Three years ago I was one of thousands of Yazidi women kidnapped by the Islamic State and sold into slavery. I endured rape, torture and humiliation at the hands of multiple militants before I escaped. I was relatively lucky; many Yazidis went through worse than I did and for much longer. Many are still missing. Many have been killed.

Once I escaped, I felt that it was my duty to tell the world about the brutality of the Islamic State. Yazidi women hoped that recounting our experiences of mass murder, rape and enslavement would bring attention to the Yazidi genocide. We received sympathy and solidarity all over the world, but now what we really need is concrete action to get justice and allow our community to return to its homeland.

On Aug. 3, 2014, the Islamic State invaded the Sinjar region in northern Iraq with the mission of exterminating the Yazidis, whose numbers are estimated to be between 400,000 and 500,000. Our religion dates back to ancient Mesopotamia and preserves pre-Islamic practices. Because of that, the Islamic State called us pagans without a holy book, and used that slander to justify murder. The majority of Yazidis fled, initially to the mountains of northwestern Iraq, and then to Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kocho, my village of 1,800 people about 15 miles from the city of Sinjar, was under siege for almost two weeks before it fell to the Islamic State. The militants lined up over 300 men behind a school and shot them. Their bodies were buried in irrigation ditches. Among those bodies were six of my brothers.