genocide of Yazidis by ISIL

A genocide of Yazidis by the Islamic State was carried out in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq in the mid-2010s. The genocide led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by ISIL, and thousands of Yazidi men were killed. About 5,000 thousand Yazidi civilians were killed during what has been called a "forced conversion campaign" carried out by ISIL in Northern Iraq. The genocide began after the withdrawal of Iraqi forces and Peshmerga, which left the Yazidis defenseless.

ISIL's persecution of the Yazidis gained international attention and led to the American-led intervention in Iraq, which started with United States airstrikes against ISIL. Additionally, the US, UK, and Australia made emergency airdrops to Yazidis who had fled to a mountain range. YPG and PKK fighters opened a humanitarian corridor to the Sinjar Mountains and helped the Yazidis. By 2015, ISIL's actions against the Yazidi population had resulted in approximately 500,000 refugees.

The genocide has been recognized by several bodies of the United Nations and national and multi-national organizations.

Background

The Yazidis are monotheists who believe in Melek Taus, a benevolent angel who appears as a peacock. The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other Muslims in the region tend to view the peacock angel as the malevolent creature Lucifer or Shaitan and they consider the Yazidis 'devil worshippers'. Unlike for Judaism and Christianity, ISIL does not consider Yazidis as People of the book or eligible for Dhimmi and related protections.

In August 2014, more than 300 Yazidi families were threatened and forced to choose between conversion to Sunni Islam or death.

Previous targeting of Yazidis

Ottoman era

* In 1640, 40,000 Ottoman soldiers attacked Yazidi communities around Mount Sinjar, killing 3,060 Yazidis during battle, then raiding and setting fire to 300 Yazidi villages and murdering 1,000–2,000 Yazidis who had taken refuge in caves around the town of Sinjar;
* in 1892, Sultan Abdulhamid II ordered a campaign of mass conscription or murder of Yazidis as part of his campaign to Islamize the Ottoman Empire, which also targeted Armenians and other Christians.

Post 2003 Iraq invasion era

* In April 2007, a bus in Mosul was hijacked. Muslims and Christians were told to get off, while the remaining 23 Yazidi passengers were driven to an eastern Mosul location and murdered.
* In August 2007, two Yazidi communities, in Qahtaniyah (just south of Sinjar) and Jazeera (Siba Sheikh Khidir), near Mosul, were hit by a total of four vehicle bombs carrying two tons of explosives, leaving 336–500 dead and 1,500 injured. Perpetrators are unknown; the U.S. saw "al-Qaeda as the prime suspect" because of the scale and the co-ordinated nature of the bombings.

Violence outbreak

On 3 August 2014, ISIL militants attacked and took over Sinjar in northern Iraq, a Kurdish-controlled town that was predominantly inhabited by Yazidis, and the surrounding area.

Yazidis, and internet postings of ISIL, have reported summary executions that day by ISIL militants, leading to 200,000 civilians fleeing Sinjar, of whom around 50,000 Yazidis were reportedly escaping to the nearby Sinjar Mountains. They were trapped on Mount Sinjar, surrounded by ISIL militants and facing starvation and dehydration.

On 4 August 2014, Prince Tahseen Said, Emir of the Yazidi, issued a plea to world leaders calling for assistance on behalf of the Yazidi facing attack from ISIL.

Massacres

On 3 August 2014, ISIL killed the men from the al-Qahtaniya area, ten Yazidi families fleeing were attacked by ISIL; and ISIL shot 70 to 90 Yazidi men in Qiniyeh village.

On 4 August, ISIL fighters attacked Jabal Sinjar, killed 30 Yazidi men; 60 more Yazidi men were killed in the village of Hardan. On the same day, Yazidi community leaders stated that at least 200 Yazidis had been killed in Sinjar (see Sinjar massacre), and 60–70 near Ramadi Jabal.
According to reports from surviving Yazidi, between 3 and 6 August, more than 50 Yazidi were killed near Dhola village, 100 in Khana Sor village, 250–300 in Hardan area, more than 200 on the road between Adnaniya and Jazeera, dozens near al-Shimal village, and on the road from Matu village to Jabal Sinjar.

On 10 August, according to statements by the Iraqi government, ISIL militants buried alive an undefined number of Yazidi women and children in northern Iraq in an attack that killed 500 people.
Those who escaped across the Tigris River into Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria on 10 August gave accounts of how they had seen individuals also attempting to flee who later died.

On 15 August, in the Yazidi village of Kojo, south of Sinjar, after the whole population had received the jihadist ultimatum to convert or be killed, over 80 men were killed.
A witness recounted that the villagers were first converted under duress, but when the village elder refused to convert, all of the men were taken in trucks under the pretext of being led to Sinjar, and gunned down along the way.
According to reports from survivors interviewed by OHCHR, on 15 August, the entire male population of the Yazidi village of Khocho, up to 400 men, were rounded up and shot by ISIL, and up to 1,000 women and children were abducted; on the same day, up to 200 Yazidi men were reportedly executed for refusing conversion in a Tal Afar prison.

Between 24 and 25 August 14 elderly Yazidi men were executed by ISIL in the Sheikh Mand Shrine, and the Jidala village Yazidi shrine was blown up. On 1 September, the Yazidi villages of Kotan, Hareko and Kharag Shafrsky were set afire by ISIL, and on 9 September, Peshmerga fighters discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of 14 executed civilians, presumably Yazidis.

According to an OHRCR/ UNAMI report on 26 September, by the end of August, 1,600–1,800 or more Yazidis who had been murdered, executed, or died from starvation.
In early October, Matthew Barber, a scholar of Yazidi history at the University of Chicago, estimated that 5,000 Yazidi men had been killed by ISIL.

According to the United Nations, ISIL had massacred 5,000 Yazidi men and kidnapped about 7000 Yazidi women and girls (who were forced into sex slavery) in northern Iraq in August 2014.

In May 2015, the Yazidi Progress Party released a statement in which they said that 300 Yazidi captives were killed on 1 May by ISIL in the Tal Afar