Ten years after Yazidi genocide, survivors struggle to rebuild lives
Al Jazeera
NGOs report that 200,000 are displaced in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, while thousands trapped in legal limbo in Europe.
Ten years on from ISIL’s massacre against the Yazidi people, hundreds of thousands of displaced survivors are unable to safely return to their former homes in Iraq, two NGOs say in a new report.
The report published on Friday by Refugees International and Voice of Ezidis, has warned that those making the dangerous journey to Europe are living in legal limbo.
It called on European countries to launch a humanitarian visa for genocide survivors that would enable Yazidis to reach Europe safely, and to apply EU-wide measures that would enable them to settle in countries where they have relatives.
The Yazidis, a long-persecuted group whose faith is rooted in Zoroastrianism, are still recovering from the horrors of ISIL’s onslaught on their community in Iraq’s Sinjar district in 2014.
Within days, nearly 10,000 people were killed – either shot, beheaded or burned alive – or kidnapped, according to the Public Library of Science journal PLOS Medicine in 2017.
