Report based on interviews with survivors says group seeks to destroy Yazidis through murder, sexual slavery, rape and torture

Islamic State fighters are committing genocide against Yazidis in Syria and Iraq by seeking to destroy the group through murder, sexual slavery, gang rape, torture and humiliation, UN investigators have said.



The UN report, based on interviews with dozens of survivors, said on Thursday that the Islamist militants, who include foreign fighters, had been systematically capturing Yazidis in Iraq and Syria since August 2014, seeking to “erase their identity”.

'You will stay here until you die': one woman's rescue from Isis Read more

The UN report said Isis had tried to erase the Yazidis’ identity by forcing men to choose between conversion to Islam and death, raping girls as young as nine, selling women at slave markets, and drafting boys to fight.



The report said Isis had begun holding online slave auctions with an encrypted application to circulate photos of captured Yazidi women and girls. One woman told investigators she had been sold 15 times, saying she could hardly recall all the Isis fighters who had claimed to have bought her.

Investigators gathered evidence that showed Isis separated Yazidi men and boys over 12 from the rest of their families, and killed those who refused to convert. Women and children often witnessed these killings before being forcibly transferred to locations in Iraq, and from there to Syria, where the majority of captives remain.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People hold signs reading ‘Please help Yazidi people’ during a visit of Pope Francis to Greece. Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP

“No other religious group present in Isis-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq has been subjected to the destruction that the Yazidis have suffered,” the report said.

Estimates put the global number of Yazidis at about 700,000, with the vast majority concentrated in northern Iraq, in and around Sinjar. The Yazidis are predominantly ethnically Kurdish and have kept alive their syncretic religion for centuries, despite many years of oppression and threatened extermination.

'In Iraq, there is no peace for Yazidis' Read more

The Isis actions met the definition of genocide as defined by the 1948 genocide convention, the report said. It is the first time that the UN has conducted an inquiry specifically into the Yazidis, including the Isis attack on their homes in Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. “The genocide of the Yazidis is ongoing,” the 45-page report concluded.

A previous attempt to ask the UN security council to refer Syrian war crimes to the international criminal court failed due to objections from Russia and China. But the UN added that if the path to the ICC was blocked, then the most likely form of prosecution was of foreign fighters through their domestic courts. The names of individuals responsible for the genocide were not published, but some will be passed to the relevant governments.

The UK has until recently taken an ambivalent position on whether genocide has been committed, although the Middle East minister, Tobias Ellwood, has described the treatment of the Yazidis as genocide, as has the Commons in a formal vote. UK funding to help with the gathering of evidence of Isis treatment of the Yazidis is expected to be stepped up.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paulo Pinheiro (centre), Vitit Muntarbhorn (right) and Carla del Ponte release a UN report on Yazidi genocide. Photograph: Magali Girardin/AP

Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN commission of inquiry, told a news briefing in Geneva: “Isis has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities. The crime of genocide must trigger much more assertive action at the political level, including at the security council.”

Vitit Muntarbhorn, a commission member, said it had “detailed information on places, violations and names of the perpetrators”.

The four independent commissioners claimed at least 3,200 women and children were still being held by the militants.

“Isis made no secret of its intent to destroy the Yazidis of Sinjar, and that is one of the elements that allowed us to conclude their actions amount to genocide,” said Carla del Ponte, an investigator and a former UN chief prosecutor. “Of course, we regard that as a road map for prosecution, for future prosecution.”

The Yazidi cause has been taken up by Amal Clooney, who has already visited Downing Street to discuss the issue with Foreign Office and Downing Street officials. Clooney has previously been involved with a special tribunal for Lebanon, the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the Armenian genocide recognition.

The report said: “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.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kurdish peshmerga forces rescue Yazidis after they were trapped on Mount Sinjar. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

It cited “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”.

Even after escaping Isis, the suffering of the Yazidis persists | Giles Fraser Read more

One Yazidi woman recalled being bought by an Isis fighter at a Raqqa slave farm. 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 the Aleppo area.

Women are raped most days, and if they seek to escape are punished by one of their children being killed.

Treated as chattel, many Yazidi women and girls are locked in homes to perform household tasks, and are denied adequate food and water. The commission also heard accounts of how some Yazidi women and girls killed themselves to escape the cruelty.



The report found that Yazidi boys over seven were forcibly removed from their mothers and transferred to Isis camps in Syria, where they were indoctrinated and received military training. One boy was told by his Isis commander: “Even if you see your father, if he is still Yazidi, you must kill him.”

Isis has openly referred to the Yazidis as a “pagan minority [whose] existence … Muslims should question”, adding that “their women could be enslaved … as spoils of war”.

