syria. The
attack was well organised with hundreds of ISIS fighters acting in concert with each other
as they seized towns and villages on all sides of Mount Sinjar. Information documented
by the Commission strongly suggests that the command centre for the operation was
based in Mosul, with an important operational centre in Tel Afar.
24.
As they moved into Sinjar, ISIS fighters faced little or no resistance. Many of the
Peshmerga reportedly withdrew in the face of the ISIS advance, leaving much of the
Sinjar region defenceless. The decision to withdraw was not effectively communicated to
10

6

Annex A (Map).

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the local population. No evacuation orders were issued and most villages were initially
unaware of the collapse of the security situation.
25.
As word spread that the Peshmerga had left their checkpoints, a few ad hoc groups
of lightly armed, local Yazidi men mounted a very limited defence of some villages, such
as Girzerik and Siba Sheikh Khedir, in an attempt to give their families and neighbours
more time to escape. By daybreak, Yazidi families from hundreds of villages across
Sinjar were fleeing their homes in fear and panic. They took little with them. Others were
advised by Arab neighbours to stay in the villages and raise white flags over their houses.
26.
By the time ISIS entered Sinjar, there were few military objectives in the region.
ISIS fighters focussed their attention on capturing Yazidis. After controlling the main
roads and all strategic junctions, fighters set up checkpoints and sent mobile patrols to
search for fleeing Yazidi families. Within hours, Yazidis who had been unable to escape
to the nearby city of Duhok found themselves encircled by armed, black-clad ISIS
fighters.
27.
Those who fled early enough to reach the upper plateau of Mount Sinjar were
besieged by ISIS. A humanitarian crisis quickly unfolded as ISIS trapped tens of
thousands of Yazidi men, women, and children in temperatures rising above 50 degrees
Celsius and prevented them from accessing to water, food or medical care. On 7 August
2014, at the request of the Iraqi Government, US President Barack Obama announced
American military action to help the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar.11 American, Iraqi,
British, French, and Australian forces were involved in airdrops of water and other
supplies to the besieged Yazidis. ISIS fighters shot at planes airdropping aid, and at
helicopters attempting to evacuate the most vulnerable Yazidis.
28.
Hundreds of Yazidis – including infants and young children – died on Mount
Sinjar before the Syrian Kurdish forces, the YPG, were able to open a corridor from Syria
to Mount Sinjar, allowing for those besieged on the mountain to be moved to safety.
Together with Yazidi volunteers, they repelled ISIS attacks on the corridor, as it sought to
re-establish the siege.
29.
On lower ground, ISIS fighters captured thousands of Yazidis in their villages or
on the roads as they fled between 3 and 5 August 2014. Almost all villages were emptied
within 72 hours of the attack, with the exception of Kocho village which was not emptied
until 15 August 2014. The conduct of ISIS fighters, on capturing thousands of Yazidis as
they fled, cleaved closely to a set and evidently pre-determined pattern, with only minor
deviations.
30.
Regardless of where the Yazidi families were captured, ISIS fighters swiftly
ordered the separation of males and females, with the exception of boys who had not
reached puberty,12 who were allowed to remain with their mothers. Within an hour, those
who survived capture were forcibly transferred to temporary holding sites. ISIS
operational commanders communicated these primary transfer locations, located within
the Sinjar area and in Hasakah governorate in Syria, to their fighters and checkpoints by
walkie-talkies and mobile phones. Secondary transfers were later conducted in an

11

12

The White House, Statement by the President, 7 August 2014. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/thepress-office/2014/08/07/statement-president). (“The White House Statement”)
Whether a boy had reached puberty was assessed in various ways by ISIS fighters across Sinjar.
The fighters in Kocho village, for example, inspected Yazidi boys to see if they had any underarm
hair. Fighters in other locations made snap judgments based on height and weight. In general, boys
aged 12 years and above were grouped with the Yazidi men, though this was not uniformly the
case.

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organized manner, with buses and large vehicles moving captured Yazidis to designated
holding sites in Mosul, Tel Afar and Baaj, deeper inside ISIS-controlled territory.
31.
In the process of capture and transfer, hundreds of ISIS fighters operating across a
vast territory in the Sinjar region systematically separated Yazidis into three distinct
groups: men and boys aged approximately 12 and above; women and children; and later,
drawn from the pool of male children who had remained with the women, boys aged
seven and above. Each group suffered distinct and systematic violations, sanctioned under
ISIS’s ideological framework.

C.

ISIS treatment of Yazidi men and boys aged approximately 12 and
above
After we were captured, ISIS forced us to watch them beheading some of our
Yazidi men. They made the men kneel in a line in the street, with their hands tied
behind their backs. The ISIS fighters took knives and cut their throats.
Girl, aged 16 at capture, held for 7 months, sold once
ISIS ordered everyone from Kocho to go to the school. Men and boys over 10
years were on the ground floor, while women and children were on the upper
floor. The fighters took the men and boys away. After ISIS took them, no men
from the village ever returned. My husband was with them.”
Woman, held for 15 months, sold five times
32.
Following the capture of Yazidi families by ISIS fighters, ISIS swiftly separated
men and boys who had reached puberty from women and other children. In villages south
of Mount Sinjar, men and older boys were immediately separated upon capture. In the
northern villages, Yazidi families were first transferred to main checkpoints and towns,
such as Khanasour and Sinouni, before they were separated.
33.
Following this separation, ISIS fighters summarily executed men and older boys
who refused to convert to Islam. Men from rural Yazidi villages who fled with their
personal firearms in their belongings were also executed when the weapons were
discovered in their possession. Most of those killed were executed by gunshots to the
head; others had their throats cut. ISIS fighters carried out executions of male Yazidis in
the streets of towns and villages, at makeshift checkpoints, on roadsides as well as on the
lower sections of the roads ascending Mount Sinjar. Other captives, including family
members, were often forced to witness the killings.
34.
ISIS fighters sometimes executed captured Yazidi men and older boys just out of
sight of the women and children. Some of those left behind reported hearing gunfire while
others saw fighters returning with bloodstains on their clothing. The Yazidi men were not
heard from again. Some ISIS fighters tormented survivors by telling evident untruths,
including that ISIS had released the men and boys to go to Mount Sinjar.
35.
The bodies of those killed on capture were often left in situ. Yazidis, captured and
forcibly transferred to Mosul and Tel Afar in the days following the attack, described
being driven along roads, the sides of which were littered with corpses.
36.
While most killings were of groups of between two and twenty men and boys,
there are two clearly documented cases of larger mass killings: those of the men and boys
of Kocho and Qani villages. The OHCHR Iraq Report determined that ISIS executed

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hundreds of men in Kocho, and about 80 men in Qani.13 Interviews conducted by the
Commission with Yazidi women and girls, taken from these villages and later transferred
into Syria, support these findings.
37.
Men and older boys who were forcibly converted to Islam became ISIS captives.
Separated from women and children, they were quickly transferred to sites in Tel Afar,
Mosul, and Baaj where they were later forced to work, labouring on construction projects,
digging trenches, cleaning streets, and looking after cattle. They were also forced to pray,
grow their beards and hair, and follow other religious dicta as interpreted and
promulgated by the terrorist group. Those who attempted to escape were executed upon
capture.
38.
By late August or early September 2014, ISIS began to move groups of
“converted” Yazidi families to Qasr Maharab and Qasil Qio villages, located just outside
Tel Afar. The villages’ original inhabitants, mainly from a Shiite community, had fled
months earlier when ISIS gained control of the region. Some Yazidis were held briefly in
Kocho village before being moved to the two villages. Those held in Kocho described a
strong stench of rotting corpses pervading the village.
39.
ISIS recorded videos on their phones of “converted” Yazidi men and boys urging
their relatives to convert. These videos were shown to the men’s families at holding sites
in Tel Afar and Badoush prison. Families who converted were reunited in Qasr Maharab.
Although this was not uniformly the case, women who converted but whose husbands had
been killed on capture were moved (with their children, if they had them) to nearby Qasil
Qio. Later, ISIS would also forcibly transfer some “converted” families to Al-Khadra
neighbourhood in Tel Afar.
40.
All Yazidi men and boys were required to go to mosque for prayers. In this
respect, ISIS treated the “converted” Yazidi males like Muslims. The forced conversions
did not, however, provide Yazidi families with any protection or equal status. Yazidis
could not leave the villages and were subjected to regular counts. Anyone who tried to
escape was beaten at the first attempt, and executed on the second. ISIS killed several
Yazidi men in Qasr Maharab after failed escape attempts, executing them by gunshots to
the head. When someone successfully escaped, members of their household were beaten.
Every day, ISIS took men and boys over 12 years of age out of the villages and forced
them to labour on various projects in nearby cities and towns. Those who initially refused
to go were beaten. ISIS fighters regularly searched the villages and seized unmarried
women and girls, as well as those who were married but had no children. Despite the
feigned conversions, ISIS fighters regularly insulted the Yazidis held in Qasr Maharab,
Qasil Qio and Al-Khadra, calling them “kuffar”, or infidels.
41.
By the spring of 2015, ISIS appeared to have determined that any conversions that
the Yazidis had made were false. In April or May 2015, ISIS emptied Qasr Maharab,
Qasil Qio, and Al-Khadra, separating the families. While it has been possible to trace the
fate of many of the women and children held there, little information is available about
the fate and whereabouts of the Yazidi men and older boys after this point.

D.

ISIS treatment of Yazidi women and girls aged 9 and above
Men would come and select women and girls. Women would lie and say we were
older. Girls would say they were younger. We tried to make ourselves less
13

A/HRC/28/18, para 19. Similar findings were reached in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Report, pp. 18-19.

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appealing. We would scratch ourselves and rub dirt on our faces. These things
did not work.
Woman, held for 11 months, sold twice
We were registered. ISIS took our names, ages, where we came from and
whether we were married or not. After that, ISIS fighters would come to select
girls to go with them. The youngest girl I saw them take was about 9 years old.
One girl told me that “if they try to take you, it is better that you kill yourself”.
Girl, aged 12 at capture, held for 7 months, sold four times
We were driven into Raqqah city at night and held in a building there. I was
there for three weeks before I was sold. Throughout that time, ISIS fighters were
coming to buy women and girls. All of us were Yazidi. I think I was sold about 15
times in all. It is hard to remember all those who bought me.
Woman, held for 12 months, sold approximately 15 times
42.
After separating Yazidi women and children from their male relatives aged 12 and
above, ISIS fighters immediately and forcibly transferred them between multiple holding
sites. Yazidi women and children who were eventually forcibly transferred into Syria
were first held at between four and six sites in Iraq.
43.
The first holding site was usually located within the Sinjar region. Captives were,
on average, held there for less than 24 hours, before taken against their will to Tel Afar,
Mosul or Baaj. For example, women and children from Kocho and Qani villages were
held at Solagh Technical Institute (at different times); those captured in and around Sinjar
town or in the area of Zalelah were held at the Civil Records Office or in Branch 17, KDP
Headquarters inside Sinjar town. Women and children from some villages on the north
side of Mount Sinjar, including Khanasour and Sinouni villages, were taken directly to
ISIS bases in Al-Houl and the Tel Hamis region in Hasakah, Syria, where they were
registered before being forcibly transferred back into Iraq.
44.
At the primary holding sites, ISIS fighters sorted the Yazidi women and children
into different groups. Fighters separated married females from unmarried females.14 Only
girls aged eight years and under were allowed to remain with their mothers. For the most
part boys were not separated from their mothers at this stage.
45.
Quickly surmising that the greatest danger lay in being placed in the group of
unmarried females, unmarried women and girls pretended their younger siblings or
nephews or nieces were their own children. Married women who had no children to
provide evidence of the marriage did likewise. In some instances, ISIS did not identify
this subterfuge. Some Yazidi women and girls reported that members of Sinjar’s Arab
community assisted ISIS by identifying those who were pretending to be married.
46.
ISIS sometimes registered captured Yazidi women and girls at the primary holding
sites. Fighters recorded the names of the women and girls, their age, the village they came
from, whether they were married or not, and if they were married, how many children
they had. Some women and girls reported ISIS fighters taking photographs of them,
14

10

In interviews, Yazidi women and men almost always used the term “girls” to mean females who
were not married (and therefore presumed to be virgins) regardless of their age. Conversely, the
term “woman” was used to denote a married female, again regardless of age. In this paper, the terms
used are “married women”, “unmarried women” and “girls”. ‘Girls” refers to any females below the
age of 18. Where specific reference is made to a girl who was married at the time of the attack, this
will be stated clearly in the text.

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without their headscarves. One girl, aged 18, recalled being ordered to smile and laugh
while fighters photographed her. Such registration was usually also repeated at later
holding sites in Tel Afar and Mosul, and for the women taken into Syria, again at the
main holding site in Raqqah city.
47.
The first 12 hours of capture were filled with sharply mounting terror. Many of the
women and children had seen or heard their male relatives being killed by the armed ISIS
fighters who now surrounded them. At the holding sites, relatives huddled together, trying
to hide their adolescent daughters. ISIS fighters forced Yazidi women to give up
valuables, including gold, money and mobile telephones. As the fighters did so, women
rushed to write and memorize telephone numbers of relatives who, they hoped, might be
in a position to assist them later.
48.
One mass killing of Yazidi women has been documented and occurred at a
primary holding site. In the early hours of 16 August 2014, ISIS executed older women
(who were approximately 60 years and older) from Kocho at the Solagh Technical
Institute, where the women and children had been forcibly transferred after the men had
been killed inside Kocho village. Older women were separated and taken away by ISIS
fighters, after which those left behind heard the sound of gunfire. The area has since been
retaken and a mass grave holding the remains of older women has reportedly been
discovered in the grounds of the Technical Institute.15
49.
ISIS usually held Yazidi women and girls at primary holding sites for less than a
day before loading them on to trucks and buses and forcibly transferring them to the
following secondary holding sites: multiple schools in Tel Afar; Badoush prison outside
of Mosul city; Galaxy wedding hall in Mosul; and houses in Al-Arabi neighbourhood of
Mosul city. Every Yazidi women or child captured by ISIS was held in one, and usually
moved between two or three, of these holding sites. Iraqi ISIS fighters from Tel Afar and
Mosul, operating under pseudonyms, were in direct command of these sites and also
supervised the forcible transfer of Yazidi women and girls from these sites into Syria.
50.
Women and children were forcibly displaced from site to site as space became
available as a result of ISIS fighters’ purchasing and removing women and girls. Some
transfers were motivated by security concerns. In August 2014, Yazidi captives were
suddenly transferred from Badoush to schools in Tel Afar after a coalition airstrike struck
a site close to the prison.
51.
Each site held hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Yazidi women and children, and
was surrounded by armed ISIS fighters. All were severely overcrowded. Those held at the
secondary holding sites described receiving little food or water. Interviewees reported
being given food with insects in it and having to drink water out of the toilets. Mothers
often gave their share of food to their children. Many, particularly infants and young
children, became very sick. No medical care was provided. At Badoush prison, ISIS
brought in a female gynaecologist in an effort to identify single females who had falsely
declared themselves to be married.
52.
From the moment that Yazidi women and girls entered the holding sites, ISIS
fighters came into the rooms where they were held in order to select women and girls they
wished to take with them. Interviewees described feelings of abject terror on hearing
footsteps in the corridor outside and keys opening the locks. Women and girls scrambled
to the corners of the rooms, mothers hiding their daughters. The selection of any girl was
15

Yazda, “Mass Graves of Yazidis Killed by the Islamic State Organization or Local Affiliates On or
After August 3, 2014”, 28 January 2016, (“Yazda Mass Graves Report”) p. 10. This report
identified 35 mass graves sites in the Sinjar region.

11

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accompanied by screaming as she was forcibly pulled from the room, with her mother and
any other women who tried to keep hold of her being brutally beaten by fighters.
53.
Yazidi women and girls began to scratch and bloody themselves in an attempt to
make themselves unattractive to potential buyers. Some committed suicide at holding
sites in Tel Afar, Mosul and in Raqqah city. At the main holding site in Raqqah city, a
Yazidi girl attempted to kill herself by throwing herself from the second floor of the
building. Severely injured, ISIS fighters forbade the other Yazidi captives from helping
her. Some women and girls killed themselves by cutting their wrists or throats, while
others hanged themselves using their headscarves.
54.
While individual incidents of rape committed by ISIS fighters at the holding sites
in Tel Afar and Mosul were reported, mass rape of Yazidi women and girls did not occur.
This was despite the fact that hundreds of women and girls were held captive at the sites,
surrounded by dozens of young, armed men. This serves to emphasize the rigid system
and ideology governing ISIS’s handling of Yazidi women and girls as chattel, as well as
the control it exerted over the majority of its fighters. The sexual violence, including the
sexual slavery, being committed against Yazidi women and girls is tightly controlled by
ISIS, occurs in a manner prescribed and authorised, and is respectful only of the property
rights of those who “own” the women and girls.
55.
Captured Yazidi women and girls are deemed property of ISIS and are openly
termed sabaya or slaves. ISIS made eighty percent of the women and girls available to its
fighters for individual purchase, the apportioning being drawn directly from religious
interpretation. ISIS sells Yazidi women and girls in slave markets, or souk sabaya, or as
individual purchases to fighters who come to the holding centres. In some instances, an
ISIS fighter might buy a group of Yazidi females in order to take them into rural areas
without slave markets where he could sell them individually at a higher price. The
remaining twenty percent are held as collective property of ISIS and were distributed in
groups to military bases throughout Iraq and Syria. In Syria, Yazidi females have been
held at bases in Al-Shaddadi and Tel Hamis in Hasakah; Al-Bab and Minbej in Aleppo;
Raqqah and Tabqa cities in Raqqah; Tadmur in Homs; and in various locations including
Al-Mayadin and Konica gas fields in Dayr Az-Zawr.
56.
ISIS has forcibly transferred multiple groups of between 50 and 300 Yazidi
women and girls into Syria by bus for sale to its fighters there. The first corroborated
account of ISIS taking Yazidi females into Syria indicated that this occurred on 17
August 2014, though it is considered likely that convoys had left earlier than this. They
were taken to either or both of two locations in Raqqah city: an underground prison or
security base, and/or a group of buildings densely surrounded by trees. The latter is
referred to by ISIS fighters as “the farm”. Women and girls held there describe it in eerily
similar ways: “I was taken to the upper floor of a building in Raqqah city. It was
surrounded by trees. We were not allowed outside but when we looked out of the
window, it felt like we were in a forest”.
57.
Some – generally unmarried women and girls – were purchased by ISIS fighters
and removed in a matter of days. Some women, often those with more than three children,
might remain at the holding sites for up to four months before being sold. Yazidi women
and girls were sold to individual fighters directly from the holding sites as well as in slave
markets. In the last year, ISIS fighters have started to hold online slave auctions, using the
encrypted Telegraph application to circulate photos of captured Yazidi women and girls,
with details of their age, marital status, current location and price.

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58.
In Syria, slave markets were held in “the farm” in Raqqah city, and in buildings in
Al-Bab, Al-Shaddadi, Al-Mayadin and Tadmur.16 A central committee, the Committee for
the Buying and Selling of Slaves, organises the Yazidi slave markets. Where the central
committee authorizes the opening of a slave market in a particular town, it devolves some
of its functions to a local committee and commander. An ISIS document, released online
and judged to be authentic, informed fighters were required to pre-register if they wish to
attend a slave market in Homs, and explained the procedure for buying: “the bid is to be
submitted in the sealed envelope at the time of purchase, and the one who wins the bid is
obliged to purchase”.17
59.
A woman, sold at a slave market at “the farm” in Raqqah city, recounted, “After
six days, the fighters moved us to a big white hall that was next to the river. ISIS would
buy and sell girls there. There was a raised area we had to stand on. If we refused, the
fighters would beat us with wooden sticks. There were maybe 200 Yazidi girls there. The
youngest was between seven and nine years old. Most were quite young. They would tell
us to take off our headscarves. They wanted to see our hair. Sometimes they would tell us
to open our mouths so the men could check our teeth.” Another Yazidi woman was sold
at a slave market in a house in Tadmur (Homs). She and other Yazidi women and girls
were placed in a small room away from the ISIS fighters. When the fighter in charge of
the slave market called her name, fighters entered, took off her headscarf, and escorted
her into a larger room of seated ISIS fighters. She was made to “walk through the room
like a catwalk”. She continued, “[I]f any of the men chose us he would raise his hand. The
seller from ISIS had paper with our name and the price for us on it. They would give it to
the man who raised that hand. Then he would take the woman, or women, to his car and
he would go.”
60.
Some Yazidi women and girls were present at their sale, and were aware of the
amounts paid for them, which ranged between USD 200 and USD 1,500, depending on
marital status, age, number of children, and beauty. Most were simply informed by their
fighter-owner that he had bought or sold her. A Syrian fighter bought a Yazidi woman at
a slave auction at “the farm” in Raqqah city in 2015. On placing her in his car, he told her
“You are like a sheep. I have bought you.” He sold her seven days later to an Algerian
ISIS fighter living in Aleppo governorate.
61.
Yazidi females initially purchased in Iraq might also be taken into Syria with their
fighter-owners, or else would be sold on from an ISIS fighter in Iraq to a fighter in Syria.
Fighters who buy and sell Yazidi women and girls, as well as those who arrange the
trading of them, come from all over the world. Those interviewed reported being
purchased by men from Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,
Libya, Egypt, and Kazakhstan. Interviews conducted by other documentation
organisations indicate that fighters from many more countries, including Sudan, Belgium,
Uzbekistan, and Australia, took active part in the crimes committed against Yazidi
women and girls, or were otherwise complicit in them.
62.
Once ISIS sells a Yazidi woman and girl, the purchasing fighter receives complete
rights of ownership and can resell, gift, or will his “slave” as he wishes. One Yazidi
woman, held with her young children, recounted her purchase by an Algerian ISIS
commander in northern Syria and then her being given as a gift to his nephew. Another
woman carefully explained that when her fighter-owner died intestate, she reverted to
16

17

Al-Shaddadi and Tadmur have since been recaptured. Undoubtedly, many more slave markets exist
than are listed here.
Notice on buying sex slaves, Homs province, translated by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
(http://www.aymennjawad.org/2016/01/archive-of-islamic-state-administrative-documents-1)

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being the collective property of ISIS, with the local Wali charged with organising her
resale.
63.
In Syria, Yazidi women and girls (and any young children sold with their mothers)
are held in a variety of locations, including in the fighter’s family home, alone in
apartments and houses, and in makeshift shelters nearer to the ISIS frontlines or in gas
fields. They are usually kept locked inside. The only exception is young boys who
fighters sometimes take with them to pray in the local mosque. Yazidi women and girls
are not given abayas18 which all females over the age of 10 are obliged to wear in public
in ISIS-controlled territory. This has proved to be a powerful way of preventing escapes.
The few Yazidi women or girls who managed to break out of the locations where they
were held were quickly caught once they were on the street without being covered.
64.
While held by ISIS fighters, Yazidi women and girls over the age of nine are
subjected to brutal sexual violence. Most of those interviewed reported violent daily rapes
by their fighter-owners. Some were handcuffed behind their backs during the rapes while
others had their hands and legs tied to the corners of the beds. Little, if anything, protects
against rape. Girls as young as nine were raped, as were pregnant women. Many women
and girls reported being injured as a result of the rapes, suffering bleeding, cuts, and
bruising.
65.
ISIS fighters threatened Yazidi women and girls, saying that any resistance on
their part would be punished by gang rape. One woman, bought by an ISIS fighter from
Saudi Arabia and held in a village in Aleppo governorate, stated “[H]e raped me every
day that I was with him... He told me that if I did not let him do this thing to me that he
would bring four or five men and they would all take turns raping me. I had no choice. I
wanted to die”. Another woman, held in Minbej (Aleppo), was told by her Syrian fighterowner that if she resisted, he would throw her off the roof of his house. Some women also
reported that the fighter threatened to sell or beat their children.
66.
ISIS fighters routinely beat Yazidi women and girls in their possession. One
woman, who tried unsuccessfully to escape from a house in Al-Shaddadi (Hasakah)
described being beaten by her Iraqi fighter-owner until her “body was black and blue”.
Another woman was held with her young children in ISIS-controlled areas of Iraq and
Syria for 15 months, during which time she was sold five times. She was beaten severely
by a Syrian fighter in Raqqah city and later by another fighter in Al-Mayadin (Dayr AzZawr). One woman, held by a Saudi fighter in Raqqah city, was severely beaten as she
resisted the rapes. She was still suffering from her injuries when interviewed over six
months later. Wives and children of ISIS fighters sometimes participate in these beatings.
Where Yazidi women and children are injured by rapes or beatings, ISIS fighters do not
permit them access to medical care.
67.
When women or girls try to escape and are caught and returned to their fighterowners, the consequences are severe. One woman, held in northern Syria, reported that
her fighter-owner killed several of her children after an escape attempt. The fighter
continued to hold and rape her for over six months after her children’s deaths.
68.
Fighters also order and supervise the gang rapes of Yazidi women and girls who
try to escape. A woman, unmarried and in her early twenties, was held by ISIS for over a
year during which she was sold nine times. Purchased by a fighter in Minbej, she
attempted to escape. When she was caught, he dragged her back to the house where he
and several other fighters raped and beat her. He sold her to an Algerian fighter based
elsewhere in Syria shortly afterwards.
18

14

A loose fitting garment that covers the body and head.

 A/HRC/32/CRP.2

69.
Many Yazidi women and girls reported that they were forced to take birth control,
in the form of pills and injections, by their fighter-owners. One Yazidi girl, aged 18 and
unmarried at the time of capture, was bought by a Libyan fighter and held in an oil field
compound in Dayr Az-Zawr. She was raped daily throughout her time with this fighter,
and described being forced to take pills every day. Held in ISIS captivity for over a year,
she was sold eight times and raped hundreds of times, before being sold back to her
family for over 20,000 US dollars.
70.
Other women were given no birth control. One woman, bought by a Tunisian
fighter and held and raped in Al-Bab for several months, had not been made to take any
form of birth control. “It was only luck that I did not get pregnant”, she said. Held for a
year, she was taken into Syria within weeks of the August 2014 attack on Sinjar and was
sold between four different ISIS fighters before she was smuggled out at an unknown cost
to her family. Her husband has since divorced her.
71.
There was, unsurprisingly, a profound reluctance to discuss pregnancies that
resulted from rapes by ISIS fighters. This is particularly so for women and girls who were
no longer pregnant, in contexts where abortion is illegal. Nevertheless, those interviewed
reported that such pregnancies inevitably occurred. Some Yazidi women gave birth in
captivity or upon release but many appear to have given the infants away in
circumstances that remain unclear. None of the birth control methods forced upon the
Yazidi women and girls protected them from sexually transmitted diseases but
interviewees generally refused to acknowledge this possibility.
72.
ISIS fighters, and sometimes the wives of ISIS fighters, regularly force Yazidi
women and girls to work in their houses. Many of those interviewed recounted being
forced to be the domestic servant of the fighter and his family. Sometimes, they were also
made to look after his children. When held closer to the frontlines, Yazidi women and
girls are forced to cook for their respective fighter-owners and other ISIS fighters housed
with or near him. One Yazidi girl, 13 years old, was held for 11 months in ISIS-controlled
territory and sold multiple times. Sexually enslaved, she recounted also being forced to
cook, clean and wash the clothes of her Syrian fighter-owner and his family at a house in
Raqqah city.
73.
ISIS fighter-owners often deny captured Yazidi women and children adequate
food. Some Yazidi females were starved as punishments for escape attempts or for
resisting rapes but most interviewees reported regularly having little food while held in
captivity regardless of whether they were being punished or not. Many lost significant
amounts of weight while held captive by ISIS. In photographs circulated by fighters in
online ISIS slave auctions, some captured Yazidi women and girls appear emaciated.
74.
From the moment of capture, through the various holding sites and while being
bought and raped by ISIS fighters, Yazidi women and girls were verbally abused by ISIS
fighters. Insults were specifically directed at their Yazidi faith, saying that they
“worshipped stones” and referring to them as “dirty kuffar” and “devil-worshippers”.
75.
ISIS has overarching rules governing the resale of Yazidi women and girls: for
example, they should not be sold between brothers or until they had completed their
menstrual cycle (indicating they were not pregnant). It is also forbidden to sell them to
non-ISIS members. All of these rules are regularly breached by ISIS fighters.
76.
As the sabaya are “spoils of war” ISIS does not permit the reselling of Yazidis to
non-ISIS members. Such sale is punishable by death. In effect this is meant to prevent
Yazidis being sold back to their families. The financial incentives for an individual fighter
to break this rule, however, are tremendous. Whereas Yazidi women and children are sold
between fighters for between USD 200 and USD 1,500, they are generally sold back to
their families for between USD 10,000 and 40,000. Many of the families of the Yazidi
15

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women and girls who were sold back are now heavily in debt and worry not only about
making payments, but also about how they will be able to afford to buy back any other
relatives that fighter-owners wish to sell in future. Some are still making payments to ISIS
fighters, who regularly call to threaten them.
77.
Many of the Yazidi women and girls interviewed bore physical wounds and scars
of the abuse they suffered. More apparent, however, was the mental trauma all are
enduring. Most spoke of thoughts of suicide, of being unable to sleep due to nightmares
about ISIS fighters at their door. “I wish I was dead. I wish the ground would open and
kill me and my children”, said one woman, held for 17 months. Many reported feeling
angry and hopeless. “I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, my body feels very heavy”, said one 17year old girl who had been held for more than a year.
78.
Women and girls who were rescued or sold back are consumed by thoughts of
their missing husbands, fathers and brothers, and by the distress of not knowing the
locations and fate of young sons taken for training and/or daughters who were sold into
sexual slavery and remain in the hands of ISIS. One Yazidi woman, in her early twenties
and married with children, has over twenty members of her family missing, including
most of her close male relatives. She described overcoming thoughts of suicide by the
need to care for her young children and her hope that her husband, father, and brothers are
alive and waiting to be rescued. One woman, whose daughters had been taken from her at
a holding site and sold and whose whereabouts were still unknown at the time of
interview, said she could not take her youngest daughter to the school in the IDP camp
because the sight of seeing children at play was too much for her to bear.
79.
The Yazidi community has largely embraced the women and girls who have
returned from ISIS captivity, following clear statements by their religious leaders that
survivors remain Yazidi and are to be accepted. Whereas previously they may have been
ostracised, this religious-backed embrace of female survivors has provided a space in
which those who were unmarried at the time of capture can still marry within the faith,
and in which those who are married are more likely to be accepted and supported by their
husbands and extended families.
80.
Nevertheless, Yazidi women and girls, heavily traumatised, face additional
challenges to their recovery. Many, particularly those from the more rural parts of Sinjar,
have limited education, and married and had children early. Their communication with
the world beyond their extended families was through their husbands or male relatives.
With so many Yazidi men killed or missing, these women’s ability to survive and thrive
is limited by their lack of personal and financial independence, an issue that must be
addressed. Further, discussions around accountability and reconciliation, as well as what
is best for the Yazidi community of Sinjar, must take the views and experiences of these
women and girls more clearly into account.

E.

ISIS treatment of young children held with their mothers
I said, “What did you do to them?” He beat me and said, “They are kuffar
children. It is good they are dead. Why are you crying for them?”
Woman, held for 16 months, sold three times
When he would force me into a room with him, I could hear my children
screaming and crying outside the door. Once he became very angry. He beat and
threatened to kill them. He forced two of them to stand outside barefoot in the
snow until he finished with me.”
Woman, held for 11 months, sold 7 times

16

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81.
ISIS and its fighters sell Yazidi women with young children as a package.
Hundreds of Yazidi children continue to be transferred around ISIS-controlled areas of
Iraq and Syria as their mothers are sold and re-sold.
82.
Once a Yazidi girl reaches the age of nine, ISIS takes the girl from her mother and
sells her as a slave. When a Yazidi boy reaches seven years of age, he too is taken from
his mother and sent to an ISIS training camp and from there on to battle. Younger siblings
witness these separations, which are almost always accompanied by ISIS fighters beating
their mother as she tries to keep hold of her older children.
83.
ISIS fighters often target younger Yazidi children as a means of punishing their
mothers. In one case, an ISIS fighter killed several children after their mother failed in her
escape attempt. He beat her for crying over the death of “kuffar children” before raping
her. In 2015, a Libyan ISIS fighter bought a Yazidi woman and her young children, the
oldest of whom was a 7-year-old girl, and held them in a house in Dayr Az-Zayr
governorate. After loaning the mother to be raped by another ISIS fighter for one night,
the Libyan fighter took the 7-year-old girl into a room, locking it behind him. He told her
mother, who was screaming at the door, that he wanted to check whether the 7-year-old
“was ready to be married”.
84.
Children held with their mothers are often aware of their mothers’ being the
victims of prolonged and intense violence. The extent of their understanding of the sexual
nature of the violence depends on the age of the children, and whether rapes occurred in
their presence. Many of the women interviewed described hearing their children
screaming and crying outside the door while the fighter raped them in a locked room. One
woman, held for a year with her children, described her older sons being taken away by
ISIS for training. Her youngest son was not taken but he was with her when ISIS took his
older brothers away. She stated, “[H]e was one who would scream the loudest when [her
Tunisian fighter-owner] locked the children in a room” and took her to another room to
rape her.
85.
ISIS fighters often beat Yazidi children for making too much noise or for clinging
to their mothers. A Turkish ISIS fighter, who had bought a Yazidi woman and her
children and was holding them in his family home in Al-Bab, beat the woman’s 7-yearold daughter because she was crying because she was hungry. In some cases, the wives
and children of the ISIS fighter would also beat Yazidi children.
86.
At the holding sites and while being traded with their mothers between fighters,
children suffered the same poor living conditions including lack of food and water, and,
during winter, sleeping in unheated rooms.
87.
ISIS fighters, and where Yazidi women and children were held in their family
homes their wives and children, routinely told the Yazidi children that they and their
mothers were “kuffar” and that they were unclean. Some ISIS fighters, holding Yazidi
women and children inside Syria, forced the children to say the name of the devil aloud,
an impermissible act in the Yazidi religion.
88.
Yazidi women interviewed described their children, now living in IDP camps, as
being unable to sleep and prone to bed-wetting. One mother described her son as flying
into “terrible rages”, attacking her and his father. Children, especially boys, have become
highly protective of their mothers, particularly if unfamiliar men are present. In two
instances, the children of the Yazidi women refused to be separated from their mother for
the duration of the interview and became so distressed by the presence of unknown
(female) interviewers, that the decision was made, following a discussion with the
women, not to go ahead with the interviews.

17

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89.
The violations specifically suffered by Yazidi children who were held and sold
with their mothers are not often recognised. Consequently there is limited psychosocial
support available that is directly targeted at the needs of these children. Many Yazidi
families, themselves direct victims of ISIS violations, are struggling to understand and to
cope with the behaviour of their severely traumatised children.

F.

ISIS treatment of Yazidi boys, aged seven and above
They told us we had to become good Muslims and fight for Islam. They showed
us videos of beheadings, killing and ISIS battles. [My instructor] said “You have
to kill kuffars even if they are your fathers and brothers, because they belong to
the wrong religion and they don’t worship God”.
Boy, aged 12 at capture, trained in Syria
The ISIS fighters told us, “Children are young; they are like animals. We can
change them. But you are adults. We will not be able to change your mind”.
They said this to us at the hall in Mosul.
Girl, aged 17 at capture, held for 17 months, sold 8 times
90.
ISIS allows Yazidi boys who have not yet reached puberty to remain for a time
with their mothers and any siblings. After the August 2014 attack, most boys were moved
with their mothers from point of capture to holding sites in Mosul and Tel Afar. Within
two weeks of the arrival of Yazidi women and children at the schools in Tel Afar, at
Galaxy hall in Mosul city, and at Badoush prison outside of Mosul city, ISIS fighters
began to forcibly remove boys aged seven and above from their remaining families. The
exception appears to be the younger boys of Kocho village who were taken from their
mothers at the primary holding site of Solagh Technical Institute in Sinjar on 16 August
2014, a day after ISIS emptied their village.
91.
Boys belonging to families who had “converted” moved with their relatives to
Qasr Maharab and Qasil Qio villages. Like all Yazidi males in these villages, they were
forced to attend prayers at the local mosques and were beaten if they refused. One boy,
aged 13 at the time he was held in Qasil Qio, had his wrist fractured during a beating by
an ISIS commander when he was found playing during prayer time. “Converted” Yazidi
boys were not taken for training until April or May 2015 when ISIS emptied the villages
and separated the families.
92.
When Yazidi boys reach the age of seven, they are removed from their mothers’
care, regardless of their location at the time. In this way, boys over the age of seven were
removed from “the farm” in Raqqah city and from locations across Syria, where they had
been held in captivity with the mothers and other siblings.
93.
Any mothers and siblings who try to keep hold of the boys are severely beaten by
fighters. ISIS fighters make no attempt to mask why the boys are being taken away.
Women interviewed recounted ISIS fighters telling them that they were taking their sons
to teach them to be Muslims and to train them to fight. A Saudi ISIS fighter showed some
Yazidi women a video of young boys being trained in an ISIS camp, saying “we are
training them to kill kuffar like you”. Another woman recounted an Iraqi fighter taking
one of the boys from her cell in Badoush prison and telling his distraught mother, “We are
taking him so he can go and kill your people in Kobane”. Some boys were returned to the
holding sites for short periods before they were taken permanently. The son of one Yazidi
woman, who had been returned to her after a few weeks, said he had been taken to a
school in Tel Afar and taught how to pray and fight.

18

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94.
The separation of Yazidi boys aged seven years and above was systematic. After
taking them from their mothers, ISIS forcibly transferred the boys to training centres or
military camps in Mosul, Tel Afar, and Baaj in Iraq, and in Raqqah city, Tabqa, Tel
Abyad, and Suluk in Syria. Many training centres, such as Mahad Farouq lil Ashbal in
Tel Abyad, are set up in former schools. There the boys are registered and given Islamic
names. From then on, the boys are only called by their new names, and are treated as ISIS
recruits.
95.
The Yazidi boys are forced to attend indoctrination and military training sessions
led by ISIS fighters acting as instructors. Yazidi boys are mixed with Sunni Arab boys
who are also being trained. Those interviewed were housed together in groups of between
10 and 12, in shared rooms. The boys’ daily programme consists of sessions in Quranic
recitation as well as military exercises, including being taught to use AK47s, hand
grenades, and Rocket Propelled Grenades. The boys are forced to watch ISIS-made
propaganda videos of armed battles, beheadings, and suicide missions. ISIS instructors
also hold sessions for the boys on “Jihad” and the importance of participating in ISIS’s
war against “the unbelievers”. If the boys fail to memorize Quranic verses or perform
poorly in training sessions, they are beaten.
96.
At the training centres or camps, there is no reference to the Yazidi boys’ birth
religion. Their past is deemed erased and all contact with their family and community is
effectively cut off. Instead, a new identity is forcibly imposed. The objective of the
training centres and the indoctrination programme is thus two-fold. On a general level it
aims at increasing recruitment, and all children are treated as potential or future recruits
regardless of their background. But on a specific level, targeting the Yazidi boys
uniquely, it aims at destroying their religious identity as Yazidis and recasting them as
followers of Islam as interpreted by ISIS. In this way, Yazidi boys are transferred out of
their own community, and through indoctrination and violence, into ISIS.
97.
Hundreds of Yazidi boys are systematically subjected to the above-described
pattern of violent separation from families, forcible transfer, indoctrination, and
recruitment in military training camps. After completing the training, Yazidi boys are
distributed according to the needs of the terrorist group. Some have become fighters on
the battlefield while others are deployed to guard ISIS bases or to perform other duties as
their commanders require.

G.

ISIS Destruction of Yazidi temples and shrines
98.
As ISIS fighters assumed control of the Sinjar region in early August 2014, they
began to destroy Yazidi temples and shrines. The shrines of Sheikh Mand in Jiddala
village, Sheikh Hassan in Gabara, Malak Fakhraddin in Sikeeniya, and Mahma Rasha
located in Solagh were all destroyed in the period following the attack.
99.
After forcibly transferring captured Yazidis out of the Sinjar region, ISIS fighters
marked their houses with symbols, distinguishing those houses from the houses of Arab
villagers. Afterwards, many of the houses belonging to the Yazidis were looted, and some
were destroyed or severely damaged by ISIS fighters.19

19

See UNOSAT Live Map, Complex Emergency Iraq, CE20140613IRQ Damage Assessment
(https://unosat.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=3356c7f1659a4282a08fa18820
8036d7); UNOSAT, Damage Assessment of Sinjar, Sinjar District, Nineveh Province, Northern
Iraq, 7 August 2014

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V. Legal Analysis
A.

Genocide
(i) Are the Yazidis a “protected group”?
100. Article II of the Genocide Convention, replicated in Article 6 of Rome Statute,
states that a protected group must be a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such.
The term “as such” “has been interpreted to mean that the prohibited act must be
committed against a person based on that person’s membership in a specific group and
specifically because the person belonged to this group, such that the real victim is not
merely the person but the group itself”.20
101. The Yazidis are often referred to as an ethno-religious group.21 Both ethnic and
religious groups are protected groups within the meaning of Article II of the Genocide
Convention, with ethnic groups defined as groups “whose members share a common
language or culture”22 and religious groups as groups “whose members share the same
religion, denomination or mode of worship”.23
102. The question of whether the Yazidis are a separate ethnic group is a matter of
discussion within the community itself. Indigenous communities of Yazidis are present in
Syria, Iraq, Armenia, and Turkey and have as their native tongue, Kurdish. Many of these
communities, with the exception of the Armenian Yazidis, view themselves as ethnically
Kurdish but followers of the Yazidi religion. Where Yazidis hold the view of themselves
as an ethnically distinct group, this appears in the context of repression and discrimination
against the Yazidi community by surrounding Muslim communities.
103. Little, if any, debate surrounds the Yazidis’ identity as a distinct religious group.
An indigenous religion that has existed for thousands of years, the Yazidi faith has
absorbed some aspects of later faiths – including Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam – while maintaining its own traditions. Without exception, diverse members of
the Yazidi community interviewed were of the view that the Yazidis constitute a separate
religious denomination, with distinct modes of worship.
104. Jurisprudence from the ICTR and ICTY indicates that the belief of those
perpetrating crimes may also be taken into account for the purpose of determining
membership of a protected group.24 ISIS has continually referenced the Yazidis’ religious
beliefs as the basis for its attack on and subsequent abuse of them. ISIS fighters
commonly refer to the Yazidis as infidels and “dirty kuffar”. ISIS does not regard
Yazidism as an immutable identity and has forced conversions, suggesting that it views
Yazidis as belonging to a religious community. ISIS’s later decision not to recognize

20

21

22

23
24

20

(http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/UNOSAT_A3_Landscape_Sinjar_
Damage_Assessment_v1.pdf)
Prosecutor v. Muhimana, ICTR Trial Judgment, 28 April 2005, (“Muhimana Trial Judgment”) para.
500; Prosecutor v. Kajelijeli, ICTR Trial Judgment, 1 December 2003, (“Kajelijeli Trial Judgment”)
para. 813.
For example, UNHCR's Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of
Iraqi Asylum-seekers"
Prosecutor v. Akayesu, ICTR Trial Judgment, 2 September 1998 (“Akayesu Trial Judgement”),
para. 513.
Akayesu Trial Judgement, para. 515.
Prosecutor v. Stakić, ICTY Appeals Judgment, 31 July 2003, para. 25; Prosecutor v. Gacumbitsi,
ICTR Trial Judgment, 17 June 2004 (“Gacumbitsi Trial Judgment”), para. 255; Prosecutor v.
Musema, ICTR Trial Judgment, 27 January 2000 (“Musema Trial Judgment”) para. 161.

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conversions of Yazidi adults was motivated by the realization that the conversions were
feigned. Nevertheless, ISIS continues to promote the indoctrination of younger Yazidi
boys, in a concerted effort to cause the boys to reject Yazidism and embrace ISIS’s
ideology.
105. The Commission has, on the basis of objective and subjective definitions,
determined that the Yazidis are a protected religious group within the meaning of Article
II of the Genocide Convention.
(ii) Has ISIS committed one or more of the prohibited acts against members of the
Yazidi group?
(a)

Killing members of the group

106. ISIS, including fighters who came from bases inside Syria, intentionally killed
hundreds of Yazidis as part of its attack on Sinjar. This includes Yazidis executed on
capture, as well as the deaths which resulted from ISIS’s besieging of Yazidis trapped on
the mountain.25 ISIS subsequently killed Yazidis held captive in Iraq and Syria.
107. In August 2014, ISIS fighters summarily executed hundreds of Yazidi men and
adolescent boys when the victims refused to convert to Islam or were captured with
weapons in their possession. Mass killings occurred in Kocho and Qani villages. ISIS
fighters also killed an unknown number of older Yazidi women from Kocho village while
they were held in Solagh Technical Institute in the early hours of 16 August 2014.
108. That these killings occurred is based on accounts of multiple eyewitnesses. It has
also been inferred from the accounts of captured Yazidi women and children who heard
gunfire, saw fighters covered with blood immediately after the Yazidi males were led
away, and from the fact that none of the Yazidi men and boys have been heard from since
August 2014. Additionally the Commission has noted credible documentation from
Yazda, concerning its investigation of over thirty mass graves sites in the Sinjar region.26
Most of these graves reportedly contain the remains of men and adolescent boys.
109. While most of the killing of Yazidis occurred in Iraq, ISIS fighters who had
purchased Yazidi women and children in Syria also committed intentional killings. As
detailed above, an ISIS fighter in Aleppo killed several children after a failed escape
attempt by their mother, after which he beat her for crying over the deaths of “kuffar
children”.
110. Yazidi women and girls, held in Syria and Iraq, killed themselves before they
could be sold to ISIS fighters. Several killed themselves at the “farm” in Raqqah city,
where Yazidis females were gathered, registered, and sold. ICTY jurisprudence holds that
the suicide of a person may amount to killing where the accused’s acts or omissions
“induced the victim to take actions which resulted in his death, and that his suicide was
either intended, or was an action of a type which a reasonable person could have foreseen
as a consequence”.27
111. ISIS has committed the prohibited act of killing members of a protected religious
group, the Yazidis.
(b)

25
26
27

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

See Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 589 for the material elements of the act of killing.
Yazda Mass Graves Report, pp. 7-20
Prosecutor v. Krnojelac, ICTY Trial Judgment, 15 March 2002, para. 329.

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112. Conduct resulting in serious bodily or mental harm “may include, but is not
necessarily restricted to, acts of torture, rape, sexual violence or inhuman or degrading
treatment”.28 ICTR and ICTY jurisprudence has repeatedly held that such harm can mean
torture, and inhuman and degrading treatment.29 The physical or mental harm does not
need to be permanent or irremediable.30
Rape and sexual violence, including sexual slavery
113. The ICTR case of Akayesu first found that rape and sexual violence constitute
serious harm on both a physical and mental level – and consequently, if carried out with
specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group, constitute genocide. The
findings of the Trial Chamber in the Akayesu case, heralded as “the most important
decision rendered thus far in the history of women’s jurisprudence”,31 are instructive:
Rape and sexual violence certainly constitute infliction of serious bodily and mental
harm on the victims and are even, according to the Chamber, one of the worst ways
of inflicting harm on the victim as he or she suffers both bodily and mental harm…
The rapes resulted in the physical and psychological destruction of the Tutsi women,
their families and their communities. Sexual violence was an integral part of the
process of destruction, specifically targeting Tutsi women and specifically
contributing to their destruction and to the destruction of the Tutsi group as a
whole.32
114. ISIS fighters systematically rape Yazidi women and girls as young as nine. There
is overwhelming evidence of such rapes occurring from survivors themselves, who
display both physical and psychological wounds.
115. The serious physical and mental harm that ISIS perpetrates against captured Yazidi
women and girls extends beyond rape itself. From the perspective of the victims,
perpetrators, and those involved in documenting violations, captured Yazidi women and
girls are subjected to entrenched sexual violence, in that they are sexually enslaved by
ISIS and by its fighters.
116. Sexual slavery, as a crime against humanity, is defined by Article 7(1)(g) of the
Rome Statute. Its relevant material elements are that (i) [t]he perpetrator exercised any or
all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over one or more persons, such as by
purchasing, selling, lending or bartering such a person or persons, or by imposing on them
a similar deprivation of liberty;33 and (ii) [t]he perpetrator caused such person or persons
to engage in one or more acts of a sexual nature.
28
29

30
31

32

33

22

Footnote 3 of Article 6(b) of the Rome Statute.
Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 504; Prosecutor v. Krstić, ICTY Trial Judgment, 2 August 2001,
(“Krstić Trial Judgment”) para. 513; see also Prosecutor v. Karadžić et al., Review of the
Indictment Pursuant to Rule 61 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, 11 July 1996, para. 93.
Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 502.
Kelly Askin, Women’s Issues in International Criminal Law: Recent Developments and the
Potential Contribution of the ICC, in International Crimes, Peace and Human Rights: the Role of
the International Criminal Court 47, 52 (Dinah Shelton ed., 2000).
Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 731. Later similar findings that rape and sexual violence were acts of
genocide were made by in Prosecutor v. Stakić, Trial Judgment, 31 July 2003 (“Stakić Trial
Judgment”) para. 516; Rutaganda Trial Judgment, para. 51, Musema Trial Judgment, para. 156,
Gacumbitsi Trial Judgment, paras. 291-292; and Muhimana Trial Judgment, para. 502.
Footnote 18 attached to this material element reads, “It is understood that such deprivation of liberty
may, in some circumstances, include exacting forced labour or otherwise reducing a person to a
servile status as defined in the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave
Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery of 1956. It is also understood that the

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117. In 2014, the ICC’s Katanga Trial Chamber Judgment held that “[p]owers attaching
to right of ownership must be construed as the use, enjoyment, and disposal of a person
who is regarded as property, by placing him or her in a situation of dependence which
entails his or her deprivation of any form of autonomy”.34
118. Once captured by ISIS, Yazidi women and girls are deemed to be the property of
the terrorist group, and later the individual fighters who purchase them. In the days and
weeks following the August 2014 attack, ISIS detained and registered Yazidi women and
girls in sites in Syria and Iraq. The registration process was designed to determine their
monetary value, thereby dehumanising them. Shortly thereafter, the terrorist group began
to embark on organised sales of Yazidi women and girls. These sales are conducted with
individual fighters coming to holding sites, at slave markets where groups of ISIS men
inspect and select women and girls, and in online auctions. Attempts to refuse to be sold
or to prevent other women from being sold are met with violent beatings.
119. Once sold, the Yazidi females are the sole property of their fighter-owner, who can
re-sell, gift, or will them to other ISIS fighters. ISIS fighters threaten to kill women and
girls who resist rape. Resistance is also routinely met with beatings and threats against
any children the Yazidi woman has with her. ISIS fighters block escape attempts by
refusing to provide Yazidi women and girls with clothing that would allow them to move
unnoticed in the streets. Escape attempts have been met with extreme violence including
the killing of the women’s children, gang rape, rape, and beatings. Yazidi women and
girls are also forced to work for the ISIS fighters and their families, including being made
to cook, clean and wash clothes. Throughout their captivity, captured Yazidi women and
children are treated as less than human and undeserving of respect and dignity, due to
their status as “dirty infidels”.
120. Captured Yazidi women and girls immediately recognise the hopelessness of their
situation, which is to say the complete deprivation of their liberty. Those interviewed
stressed that once they were captured, they had no choice over where they were taken,
what happened to any children they had, to whom they were sold and resold, and how
they were treated. An as yet unknown number of women and girls, in the face of what
was likely to be prolonged and brutal violence, ended or attempted to end their own lives.
121. Captured women and girls – including girls as young as nine – have no ability to
decide the conditions in which they engage in sexual activity.35 Locked into houses and

34

35

conduct described in this element includes trafficking in persons, in particular women and
children”.
Prosecutor v. Katanga, ICC Trial Judgment, 7 March 2014 (“Katanga Trial Judgment”), para. 975.
In para. 977, the Chamber took into account the following factors, which it did not regard as
exhaustive, “detention or captivity and their respective duration; restrictions on freedom to come
and go or on any freedom of choice or movement; and, more generally, any measure taken to
prevent or deter any attempt at escape. The use of threats, force or other forms of physical or mental
coercion, the exaction of forced labour, the exertion of psychological pressure, the victim’s
vulnerability and the socioeconomic conditions in which the power is exerted may also be taken
into account.” Those factors were held to be objective elements of the crime, though the Trial
Chamber stated that it would consider, in its analysis of the first constituent element of the crime,
the subjective nature of the deprivation of liberty, “that is, the person’s perception of his or her
situation as well as his or her reasonable fear”. The Trial Chamber further stated that the second
element of the crime concerns “the victim’s ability to decide the conditions in which he or she
engages in sexual activity”
For a discussion on child slavery, including sexual slavery, see Cécile Aptel, Child Slaves and
Child Brides, Journal of International Criminal Justice (2016), pp. 1-21

23

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apartments by their ISIS fighter-owners, Yazidi women and girls are often handcuffed
and tied to the beds and raped. Many are subjected to physical and psychological
violence, including beatings and/or threats against themselves and their children.
122. ISIS’s sexual enslavement of Yazidi women and girls is an act of sexual violence,
first recognised in Akayesu and later followed in a myriad of ICTY and ICTR Judgments
as constituting serious bodily and mental harm within the meaning of Article II of the
Genocide Convention. Further it is evident from the facts as described above that serious
physical and mental harm has been, and is being, sustained by Yazidi women and girls as
a result of their sexual enslavement by ISIS.
123. The sexual violence being committed by ISIS against Yazidi women and girls, and
the serious physical and mental harm it engenders, is a clear “step in the process of
destruction of the … group – destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life
itself”.36
124. Yazidi women and girls are not, however, simply vessels through which ISIS
seeks to achieve the destruction of the Yazidi religious group. Rape and sexual violence,
when committed against women and girls as part of a genocide, is a crime against a wider
protected group, but it is equally a crime committed against a female, as an individual, on
the basis of her sex.37 The view of females as objects, not specific to ISIS, when backed
by radical religious interpretation, and territorial control affording dominance over
women and girls, finds a horrific, though logical, extreme in the terrorist group’s conduct.
It is the common thread that links ISIS’s forcing Sunni women and girls to remove
themselves from the male gaze, either by having them remain indoors or covering
themselves entirely when in public, while simultaneously and overtly encouraging its
fighters to hold, use, and trade Yazidi women and girls as sex slaves. In treating the
trauma arising from their sexual enslavement, care must be paid to the fact that Yazidi
women and girls have been doubly victimized, on the basis of their religion and their sex.
Enslavement
125. ISIS and its fighters continue to enslave Yazidi women and girls, a crime distinct
to that of sexual slavery. The definition of enslavement, as a crime against humanity, is
set out in Article 7(1)(c) of the Rome Statute. It requires the perpetrator to have
“exercised any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over one or more
persons, such as by purchasing, selling, lending or bartering such a person or persons, or
by imposing on them a similar deprivation of liberty.”38 Indicia of enslavement include,
“control of someone’s movement, control of physical environment, psychological control,
measures taken to prevent or deter escape, force, threat of force or coercion, duration,

36

37

38

24

Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 732. See also Catharine A. McKinnon, Rape, Genocide, and
Women’s Human Rights, 17 Harvard Women’s Law Journal 5, pp.11-12 (1994), which reads, in
part, “It is a rape to drive a wedge through a community, to shatter a society, to destroy a people. It
is rape as genocide.”
See Beth Van Schaak, Engendering Genocide: The Akayesu Case Before the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda, Santa Clara University School of Law, Legal Studies Research Paper Series,
July 2008; Sherrie L. Russell-Brown, Rape as an Act of Genocide, Berkeley Journal of International
Law, Volume 21, Issue 2, 2003.
Footnote 11 attached to this material element reads, “It is understood that such deprivation of liberty
may, in some circumstances, include exacting forced labour or otherwise reducing a person to a
servile status as defined in the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave
Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery of 1956. It is also understood that the
conduct described in this element includes trafficking in persons, in particular women and
children.”

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assertion of exclusivity, subjection to cruel treatment and abuse, control of sexuality and
forced labour”.39
126. ISIS fighter-owners force Yazidi women and girls to cook, clean, and wash clothes
for them, and sometimes for their families. Where Yazidi women and girls are held
captive in the fighters’ houses, they are sometimes forced to care for the fighters’ children
and to assist his wife with any tasks, as he or she wishes. Yazidi men and boys over the
age of puberty were similarly made to labour on ISIS projects in Tel Afar and Mosul.
These tasks included construction and cleaning work, digging trenches, and looking after
cattle.
127. ISIS and its fighters exercise powers of ownership over Yazidi women and girls,
buying and selling them at will, in circumstances where the women and girls are treated
as chattel, bereft of autonomy. As already described, they are subjected to physical and
psychological controls, including measures to prevent escape, and are victims of violent
abuse. Yazidi women and girls were, and are, being trafficked between Iraq and Syria.
Yazidi men and women, girls and boys were forced to work for ISIS fighters, albeit in
differing environments depending on their sex. Any Yazidi, male or female, who refused
to undertake tasks as ISIS ordered, was beaten severely.
128. ISIS and its fighters continue to enslave Yazidis, causing them serious bodily and
mental harm as a result. The acts underpinning their enslavement are incremental steps in
the destruction of the individual, and ultimately the group.
Torture and inhuman and degrading treatment
129. At the point of capture, Yazidi women and children suffered serious mental harm
as a result of being separated from their male relatives and being forced either to bear
witness to their murders or to watch them being taken away to an unknown fate.40
130. ISIS fighters severely beat captured Yazidi women and girls if they resist rapes,
attempt to escape, refuse orders to carry tasks for the fighters and their families, or try to
prevent ISIS fighters from removing their children or siblings from their care. Severe
mental anguish is being caused to Yazidi mothers as a consequence of ISIS fighters
taking their daughters to sell into sexual slavery, and their sons to be indoctrinated and
recruited in ISIS forces. For many Yazidi women, who still do not know where their
children are and what conditions they are living under, the mental trauma is allconsuming. The sexual and physical violence, together with the severe mental trauma,
which Yazidi women and girls over the age of nine experience at the hands of ISIS rises
to the level of torture, causing them serious physical and psychological harm.
131. Yazidi women and girls are treated like chattel. This includes being registered and
having their monetary assessed while at the holding sites. The registration process
sometimes included being photographed without their headscarves and being made to
smile for the camera. Some of those interviewed were forced to appear before ISIS
fighters without their headscarves, while the men made their selection. Throughout their
time in captivity, Yazidi women and girls are treated as being undeserving of human
dignity and are continually told that they are “unclean”, and “worship stones”. By this
39

40

Prosecutor v. Kunarac, ICTY Trial Judgment, 22 February 2001, para. 542. This was confirmed in
the Prosecutor v. Kunarac, ICTY Appeals Judgment, 12 June 2002, para. 119, and was later
followed in Prosecutor v. Kaing (alias Duch), ECCC Trial Judgment, 26 July 2010, para. 342; and
the 2012 Taylor Trial Judgment, para. 447. Please note the ICTY Statute, unlike the ICC Statute,
did not contain the separate crime of sexual slavery.
Prosecutor v. Tolimir, ICTY Trial Judgment, 12 December 2012, para. 756; Prosecutor v. Karadžić,
ICTY Trial Judgment, 24 March 2016, (“Karadžić Trial Judgment”) para. 6049.

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conduct, ISIS subjects Yazidi women and girls that it holds captive to inhuman and
degrading treatment.
132. ISIS’s beating and mistreatment of Yazidi children held with their mothers; the
holding of them in conditions where they are aware of the sexual violence being
perpetrated against the mothers and where they are exposed to older siblings being taken
away to be trained as fighters or sold as sex slaves; the threats to kill, beat and sell Yazidi
children; and the continued denigration of the children and their mothers as “dirty
infidels” amount to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, acts which constitute
seriously bodily and mental harm.
133. ISIS also causes serious physical and psychological harm to Yazidi boys over
seven years of age. This harm comes about through the violent separation of Yazidi boys
from their families, forced conversions and subsequent indoctrination, recruitment,
military training – which includes beatings, training on suicide bombing, and watching
violent war propaganda – and ISIS’s use of the boys to actively participate in hostilities.
Through this abuse, ISIS intends to destroy the boys’ identity as Yazidis.
Forcible transfer
134. ISIS forcibly transferred Yazidi men, women and children from the point of
capture to various primary and then to secondary holding sites in Syria and Iraq. ISIS, and
after purchase its fighters, forcibly transferred Yazidi women and children among
multiple locations as they are sold and re-sold.
135. Such forcible transfers, which in the case of captured Yazidi women and girls
occurred and continues to occur frequently as they are sold between ISIS and its fighters,
as well as between fighters, cause Yazidi women and girls serious mental harm so as to
constitute a prohibited act under Article II of the Genocide Convention and Article 6 of
the Rome Statute.41
136. Based on the conduct described above, it is determined that ISIS has committed,
and is continuing to commit, the prohibited act of causing serious bodily or mental harm
to the Yazidis, a protected religious group.
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part
137. This act of genocide refers to methods of destruction by which ISIS “does not
immediately kill the members of the group, but which, ultimately, seeks their physical
destruction”.42 “The term “conditions of life” may include, but is not necessarily restricted
to, deliberate deprivation of resources indispensable for survival, such as food or medical
services, or systematic expulsion from homes.”43 This appears to draw from the accepted
jurisprudence of the ICTR and ICTY.44
138. ISIS encircled and besieged Yazidis who had successfully fled to the upper slopes
of Mount Sinjar on 3 August 2014. The terrorist group deliberately cut those on the
mountain off from food, water, and medical care. Yazidis struggled to survive in
temperatures that rose above 50 degrees Celsius. ISIS fighters also attacked planes
seeking to aid drop water and food supplies, and helicopters which attempted to rescue
those in need to medical attention or who were otherwise particularly vulnerable.
41 Prosecutor v. Tolimir, ICTY Appeals Judgment, 8 April 2015, para. 209; Karadžić Trial Judgment, para. 545;
42
Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 505.
43
Footnote 4, Article 6(c) of the Rome Statute.
44
See, for example, Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 506; Rutaganda Trial Judgment, para. 52; Musema
Trial Judgment, para. 157; Stakić Trial Judgment, para. 517.

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139. In the Kayishema case before the ICTR, the Trial Chamber determined that rape
was also a method of destruction which does not “lead immediately to the death of
members of the group”.45 In 2015, the International Court of Justice indicated that rape
could fall within Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention but noted, in the particular case
before the Court, “it has not been shown that these occurrences [of rape] were on such a
scale to have amounted also to inflicting conditions of life on the group that were capable
of bringing about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.46
140. Yazidi women and girls, captured by ISIS and registered and sold in Syria and
Iraq, are subjected to organised sexual violence on a massive scale occurring in the
context of their sexual enslavement. Women and girls suffer multiple – sometimes
hundreds – of rapes by their various fighter-owners. Further, captured Yazidi women and
children – including infants – held by ISIS are also being given limited food and water, do
not receive medical care, and are severely beaten if they failed to obey orders. ISIS and
its fighters deliberately impose these conditions in a calculated awareness that such
conditions, particularly when inflicted continuously over a long period of time, would
cause the deaths of Yazidi women and children.
141. The Commission has determined ISIS has committed, and is committing, the
prohibited act of deliberately inflicting on captured Yazidis conditions of life calculated
to bring about their physical destruction, in whole or in part.
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
142. Measures intended to prevent births within the group include rape; sexual
mutilation; the practice of sterilisation; forced birth control; separation of the sexes;
prohibition of marriages; impregnation of a woman to deprive group identity; and mental
trauma resulting in a reluctance to procreate. 47
143. The first act of ISIS on capturing Yazidis in August 2014 was to separate men
from women. Further, hundreds of Yazidi men were killed on capture. Yazidi women,
once under the control of ISIS, are held separately from their husbands and from other
Yazidi men. The only exception to this has been the reuniting of “converted” Yazidi men
and their wives in Qasr Maharab. As detailed above, ISIS emptied Qasr Maharab in April
or May 2015 and permanently separated the Yazidi men and women at that time.
144. Under Yazidi religious tradition, both parents must be Yazidi for the child to be of
the Yazidi faith. It is not possible to convert to Yazidism. ISIS statements, as set out in
detail below, indicate that ISIS would not countenance the existence of Yazidis, living as
Yazidis, within its territory. By the act of separating Yazidi men and women, by killing
hundreds of Yazidi men, and by forcing conversions to Islam, ISIS has imposed measures
intended to prevent births within the group.
145. Rape can be a measure to prevent births “when the person raped subsequently
refuses to procreate, in the same way that members of a group can be led, through threats
or trauma, not to procreate”.48 An expert in trauma psychology involved in the treatment
of hundreds of Yazidi women and girls who were held by ISIS stated that “[the Yazidi
females being treated] do not trust those around them, particularly men. There is a real
anxiety around any contact with men. This in turn has resulted in sexual dysfunction,
45

46

47
48

Prosecutor v. Kayishema et al., ICTR Trial Judgment, 21 May 1999 (“Kayishema Trial Judgment”)
para. 116.
Republic of Croatia v. Republic of Serbia, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ICJ Judgment, 3 February 2015, paras. 362-364.
Akayesu Trial Judgment, paras. 507-8. See also Rutaganda Trial Judgment, para. 53.
Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 508.

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which is to say, a disinterest in sexual relationships, in any contact with men…. For the
younger girls, where rape was their first experience of sex, and where the traumatic
sexual violence was extended over a long time at the hands of multiple men, you would
expect difficulty in future sexual relationships and anxiety around sex.” The interviewee
stated that the Yazidi women and girls under treatment did not want to marry, or to
contemplate relationships with men now or in the future. This was compounded by a
sense that they had lost their honour. In this way, the rapes being perpetrated by the ISIS
fighters on Yazidi women and girls themselves constitute a measure to prevent births
within the group.
146. The Commission has determined that ISIS has committed, and is committing, the
prohibited act of imposing measures intended to prevent births within the Yazidi
community.
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
147. ISIS forcibly transfers Yazidi children in two ways, depending on their sex. Girls,
on reaching the age of nine, are taken from their mothers and sold as sex slaves to ISIS
fighters in Syria and Iraq. Yazidi boys, once they reach the age of seven, are also taken
from their mothers and sent to ISIS training bases in Syria and Iraq where they are
instructed on how to follow Islam as interpreted by ISIS, and on how to fight. Later,
trained “converted” Yazidi boys fight in battles as part of ISIS forces.
148. In this way, ISIS transfers Yazidi children to the custody of fighters, albeit in
radically different ways. These transfers, achieved through physical force at the time the
children are taken from their mothers, remove the children from their community and the
practice of their faith. In this way, ISIS intentionally seeks to destroy Yazidi children’s
concept of themselves as Yazidi, erasing their attachment to the Yazidi religion. Whereas
Yazidi girls are prevented from practising their religion, Yazidi boys are fully
indoctrinated into ISIS ideology.
149. The Commission has determined that ISIS has committed, and is committing, the
prohibited act of forcibly transferring Yazidi children to another group.
(iii) Did ISIS commit the prohibited acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, the Yazidis?
150. For a finding of genocide, it must be shown that ISIS committed one or more of
the prohibited acts listed in Article II of the Genocide Convention, and replicated in
Article 6 of the Rome Statute, with the intent that its acts result in the destruction, in
whole or in part, of the Yazidis. Pivotal to this intent is the reason why the Yazidis were
targeted. The ICTR Rutaganda Trial Judgment deconstructs this special intent,
For any of the acts charged to constitute genocide, the said acts must have been
committed against one or more persons because such person or persons were
members of a specific group, and specifically, because of their membership in this
group. Thus, the victim is singled out not by reason of his individual identity, but
rather on account of his being a member of a national, ethnical, racial or religious
group.49
151. Historically, the special intent to destroy has often been inferred from conduct,
including statements. ISIS explicitly holds its abuse of the Yazidis to be mandated by its
religious interpretation and its public statements have provided an invaluable resource
directly demonstrative of its intent.
49

28

Rutaganda Trial Judgment, para. 60.

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152. Genocidal intent can also be inferred from the perpetrator’s “deeds and utterances
considered together, as well as from the general context of the perpetration of other
culpable acts systematically directed against the same group”.50 Relevant conduct
includes the physical targeting of the group or their property, the use of derogatory
language towards members of the targeted group, and the methodical way of planning.51
The scale of atrocities committed, their general nature, and the fact of deliberately and
systematically targeting victims on account of their membership in a particular group,
while excluding members of other groups, were other factors from which the Commission
was able to infer genocidal intent.52
153. ISIS, in an article entitled “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour” published in
its English language magazine Dabiq, indicated that, prior to the attack on Sinjar being
launched, it had sought to determine how the Yazidis should be treated under ISIS’s
ideology.53 In the same article, ISIS declares, “Upon conquering the region of Sinjar…
the Islamic State faced a population of Yazidis, a pagan minority existent for ages in the
regions of Iraq and Sham [Syria]. Their continual existence to this day is a matter that
Muslims should question as they will be asked about it on Judgment Day…”
154. Having decided that the Yazidis were a mushrik group, judged not to believe in
God as worshipped by Ahl Al-Kitab, or the People of the Book, ISIS stated that it
dealt with this group as the majority of fuqaha [religious scholars] have indicated
how mushrikin should be dealt with. Unlike the Jews and the Christians, there was
no room for the jizyah payment [a tax to be paid to avoid conversion or death].
Also their women could be enslaved unlike the female apostates who the majority
of the fuqaha say cannot be enslaved and can only be given an ultimatum to repent
or face the sword. After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided
according to the Shariah [religious law] amongst the fighters of the Islamic State
who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were
transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums [spoils of
war]…. The enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as
the mushrikin were sold by the Companions.54
155. ISIS’s plan to attack Sinjar was presaged by research into how its religious
interpretation mandated the treatment of the Yazidis they would find there. This
interpretation determined the behaviour of its fighters during the attack on Sinjar and in
its and their subsequent abuse of Yazidi men, women and children. ISIS’s killing of the
men and boys who did not convert, its sexual enslavement and enslavement of Yazidi
women and girls, and its forced abduction, indoctrination and recruitment of Yazidi boys
to be used in hostilities, de facto converting them, adhered seamlessly to the religious
mandates set out by its “scholars” concerning how to treat Yazidi captives. The objectives
for the capture and enslavement of Yazidis have been set out in various ISIS statements
and documents.55

50
51
52
53

54
55

Gacumbitsi Trial Judgment, para. 252.
Kayishema Trial Judgment, para. 93.
Akayesu Trial Judgment, para. 523; Kajelijeli Trial Judgment, paras. 804-805.
Dabiq, “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour”, Issue 4, 2014, pp. 14-16 (“Dabiq article”). At p.
14: “Prior to the taking of Sinjar, Shari’ah students in the Islamic State were tasked to research the
Yazidi group to see if they should be treated as an originally mushrik group or one that originated as
Muslims and then apostatized…”
Ibid., p.15.
For example, see “Unseen Islamic State Pamphlet on Slavery”, translated by Aymenn Jawad AlTamimi. (http://www.aymennjawad.org/2015/12/unseen-islamic-state-pamphlet-on-slavery)

29

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156. Further, a massive organizational effort was put into aligning conduct of the ISIS
fighters with the terrorist group’s ideological stance concerning the existence of Yazidis.
This included the coordination of the near-identical treatment of Yazidis by fighters
across Sinjar, the transferring of thousands of Yazidi captives to clearly designated
primary and then secondary holding sites, and the complex system of registering and
selling Yazidi women and children.
157. During and after the 3 August attack, ISIS also destroyed Yazidi shrines and
temples in Sinjar. Some homes were also looted after being marked as belonging to
Yazidis. As held by the ICTY Appeals Chamber in the Krstić case, “[t]he destruction of
cultural property may serve evidentially to confirm an intent, to be gathered from other
circumstances, to destroy the group, as such”.56 This dictum was endorsed by the
International Court of Justice in the 2007 case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and
Montenegro.57
158. Motives, such as the desire for territorial control of the Sinjar region or the sexual
gratification that resulted from the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women and girls, do not
preclude ISIS fighters from having the specific intent to commit genocide.58
159. Indeed, from the moment of first contact with the population of Sinjar, ISIS
fighters focussed their attack on the Yazidis, because they were Yazidis. Yazidi men and
older boys were forced to convert or die, in either case leading to their destruction as
Yazidis. Mothers, trying to prevent ISIS from taking their sons to be trained, were told
that ISIS would make their sons Muslims. One boy, taken for training, was told by his
ISIS commander, “even if you see your father, if he is still Yazidi, you must kill him”.
160. The notion of ISIS-interpreted Islam as a purifying force is present throughout all
ISIS fighters’ interactions with the Yazidis. From schools in Tel Afar to houses in Raqqah
city, fighters repeatedly told captured Yazidi women and girls, held as slaves, that they
were “dirty Yazidis” and “kuffar”. The Dabiq article continues in this vein: “Their creed
is so deviant from the truth that even cross-worshipping Christians for ages considered
them devil-worshippers and Satanists”.59
161. Those captured and held by ISIS indicated that only Yazidis were present at the
various holding sites in Iraq and Syria, and that it was only Yazidi women and girls who
are being sold at slave markets. Those bought in groups by their fighter-owners or held on
ISIS military bases as sex slaves for its fighters stated they were only ever held with other
Yazidi females, including girls aged nine and above.
162. No other religious group present in ISIS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq has
been subjected to the destruction that the Yazidis have suffered. Arab villagers who did
not flee Sinjar in advance of the ISIS attack were allowed to remain in their homes, and
were not captured, killed, or enslaved. While the Christian communities still living in
56

57

58
59

30

Prosecutor v. Krstić, ICTY Appeals Judgment, 19 April 2014, paras. 25-26. This confirmed para.
580 of the Krstić Trial Judgment, which read, “Where there is physical or biological destruction
there are often simultaneous attacks on the cultural and religious property and symbols of the
targeted group as well, attacks which may legitimately be considered as evidence of intent to
physically destroy the group. In this case, the Trial Chamber will thus take into account as evidence
of intent to destroy the group, the deliberate destruction of mosques and houses belonging to
members of the group”.
Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, Application of the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ICJ Judgment, 26 February 2006, (“Bosnia v.
Serbia Judgment”), para. 344.
Prosecutor v. Jelisić, ICTY Appeals Judgment, 5 July 2001, para. 49.
Ibid., p.14.

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ISIS-controlled territory live difficult and often precarious existences, are viewed with
suspicion, and are vulnerable to attack if ISIS perceive they are seeking protection from
non-aligned forces, their right to exist as Christians within any Islamic state existing at
any point in time, is recognised as long as they pay the jizya tax. Under ISIS’s radical
interpretation of Islam, however, it is impermissible for Yazidis to live as Yazidis inside
its so-called caliphate because they are not People of the Book.
163. The public statements and conduct of ISIS strongly indicate that ISIS intended to
destroy the Yazidis of Sinjar, composing the majority of the world’s Yazidi population, in
whole or in part.60
164. There are reasonable grounds to believe that ISIS committed prohibited acts, as set
out in Article II of the Genocide Convention and Article 6 of the Rome Statute, against
individual Yazidis as a consequence of his or her belonging to the Yazidi group, and as an
incremental step in the overall objective of destroying the group.61
165. The Commission has determined that ISIS has committed, and is committing, the
prohibited acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Yazidis of Sinjar, and
has, therefore, committed the crime of genocide.

B.

Crimes Against Humanity
166. ISIS’s August 2014 attack on Sinjar and its subsequent abuse of captured Yazidis,
including the sexual and physical violence directed against Yazidi women and children
transferred into Syria, constitute a direct attack on the Yazidis, a civilian population who
was the primary target of the attack.
167. The ISIS attack was widespread, encompassing hundreds of villages across the
Sinjar region, and Mount Sinjar itself. The attack was also systematic, with organised acts
of violence committed in a near-identical manner by fighters across Sinjar and later,
across ISIS-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq. The attacks on the Yazidis, which continue
until the present day, are committed pursuant to an explicit ideological policy of the
terrorist group, whose radical religious interpretation does not permit the existence of
Yazidism within the territory it controls. The fighters’ abuse of the Yazidis closely
follows and is supported by ISIS’s stated organizational policy.
168. In its killing of Yazidi men, women and children, ISIS has committed the crime
against humanity of murder and extermination. In its sexual enslavement, enslavement,
and beating of Yazidi women and girls, ISIS has committed the crimes against humanity
of sexual slavery, rape, sexual violence, enslavement, torture, other inhumane acts, and
severe deprivation of liberty. By forcing Yazidi men and boys to labour on ISIS projects
and by beating them for refusing to so labour, ISIS has committed the crimes against
humanity of enslavement, torture, and other inhumane acts. These crimes were
committed against the Yazidis on discriminatory grounds based on their religion, and as
such they also amount to the crime against humanity of persecution.62

60
61
62

Kayishema Trial Judgment, para. 96; Krstić Trial Judgment, para. 590.
Jelisić Trial Judgment, para. 66.
Prosecutor v Tadić ICTY Trial Judgment, 7 May 1997, paras. 704-710; Prosecutor v Kupreskić,
ICTY Trial Judgment, 14 January 2000, para. 594.

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C.

War Crimes
169. The Yazidis, a civilian population that was not taking part in hostilities, were the
primary object of the August 2014 ISIS attack on Sinjar. They were attacked merely
because ISIS considered them to be infidels. By directing an attack against the Yazidis,
ISIS committed the war crime of attacking a civilian population.
170. Upon seizing Sinjar, ISIS proceeded to separate men and older boys from their
families, and then to summarily execute those who refused to convert, often within sight
of their relatives. Yazidis men, women, and children were also killed by ISIS during their
captivity in Iraq and Syria. These killings constitute the war crime of murder.
171. ISIS’s abuse of Yazidi women and girls forcibly transferred into Syria – including
the brutal sexual violence that the victims endure – take place in the context of an armed
conflict and as such amount to war crimes. In addition to the individual rapes, the victims
were – and more than 3,200 continue to be – deprived of their liberty and sold repeatedly
for the purpose of being sexually abused. ISIS members exercise rights of ownership over
the women and girls that they use to subject the women and girls to sexual violence. By
doing so, ISIS members have committed – and are committing – the war crimes of rape,
sexual violence, and sexual slavery.
172. Yazidi women and girls are violently and regularly raped, often by different men,
and over a prolonged period of time. They are beaten, sold as chattel, insulted and
humiliated. The treatment that they endure in captivity causes them indescribable physical
pain and mental suffering, effectively stripping them of their human dignity. Women and
girls who managed to escape show clear signs that they have not been able to recover
from the suffering they were subjected to in captivity, and many are likely to bear
psychological scars for the rest of their lives. By deliberately inflicting severe pain and
suffering on the women and girls they held in captivity, all of whom were civilians, ISIS
committed the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, and outrages upon personal liberty.
173. In respect of its abuse of Yazidi boys between the ages of seven and 15, ISIS has
committed the war crime of using, conscripting and enlisting children.63 ISIS pursued a
clear policy of separating the boys from their mothers, training them and then using them
in armed hostilities in Syria.

D.

Human Rights Abuses
174. In addition to the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes,
the underlying acts committed against the Yazidis constitute, in and of themselves,
serious violations of international human rights law. Those acts include violations of the
right to life, liberty and security of the person; the prohibition against torture and other
cruel and inhumane acts; the freedom of religion or belief; and the prohibition against
slavery. The forced displacement and sale of women and girls further amounts to human
trafficking. The fact that the fate of thousands of men and boys remains unknown
constitutes the crime of enforced disappearance.

63

32

Under the 2002 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement
of children in armed conflict, non-state armed groups, such as ISIS, are precluded the recruitment
and use of children under the age of eighteen. Syria ratified the Optional Protocol in 2003.

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VI. Impact on the Yazidi Community
175. The Yazidi community of Sinjar has been devastated by the ISIS attack. In its
aftermath, no free Yazidis remained in the Sinjar region. The 400,000-strong community
had all been displaced, captured, or killed.
176. Slow progress is being made in re-capturing Sinjar and clearing villages of
improvised explosive devices intentionally left behind by ISIS. While Yazidis are
gradually, and fearfully, returning to the retaken areas of Sinjar north of the mountain, the
majority of the region’s Yazidis live difficult and impoverished existences in IDP camps
scattered throughout the Duhok region of northern Iraq.
177. Female survivors of sexual slavery have been shattered, with many experiencing
suicidal thoughts, and intense feelings of rage interspersed with periods of deep
depression and listlessness. Many women and girls have not engaged with psychosocial
support, which is present but limited. With regard to the youngest female victims of
sexual slavery, some the families have had tremendous difficulty acknowledging the
crimes committed against them. Borne out of their own trauma and distress, this has also
limited the girls’ willingness to access trauma therapy, if available.
178. Yazidi children, held with their mothers, are similarly traumatised but many have
not, to date, received specialised therapy. Yazidi boys who were taken for indoctrination
and training by ISIS suffer outbursts of rage, and are traumatised by prolonged exposure
to violence, either directly at the hands of their instructors or in combat, or by witnessing
it on the battlefield or in training videos.
179. Families, whether captured or not, are struggling to deal with the trauma
experienced by those who were bought back or smuggled out, and by the profound
distress of not knowing the fate or whereabouts of relatives still in ISIS-controlled
territory. Many are in profound debt having sold all valuables, including land, and having
borrowed money to buy back relatives offered for sale by ISIS fighters.
180. With hundreds of Yazidi men missing or dead, Yazidi women face a precarious
existence in a society that has not encouraged their independence, or given many of them
the tools to live autonomously. Yazidi women need financial support and skills training if
they are to be able to support themselves and their children. This will ensure that any
future marriages entered into are a choice, rather than a necessity.
181. Many Yazidis have chosen to go abroad, either because they seek medical
treatment not available to them in Iraq or because they believe they can no longer live
safely in the Middle East. Many cannot take legal routes out of Iraq as all their
identification documents were left behind when they fled or were destroyed by ISIS.
Getting new passports, identity cards, and birth certificates is a complex, bureaucracylayered process in Iraq. Often, the fees involved are beyond the reach of most of the nowdisplaced Yazidis. Additionally, where documents require a male relative’s signature,
families are often, understandably, unwilling to make a necessary declaration that a
missing father or husband is deceased.
182. Over 1000 Yazidi women and children are receiving medical treatment, including
trauma therapy, under the auspices of a programme run by the Federal Republic of
Germany.
183. Many more, including female survivors of sexual slavery, are now in Europe,
having placed themselves in the hands of smugglers and made dangerous journeys by
land, and increasingly by boat. Following the 20 March 2016 agreement between the
European Union and Turkey, over 1,500 Yazidis remain in camps in Greece, awaiting the
opportunity to apply for asylum. It is unclear how well Yazidi victims of genocide, sexual

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violence, and torture have been identified in the screenings for vulnerable groups. That
Yazidis are Kurdish-speakers has made communication with organisations running the
camps and with psychologists on staff, difficult and sometimes impossible. In one camp
visited in Greece, a Kurdish-speaking camp staff member was present only one day per
week.
184. In Iraq, there has been a complete breakdown of trust between the Yazidi
community and their neighbours. While some Arab families in Iraq and in Syria helped
Yazidis to escape, what is remembered and often recounted are the acts of Arab families
who actively assisted ISIS in the commission of their crimes. There have, as yet, been no
real attempts to bring about reconciliation, the success of which is not assured.
185. There is a significant anger within the Yazidi community directed towards the
Kurdish Regional Government, flowing from the unannounced withdrawal of the
Peshmerga from Sinjar as ISIS advanced. This anger has been fed by military and
political wrangling between local and regional actors in Iraq and the Kurdistan region,
over control of the recaptured areas of Sinjar. Some of those interviewed believed that
this wrangling has delayed the securing of Sinjar, and its reconstruction. It is critical that
Peshmerga forces allow humanitarian organisations access to the Sinjar region, as well as
ensuring that food, fuel, medicine, and other items reach Yazidi families who have
returned, or who are returning, to Sinjar.
186. There is also a sense of profound disappointment with the international
community. While there is support for organizations doing humanitarian work in IDP
camps and, abroad, refugee camps, it is perceived that, at best, there is a paralysis, and, at
worst, a reluctance regarding the taking of any action to rescue Yazidis still held by ISIS.
This is compounded by reports of Yazidi captives being killed in airstrikes on ISIS bases
and other military targets.
187. The on-going attack by ISIS on the Yazidis is viewed by the community not as a
stand-alone event, but part of a long history of historical oppression and violence against
them, and has compounded what one psychologist described as intergenerational trauma.
There is little trust in the international community’s willingness to protect the Yazidis’
existence inside their homeland. While most Yazidis said they wanted ISIS brought to
justice for their crimes, few believed that international criminal justice was possible,
citing centuries of impunity in relation to attacks on their community.

VII. Obligations and Accountability
A.

Genocide Convention
188. Under the Genocide Convention, contracting parties are under an obligation not
only not to commit genocide themselves, but also to prevent genocide committed by
others. In 2007, the International Court of Justice in its Bosnia v. Serbia Judgment,
confirmed that obligation, stating
Responsibility is… incurred if the State manifestly failed to take all measures to
prevent genocide which were within its power, and which might have contributed
to preventing the genocide.64
189. Factors which are considered in assessing whether a State has discharged its
obligations under the Genocide Convention include whether the State has the capacity to
64

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Ibid, para. 430.

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influence effectively the action of persons likely to commit, or already committing,
genocide. The International Court of Justice found that this will depend on, among other
things, “the geographical distance of the State concerned from the scene of events, and on
the strength of political links, as well as links of all other kinds, between the authorities of
that State and the main actors in the events.65 A State’s obligation to prevent and the
corresponding duty to act “arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally
have learnt of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed”.66
190. In a statement from the White House on 7 August 2014, US President Barack
Obama stated that that “at the request of the Iraqi government -- we’ve begun operations
to help save Iraqi civilians stranded on the mountain”, noting they were acting “to prevent
a potential act of genocide”.67 American, Iraqi, British, French, and Australian forces
were involved in airdrops of supplies to the besieged Yazidis. American airstrikes also
facilitated the YPG’s opening of a corridor through which trapped Yazidis could escape.
191. Since that time, as an extension of the non-international armed conflict in Iraq, a
coalition of States have attacked ISIS in Iraq and in Syria.68 In late September 2015,
Russia, Iraq, Iran and Syria set up a 'joint information center' in Baghdad to coordinate
anti-ISIS operations. The Syrian Government continues to bombard ISIS inside Syria. On
30 September 2015, Russia began airstrikes in support of the Syrian government, some of
which were directed towards ISIS targets.
192. With the exception of US President Obama’s statement, which related solely to
military action on Mount Sinjar, no State operating in Iraq or Syria has indicated that its
actions are guided by the need to prevent the commission of genocide by ISIS.
193. Where there is evidence of States having any political or other links to ISIS, this
too must be scrutinised to see if those States have violated their obligations under the
Genocide Convention.
194. In order to determine whether States have violated their obligations under the
Genocide Convention, further investigation is required as to whether States – and notably
Syria and Iraq, being the territories in which ISIS is committing genocide – are taking all
measures to prevent genocide which are within their power. Of particular concern is an
examination of the circumstances of the withdrawal of the Peshmerga from the Sinjar
region as the ISIS attack commenced. Further, there is as yet no information available
concerning any steps being taken by the Governments of Syria and Iraq to free Yazidi
women and children being held by ISIS on their territory.
195. Article I of the Genocide Convention imposes an obligation to punish the crime of
genocide. To date, there appear to have been no concrete steps taken by any State to
65
66
67

68

Ibid.
Ibid., para. 431.
The White House Statement. In it, President Obama stated, “the United States cannot and should
not intervene every time there’s a crisis in the world. So let me be clear about why we must act,
and act now. When we face a situation like we do on that mountain - with innocent people facing
the prospect of violence on a horrific scale, when we have a mandate to help - in this case, a request
from the Iraqi government - and when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then
I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and
responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That’s what we’re doing on that mountain."
States forming part of this coalition operating in Iraq and Syria include the United States, the United
Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Morocco, France, the Netherlands, Jordan. Operating only
in Syria are Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. In February 2016,
Canada withdrew from bombing missions, but its operation of surveillance aircraft and air-to-air jet
refuellers continued.

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investigate or prosecute ISIS fighters, religious leaders or supporters for committing
genocide, conspiring to commit genocide, directly and publicly inciting others to commit
genocide, attempting to commit genocide, or being complicit in genocide.

B.

International and National Justice Mechanisms
196. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is, at present, the only international
criminal tribunal that could have jurisdiction over ISIS crimes against the Yazidis.
Neither Syria nor Iraq are parties to the Rome Statute.
197. Consequently, for the ICC to be seized of the matter requires a referral of the
situations in Syria and/or Iraq by the UN Security Council, the members of which are all
contracting parties to the Genocide Convention. On 22 May 2014, a draft Resolution that
that would have referred the situation in Syria to the ICC failed after the Governments of
Russia and China exercised their veto. There have been no subsequent attempts to refer.
198. Equally, there have been no attempts to establish an ad hoc tribunal, the
jurisdiction of which might encompass ISIS crimes against the Yazidis.
199. The path to accountability for ISIS crimes against the Yazidis, or indeed any
crimes committed in Syria, within international criminal justice mechanisms remains
blocked.
200. Currently national prosecutions provide the only path for accountability for
victims of crimes committed in Syria. It is integral, therefore, that States enact domestic
laws against genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

VIII. Conclusions
201. ISIS has committed, and continues to commit, the crime of genocide, as well
as multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes, against the Yazidis.
202. The genocide committed against the Yazidis has not primarily been
accomplished through killings, though mass killings of men and women have
occurred. Rather ISIS seeks to destroy the Yazidis in multiple ways, as envisaged by
the drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention. ISIS has sought, and continues to
seek, to destroy the Yazidis through killings; sexual slavery, enslavement, torture
and inhuman and degrading treatment, and forcible transfer causing serious bodily
and mental harm; the infliction of conditions of life that bring about a slow death;
the imposition of measures to prevent Yazidi children from being born, including
forced conversion of adults, the separation of Yazidi men and women, and mental
trauma; and the transfer of Yazidi children from their own families and placing
them with ISIS fighters, thereby cutting them off from beliefs and practices of their
own religious community, and erasing their identity as Yazidis. The public
statements and conduct of ISIS and its fighters clearly demonstrate that ISIS
intended to destroy the Yazidis of Sinjar, in whole or in part.
203. Like all genocides, it is born of the warped thinking that the world, as the
perpetrators understand it, would be better without a particular group of people in
it and that by doing the work of destroying what they consider impure, the
perpetrators are creating a more perfect society.
204. ISIS commits the crime of genocide against individual Yazidis, as an
incremental step in their overall objective of destroying this religious community.
This is the genocide accomplished through the destruction of a nine-year-old girl in a

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slave market, surrounded by men waving their bids; of a woman and children
locked in a room, beaten and starved; of a little boy trained to kill his father. It is a
genocide perpetrated by male fighters so ideologically enslaved that they believe that
by committing some of the most horrific crimes imaginable, they are bettering the
society in which they live.
205. Over 3,200 women and children are still held by ISIS. Most are held in Syria
where Yazidi women and girls continue to be sexually enslaved and otherwise
abused, and Yazidi boys, indoctrinated and trained. Thousands of Yazidi men and
boys are missing. ISIS’s trade in women and girls and its recruitment and use of
boys have never ceased. The genocide of the Yazidis is on-going.

IX. Recommendations
206. On the basis of its findings, the Commission makes the recommendations
below.
207.

The Commission recommends that the Security Council:

(a)
As a matter of urgency, and in line with each State’s individual
obligations under the Genocide Convention, refer the situation to justice, possibly to
the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc tribunal, bearing in mind that, in the
context of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of Iraq, only the Security
Council is competent to refer the situation;
(b)
Consider engaging its Chapter VII powers, given the acknowledged
threat ISIS imposes to international peace and security;
(c)
Include regular briefings by the Commission of Inquiry as part of the
formal agenda of the Security Council, including a further update on the
commission of crimes by ISIS against the Yazidis; and
(c)

Support the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry.

208. The Commission recommends to the Government of the Syrian Arab
Republic:
(a)
Use all means available to ensure Yazidis held captive by ISIS in Syria
are safely rescued during military operations;
(b)
Put in place a protocol for the care and treatment of Yazidis rescued as
areas in Syria are seized from ISIS;
(c)
Take all steps to protect the pre-existing Syrian Yazidi community
from attack;
(d)
Ensure provisions of Genocide Convention are replicated in national
legislation, as per its obligations under Article V;
(e)
Investigate and prosecute ISIS members involve in crimes, perpetrated
in Syria, against the Yazidis; and
(f)

Ratify the Rome Statute.

209. The Commissions recommends to the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish
Regional Government:
(a)
Immediately take steps to preserve and document mass graves sites in
order to preserve evidence of ISIS crimes;

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(b)
Establish a forum, based in the Duhok region, which advances
reconciliation between the Yazidi community and Arab and Kurdish Muslims. Such
a forum may include the establishment of an internationally-advised Truth
Commission which would simultaneously seek to establish a historical record,
provide survivors with a catharsis and opportunity for healing by telling their
stories, and which would expose and delegitimize ISIS crimes in the region through
broadcast and dissemination of the testimony;
(c)
Undertake a public and transparent investigation into the
circumstances surrounding the withdrawal of the Peshmerga forces from the Sinjar
region in early August 2014, and ensure the Yazidi community is involved and kept
regularly apprised the work of the investigation;
(d)
Establish a clearer, accelerated process for issuing of identification
documents for Yazidi community displaced from Sinjar, at no or at a heavily
subsidized cost. This includes amending regulations governing issuance of
identification documents to women and children with missing male relatives so that
the families are not required to declare their missing male relatives to be deceased;
(e)
Work effectively with the local population of Sinjar, including those
currently displaced, to design a security framework that effectively addresses their
concerns; and
(f)

Ratify the Rome Statute.

210. The Commission recommends that parties fighting against ISIS in Syria and
Iraq:
(a)

Strongly consider rescue plans targeted at Yazidi captives;

(b)
Ensure coordination between local and international armed forces
where military operations target ISIS controlled regions where Yazidi captives are
held;
(c)
Use all means available to ensure Yazidis held captive by ISIS in Syria
are rescued during on-going military operations; and
(d)
Put in place a protocol for the care and treatment of Yazidis rescued as
areas are seized from ISIS.
211. The Commission recommends to the Office of the Special Adviser of the
Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide:
(a)
Remain seized of the matter and to raise awareness of the causes and
dynamics of ISIS’s genocide of the Yazidis;

212.

(b)

Continue to alert relevant actors of the ongoing genocide; and

(c)

Advocate and mobilize for appropriate action.

The Commission recommends to the international community:

(a)
Recognize ISIS’s commission of the crime of genocide against the
Yazidis of Sinjar;
(b)
For those States that are contracting Parties to the Genocide
Convention, engage with Article 8 of the Convention, and call upon the competent
organs of the United Nations, including the Security Council, to take such action
under the Charter of the United Nations to prevent and suppress acts of genocide;
(c)
Provide expertise, on request, to assist in the preservation and
documentation of mass grave sites;
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(d)
Provide further funding for psychosocial support programmes, with
increased emphasis on trauma therapy for children, noting that Yazidi children
suffered different violations depending on their sex;
(e)
Provide funding and expertise to support the training of psychologists
and social workers in Iraq and Syria;
(f)
Provide funding for the reconstruction as Sinjar and expertise to allow
the more efficient clearing of improvised explosive devices;
(g)

Accelerate the asylum applications of Yazidi victims of genocide; and

(h)
Ensure provisions of Genocide Convention are enacted in national
legislation, as contracting States are obliged to do under Article V of the Genocide
Convention.
212. The Commission recommends to organizations involved in the care of Yazidi
internally displaced persons:
(a)
Fund and recruit additional psychosocial support for Yazidi survivors,
with increased emphasis on trauma therapy for children, noting that Yazidi children
suffered different violations depending on their sex; and
(b)
Build and provide on skills training programmes aimed at allowing
Yazidi women greater financial and social independence;
213. The Commission recommends that States and organizations involved in the
care of Yazidi refugees and asylum-seekers:
(a)
Ensure that Yazidi victims of genocide, including but not limited to
sexual violence, are identified and treated as a vulnerable group for the purposes of
housing, psychosocial support, and with regard to the asylum process;
(b)
Hire appropriate Kurmanji Kurdish speakers, preferably those able to
speak the Shengali dialect;
(c)
Promote awareness among staff and contractors of the situation of the
Yazidis, including the most recent crimes committed against them;
(d)
Take steps to root out discrimination against Yazidis in refugee camps
and in hosting communities where Yazidis are placed, including ensuring that
historical misunderstandings of the Yazidi faith which often underpin such
discrimination are addressed; and
(e)
Set up a clearly understood reporting system for harassment and
crimes committed against the Yazidis in the camps.
214.

The Commission recommends that Yazidi religious authorities:

(a)
Continue to promote and advocate for the acceptance of Yazidi
survivors of ISIS crimes by the wider Yazidi community; and
(b)
Engage directly with Yazidis, particularly Yazidi women and children
who were held by ISIS, living in IDP camps in northern Iraq and in refugee camps
abroad.
215.

The Commission recommends that the General Assembly:

(a)
Include a briefing by the Commission of Inquiry as part of its formal
agenda, including a further update on the commission of crimes by ISIS against the
Yazidis;
216.

The Commission recommends that the Human Rights Council:
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(a)
Request an assessment of current needs and priorities of the Yazidi
community, with particular attention to be paid to the views of Yazidi women; and
(b)
Require further updates on the situation of groups and communities
targeted by ISIS, notably the Yazidis.

40

 Annex
Map of the northern regions of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of Iraq

A/HRC/32/CRP.2

41