tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/yazidi-11858/articlesYazidi – The Conversation2024-02-28T16:52:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2244192024-02-28T16:52:40Z2024-02-28T16:52:40ZBy not repatriating Shamima Begum, the UK is washing its hands of continuing Islamic State terror<p>Shamima Begum is <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Begum-v-SSHD-CA-2023-000900-2024-EWCA-Civ-152.pdf">not coming home</a>. The Islamic State (IS) poster girl <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-68372112">lost her latest appeal</a> against the British government’s 2019 decision to strip her of her citizenship on grounds of national security. </p>
<p>The ruling meant a brief return to the British headlines for both Begum and the jihadist terrorist group. When the then 15-year-old and two friends ran away from London for IS in 2015, the group held land <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/09/12/heres-how-the-islamic-state-compares-to-real-states/">almost the size of Britain</a> in Iraq and Syria. </p>
<p>Now, IS has no territory in the region. Begum is the only one of the young women left alive. And there is neither the public nor political will to bring Begum or others like her home. IS is yesterday’s news – at least in Europe.</p>
<p>Islamic State’s newsletter al-Naba tells a different story. Each week it reports on successes in <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/violent-extremism-sahel">Africa</a>, the centre of its global activities. The <a href="https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/GTI-2023-web-170423.pdf">Global Terrorism Index report</a>, published annually by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a thinktank, noted that IS was the world’s most deadly terror group in 2022, and 43% of deaths from terrorism were in the Sahel. Both IS and rival jihadist factions are thought to be responsible. </p>
<p>War between IS and rivals al-Qaeda blazes across sub-Saharan Africa. In Mozambique, thousands of civilians <a href="https://www.opendoorsuk.org/news/latest-news/africa-jihadist-violence/">are on the move</a>, forced from their homes by an IS affiliate. As in Iraq and Syria, women are often targets. In one brutal incident in Mozambique, fighters reportedly <a href="https://www.opendoorsuk.org/news/latest-news/africa-jihadist-violence/">trapped Christian women in a house</a> and set it ablaze. </p>
<h2>Trafficking, violence and IS women</h2>
<p>Jihadist targeting of women, such as the rape and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jan/24/yazidi-women-islamic-state-slaves-appeal-to-un-to-intervene-in-their-fight-for-compensation">enslavement</a> of Yazidi women in Iraq and Syria, or the <a href="https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Boko-Haram-Beyond-the-Headlines_Chapter-2.pdf">abductions of women in Nigeria</a>, are central to their violence. Recognising this, the UN security council in 2019 passed a resolution emphasising the need to see gender-based violence <a href="https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/press-release/landmark-un-security-council-resolution-2467-2019-strengthens-justice-and-accountability-and-calls-for-a-survivor-centered-approach-in-the-prevention-and-response-to-conflict-related-sexual-violence/">“as a tactic of war and terrorism”</a>. In Nigeria, IS west Africa fighters have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-45876440">explicitly targeted women</a> working with humanitarian organisations, even executing them on video. </p>
<p>Trafficking has been an important IS tactic. At its height, IS <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/30671634.pdf">propaganda techniques</a> resembled those of organised child sexual exploitation. Recruiters, <a href="https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/mca/vol1/iss1/4/">like predators</a>, sought out the vulnerable to gain their trust, encouraging them to keep this secret. </p>
<p>The group needed women. Without them, there was no one to birth the next generation, no one for the “heroic” jihadists of IS propaganda videos to fight to protect. Women were at the heart of the IS governance project, its recruitment and trafficking, and of its violence.</p>
<p>Lawyers for Shamima Begum have argued she was a minor who was trafficked to Syria, and was therefore a victim of IS, lacking agency. A UN special representative stated in a 2018 report (the year before Begum’s citizenship was stripped) that armed groups’ “recruitment and use of children nearly always constitutes trafficking”. </p>
<p>By removing Begum’s citizenship, the UK has essentially <a href="https://law.duke.edu/sites/default/files/humanrights/Huckerby-Opinion-Appeal-July2022.pdf">blocked any attempt</a> to understand if and how that trafficking took place. </p>
<h2>Repatriation and justice</h2>
<p>The UK’s stance on repatriating IS women is one of <a href="https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/KCL-Speech-final1.pdf">“strategic distance”</a>. In the words of former Met police counterterrorism chief <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/shamima-begum-threat-neil-basu-antiterrorism-b320306.html">Neil Basu</a>, “if you have chosen to go … you shouldn’t be allowed to come back”. This approach <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/12/britain-to-repatriate-woman-and-five-children-from-syrian-camps">sets the UK apart</a> from other western countries.</p>
<p>In 2023, according to US state department data, <a href="https://www.state.gov/progress-in-repatriations-how-foreign-assistance-is-addressing-the-humanitarian-and-security-crises-in-northeast-syria-part-1-of-2/">14 countries repatriated more than 3,500 of their nationals</a> from north-east Syria. In France and Germany, some IS women have gone through the domestic courts. </p>
<p>While IS women were mainly not permitted to fight, not all violence took place on the battlefield. France has prosecuted female jihadis for <a href="https://www.icct.nl/sites/default/files/2024-01/Female%20Jihadis%20Facing%20Justice.pdf">association with “terrorist wrongdoers”</a>. </p>
<p>Germany has prosecuted some IS women under war crimes and genocide legislation. In one case, a woman was sentenced for her role in the <a href="https://www.doughtystreet.co.uk/news/german-court-delivers-third-genocide-verdict-against-isis-member-enslavement-and-abuse-yazidi">enslavement of a Yazidi woman</a>. In another, for the death of a Yazidi child, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12456659/German-ISIS-bride-jailed-14-years-crimes-against-humanity.html">left in the sun to die</a>. Repatriation and trials go some way not just to punishing wrongdoing, but providing the Yazidi people with justice. </p>
<p>Returned to countries of origin, IS members can be managed. <a href="https://www.icct.nl/sites/default/files/2024-02/Female%20Jihadis%20Facing%20Justice.pdf">A new report</a> published by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism found that in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands, most imprisoned women do not appear to pose a threat.</p>
<p>The 2023 <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63e26a08d3bf7f172f6ce87f/Independent_Review_of_Prevent__print_.pdf">Shawcross report</a> into the British counter-radicalisation strategy Prevent concluded that Islamism terrorism is the largest terrorist threat facing the UK. British Islamism is not isolated, it is influenced by wider trends of transnational jihad. </p>
<p>In leaving Shamima Begum stateless in Syria, the British government sends a message, not just to a <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/shamima-begum-78-of-britons-support-revoking-is-brides-uk-citizenship-sky-data-poll-11643068">Britain that does not want her</a>, but to the Middle East and Africa: Islamic State is no longer our problem.</p>
<p>The truth is, <a href="https://theglobalcoalition.org/en/">IS violence is not over</a>, even if the theatre of conflict has shifted. Begum has become a symbol of British unwillingness to take this seriously. Her lawyers say <a href="https://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2024/02/shamima-begums-lawyers-will-keep-fighting-after-judges-reject-citizenship-appeal/">they will fight on</a>. Perhaps next time Britain will recognise that IS violence remains a global threat.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Pearson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Islamic State has fallen out of the public attention in the UK and Europe but remains active in Africa.Elizabeth Pearson, Programme Lead MSc Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092942023-07-19T20:41:05Z2023-07-19T20:41:05ZHealing through witnessing: Documenting the stories of Yazidi refugees in Canada<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537175/original/file-20230712-22-gost18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C0%2C5532%2C4023&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Yazidi refugee woman's upper body is tattooed with the names of her missing family members and fiancé.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Leah Hennel)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/healing-through-witnessing-documenting-the-stories-of-yazidi-refugees-in-canada" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Weeks after Yazidi refugees were rescued from horrific captivity and enslavement imposed by Daesh (also known as ISIS) and <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2021/03/canada-expands-efforts-to-welcome-more-yazidi-refugees-and-other-survivors-of-daesh.html">arrived in Canada</a>, we began to document the harm. </p>
<p>At the <a href="https://mosaicpcn.ca/programs/refugee-health/">Mosaic Refugee Health Clinic</a> in Calgary, we tallied the physical damage, mental trauma and how families were ripped apart. </p>
<p>Our new patients’ intent was clear: They wanted the world to know. They insisted that the atrocities of genocide should never be forgotten and the culprits face justice. Beyond holding the guilty accountable, they also wanted to restore fragments of the familial and communal societies from which they’d been uprooted.</p>
<p>After centuries of religious persecution, their community had been dealt a deadly blow in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/isis-genocide-yazidi-un.html">August 2014</a>. A massacre — <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2021/sc14514.doc.htm">labelled a genocide by the United Nations</a> — resulted in approximately 200,000 displaced Yazidis, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-017-0965-7">7,000 murdered</a>, 7,000 women and children abducted into <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1002297">enslavement</a>, and the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2018/murad/lecture/#:%7E:text=Thank%20you%20very%20much%20for,solely%20because%20they%20were%20Yazidis">destruction of farms, villages, homes and places of worship</a>.</p>
<p>These are the narratives shared by Yazidi refugees who were resettled through Canada’s <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2017/02/helping_vulnerableyazidiwomenandchildrenandothersurvivorsofdaesh.html">Survivors of Daesh Program</a> in Calgary and three other major Canadian cities between 2017 and 2019. Although our clinic is one of the largest and longest-running specialized refugee health clinics in Canada, the rapid resettlement of 242 Yazidi refugees <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-0151">nearly broke us</a>. </p>
<p>Their stories were profoundly vivid, their trauma piercing. They gave horrific accounts of Daesh’s invasion and the ensuing genocide, recounting their enslavement, slaughter and forced indoctrination.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three women on a sofa in a room with a Canadian flag on the wall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537174/original/file-20230712-23-q1est.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537174/original/file-20230712-23-q1est.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537174/original/file-20230712-23-q1est.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537174/original/file-20230712-23-q1est.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537174/original/file-20230712-23-q1est.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537174/original/file-20230712-23-q1est.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537174/original/file-20230712-23-q1est.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three sisters, all of whom had been abducted and enslaved by ISIS, were reunited in Calgary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Leah Hennel)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We tried to listen empathetically, without judgement — unaware that doing so all but guaranteed a crippling <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-0151">vicarious trauma</a> that led to intense symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder among our physicians, nurses and other health-care staff.</p>
<p>Over time, with immense effort, patients and providers began to heal together. Our Yazidi patients have launched their <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-torn-apart-by-islamic-state-and-reunited-in-calgary-three-yazidi/">new lives</a>, and are chasing ambitious dreams.</p>
<p>As part of this healing, they tasked us with ensuring the world would not forget their plight. As co-directors of <a href="https://www.refugeehealthyyc.ca/">Refugee Health YYC</a> — a research, education, and innovation platform at the University of Calgary — we obeyed. With our research team and <a href="https://www.ucalgary.ca/news/academic-journey-connects-head-and-heart-bachelor-health-sciences-alumna">Nour Hassan</a>, an undergraduate student in the Health and Society program, we began the process of meticulously investigating and documenting the harm through research.</p>
<h2>Documenting genocide</h2>
<p>We reviewed the medical records of every Yazidi patient at the <a href="https://mosaicpcn.ca/programs/refugee-health/">Mosaic Refugee Health Clinic</a>. We recorded the direct exposure to Daesh and nearly universal family separations. We assembled a panel of expert clinicians to review almost 1,400 individual diagnoses and determine which were most likely caused by exposure to Daesh. We found, in addition to the psychological trauma, the physical consequences of violence, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.4782">starvation</a> and rape.</p>
<p>To ensure our findings were accurate and meaningful, we collaborated with the Yazidi community and their leaders, one of whom is still languishing in an internally displaced camp in northern Iraq. The group provided insights, offered recommendations and made edits. We listened and obeyed.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When genocide is committed, it must be seen.” – Yazidi refugee, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist <a href="https://www.nadiasinitiative.org/">Nadia Murad</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The resulting research is a community- and clinician-engaged cross-sectional study, which was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.23064">recently published</a> in the <em>JAMA Network Open</em>. Though our methodology was simple and the output inefficient from a research perspective — it took us nearly four years to summarize the ordeals of 242 Yazidi genocide survivors — this stands among the research we are most proud of.</p>
<p>We offer it as a testament to the world, documenting the depths of human depravity and its darkest impulses. The horrors of genocide defy comprehension, but in our ongoing struggle for human rights amid increasing global displacement, we must confront them. So far, we are failing. </p>
<p>Yazidi refugees are calling on the world to open its eyes to genocide, while indiscriminate killings and violence against women and children are, yet again, being used as weapons of war in <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/afghanistan-talibans-cruel-attacks-in-panjshir-province-amount-to-war-crime-of-collective-punishment-new-report/">Afghanistan</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-un-investigation-report-1.6780600">Ukraine</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/05-07-2023-sudan-top-un-officials-sound-alarm-at-spike-in-violence-against-women-and-girls">Sudan</a>.</p>
<p>In Calgary, a city leading the country in per capita refugee resettlement among major urban centres, we’ve resettled approximately <a href="https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/4a1b260a-7ac4-4985-80a0-603bfe4aec11/resource/1938d8f2-177c-4f1b-8f6f-1fd7ea1acc78?inner_span=True">24,000 refugees since 2015</a>, surpassing the total for all of British Columbia, and nearly the number received by Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Newfoundland <a href="https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/4a1b260a-7ac4-4985-80a0-603bfe4aec11/resource/1938d8f2-177c-4f1b-8f6f-1fd7ea1acc78?inner_span=True">combined</a>. </p>
<p>We’re proud of this work, carried out largely behind the scenes by passionate coalitions across the settlement, health care, public health and education <a href="https://www.ccisab.ca/">sectors</a>. Our efforts are boosted by a welcoming and generous population that opens its doors to those in need, regardless of local challenges.</p>
<h2>Refugee health policy summit</h2>
<p>In the final act of healing, Refugee Health YYC will host Yazidi refugee, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2018/murad/facts/">Nadia Murad</a> in Calgary, a <a href="https://www.refugeehealthyyc.ca/pre-conference">refugee health policy summit</a>, and for the first time, the <a href="https://refugeesociety.org/narhc-conference/">North American Refugee Health Conference</a> July 21-23. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman in a light blue jacket, wearing headphones, in front of a microphone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537987/original/file-20230718-19-qf2dvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537987/original/file-20230718-19-qf2dvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537987/original/file-20230718-19-qf2dvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537987/original/file-20230718-19-qf2dvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537987/original/file-20230718-19-qf2dvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537987/original/file-20230718-19-qf2dvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537987/original/file-20230718-19-qf2dvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Refugee Health YYC will host Yazidi refugee, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist Nadia Murad in Calgary during the North American Refugee Health Conference July 21-23.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Associated Press/Kay Nietfeld)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These events will bring together health-care providers, researchers, policymakers and refugee leaders to learn from one another and develop new models to improve health care and well-being for the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/global-trends">108.3 million people forcibly displaced</a> around the world. Among these, only two per cent are resettled each year. The rest remain trapped in unstable and unsafe situations, often in countries that are not their homes.</p>
<p>These small offerings symbolize our commitment to work alongside refugees, as <a href="https://www.unhcr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Seven-Decades-of-Refugee-Protection-In-Canada-14-December-2020.pdf">Canada</a> again led the world in the number of <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/global-trends">refugees resettled in 2022</a>. They underscore our dedication to ensuring the world never forgets the horrors of genocide and its devastating multi-generational impact on the communities targeted. </p>
<p>Our Yazidi patients arrived in Canada, courageously telling their stories. We need to listen. Otherwise, the crimes committed against them, and other refugees, will be repeated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209294/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriel E. Fabreau MD, MPH, FRCPC receives research grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Alberta Innovates, MSI Foundation, and the University of Calgary.
The work presented and the study it describes were unfunded.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annalee Coakley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Calgary refugee health clinic documented the stories of 242 Yazidi genocide survivors, recounting enslavement, slaughter and forced indoctrination.Gabriel Fabreau, Assistant Professor - General Internal Medicine; Depts. of Medicine and Community Health Sciences | Cumming School of Medicine, University of CalgaryAnnalee Coakley, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2037272023-04-30T13:12:16Z2023-04-30T13:12:16ZThe power of cultural identity on psychological well-being: Singing, trauma and the resilience of the Yazidi population of northern Iraq<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520700/original/file-20230413-20-8ypkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C84%2C3748%2C2230&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mourners preparing to bury the remains of 104 Yazidi victims in a cemetery in Sinjar, Iraq on Feb. 6, 2021. The Yazidis were killed by the Islamic State group in 2014, and were given a proper burial after the bodies were exhumed from mass graves and identified through DNA tests.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Behind each door and gate in Sinuni, Iraq, there is a different story of trauma and resilience. The Yazidi community is still coping with the trauma and mental health burden following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-year-after-massacre-by-islamic-state-iraqs-yazidis-are-clinging-on-44494">ISIS genocide of 2014</a>, where thousands of men, women and children were killed, tortured and kidnapped for sexual slavery. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/81-mass-graves-of-yazidis-found-in-iraqs-sinjar-since-2014-official/2538307#:%7E:text=A%20total%20of%2081%20mass,the%20Daesh%2FISIS%20terrorist%20group">Eighty-one mass graves</a> have been discovered, the most recent of which was found in June 2022.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A collage of nine different ornamental gates" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520732/original/file-20230413-26-483g5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ornamental property gates from random houses in the Sinuni region of Iraq.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mylène Ratelle)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Yazidi community is based in Sinjar region, which is located in Nineveh Governorate, in northern Iraq. For thousands of years, this Mesopotamian-based population was <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iraq-s-yazidi-minority-has-long-been-singled-out-for-hatred-1.2732115">persecuted for their unique ethno-cultural and religious beliefs</a>, which promote harmony and peace. </p>
<p>After the genocide of 2014, members of the Yazidi community <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/CIMM/Brief/BR9342569/br-external/Yazda-e.pdf">looked for safety</a> in countries all over the world. However, a community core still stands with resolution on the land where their ancestors were born, around the Sinjar Mount. Some by choice, some because they were not able to leave.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002297">A study from 2015</a> estimated that 2.5 per cent of the Yazidi population was either killed or kidnapped over the course of a few days in August 2014. Thousands were kept as sexual slaves. As such, it is not surprising that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764021994145">a study published in 2022</a> investigating the traumatic experience of displaced Yazidis living in a Kurdistan camp estimated that about four out of five respondents had PTSD symptoms, and that women had a higher rate and score of trauma and PTSD symptoms. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/nmd.0000000000001400">Resilience strengthening</a> is a key for the treatment of those survivors, especially for the Yazidi individual, collective and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186%2Fs12916-017-0965-7">transgenerational traumatization</a>.</p>
<h2>Link between mental health and cultural identity</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764003494001">Research has indicated</a> that a positive cultural identity contributes to better mental health. Cultural identity is a concept that encompasses <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11013-016-9514-7">personal, ethnic and social self-identity</a>, which is critical for self-esteem.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029329">longitudinal study with Asian and Latino youth</a>, cultural identity was associated with lower levels of depression symptoms. In addition, for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1424-7">Syrian refugees</a>, the sense of belonging to a social or cultural community was a predictor of lower levels of depression symptoms, as well as greater life satisfaction.</p>
<p>Historical colonialism, oppression and marginalization have contributed to poor mental health of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and Australia. However, cultural identity seems to have a role to play in health and well-being. </p>
<p>For example, for Australian Indigenous people in custody, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4603-2">their cultural engagement was associated with non-recidivism</a>. Cultural continuity helped Indigenous communities of Canada to thrive, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/070674370004500702">promoting the sense of collective pride</a> might contribute to positive mental health.</p>
<p>As such, the idea was suggested recently that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22827">mental health programs should support the development of cultural identities</a>, with the potential to improve psychological well-being.</p>
<p>Since the genocide, some <a href="https://theconversation.com/5-years-after-islamic-state-massacre-an-iraqi-minority-is-transformed-by-trauma-126917">Yazidis report a renewed interest in their Yazidi cultural and political identity</a>. They have a stronger will than before to protect Yazidi holy sites, preserve oral traditions and hymns and their unique cultural practices.</p>
<h2>Humanitarian intervention</h2>
<p>My work is usually done in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples in North America, who deal with systematic racism, exclusion and stigma, generational trauma, awful abuses from residential schools and thousands of unmarked graves of children. </p>
<p>The Yazidi issues are a different type of deliberate horror, and are still very recent in the memory of survivors. <a href="https://www.msf.org/msf-warns-mental-health-crisis-among-yazidis-iraq">Médecins Sans Frontières warned the world in 2019 of the mental health crisis</a> and of increasing suicide rates in the region.</p>
<p>I was recruited by Médecins Sans Frontières in summer 2022 to support a health promotion program in Sinuni, Iraq. The role of our health promotion team was to provide a bridge between the local hospital services and the population, as well as to implement preventive initiatives to improve physical and mental health in the community. In parallel, mental health professionals were offering support to the residents.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photo of a mountain landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520735/original/file-20230413-22-uny1dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sinjar Mount is the core of the Yazidi community location in Iraq.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mylène Ratelle)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During our outreach activities, we often got a glimpse of the depth of the trauma of some community members, and witnessed their mental challenges. These included expressions such as:</p>
<ul>
<li> How can I be stress-free while there are 21 members of my family who are still missing?</li>
<li> My father’s house was destroyed years ago. Every time I see it, next to my house, it makes me sad.</li>
<li> I think about killing myself, day after day. We don’t have skills, hobbies, hope.</li>
<li> Many of us have someone we don’t let alone in the house because we fear they might kill themselves.</li>
</ul>
<p>As part of the mental health activities, I developed the content of a series of workshops, with the aim to: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>destigmatize mental health issues, </p></li>
<li><p>improve individual resiliency to stress by learning techniques to decrease anxiety at home,</p></li>
<li><p>increase community support, social capital and cultural identity to prevent and cope with mental health issues. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Those workshops were implemented by the team in homes and schools. As part of the last workshop, there were participatory activities on the importance of peer groups, on the role of cooking and traditional practices. One key activity was to invite participants to sing traditional songs together. </p>
<p>The aim of those activities was to bring awareness on the positive impact of cultural identity, and strengthen social relations between neighbours. Those activities were evaluated, with participants reporting immediate and lasting positive impacts. </p>
<p>Assessment of the workshops indicated increased happiness index: 58 per cent were above the threshold for depressive symptoms before the workshop while 92 per cent of participants were above the threshold immediately after. In addition, after two weeks post workshop, there were fewer participants self-isolating and meeting socially once a month or less (30 per cent versus 10 per cent post-workshop), and there was an increased average number of social activities. </p>
<p>Our team observed that the Yazidi are collectively strong, resilient and hopeful. However, the trauma is still acute, and the extent of the mental health issues is such that it could pass on a <a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/intergenerational-trauma">generational trauma</a>. </p>
<p>As several <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2023/03/20/un-united-nations-shift-away-emergency-aid-iraq">NGOs cease their activities in the region</a>, there are fewer organizations offering mental health care for the Yazidis, on the south and north side of Sinjar Mount. </p>
<p>However, more work needs to be done to improve mental health in the region via health promotion, counselling, therapy and psychiatry. There is also an opportunity to support cultural identity to reinforce mental health resilience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203727/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mylene Ratelle worked on a health promotion program for Doctors without Borders in 2022-2023 in Iraq, but her views are not those of Doctors Without Borders.</span></em></p>For the Yazidi communities in northern Iraq, there is a need to improve mental health. The sense of cultural identity has the potential to improve psychological well-being.Mylène Ratelle, Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health Sciences, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2021402023-04-04T06:29:10Z2023-04-04T06:29:10ZMore than 650 refugees arrived in this regional town. Locals’ welcoming attitudes flipped the stereotype<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519179/original/file-20230404-28-9ynrlj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5317%2C3419&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When we think of regional towns in Australia, some of us might think “close-knit”, “conservative”, or “resistant to change”.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.ssi.org.au/images/insights/Community_attitudes_toward_refugee_settlement_in_Armidale_Report__2023_1.pdf">new research</a> flips these stereotypes.</p>
<p>Over four years, we examined a regional town’s attitudes before and after hundreds of refugees settled in the area. Our surveys found residents of Armidale, in northeastern New South Wales, started out reasonably positive about the settlement program, and became even more so.</p>
<p>Over time, they had fewer concerns about the impact of refugees on the town, more contact with the refugees, and more positive attitudes towards refugees and the settlement program.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-regions-can-take-more-migrants-and-refugees-with-a-little-help-121942">The regions can take more migrants and refugees, with a little help</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Welcoming communities</h2>
<p>After a lengthy process, Armidale was chosen as a regional settlement location for Australia’s refugee program under the Turnbull government in 2017. Since 2018, the town has welcomed some 650 Ezidi refugees, boosting the town’s population by almost 3%.</p>
<p>Ezidis are a religious minority mostly from northern Iraq, Syria and Turkey, and are also known as Yazidis or Yezidis. They’ve faced persecution for centuries, including recently by Islamic State (or ISIS), who <a href="https://www.dhi.health.nsw.gov.au/transcultural-mental-health-centre-tmhc/resources/community-mental-health-profiles-and-information-resources/mental-health-of-syrian-conflict-refugees/yazidi-community#:%7E:text=The%20Yazidi%20people%20are%20an,subject%20to%20persecution%20for%20generations.">perpetrated genocide on the group</a> in the mid-2010s.</p>
<p>There are several elements in the equation for successful refugee settlement. Receptive, welcoming communities is one important part.</p>
<p>We documented shifts in the Armidale community’s attitudes towards refugee settlement through six successive surveys. Each surveyed about 200 residents, drawing a new sample each time.</p>
<p>Initially, the main concerns were whether there would be enough jobs, and whether local services were adequate.</p>
<p>Residents’ views changed significantly about how many refugees were OK to accept. The number of residents who believed the number was “too high” declined, and the number of people who thought it was “too low” increased.</p>
<p>But, of course, sentiment was not uniformly positive (or negative).</p>
<h2>Residents’ views on the number of refugees coming to Armidale over time</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519192/original/file-20230404-20-gl2zp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519192/original/file-20230404-20-gl2zp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519192/original/file-20230404-20-gl2zp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519192/original/file-20230404-20-gl2zp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519192/original/file-20230404-20-gl2zp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519192/original/file-20230404-20-gl2zp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519192/original/file-20230404-20-gl2zp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The percentage of residents who thought the number of refugees coming to Armidale was ‘too high’ decreased over time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ssi.org.au/images/insights/Community_attitudes_toward_refugee_settlement_in_Armidale_Report__2023_1.pdf">University of New England and Settlement Services International</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We segmented the community to identify clusters of attitudes among like-minded people toward refugee settlement. Initially, there were four clusters, which we named “enthusiastic”, “positive”, “concerned” and “resistant”. Enthusiastic and positive formed the majority.</p>
<p>Over time, the positive clusters expanded, and the negative clusters reduced. By the final survey, our most negative cluster was, in fact, positive towards the refugees. We renamed it “cautious”.</p>
<p>Residents’ contact with Ezidis increased as time went on, and was overwhelmingly rated positively, with residents saying Ezidis were “friendly”, “grateful” and “polite”.</p>
<p>The final three surveys also re-interviewed participants from earlier surveys to examine changes in attitudes at the individual level. As with the community surveys, participants had more positive attitudes over time.</p>
<p>On average, the greatest change was among people who initially had reservations: those who started out negative became more positive. People who started out positive remained positive.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1430763936912080898"}"></div></p>
<h2>A model for regional settlement</h2>
<p>It’s tempting to think of Armidale as an outlier in regional Australia. Local talk was that Armidale was “special” – highly educated, multicultural, welcoming.</p>
<p>But when we <a href="https://scanloninstitute.org.au/research/mapping-social-cohesion">compared</a> Armidale with other similar areas in regional Australia, there were few differences.</p>
<p>Armidale was reasonably representative in socio-demographics and attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism. Contrary to expectations, Armidale actually rated slightly <em>lower</em> on social cohesion, and on having multicultural neighbourhoods. However, we found Armidale improved on all multiculturalism indicators during the settlement period.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/resettling-refugees-in-other-countries-is-not-reliable-nor-is-it-fair-so-why-is-australia-doing-it-162505">Resettling refugees in other countries is not reliable, nor is it fair. So, why is Australia doing it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Our research showed Armidale progressively adapting and embracing the refugee settlement program, challenging <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.01.014">stereotypes of regional Australia</a>.</p>
<p>The study occurred during a time of disruption to the Armidale community through the impact of a severe drought followed by the COVID pandemic. Nonetheless, the community became increasingly positive, a result that speaks to the hard work of many people and organisations, and the efforts and strengths of Ezidis to settle as they build a new chapter of their lives in Australia.</p>
<p>Indeed, if Armidale is representative of inner regional Australia, which it appears to be, our results are promising for refugee settlement in other regional towns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>SSI, University of Newcastle and the University of New England provided funding for the research reported in this article. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefania Paolini receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tadgh McMahon works for SSI which receives funding from the Australian Government to provide settlement services to refugees. He is affiliated with Flinders University. </span></em></p>Over time, Armidale locals had more positive attitudes towards refugees and the regional settlement program.Sue Watt, Associate Professor in Psychology, University of New EnglandStefania Paolini, Professor, Department of Psychology, Durham UniversityTadgh McMahon, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1699042022-08-22T12:27:10Z2022-08-22T12:27:10ZSlavery and war are tightly connected – but we had no idea just how much until we crunched the data<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479488/original/file-20220816-8518-l5gine.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C3%2C996%2C666&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ugandans watch the start of the International Criminal Court trial of former child soldier-turned-warlord Dominic Ongwen.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/residents-watch-the-screening-of-the-start-of-the-icc-trial-news-photo/628000204?adppopup=true">Isaac Kasamani/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm">40 million people</a> are enslaved around the world today, though estimates vary. Modern slavery takes many different forms, including child soldiers, sex trafficking and forced labor, and no country is immune. From cases of <a href="https://www.gahts.com/publications/ygsrx3nh2ecyz6z-34kln-yh99p-as9yk-e7k8n-slkln-f3htp-t9p9l-x9kb3-e75h9-mrbd6-rw7m5-t3bdh-j43r4">family controlled sex trafficking</a> in the United States <a href="https://www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/">to the enslavement of fishermen</a> in Southeast Asia’s seafood industry and <a href="https://www.verite.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/VeriteForcedLaborMalaysianElectronics2014.pdf">forced labor</a> in the global electronics supply chain, enslavement knows no bounds. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WuHCE3sAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholars</a> of <a href="https://unu.edu/experts/angharad-smith.html">modern slavery</a>, we <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/people/kevin.bales">seek to understand</a> how and why human beings are still bought, owned and sold in the 21st century, in hopes of shaping policies to eradicate these crimes. </p>
<p>Many of the answers trace back to causes like poverty, corruption and inequality. But they also stem from something less discussed: war.</p>
<p>In 2016, the United Nations Security Council <a href="http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2331">named modern slavery</a> a serious concern in areas affected by armed conflict. But researchers still know little about the specifics of how slavery and war are intertwined. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211065649">recently published research</a> analyzing data on armed conflicts around the world to better understand this relationship.</p>
<p>What we found was staggering: The vast majority of armed conflict between 1989 and 2016 used some kind of slavery.</p>
<h2>Coding conflict</h2>
<p>We used data from an established database about war, <a href="https://ucdp.uu.se/">the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)</a>, to look at how much, and in what ways, armed conflict intersects with different forms of contemporary slavery. </p>
<p>Our project was inspired by <a href="https://wappp.hks.harvard.edu/files/wappp/files/journal_of_peace_research-2014-cohen-418-28.pdf">two leading scholars</a> of sexual violence, <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/dara-kay-cohen">Dara Kay Cohen</a> and <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/polisci/people/faculty/ragnhild-nordaas.html">Ragnhild Nordås</a>. These political scientists used that database to produce <a href="http://www.sexualviolencedata.org/bibliography/papers-in-progress/">their own pioneering database</a> about how rape is used as a weapon of war.</p>
<p>The Uppsala database breaks each conflict into two sides. Side A represents a nation state, and Side B is typically one or more nonstate actors, such as rebel groups or insurgents.</p>
<p>Using that data, our research team examined instances of different forms of slavery, including sex trafficking and forced marriage, child soldiers, forced labor and general human trafficking. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211065649">This analysis</a> included information from 171 different armed conflicts. Because the use of slavery changes over time, we broke multiyear conflicts into separate “conflict-years” to study them one year at a time, for a total of 1,113 separate cases.</p>
<p>Coding each case to determine what forms of slavery were used, if any, was a challenge. We compared information from a variety of sources, including human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, scholarly accounts, journalists’ reporting and documents from governmental and intergovernmental organizations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman in dark clothes sits, looking forlorn, over a crevice with rubble in it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478426/original/file-20220810-16-jwchpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478426/original/file-20220810-16-jwchpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478426/original/file-20220810-16-jwchpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478426/original/file-20220810-16-jwchpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478426/original/file-20220810-16-jwchpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478426/original/file-20220810-16-jwchpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478426/original/file-20220810-16-jwchpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Yazidi woman who was held captive by the Islamic State visits the mass grave where her husband is believed to be buried in Iraq.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/YazidiSlaveTrade/994255e1eb3a4296afa1a3f3599d7192/photo?Query=yazidi&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=755&currentItemNo=6">AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Alarming numbers</h2>
<p>In our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211065649">recently published analysis</a>, we found that contemporary slavery is a regular feature of armed conflict. Among the 1,113 cases we analyzed, 87% contained child soldiers – meaning fighters age 15 and younger – 34% included sexual exploitation and forced marriage, about 24% included forced labor and almost 17% included human trafficking.</p>
<p><iframe id="mSfzB" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/mSfzB/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>A global heat map of the frequency of these armed conflicts over time paints a sobering picture. Most conflicts involving enslavement take place in low-income countries, often referred to as the Global South.</p>
<p>About 12% of the conflicts involving some form of enslavement took place in India, where there are several conflicts between the government and nonstate actors. Teen militants are involved in conflicts such as <a href="https://www.orfonline.org/research/children-as-combatants-and-the-failure-of-state-and-society-the-case-of-the-kashmir-conflict-47514/">the insurgency in Kashmir</a> and the separatist movement <a href="http://www.humanrights.asia/news/alrc-news/human-rights-council/hrc6/AL-024-2007/">in Assam</a>. About 8% of cases took place in Myanmar, 5% in Ethiopia, 5% in the Philippines and about 3% in Afghanistan, Sudan, Turkey, Colombia, Pakistan, Uganda, Algeria and Iraq. </p>
<p>This evidence of enslavement predominately in the Global South may not be surprising, given how poverty and inequality <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0738894214559673">can fuel instability and conflict</a>. However, it helps us reflect upon how these countries’ historic, economic and geopolitical relationships to the Global North also fuel pressure and violence, a theme we hope slavery researchers can study in the future. </p>
<h2>Strategic enslavement</h2>
<p>Typically, when armed conflict involves slavery, it’s being used for tactical aims: building weapons, for example, or constructing roads and other infrastructure projects to fight a war. But sometimes, slavery is as part of an overarching strategy. In the Holocaust, the Nazis used “strategic slavery” in what they called “extermination through labor.” Today, as in the past, strategic slavery is normally part of a larger strategy of genocide.</p>
<p>We found that “strategic enslavement” took place in about 17% of cases. In other words, enslavement was one of the primary objectives of about 17% of the conflicts we examined, and often served the goal of genocide. One example is <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/resources/academic-publications/2020/establishment-and-regulation-of-slavery-by-the-islamic-state.pdf">the Islamic State’s enslavement</a> of the Yazidi minority in the 2014 massacre in Sinjar, Iraq. In addition to killing Yazidis, the Islamic State sought to enslave and impregnate women for systematic ethnic cleansing, attempting to eliminate the ethnic identity of the Yazidi through forced rape. </p>
<p>The connections between slavery and conflict are vicious but still not well understood. Our next steps include coding historic cases of slavery and conflict going back to World War II, such as <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/forced-labor">how Nazi Germany used forced labor</a> and how Imperial Japan’s military used <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/12/04/940819094/photos-there-still-is-no-comfort-for-the-comfort-women-of-the-philippines">sexual enslavement</a>. We have published a new data set, “<a href="https://www.csac.org.uk">Contemporary Slavery in Armed Conflict</a>,” and hope other researchers will also use it to help better understand and prevent future violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169904/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Our research team received the following funding that assisted with our work:
UK Arts and Humanities Research Council – Antislavery Usable Past project (AH/ M004430/1 and AH/M004430/2).
UK Economic and Social Research Council – Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement” (ES/P001491/1) (Including funds from ESRC International Impact Prize).
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angharad Smith is affiliated with United Nations University Centre for Policy Research.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Our research team received the following funding that assisted with our work: UK Arts and Humanities Research Council – Antislavery Usable Past project (AH/ M004430/1 and AH/M004430/2). UK Economic and Social Research Council – Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement” (ES/P001491/1) (Including funds from ESRC International Impact Prize).</span></em></p>Armed conflicts today involve slavery in many different forms, from forced marriage to child soldiers.Monti Datta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of RichmondAngharad Smith, Modern Slavery Programme Officer, Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), United Nations UniversityKevin Bales, Prof. of Contemporary Slavery, Research Director - The Rights Lab, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1761212022-02-22T17:13:09Z2022-02-22T17:13:09Z‘I am back to square one’: How COVID-19 impacted recently resettled Yazidi and Syrian refugees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445495/original/file-20220209-13-584ubx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C8%2C5708%2C3819&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of Syrian refugees, now new Canadians, take part in a virtual citizenship ceremony in December 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Giordano Ciampini</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and exacerbated existing challenges and vulnerabilities across <a href="https://rsc-src.ca/en/covid-19-policy-briefing/supporting-canada%E2%80%99s-covid-19-resilience-and-recovery-through-robust">Canada’s immigration system</a>. It has placed an <a href="https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v16i1.2691">uneven burden on refugees</a>, including <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059602">temporary halts</a> on Canada’s resettlement efforts and has increased their risk of <a href="https://www.ices.on.ca/Publications/Atlases-and-Reports/2020/COVID-19-in-Immigrants-Refugees-and-Other-Newcomers-in-Ontario">COVID-19 infection</a>.</p>
<p>Beyond higher infection rates, how did lockdowns, school closures and the economic downturn impact refugees who were recently resettled in Canada before the pandemic began? </p>
<p>In our two recently published studies based on <a href="https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v16i1.2692">interviews with Yazidi</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v16i1.2669">and Syrian families</a>, we find that the emotional, social and economic toll of COVID-19 unsettled families and reinforced pre-migration trauma. </p>
<p>Between spring and winter 2020, our research teams interviewed 38 Syrian refugees and 23 Yazidi refugees in three Canadian cities: Calgary, London and Fredericton. </p>
<p>Our findings showed that, for many refugee families, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing structural inequalities. The pandemic effectively eliminated progress in employment, social connections, language development and access to suitable housing they had made since arriving in Canada.</p>
<h2>Falling behind, feeling unsettled</h2>
<p>“It’s like I am back to square one. It’s like I am in my first month in Canada. It took me almost three years to make all the progress and now I lost it again. It makes me very scared for my family’s future,” says Gulroz, a Yazidi mother, when talking about the pandemic.</p>
<p>Gulroz is not alone. Many families felt like they were “back to square one.” </p>
<p>The families we interviewed were financially vulnerable before the pandemic. So when the pandemic brought <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/2020004/s6-eng.htm">job losses</a>, <a href="https://www.macleans.ca/longforms/covid-19-pandemic-disrupted-schooling-impact/">disruptions to schooling</a> (for both children and adults) and increased expenses (like <a href="https://www.dal.ca/sites/agri-food/research/canada-s-food-price-report-2021.html">higher food costs</a>), people felt a growing sense of hopelessness. </p>
<p>The sense of falling behind loomed large, especially in areas of language acquisition, employment and housing prospects — these impacts were felt more acutely by women who experienced <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/blogs/compounding-misfortunes-refugee-women-and-girls-lose-even-more-ground-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/">disproportionate care work responsibilities</a>. </p>
<h2>Social isolation and reliving trauma</h2>
<p>The implementation of local lockdowns led to intense feelings of social isolation for recent refugee families who lived in inadequate, crowded housing conditions with minimal access to green space. As Elham, a Syrian refugee, explained, “We do not have a balcony.… During the [lockdown], we wanted to breathe some fresh air [but] we were always inside the apartment.” </p>
<p>Elham’s frustration illustrates <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ncc-tightens-rules-closes-all-urban-parks-except-for-walkthrough">how the closure of public green spaces</a> led to feelings of claustrophobia for people living in small apartments <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2230">without access to balconies, backyards and residential green spaces</a>.</p>
<p>Many families used the imagery of prison, suffocation and captivity to describe the lockdown. Peri, a Yazidi single mother, says, “It’s like, I am back in that little room where the monster who took me kept me, locked in chains. Sometimes I can’t breathe. All the progress I made in my head to feel better is gone now. I feel like it’s the first day of landing here when I kept having visions of my captivity.” </p>
<p>COVID-19 restrictions and other governmental measures were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014564118">necessary</a> to contain the pandemic. However, an unintended fallout was that, for many refugee families, lockdowns <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32669034/">increased mental health challenges</a>. Our interviewees were triggered as memories of pre-migration trauma were reignited. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman stand working on a garden" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445531/original/file-20220209-25-12bq8ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445531/original/file-20220209-25-12bq8ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445531/original/file-20220209-25-12bq8ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445531/original/file-20220209-25-12bq8ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445531/original/file-20220209-25-12bq8ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445531/original/file-20220209-25-12bq8ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445531/original/file-20220209-25-12bq8ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Land of Dreams, an urban farming project in Calgary, helped some Yazidi women build relationships during the pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kheriya Khidir/Calgary Catholic Immigration Society)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hope and resilience</h2>
<p>Despite the enormous challenges they faced, the refugees we spoke with are determined to pursue their dreams of suitable employment and homeownership. They also expressed gratitude and a sense of security for the “sanctuary” of their lives in Canada — most believed living in Canada allowed them to avoid the extreme effects of the pandemic in their <a href="https://www.msf.org/health-system-overwhelmed-northern-syria-most-severe-covid-19-outbreak-yet">countries of origin</a>.</p>
<p>Many of our interviewees were part of community engagement programs that made space for resiliency in their lives throughout the pandemic.</p>
<p>Some Yazidi women in Calgary engaged in an urban farming project, <a href="https://www.ccisab.ca/services/urban-farming.html">Land of Dreams</a> — a place that enabled building new relationships during the pandemic. As they connected with the land, the women shared food they grew in the farm and exchanged cultural knowledge with other newcomer communities. </p>
<p>Vian, a Yazidi mother says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“… we came from a small village where we used to wake up very early in the morning, go to the farm, plant our vegetables, water them and feed our animals. It was a very beautiful and simple life and I liked it so much. When I go Land of Dreams, I remember those days and feel like I still am living in those moments and nothing bad [has] happened to us.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Land of Dreams shows that community-led approaches can support refugees during and beyond the pandemic. Our research highlights the need for governments to include refugees in COVID-19 recovery responses that address the disproportionate burden the pandemic has placed on refugees and other marginalized peoples. Many refugees feel like the pandemic has caused them to fall behind and they know what structural changes are needed to catch up. </p>
<p>We must meaningfully include newcomers and refugees in the formulation of policies that address structural constraints that affect them during times of crisis. </p>
<p><em>Fawziah Rabiah-Mohammed, PhD Student in Health Sciences at Western University co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Hamilton has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pallavi Banerjee has received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), and the University of Calgary Research Grant Committee. </span></em></p>We must meaningfully include newcomers and refugees in the formulation of policies that address structural constraints that affect them during times of crisis.Leah Hamilton, Professor, Department of General Management & Human Resources, and Department of Psychology (cross-appointed), Mount Royal UniversityPallavi Banerjee, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1730012022-01-06T17:21:53Z2022-01-06T17:21:53ZMultiracism: why we need to pay attention to the world’s many racisms<p>Racism is being called out across the world – and not just in the usual places. The word “racism” has been taken up by <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/world-left-yazidis-to-suffer-says-nobel-winner-nadia-murad-5fr7h2lfl/">Yazidis in Syria</a>, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/people-will-rise-up-uyghur-exile-foresees-end-of-chinas-ruthless-rule/">Uyghurs in China</a>, and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/16/black-lives-matter-papua-indonesia/">Papuans in Indonesia</a> and used to describe their experience of discrimination. </p>
<p>Expressed very simply, racism is prejudice and discrimination by a more powerful in-group against a minority group or individual based on their ethnic background. Yet in both public and academic debate in the west, racism is routinely represented as uniquely western, European and white. It’s a chain of association that reflects the history and power of western racism. </p>
<p>Racism in the west is an enduring and shameful problem. But in a multi-polar world, where the relationship between power and prejudice is shifting, a more universal approach is needed, too. Racism has a diverse history with multiple roots – and needs to be called out <em>wherever</em> it is encountered.</p>
<p>The past 20 years have witnessed numerous acts of mass racist violence. The recent conviction of an Islamic State fighter in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/yazidi-genocide-landmark-guilty-verdict-for-is-jihadi-could-transform-how-atrocities-are-brought-to-justice-173043">German court for genocide</a> was welcomed by Yazidi rights advocate and Nobel peace prize winner Nadia Murad, who <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/world-left-yazidis-to-suffer-says-nobel-winner-nadia-murad-5fr7h2lfl">tells us</a> that her community has been “subjected to ethnic cleansing, racism and identity change in plain sight of the international community”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yazidi-genocide-landmark-guilty-verdict-for-is-jihadi-could-transform-how-atrocities-are-brought-to-justice-173043">Yazidi genocide: landmark guilty verdict for IS jihadi could transform how atrocities are brought to justice</a>
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<p>Reports of one million Muslims <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un-idUSKBN1KV1SU">held in “re-education camps”</a> in Xinjiang province in China appear credible. And in 2019, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24187&LangID=E">UN human rights experts</a>, detailed “the deeply entrenched discrimination and racism that indigenous Papuans face” in West Papua from the Indonesian police and army, pointing to “numerous cases of alleged killings, unlawful arrests, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.</p>
<p>There are many such cases. We might add the bloody pogroms targeting <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26918077?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Muslims in India</a> and <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/hazaras-afghan-state/">Hazaras in Afghanistan</a> and the widespread maltreatment of black Africans in North Africa. In 2017, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/11/13/libya-migrant-slave-auction-lon-orig-md-ejk.cnn">CNN aired footage</a> of black African migrants auctioned as slave labour for as little as US$400 (£300) in a clandestine market outside Tripoli.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2S2qtGisT34?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">CNN report on migrants being sold as slaves in Libya.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The facts are there: the racism is stark and ongoing. Yet these examples rarely feature in journals in the academic field of ethnic and racial studies. It is a typical oversight that serves the interests of those who wish to bury discussion of the topic and deny the existence of racism in their country.</p>
<h2>Growing debate</h2>
<p>A new generation of activists and many scholars across Asia and Africa don’t want to forget or be silent. In part, their choice to use the term “racism” comes from the knowledge that this is a word the international community listens to. But mostly it stems from the fact that racism is an accurate description of the hatred they have witnessed. It’s a hatred that leads to ethnic and racial minorities facing attack, eviction, impoverishment and – sometimes – enslavement and genocide.</p>
<p>In my book <a href="https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=multiracism-rethinking-racism-in-global-context--9781509537310">Multiracism</a> I draw on these new voices to understand the diversity of racism and make the case that the modern world cannot continue to view racism in the traditional, rather monolithic, way.</p>
<p>Thus, for example, in <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-05357-4">Discourses of Race and Rising China</a>, Yinghong Cheng depicts racism in China as “an independent variation rather than an imitation or reflection of western racism”. In <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=8250">Ethnic Nationalism in Korea</a> Gi-Wook Shin writes that “nationalism based on common blood and shared ancestry” has been “a key feature of Korean modernity”.</p>
<p>Critical studies from many different sources are opening up the question of who gets to define racism. The Indian activist for the rights of the Dalit or “Untouchable” caste, <a href="https://www.rawatbooks.com/sc-st/caste-race-and-discrimination-discourses-in-international-context">Teesta Setalvad</a>, asks: “is it not time that we fill and feed such terminology with our own histories and thereby deepen their meanings?” She goes onto explain: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Within political science and sociology circles, racism has come to typify and describe systems of inequality and discrimination. The condition of the 160 million Dalits more than fulfils the description of the conditions used to describe racism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A caste is something that one is born into and, for many, it defines pretty much all aspects of their lives. The social exclusion of Dalits in India has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/28/india.mainsection">depicted as a form of apartheid</a>. The Indian government has no sympathy for this kind of conceptual expansion and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/08/17/india.caste/">points out</a> that Dalits are defined by caste – not ethnicity or race. But “racism” is not a fixed signifier – it is being adopted but also adapted. It is being put to work in fast-changing societies in new ways that help people organise and resist discrimination.</p>
<h2>Speaking out</h2>
<p>In many countries, writing about racism can result in harassment, imprisonment or worse. Disappearances of activists and scholars critical of discrimination are common, while other researchers are forced into exile. The Eritrean social critic <a href="https://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/978-3-643-90332-7">Abdulkader Mohammad</a>, writing in exile, explains that “speaking about ethnicity and ethnic conflicts has been a risky issue and a taboo” in his country.</p>
<p>The topic of racism is held by numerous governments to be a direct political challenge and an unpatriotic affront. Even in democratic countries such as India, Turkey and Malaysia, research is increasingly difficult and risky. <a href="https://merip.org/2018/12/turkeys-purge-of-critical-academia/">Anti-racist scholarship can be dangerous</a> but it is happening anyway and, despite the risks, academics and activists are asking the world to listen and learn.</p>
<p>If we do, we will hear a profound challenge to the idea that the history of racism can be framed solely or simply in terms of western action and non-western reaction. Chouki El Hamel in his groundbreaking <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/african-history/black-morocco-history-slavery-race-and-islam?format=PB&isbn=9781107651777">Black Morocco</a> shows that North African patterns of racism do not simply mirror Euro-American racism.</p>
<p>El Hamel’s intervention, along with others, takes issue with the defensiveness and evasion that has marked debate in the past, in which the severity or importance of anti-black racism in North Africa was downplayed or simply ignored. The telling title of a report published in 2020 by the Arab Reform Initiative on anti-black racism in Morocco is <a href="https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/ending-denial-anti-black-racism-in-morocco/">Ending Denial</a>.</p>
<p>There is a nascent debate on racism in Morocco. It is a debate that demands to be acknowledged and taken seriously, along with those many other voices from beyond the west that are today studying, challenging, and reimagining racism. Yet a final point must be made. For this is a topic where silence and denial can be more telling than public controversy. The fact that racism is now being talked about in some circles in Morocco does not mean that Morocco is “where the problem is”. </p>
<p>Far from it – it is where the silence endures, where it is impossible to speak out, that racism is likely to be taking its heaviest toll.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173001/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alastair Bonnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The west has long defined racism as a function of colonial domination and discrimination. But in a changing world this definition must be challenged.Alastair Bonnett, Professor of Geography, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1621282021-06-04T16:20:58Z2021-06-04T16:20:58ZCanada’s hypocrisy: Recognizing genocide except its own against Indigenous peoples<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404416/original/file-20210604-27-fbnzmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits a memorial on Parliament Hill in recognition of the discovery of children's remains at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Canadian Parliament is sometimes at the cutting edge of genocide recognition and human rights.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/43/2/56">the House of Commons passed a non-binding motion</a> to recognize China’s treatment of Muslim Uyghurs as genocide. It was a principled and courageous stand and Canada was just the second country in the world to take this position. </p>
<p>A report by <a href="https://www.glanlaw.org/single-post/legal-opinion-concludes-that-treatment-of-uyghurs-amounts-to-crimes-against-humanity-and-genocide">a prominent British legal team</a> documented crimes of the genocide which included “evidence of Uyghur children being forcibly removed from their parents,” placed in orphanages and mandatory boarding schools.</p>
<p>It also said children “are deprived of the opportunity to practise their Uyghur culture…are sometimes given Han names, and are sometimes subject to adoption by Han ethnic families.” The report concludes there is enough evidence that their forced removal is carried out with the intention of “destroying the Uyghur population as an ethnic group.” </p>
<h2>Shameful history of residential schools</h2>
<p>Similar descriptions could be applied to what churches and governments in Canada did to Indigenous children who were sent to Indian Residential Schools.</p>
<p>Is it a double standard for Canada to recognize the Uyghurs and not Indigenous people? It’s a question that needs to be considered once again after the recent announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation that <a href="https://tkemlups.ca/wp-content/uploads/05-May-27-2021-TteS-MEDIA-RELEASE.pdf">a ground penetrating radar specialist had discovered the buried remains of 215 children</a> who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An aerial photo of the school that is set along a winding river" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404419/original/file-20210604-25-1ie9e6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404419/original/file-20210604-25-1ie9e6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404419/original/file-20210604-25-1ie9e6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404419/original/file-20210604-25-1ie9e6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404419/original/file-20210604-25-1ie9e6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404419/original/file-20210604-25-1ie9e6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404419/original/file-20210604-25-1ie9e6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The former Kamloops Indian Residential School is seen in Kamloops, B.C. The remains of 215 children have been discovered buried near the former school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to the February motion against China’s treatment of its Uyghur population, Canada recognizes seven other genocides: the Holocaust during the Second World War, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-parliament-recognizes-armenian-genocide-1.509866">the Armenian genocide</a>, the Ukrainian famine genocide (<a href="https://www.ucc.ca/issues/holodomor/">Holodomor</a>), the Rwandan genocide, the <a href="https://bosniak.org/2010/10/19/canadian-parliament-unanimously-adopts-the-srebrenica-genocide-resolution/">Srebrenica massacres</a>, the mass killing of the <a href="https://natoassociation.ca/canadian-government-acknowledges-isis-genocide-against-the-yazidis-now-what/">Yazidi people</a> and the mass murder of the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4470455/canada-declares-myanmar-rohingya-genocide/">Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar</a>. </p>
<p>Recognition of our country’s own genocide against Indigenous people is long overdue.</p>
<h2>A violation of UN convention</h2>
<p>There have been calls for Parliament to recognize the Indian Residential Schools as a violation of the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml">United Nations Genocide Convention</a>, in particular of <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">Article 2e </a> which prohibits “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” </p>
<p>Almost two decades ago, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) described the residential school system as “the forcible transfer of children from one racial group to another with the intent to destroy the group.” AFN National Chief Atleo <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/residential-schools-fit-definition-of-genocide-atleo/">made reference to genocide in 2011</a>, as has current National Chief Perry Bellegarde, <a href="https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/discovery-of-indigenous-children-s-bodies-reminder-of-canada-s-genocide-experts-1.24325480">who reiterated his views on genocide</a> after the announcement of the discovery of the graves in Kamloops.</p>
<p>There is ample evidence in the <a href="http://www.trc.ca/about-us/trc-findings.html">Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report</a> of state intentions, legislation, actions and legacies of genocide.</p>
<p>Sen. Murray Sinclair regularly discussed the Indian Residential Schools system as <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-murray-sinclair-has-tried-for-years-to-shock-canada-into-confronting/">violating Article 2e</a> and stated that he would have put this in the TRC’s Final Report, had it been permitted.</p>
<p>As he explained in an interview with me for my book <em><a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/the-sleeping-giant-awakens-4">The Sleeping Giant Awakens</a>: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation</em>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I had written a section for the report in which I very clearly called it genocide and then I submitted that to the legal team and I said, can I say this, or, can we say this? And the answer came back unanimously no, we can’t as per our mandate, because we can’t make a finding of culpability, and that’s very clear. So, we did the next best thing.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The TRC ultimately concluded that <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/canada-guilty-cultural-genocide-indigenous-peoples-trc-2/">cultural genocide had been committed in the Indian Residential School system</a>, while also making hints throughout the report that the government was culpable of more. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A portrait of former senator Murray Sinclair taken in the halls of Parliament Hill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404420/original/file-20210604-17-gyywp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404420/original/file-20210604-17-gyywp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404420/original/file-20210604-17-gyywp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404420/original/file-20210604-17-gyywp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404420/original/file-20210604-17-gyywp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404420/original/file-20210604-17-gyywp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404420/original/file-20210604-17-gyywp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former senator Murray Sinclair, who spent six years hearing stories of the effects of Canada’s residential school system for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has used the term ‘genocide’ to describe the IRS system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Preventable deaths</h2>
<p>The discovery of the graves of 215 Indigenous children makes it clear that preventable deaths were always a part of the Indian Residential School system. We are now at the beginning of compiling the evidence of mass deaths in the schools. </p>
<p>Ground radar scans will help us get to the truth, and Sinclair believes <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-survivors-of-residential-schools-share-their-stories-call-on-the/">the death toll may reach 15,000 lives</a>. But we need not wait for the results of these investigations to make a conclusion of genocide. We have ample evidence of violations of Article 2e. </p>
<p>Remember that Raphael Lemkin, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41204789">who coined the term genocide</a>, was clear that genocide need not mean killing. In 1944 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/51.1.117">he wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Killing marks only the final stage of genocide. Lemkin was clear that “the machine gun” was often “a last resort” instead of the primary means of destruction.</p>
<p>In 2016, MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette, with help from <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/maeengan-linklater-lobbies-for-manitoba-residential-school-memorial-day-1.3102730">Maeengan Linklater</a>, a Winnipeg man whose parents went to residential schools, <a href="http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-318/first-reading">introduced C-318</a> “An Act to establish Indian Residential School Reconciliation and Memorial Day.” It called for Parliament to recognize that “the actions taken to remove children from families and communities to place them in residential schools meets this (UN) definition of genocide.”</p>
<h2>Never debated</h2>
<p>This private member’s bill didn’t make it to the committee stage and was never debated or discussed in the House. Bills have a long and complex route through Parliament to be enacted into law.</p>
<p>A motion, like the one about the Uyghur genocide, is a much shorter and simpler process and can be passed quickly. However, a motion in Parliament must pass unanimously; there can be no votes against. In the Uyghur case 266 voted for genocide recognition and the rest chose to abstain, including <a href="https://bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56163220">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and most of the cabinet</a>. </p>
<p>Within days of the news about the discovery in Kamloops, the <a href="https://www.brandonsun.com/local/dotc-seeks-recognition-of-genocide-574551162.html">Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council at Keeshkeemaquah, Man., recommended</a> that “the Parliament of Canada should recognize the Indian Residential School system as an act of genocide.”</p>
<p>I wholeheartedly agree. A motion to recognize the Indian Residential School system as a violation of Article 2e of the UN Genocide Convention can go some way towards establishing a ground floor of truth on which we can build for the coming generations.</p>
<p><em>If you are an Indian Residential School survivor, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David MacDonald receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant 430413).</span></em></p>Canada has officially recognized eight genocides that have happened around the world. It has not done the same for its own treatment of Indigenous children who they sent to Indian Residential Schools.David MacDonald, Professor of Political Science, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1269172019-11-26T13:35:40Z2019-11-26T13:35:40Z5 years after Islamic State massacre, an Iraqi minority is transformed by trauma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303532/original/file-20191125-74542-1rexbz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3732%2C2641&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dilbar Ali Ravu, 10, is kissed by his aunt, Dalal Ravu, as Yazidi children are reunited with their families in Iraq after five years of captivity with the Islamic State group, March 2, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Iraq-Yazidis/b29290af2a7948a8b707bce676e7a68f/16/0">AP Photo/Philip Issa, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been five years since the Islamic State killed <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002297">3,100 Yazidi people</a> in Iraq – mostly men and the elderly – forced <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/06/world/meast/iraq-crisis-minority-persecution/index.html">6,800 women and children</a> into sexual slavery, marriage or religious conversion and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing.</p>
<p>The Islamic State saw the Yazidis as infidels with no right to exist under <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-caliph-the-islamic-state-tries-to-boost-its-legitimacy-by-hijacking-a-historic-institution-126175">the extremist group’s rule</a>. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13530194.2019.1577129">The Yazidis</a> are a Kurdish-speaking Mideast minority whose monotheistic religion differs from Islam, Judaism and Christianity. They have a distinct historical lineage and no systematic requirement of fasting or prayer for the faithful. The Yazidis have lived in northern Iraq <a href="http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yazidis-i-general-1">since at least the 12th century</a>. </p>
<p>Today, more than 3,000 enslaved Yazidi women and children in Iraq <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/life-after-isis-slavery-for-yazidi-women-and-children">have been freed from IS captivity</a>, but life is far from normal. </p>
<p>Since 2017, we have <a href="https://sciences.ucf.edu/politics/kps/projects/">interviewed over a hundred Yazidi</a> survivors, both in Iraqi Kurdistan and in Germany, where several thousand Yazidis <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/surviving-genocide-storytelling-and-ritual-help-communities-heal">have sought asylum since the massacre</a>. Our research documented long-lasting emotional, cultural and spiritual effects from the violence they experienced. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303524/original/file-20191125-74599-chlfbq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exhuming a mass grave in Iraq’s northwestern region of Sinjar, where IS’s assault of the Yazidis occurred, March 15, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Iraq-Exhumation/85724d75f5a44eb5a56f74c96babd00b/3/0">AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cynicism and secularization</h2>
<p>This once tight-knit religious community has been transformed by the Islamic State’s assault, albeit in different ways for different people. </p>
<p>Those who survived the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27778112">August 2014 massacre</a> – which the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/06/532312-un-human-rights-panel-concludes-isil-committing-genocide-against-yazidis">United Nations has declared a genocide</a> – now live as displaced people <a href="https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/5cd156657.pdf">in Iraqi Kurdistan</a> or as <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/yazidis-seek-church-asylum-europe-empathy-refugees-wanes-180828221815711.html">refugees abroad</a>. </p>
<p>For many Yazidis, religious practice has been replaced by a struggle to survive. </p>
<p>“I don’t care what will happen to the Yazidi identity in the future, or if all Yazidis live in foreign countries,” said Gule, a displaced Yazidi woman we met in a Yazidi village in Duhok, Iraq. </p>
<p>To protect the anonymity of our interviewees, who continue to be vulnerable and insecure, we refer to them by their first names only.</p>
<p>Gule, who once had a house in her village, now lives in a tent with her children and chronically ill husband. All she wants for Yazidis is “a house, an income.” </p>
<p>Being targeted for their religious identity has made Xidir, a young man in his late 20s, disillusioned with religion in general.</p>
<p>“When you look at what has happened, not only this genocide [but] all these wars, all this violence, you see it is because of religion,” Xidir told us.</p>
<p>Xidir lives in a camp for displaced Yazidis in Iraqi Kurdistan and struggles to provide for his family. </p>
<p>“I don’t believe in any religion anymore,” he told us. “I wish I could erase all religions from the Earth.”</p>
<h2>Embracing Yazidi identity</h2>
<p>Others have had the opposite experience. </p>
<p>The Yazidis have long led a <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-yezidis-9781784532161/">precarious existence</a> alongside their Muslim and Christian neighbors in Iraq. The Islamic State’s assault was a bitter reminder that they are a persecuted people, causing many to feel more strongly committed to their faith.</p>
<p>“Before I would say, I am a Yazidi, and that was it. But now it is different,” said Azad, who had escaped to Kurdistan with his family during the IS attacks. “When I say I am a Yazidi [now], I embrace it in a whole new way.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303526/original/file-20191125-74542-18lxhxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4083%2C2520&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303526/original/file-20191125-74542-18lxhxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303526/original/file-20191125-74542-18lxhxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303526/original/file-20191125-74542-18lxhxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303526/original/file-20191125-74542-18lxhxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303526/original/file-20191125-74542-18lxhxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303526/original/file-20191125-74542-18lxhxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yazidi refugees who escaped IS – many on foot – at the Newroz camp in Iraq, Aug. 13, 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Yazidi_refugees.jpg">Rachel Unkovic/International Rescue Committee</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of the Yazidis we spoke with expressed greater concern for Yazidi holy sites like the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/middle-east/lalish-yazidi-kurdistan-sheikh-adi-ibn-musafir-erbil-peacock-angel-sinjar-isis-a7726486.html">Lalish</a> temple complex in Iraqi Kurdistan. They said they were determined to preserve <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Yezidi-Oral-Tradition-in-Iraqi-Kurdistan/Allison/p/book/9781138883871">Yazidi oral traditions</a>, such as religious hymns known as “qawls,” and to pass their faith on to future generations.</p>
<p>But they are not necessarily strict practitioners of the Yazidi religion, praying daily or making pilgrimages to the Lalish. In fact, many Yazidis we interviewed in Germany – like other <a href="https://theconversation.com/syrian-refugees-in-turkey-are-there-to-stay-at-least-for-now-125176">war refugees just struggling to survive in their new homes</a> – had become more secular. </p>
<p>Their renewed interest in their Yazidi identity was primarily cultural and political. They <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Online-social-media-campaign-on-4th-anniversary-of-Yazidi-genocide-563987">advocate for their community</a> on social media and see Yazidis as a separate ethnic group with a unique history – a people that should have autonomous political representation in Iraq, perhaps even self-rule. </p>
<h2>Yazidi women find power and struggle</h2>
<p>The status of women in Yazidi society has also changed since the massacre, our research found. </p>
<p>Despite some recent advances in women’s rights, the Yazidi culture remains <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/wps/2018/10/12/to-address-the-plight-of-yazidi-women-we-must-look-beyond-the-notion-of-wartime-sex-slaves/">deeply patriarchal</a>. Women’s educational attainment, labor participation and political representation is very low. Many Yazidi women marry as young as 15 and become financially dependent on, and socially subordinate to, their husbands for the rest of their lives. </p>
<p>This social structure was upended by the Islamic State’s highly gendered attack, in which men were killed, while women and girls were kidnapped. </p>
<p>Some Iraqi Yazidi women actually gained real or symbolic power. The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2018/murad/facts/">Nadia Murad</a>, for example, survived IS captivity to become an international activist. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303534/original/file-20191125-74557-1v3n7lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nadia Murad has been globally honored for her efforts to obtain justice for the Yazidis, Feb. 6, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://live.staticflickr.com/4862/47010087691_95d7691f89_b.jpg">US Dept. of State</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We also met some Yazidi women working outside the home for the first time. </p>
<p>“I work with people from all backgrounds, I travel alone,” said Leila, a college graduate from Sinjar who works for an international Christian philanthropy. </p>
<p>“My family respects this, as I contribute to the family budget,” she said. “I feel confident and proud of myself.”</p>
<p>The lives of most Yazidi women, however, are more precarious than before. </p>
<p>Many lost not only their homes but also their husbands, fathers and brothers – the breadwinners. And while the Yazidi religious leadership <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/stories/2015/6/56ec1e9611/yazidi-women-welcomed-back-to-the-faith.html">welcomed women survivors back from IS captivity</a>, the community <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yezidis-sinjar-massacre-rape-iraq-isis-fighters-children-a9037126.html">strongly opposes integrating the children</a> born of rape by IS members, forcing some mothers to make an impossible choice between their children and their people. </p>
<h2>‘I am not afraid to tell my story’</h2>
<p>When we met 31-year-old Nesreen in the summer of 2018, she was living in a Yazidi village in Duhok, Iraq. She told us her husband was killed by IS and that she and her two children had endured almost three years of enslavement. </p>
<p>No one in her family had received therapy. They all live together in a tent, dependent on a monthly allowance of 100,000 Iraqi dinars – around US$84 – from the Kurdistan regional government.</p>
<p>With the help of her brother, Nesreen had written a manuscript telling the story of her captivity. </p>
<p>“I escaped the hell and I am not scared to tell my story,” she told us. But, she wondered, “How can we get a normal life after all this?” </p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tutku Ayhan received travel assistance from the Project on Middle East Political Studies for her fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Güneş Murat Tezcür receives funding from Global Religion Research Initiative based at the University of Notre Dame. </span></em></p>Interviews with the Yazidi survivors of IS attacks that killed 3,100 people in 2014 reveal the emotional, cultural and spiritual scars of religious persecution.Tutku Ayhan, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Central FloridaGüneş Murat Tezcür, Jalal Talabani Chair and Professor of Political Science, University of Central FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1226102019-09-06T11:18:17Z2019-09-06T11:18:17ZWhat is Ashura? How this Shiite Muslim holiday inspires millions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290796/original/file-20190903-175673-8bwl2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ashura in Syria</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ashura_in_Syria-_2017_01_(2).jpg">Tasnim News Agency</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thousands of Shiite Muslims from around the world will <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/93yvgy/look-at-these-spectacular-images-of-shia-muslims-marking-ashura-in-iraq">visit Iraq this month to see the shrines</a> of Hussain, grandson of Prophet Mohammed, and his brother Abbas on the day of “Ashura.” </p>
<p>This annual pilgrimage marks the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic new year. As the Islamic calendar is a lunar one, the day of Ashura changes from year to year.</p>
<p>Muslims visit the shrines to observe the martyrdom day of Hussain, who was killed in the desert of Karbala in today’s Iraq in A.D. 680. Shiite Muslims believe that Hussain was their third imam – a line of 12 divinely appointed spiritual and political successors. </p>
<p>Muharram may be an ancient festival, but as <a href="https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1169/">my research</a> tracing the modern-day impact of Islamic pilgrimage shows, its meaning has changed over the centuries. What was once a commemoration of martyrdom today inspires much more, including social justice work around the globe. </p>
<h2>Martyrdom of Hussain</h2>
<p>The story of Muharram dates back 13 centuries, to events that followed the death of Prophet Mohammed.</p>
<p>After the prophet’s death in A.D. 632, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-shia-sunni-divide-78216">a dispute emerged</a> over who would inherit the leadership of the Muslim community and the title of caliph, or “deputy of God.” A majority of Muslims backed Abu Bakr, a close companion of the prophet, to become the first caliph. A minority wanted the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali. Those that supported his claim later came to be called Shiite Muslims. </p>
<p>Even if Ali was not made the caliph, Shiite Muslims would consider Ali their first imam – a leader divinely appointed by God. The title of imam would be passed on to his sons and his descendants.</p>
<p>Political leadership largely remained out of the hands of Shiite Imams. They would not be caliphs, but Shiites came to believe that their imam was the true leader to be followed. </p>
<p>By the time Ali’s second son, Hussain, came to be the third imam, divisions between the caliph and the imam had further deepened.</p>
<p>In A.D. 680, during the holy month of Muharram, a caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, Yazīd, ordered Hussain to pledge allegiance to him and his <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780203137000">caliphate</a> – a dynasty that ruled the Islamic world from A.D. 661 to 750. </p>
<p>Hussain refused because he believed Yazīd’s rule to be unjust and illegitimate. </p>
<p>His rejection resulted in a massive 10-day standoff at Karbala, in modern-day Iraq, between Umayyad’s large army and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=egGgUM_YdL8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=A%20Brief%20Historical%20Background&f=false">Hussain’s small band</a>, which included his half-brother, wives, children, sisters and closest followers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291000/original/file-20190904-175700-nsjgco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291000/original/file-20190904-175700-nsjgco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291000/original/file-20190904-175700-nsjgco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291000/original/file-20190904-175700-nsjgco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291000/original/file-20190904-175700-nsjgco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291000/original/file-20190904-175700-nsjgco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/291000/original/file-20190904-175700-nsjgco.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/akocman/4598825877">Alessandra Kocman</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Umayyad army cut off food and water for Hussain and his companions. And on the day of Ashura, Hussain was brutally killed. Among the men, only Hussain’s sick son was spared. Women were unveiled – a violation of their honor as the family members of the prophet – and paraded to Damascus, the seat of Umayyad rule. </p>
<h2>Passion plays and performances</h2>
<p>This history is reenacted throughout the world on the day of Ashura. </p>
<p>In Iraq, millions of pilgrims fill the streets to visit the shrines, chanting poems of lamentation, and witness a reenactment of violence in Karbala and the capture of the women and children. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tc4tZTEQ3VA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Lights of Hussain’s shrine, in Karbala, present-day Iraq, change from white to red, the color of martyrdom, on the first night of Muharram, while the crowds chant ‘Labbayk Ya Husayn,’ meaning ‘I am here, Hussain,’ answering the call he is believed to have made centuries earlier.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From New York and London to Hyderabad and Melbourne, thousands take part in Ashura processions carrying replicas of Hussain’s battle standard and following a white horse. This symbolizes Hussain’s riderless horse returning to the camp after his martyrdom. </p>
<p>Persian passion plays known as “taziyeh,” music dramas of the many martyrs and tragedies of Karbala, are performed across Iran and many other countries. Taziyeh performances are <a href="https://asiasociety.org/time-out-memory-taziyeh-total-drama">meant to evoke deep emotions</a> of grief in the audience. </p>
<h2>A powerful set of themes</h2>
<p>Numerous historians and anthropologists have explored how communities across time and space have <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_62A00tLaygC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=Contents&f=false">adapted the story</a> of <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300035537/shiism-and-social-protest">Karbala</a> or the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bd3Mst27MlkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=Karbala&f=false">rituals around Ashūrā</a>. </p>
<p>In the 16th century, <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/E/bo8922300.html">a vast majority of the population</a> across Persia, or today’s Iran, would be converted to Shiite Muslims. In this region, the passion plays evolved into a popular form of religious and artistic expression. </p>
<p>The character of Zainab, the Prophet Mohammed’s granddaughter, has also come to play a central role in remembrance of the Karbala story. </p>
<p>Scholars have <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=MntMCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT144&lpg=PT144&dq=khutba+zainab&source=bl&ots=FhwAf7KvCs&sig=ACfU3U1_74Uk5WVpfDYT8LedFn4YKNP9aA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjlmfiUxLXkAhUxq1kKHXxcBHQ4ChDoATAHegQIBxAB#v=onepage&q=khutba%20zainab&f=false">drawn attention</a> to speeches in which Zainab denounced the violence in Karbala and lauded Hussain’s “martyrdom.” </p>
<p>Today, Zainab is seen as a strong female model of resistance. </p>
<p>In the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the story of Karbala became a <a href="http://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/ashariati/works/red_black_shiism.php">rallying point</a> for opponents of the shah, who were fighting against the shah’s brutal and oppressive regime. They compared the shah to the caliph Yazīd and argued that ordinary Iranians had to stand up to an oppressor, just like Hussain had.</p>
<p>Zainab’s resistance to oppression <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/aghwom">helped emphasize the role of women</a> in Islamic society. </p>
<p>Anthropologist <a href="https://anthropology.mit.edu/people/faculty/michael-fischer">Michael Fischer</a> calls this the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QzDMzTWRnFIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=paradigm&f=false">Karbala paradigm</a>” – a story that captures a powerful set of themes, including people standing up to the state and fighting for justice and morality.</p>
<h2>Inspiring change?</h2>
<p>Today the story of Karbala has become a powerful tool of fight for social justice in Muslim communities. </p>
<p><a href="https://whoishussain.org/">“Who is Hussain?,”</a> a social movement with chapters in over 60 cities worldwide, carries out charitable activities and blood donations in the name of Hussain. Volunteers are encouraged to organize around events that will be meaningful in their communities and will tie into social justice issues that Hussain is believed to have fought for. </p>
<p>In 2018, <a href="https://whoishussain.org/tag/michigan/">local volunteers donated</a> tens of thousands of bottles of water in Flint, Michigan in remembrance of Hussain and his companions, who were denied water for three days before they were killed. </p>
<p>As historian <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/yitzhak-nakash">Yitzhak Nakash</a> points out, the tragedy of Karbala gives Shiite Muslims a <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/wdi/33/2/article-p161_1.xml">common narrative</a> to pass on to the next generations. And commemorating it in multiple ways is an part of their unique identity.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Noorzehra Zaidi received funding from Gerda Henkel Stiftung to carry out research on transnational Ashūra rituals. </span></em></p>For Muslims, Ashura marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammed’s grandson Hussain.Noorzehra Zaidi, Assistant Professor of HIstory, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1077832018-12-04T22:20:49Z2018-12-04T22:20:49ZThe world’s disturbing inaction as the Genocide Convention turns 70<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248758/original/file-20181204-34134-yuy3ah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Residents stand near rescued Rohingya men after they were brought ashore by local fishermen in Kuala Idi, Aceh province, Indonesia on Dec. 4, 2018. A wooden boat carrying the hungry and weak Rohingya Muslims, forced to flee Myanmar and Bangladesh, was found adrift. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Iskandar Ishak)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month marks the 70th anniversary of the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crimeofgenocide.aspx">Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide</a>. This is a foundational piece of international law that was born out of the mass atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against European Jews during the Second World War. </p>
<p>Despite the passage of time, we can still find inspiration in the example of <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/coining-a-word-and-championing-a-cause-the-story-of-raphael-lemkin">Raphael Lemkin</a>. After fleeing to the United States when he lost his family to the Holocaust, Lemkin campaigned for the establishment of an international law to define and forbid genocide. When his resolution proposing the Genocide Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, it became the UN’s first human rights treaty.</p>
<p>The Genocide Convention has since led to other norms and mechanisms, two of which are crucial in combating large-scale human rights violations. </p>
<p>The first is the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/Main.aspx">International Criminal Court</a> (ICC), established through the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/Documents/RS-Eng.pdf">Rome Statute</a> in 1998, with a mandate to prosecute those who commit the crime of genocide. The second is the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/about-responsibility-to-protect.html">Responsibility to Protect</a> (R2P), a global political commitment to prevent and interdict genocide and ensure the Convention is operational. R2P was initiated in 2001 under the leadership of Canada, and endorsed by all UN member states in 2005 at the UN <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/pastevents/worldsummit_2005.shtml">World Summit</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the conditions that led to the Genocide Convention hold ominous similarities to our world today. The protection of human rights, the commitment to multi-lateralism and our rules-based international order are all under threat. </p>
<h2>‘Mute and dysfunctional’</h2>
<p>The ICC is under fierce partisan attack. Nationalism and xenophobia in Europe and Asia have produced authoritarian regimes, emboldened by a White House that has relinquished moral leadership and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/trump-xi-jinping-dictators/554810/">condones their worst behaviour</a>. And the UN Security Council, responsible for acting on humanity’s behalf, stands by mute and dysfunctional.</p>
<p>Most troubling of all, there has been a resurgence of the very crimes the Genocide Convention was intended to address.</p>
<p>In August, a <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/08/1017802">UN fact-finding mission</a> determined the state-led ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar to be an act of genocide. This was echoed one month later by <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4470455/canada-declares-myanmar-rohingya-genocide/">Canada’s parliament</a>, which voted historically to recognize the events as genocide, calling for the prosecution of those in the Burmese military who are responsible. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248763/original/file-20181204-34148-ewnh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nadia Murad, a Yazidi who escaped the Islamic State and a co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, is seen in Paris after a meeting with the French president in this October 2018 photo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Francois Mori)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/09/09/eradicating-ideological-viruses/chinas-campaign-repression-against-xinjiangs">the Uyghurs</a> are still being rounded up in mass detention camps in western China, facing the prospect of annihilation. And <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20113">the Yazidis</a>, a minority group in Iraq, endured attempted genocide at the hands of ISIS, a crime that continues to go unpunished. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2018/murad/facts/">Nadia Murad</a>, a Yazidi survivor who was sold into sexual slavery, was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for using her voice to campaign for the prevention and punishment of genocide.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-canada-must-prosecute-returning-isis-fighters-105198">Why Canada must prosecute returning ISIS fighters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Our collective response to these heinous crimes has fallen far short of what the Convention requires. Most UN member states have shown reluctance even to use the term “genocide” when it obviously applies, no doubt worried they’ll be called upon to meet the responsibilities laid out in the Convention — to prevent and to punish. </p>
<h2>Inaction now the norm</h2>
<p>So inaction in the face of mass atrocity has sadly become the norm. While R2P was adopted relatively recently, it is already in danger of atrophying to irrelevance. R2P has not led to effective responses in Syria, Iraq, Myanmar, Yemen or South Sudan. Indeed, R2P has not been meaningfully invoked since the controversial 2011 intervention <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2011/05/19/the-lessons-of-libya">in Libya</a>. </p>
<p>While there are ample grounds to criticize the way R2P was implemented in that case, it is shameful to use those concerns as an excuse for doing nothing to prevent atrocities elsewhere. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council must take up their responsibility and stop abusing their undeserved privilege to advance their narrow self-interest.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248768/original/file-20181204-34128-14vsh66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248768/original/file-20181204-34128-14vsh66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248768/original/file-20181204-34128-14vsh66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248768/original/file-20181204-34128-14vsh66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248768/original/file-20181204-34128-14vsh66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248768/original/file-20181204-34128-14vsh66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248768/original/file-20181204-34128-14vsh66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adama Dieng, the UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, has issued a call for action that is so far going unheeded.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Nations/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>History shows that individuals like Raphael Lemkin and Nadia Murad can make a difference. But the promise of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/world/europe/germany-anti-semitism.html">“never again”</a> will ring hollow in the absence of political leadership. </p>
<p>Only 149 UN member states have ratified the Convention, leaving 45 to do so. Adama Dieng, the UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, has launched <a href="https://medium.com/we-the-peoples/70-years-of-the-genocide-convention-demonstrating-our-commitment-to-the-promise-of-never-again-6d97ec7ba424">an appeal</a> for universal ratification. </p>
<p>Faced with a lacklustre response, he said this: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What message are those states sending, 70 years after the adoption of the convention? That genocide could never happen within their borders? That is being naïve. History has shown us time and again that genocide can happen anywhere.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Heeding history’s call, we must reaffirm our commitment to the Genocide Convention and work towards universal ratification. More importantly, we must abide by the convention’s terms and show the moral courage of our convictions. </p>
<p>The Genocide Convention’s anniversary comes at a perilous time. But it can also be a moment of promise if we summon the spirit of 1948 and renew our collective determination to prevent and punish the most serious crime of all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kyle Matthews is affiliated with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, the Canadian International Council, the Global Diplomacy Lab and the BMW Foundation's Responsible Leaders network. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allan Rock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UN’s Genocide Convention turns 70 this month. It’s time for the world to reaffirm its commitment to the international law and show the moral courage of our convictions.Kyle Matthews, Executive Director, The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Concordia UniversityAllan Rock, President Emeritus and Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, former Attorney General of Canada and Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1052342018-10-19T08:42:21Z2018-10-19T08:42:21ZViolence against women: Nobel Peace Prize is a start – but legal backing is long overdue<p>The decision to award the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize to two campaigners against sexual violence against women in conflict, <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-peace-prize-awarded-to-nadia-murad-and-denis-mukwege-for-campaigns-against-sexual-violence-104494">Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege</a> has rightly been hailed as a much-needed signal that the international community recognises the severity of this problem in an increasingly conflict-ridden world.</p>
<p>Violence against women has been a topic engaging feminist legal scholars and international lawyers for a long time. A sustained feminist advocacy emerged around widespread reports of sexual violence experienced by women during the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early 1990s. This culminated in the creation of the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/">International Criminal Court</a> in 2002, whose statute enables the prosecution of a range of sexual harms.</p>
<p>So giving this prestigious prize to two frontline human rights activists does highlight the growing global recognition of the widespread and endemic sexual harms women suffer during wartime. But despite this welcome recognition – and in spite of the widespread reporting of sexual violence incidences in conflict – the international legal system lacks a binding legal convention on the prohibition of violence against women. There is therefore a gap between symbolism and legal reality.</p>
<h2>Personal ordeals</h2>
<p>Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy work in relation to her experience as a Yazidi-Kurdish woman who survived sexual violence assaults – including numerous rapes and prolonged sexual enslavement at the hands of Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq in 2014. In 2016 she became the UN goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking, using her appointment as a platform to raise awareness of the widespread nature of human trafficking of women before the United Nations Security Council. </p>
<p>In 2017 she published <a href="https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/11/30/nadia-murads-tale-of-captivity-with-islamic-state">her memoir</a>, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, in which she recounts her ordeal at the hands of IS and advocates for the prosecution of IS fighters before the International Criminal Court. She has also continually reiterated the idea that rape and sexual slavery need to be conceptualised as weapons of war and treated as such by international criminal law. In a recent interview she said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rape has been used throughout history as a weapon of war. I never thought I would have something in common with women in Rwanda – before all this, I didn’t know that a country called Rwanda existed – and now I am linked to them in the worst possible way, as a victim of a war crime that is so hard to talk about that no one in the world was prosecuted for committing it until just 16 years before ISIS came to Sinjar.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mukwege gained worldwide acclaim for his work as a surgeon, gynaecologist and women’s rights activist. He founded the <a href="https://www.panzifoundation.org/panzi-hospital/">Panzi Hospital</a> in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1999 as a clinic specialising in gynaecological and obstetric care, performing complex surgeries on women who had been raped and viciously sexually assaulted during armed conflict in the DRC from 2003 to 2016. </p>
<p>Having treated 40,000 survivors of sexual violence, he is today considered one of the world’s leading experts on “repairing” the internal physical damage caused by gang rape. In addition to restorative surgery, the hospital also provides psychological support for victims and offers a one-stop hospital for rape survivors, as well as providing financial support for the women affected in order to enable them to reintegrate into society.</p>
<p>Both activists have brought to the world’s attention the gendered nature of armed conflict and have shone a light on a pervasive phenomenon of modern wars. This has also been one of the central concerns of the UN Security Council, which has passed <a href="https://www.peacewomen.org/why-WPS/solutions/resolutions">eight resolutions</a> on Women, Peace and Security, since 2000. </p>
<h2>Time for action</h2>
<p>But despite the powerful symbolic victory of the Nobel Peace Prize, the reality on the ground remains that a binding convention on the prohibition of gender-based violence in all its forms is still lacking. The <a href="http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/">1979 Women’s Convention (CEDAW)</a>, often heralded as the most significant treaty for the elimination of discrimination against women, does not contain a specific prohibition against gender-based violence. </p>
<p>Neither does the <a href="http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cedaw/cedaw.html">1992 CEDAW Committee Declaration No. 19</a> – a landmark declaration defining gender-based violence, which is symbolic rather than binding in nature. The UN Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, such as <a href="http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/">UN Resolution 1325</a> – which calls on all state actors and those involved in post-conflict reconstruction efforts to incorporate a gender-based perspective into the transitional peace process and emphasises the full and equal participation of women in all peace-related efforts – have not led to the securing of a binding resolution on the prohibition of gender-based violence. </p>
<p>There remains a persistent moral gap between rhetoric and practice when it comes to addressing gender-based violence. What is lacking is a clear political will to implement a multilateral convention that would impose obligations on state parties. As former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/Issues/Women/SRWomen/Pages/RashidaManjoo.aspx">Rashida Manjoo</a> told me when I interviewed her in 2015: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One of the challenges is that, whereas the rhetoric is that violence against women is a human rights violation, the reality is that there is an absence of responding to that in a deeper way that demands a different response. So when the rhetoric is that it is a human rights violation, and we do not acknowledge that it is pervasive, that it is systemic and that it has numerous structural causes, including socioeconomic causes, then actions must reflect this reality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is especially important in light of the fact that gender-based violence almost always exists on a continuum of violence. Frequently, there is a link between the prolonged incidences of domestic violence in peacetime and the levels of sexual violence seen in armed conflict. This has been <a href="https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/ILJ/upload/Manjoo-McRaith-final.pdf">seen time and time again</a>, in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as in the DRC.</p>
<p>The recent recognition of the advocacy efforts of the two Nobel laureates therefore serves as a vital reminder that the actual work of drafting and putting into effect a binding convention for the prohibition of violence against women is an urgent priority, which can no longer go unaddressed by the international community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniela Nadj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is an urgent need for a binding convention for the prohibition of violence against women.Daniela Nadj, Lecturer in Public Law, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1051982018-10-17T22:55:56Z2018-10-17T22:55:56ZWhy Canada must prosecute returning ISIS fighters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241118/original/file-20181017-41122-br0nrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nadia Murad, co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, listens to a question at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2018.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/nadia-murad-isis-sex-slave-nobel-peace-prize">Human rights champion Nadia Murad</a> was recently co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In August 2014, Murad’s village in northern Iraq was attacked by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and she was sold into sexual slavery.</p>
<p>She managed to escape, sought asylum in Germany in 2015 and has fought for the rights of the Yazidi minority ever since. Upon becoming a Nobel laureate, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-prize-peace-murad-statement/yazidi-activist-nadia-murad-on-receiving-the-nobel-peace-prize-idUSKCN1MF1XE">she said:</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We must work together with determination — so that genocidal campaigns will not only fail, but lead to accountability for the perpetrators. Survivors deserve justice. And a safe and secure pathway home.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Accountability has become a key issue. While the United States-led international coalition has dislodged ISIS from the cities it had occupied and controlled, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/world/middleeast/isis-syria-raqqa.html">namely Mosul and Raqqa</a>, the group is weakened but not dead. </p>
<h2>ISIS remains a force in the Middle East</h2>
<p>Both the U.S. Department of Defense and the United Nations estimate that approximately <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20180823-counting-islamic-state-members-impossible-task">30,000 ISIS fighters</a> remain in those countries.</p>
<p>At the same time, a significant number of foreign fighters from places like Canada, the U.K. and Australia have fled Iraq and Syria. Numerous countries are struggling to find <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/world/australia/citizenship-isis-khaled-sharrouf.html">policy solutions</a> on how to manage the return of their nationals who had joined the group. </p>
<p>The Canadian government has stated publicly that it favours taking a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hamilton-trudeau-town-hall-1.4481025">comprehensive approach</a> of reintegrating returnees back into society. Very few foreign fighters who have returned to Canada have been prosecuted.</p>
<p>Things are about to become much more complicated for officials in Ottawa. Stewart Bell of <em>Global News</em>, reporting recently from Northern Syria, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4526514/canadian-isis-caught-in-turkey/">interviewed</a> Canadian ISIS member Muhammad Ali who is being held by Kurdish forces in a makeshift prison.</p>
<p>Ali admits to having joined ISIS and acting as a sniper, and playing soccer with severed heads. He also has a digital record of using social media to incite others to commit violent attacks against civilians and recruiting others to join the group.</p>
<p>Another suspected ISIS member, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/06/suspected-british-isis-fighter-could-face-repatriation-to-canada">Jack Letts</a>, a dual Canadian-British national, is also locked up in northern Syria. The same Kurdish forces are adamant that the government of Canada repatriate all Canadian citizens they captured on the battlefield.</p>
<h2>Soft on terror or Islamophobic</h2>
<p>The issue of how to manage the return of foreign fighters has resulted in highly political debates in Ottawa, demonstrating strong <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/plan-to-deal-with-returning-isis-fighters-sparks-fiery-exchange-between-scheer-pm-1.3698183">partisan differences</a> on policy choices and strategies to keep Canadians safe. </p>
<p>The Liberal government has been accused of being soft on terrorism and national security, while the Conservative opposition has been charged with “fear mongering” and “Islamophobia” for wanting a tougher approach, namely prosecuting returnees.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241122/original/file-20181017-41140-4wn6sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241122/original/file-20181017-41140-4wn6sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241122/original/file-20181017-41140-4wn6sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241122/original/file-20181017-41140-4wn6sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241122/original/file-20181017-41140-4wn6sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241122/original/file-20181017-41140-4wn6sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241122/original/file-20181017-41140-4wn6sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A member of the Asaish Kurdish security force shows a reporter the inside of an ISIS fighters house in February 2017 in Bashiqa, Iraq. The town in the Mosul district was liberated in November 2016 after being under ISIS control for two years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the most important point is that Canada has both a moral and legal duty to seek justice and uphold the most basic human rights of vulnerable populations. </p>
<p>ISIS and other jihadi groups have engaged in systematic mass atrocities against minorities in Iraq and Syria, including Christians and Shiites. ISIS has demonstrated a particular disdain for the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf">Yazidi minority in Iraq</a>. The Canadian government <a href="http://natoassociation.ca/canadian-government-acknowledges-isis-genocide-against-the-yazidis-now-what/">recognized the group’s crimes against the Yazidis</a> as genocide. </p>
<p>As a state party to the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/rdonlyres/ea9aeff7-5752-4f84-be94-0a655eb30e16/0/rome_statute_english.pdf">Rome Statute</a> of the International Criminal Court, and a signatory of the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crimeofgenocide.aspx">Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide</a>, Canada has a responsibility to uphold these international legal conventions when formulating carefully crafted policy responses that deal with returning foreign fighters.</p>
<h2>Trials can serve as deterrents</h2>
<p>Canada has the option to prosecute its nationals in domestic courts using the <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-45.9/page-2.html#h-5">Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act</a>.</p>
<p>Open trials can serve as means by which to lay bare ISIS’s narrative and to help counter violent extremism and future atrocities. </p>
<p>They can also serve as a deterrent and warning to other Canadians who might try to join ISIS as it mutates and moves to other countries in the world like Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Philippines, Pakistan or in Mali, where Canadian peacekeepers have just been deployed.</p>
<p>If Canada truly stands for multiculturalism, pluralism, the rule of law, global justice, human rights and the liberal international order, then we must be firm and take a principled stand to prosecute those have fought with ISIS. That includes our own citizens. No doubt Nadia Murad would agree.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kyle Matthews is affiliated with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute </span></em></p>If Canada truly stands for multiculturalism, pluralism, the rule of law, global justice, human rights and the liberal international order, we must prosecute our citizens who have fought with ISIS.Kyle Matthews, Executive Director, The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1045302018-10-05T21:01:08Z2018-10-05T21:01:08ZWarriors against sexual violence win Nobel Peace Prize: 4 essential reads<p>In a world whose attention is <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/metoo-goes-global-and-crosses-multiple-boundaries">fixed on the victims of sexual assault and violence</a>, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Denis Mukwege of the Congo and Nadia Murad of Iraq “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”</p>
<p>The two winners, said the <a href="https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/The-Nobel-Peace-Prize-2018">Nobel committee in its award announcement</a>, “have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes. Denis Mukwege is the helper who has devoted his life to defending these victims. Nadia Murad is the witness who tells of the abuses perpetrated against herself and others.”</p>
<p>The Conversation’s archives provide background on the problems the two winners are trying to address. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239541/original/file-20181005-72130-mdqeb5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nobel Peace Prize winners Denis Mukwege, left, and Nadia Murad, right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nobel-Peace-Prize/5899fc698d774153b360444ff6d20506/9/0">AP/Christian Lutz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. Helping the victims</h2>
<p>In 2015, scholar Lee Ann De Reus got ahead of the Nobel committee when she wrote an analysis for The Conversation headlined <a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-mukwege-deserves-the-nobel-peace-prize-for-his-work-in-congo-48489">“Denis Mukwege Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for His Work in Congo.”</a>. </p>
<p>Mukwege, a physician, runs a hospital for victims of sexualized violence in the Congo, the site of armed conflicts for the last 20 years. One 2011 study estimated that 48 women were raped every hour in that country. While what is known as the Second Congo War ended in 2003 with an estimated 5 million dead, violence has continued throughout the country since then, with rape frequently used by militias to terrorize civilians. </p>
<p>Hospital records documented that at the time De Reus wrote the article, Mukwege had “personally treated over 20,000 women, girls, men and boys who have suffered the physical and psychological wounds of traumatic rape.”</p>
<h2>2. Fighting IS</h2>
<p>Reports emerged from the Middle East in 2015 that the Islamic State group, or IS, was systematically raping women and girls under the pretext that their religion sanctioned such assaults on non-Muslims. Nobel winner Nadia Murad, a member of a minority in Iraq known as the Yazidis, was herself raped by IS members, along with thousands of other women and girls abducted by the militants. Murad was able to escape her captors and has subsequently devoted herself to publicizing the ordeal of IS victims. </p>
<p>“Beheadings, burning people alive, mass rape – these are <a href="https://theconversation.com/isis-has-changed-international-law-56781">the methods of IS terror,”</a> writes international law scholar Michael Scharf. But countries that wanted to fight IS and its brutal methods found themselves in a quandary, wrote Scharf. IS wasn’t a state, and international law made fighting such a group difficult. The need to fight IS, writes Scharf, would challenge international law’s very foundation. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239542/original/file-20181005-72100-1uxclua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 47-year-old rape victim in the refugee camp in the Liberian capital Monrovia in 2003. Kula, who wished to have her identity protected for fear of reprisals, was repeatedly gang-raped by rebels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nobel-Peace-Sexual-Violence-In-Conflicts/565bcd9781254669b0362ab2402df3f3/4/0">AP/Ben Curtis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. ‘Global pandemic’ of sexual violence</h2>
<p>Women across the globe experience sexual assault and sexual violence at shockingly high rates, write Valerie Dobiesz and Julia Brooks, <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-oreilly-and-weinstein-sexual-violence-is-a-global-pandemic-85960">experts in emergency medicine and legal research</a>. </p>
<p>From honor killings to female infanticide to forced marriages and trafficking, “This issue transcends national borders and class boundaries to touch the lives of roughly 33 percent of all women worldwide,” they write. </p>
<h2>4. Stopping sexual predation where it starts</h2>
<p>How to fight the scourge of sexual assault and violence in the U.S.? <a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-prevent-sexual-harassment-and-assault-start-by-teaching-kids-85879">Begin with children</a>, write scholars Poco Kernsmith, Joanne Smith-Darden and Megan Hicks. </p>
<p>Right now, prevention programs focus on teaching girls and women how to minimize their risks of being assaulted. Instead, write the scholars, “Real prevention needs to focus on the only person who can actually prevent harassment: the potential perpetrator.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
With the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to two leaders who fight against sexual violence as a tool of war, we looked into our archive to find stories about those efforts across the globe.Naomi Schalit, Senior Editor, Politics + Democracy, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1044942018-10-05T11:14:30Z2018-10-05T11:14:30ZNobel Peace Prize awarded to Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege for campaigns against sexual violence<p>Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege have been <a href="https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/Uten-foreldre/The-Nobel-Peace-Prize-2018">awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize</a> for their work in trying to end sexual violence during war and armed conflict. There are many tragedies in war and among the worst are victims of sexual violence. Women’s bodies have become battle sites and sexual violence a weapon of war.</p>
<p>Murad is one such victim, developing a global witness as a UN Goodwill Ambassador to the abuse she suffered as a Yazidi at the hands of Islamic State. She has campaigned for the protection of survivors of human trafficking. </p>
<p>Denis Mukwege is a medic based in the Democratic Republic of Congo and he and his staff have helped thousands of victims abused in its prolonged and bloody wars - and many more forcibly removed people besides. Mukwege also speaks, at much risk to himself, against Congolese governments and others who shield military rapists.</p>
<p>It is a comment frequently made that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-curious-history-of-the-nobel-peace-prize-66609">Nobel Peace Prize</a> is a contradiction, founded for “the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” by an armaments manufacturer, notable for inventing dynamite. </p>
<p>Handing over the awarding of the Peace Prize to a five-person committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament, rather than to Sweden, reflects Norway’s long-established engagement in facilitating peace negotiations. Well before the Peace Prize was inaugurated in 1901, the Norwegian government was assisting the European Inter-Parliamentary Union’s work on mediation, an involvement in conflict resolution that continues to this day. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-curious-history-of-the-nobel-peace-prize-66609">The curious history of the Nobel Peace Prize</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The right choice</h2>
<p>Peace is itself often politically controversial, especially when powerful nation states and multi-state alliances have conducted the war – and the award of the Peace Prize is invariably disputed. The Peace Prize is notable for the illustrious people omitted from its list of laureates as for those recognised by its award.</p>
<p>Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclav Havel and Eleanor Roosevelt are among a number who have failed to muster the prize – Gandhi was nominated five times to no avail. But politicians abound among its laureates – including those with dubious reputations, even at the time, such as <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2096389_2096388_2096386,00.html">Henry Kissinger</a>. </p>
<p>Barack Obama, who was awarded in his first year as US president, seemed to get one simply for being elected as the first black president (he was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/barack-obama-stephen-colbert-nobel-peace-prize-a7367321.html">still puzzled</a> himself at the award even at the end of his second term). Relatively unsuccessful politicians can be given the award – for example one-term US president Jimmy Carter and unsuccessful presidential candidate Al Gore. People from Northern Ireland, with only 1.8m people, have won it twice. The US and the UK dominate the countries of recipients. It has also been won by 16 women – more than any other Nobel category.</p>
<p>It has been awarded to organisations on several occasions: the European Union won it for not being at war with itself since 1945, the International Committee of the Red Cross has won it three times, and the Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees twice. Only one nominee declined the prize, the Vietcong’s chief negotiator <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/tho/facts/">Le Duc Tho</a>, who described it as bourgeois sentimentality. Two members of the awarding committee resigned in protest when it was determined to make the 1973 award to Le Duc Tho and Kissinger, while the results of the peace negotiations were still uncertain. Kissinger gave his prize money to charity and did not attend the ceremony.</p>
<p>Political controversies aside, the award committee has often got it right and the recipient is met with general acclaim. The 2018 recipients are such a case. As the prize committee said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad have both put their personal security at risk by courageously combating war crimes and seeking justice for the victims.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Courage – in speaking out against sexual violence and in speaking for its countless victims – is the word that catches my eye in the <a href="https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/Uten-foreldre/The-Nobel-Peace-Prize-2018">committee’s comments</a>. I think this word apt, for it applies as much to the victims themselves who have to live daily – if they survive at all – with the consequences of sexual violence. </p>
<p>I like to think the award is as much in honour of those victims as the two deserving recipients.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Brewer receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council, Leverhulme Trust, Forces in Mind Trust</span></em></p>The prize recognises that violence against women has become a weapon of war.John Brewer, Professor of Post Conflict Studies, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648402016-09-08T09:31:23Z2016-09-08T09:31:23ZWomen are being traded as slaves on WhatsApp – here’s how the UN can act<p>The members of the United Nations Security Council hear terrible stories from conflict zones with alarming frequency. So it takes a truly horrific tale to bring them to tears.</p>
<p>Yet as officials in the Council listened in December to Nadia Murad Basee Taha bravely <a href="http://freedomfund.org/blog/5380/">recount</a> her torturous ordeal as an Islamic State sex slave, some wept openly. When she fell silent, she received a rare ovation.</p>
<p>Murad is returning next week to the UN to be inducted as a Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. Since her last visit, the Security Council has <a href="http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12165.doc.htm">requested a report</a> from the Secretary-General on human trafficking in conflict, and what can be done about it. </p>
<p>The council should act soon – because the problem appears to be rapidly getting worse.</p>
<iframe frameborder="0" width="100%" height="270" scrolling="no" src="https://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1722935254001/?bctid=4665835954001&autoStart=false&secureConnections=true&width=480&height=270"></iframe>
<h2>Is slavery making a comeback?</h2>
<p>International law is clear that slavery is never allowed, anywhere, any time. Yet the best estimates suggest that <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/">45.8 million people</a> alive today are enslaved.</p>
<p>Armed groups have long forced vulnerable people into sexual exploitation, military service, and forced labor including construction, cleaning work, digging trenches, mining and agriculture. Some people displaced by conflict in South-East Asia may even end up <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/10/supermarket-prawns-thailand-produced-slave-labour">catching and processing the fish</a> that ends up in our supermarkets.</p>
<p>But today, organizations such as Islamic State and Boko Haram are openly encouraging and organizing slavery on a scale not seen since World War II.</p>
<p>More than <a href="http://www.yazda.org/abductees/">5,000 Yazidi women, children and men</a> are thought to be enslaved by Islamic State right now. The organization has set up <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30573385">slave registries and markets</a>, openly advocates for the revival of slavery through official mouthpieces, and has even issued <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-islamic-state-sexslaves-idUSKBN0UC0DZ20151229">“how-to” manuals</a> on slavery. Increasingly, the group <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-state-losing-fighters-and-territory-increasingly-turns-to-child-bombers/2016/08/22/bc611ce6-687a-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html">relies on forced child recruits</a> as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-islamic-state-recruits-and-coerces-children-64285">suicide bombers</a>.</p>
<h2>Slavery in a social media age</h2>
<p>This is not just Iraq and Syria’s problem. Like conflict, the problem of slavery has become international. A recent UN Commission of Inquiry <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf">found</a> that men from Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Egypt, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Uzbekistan have participated in Islamic State’s enslavement and human trafficking crimes. Other armed groups, such as Boko Haram, are following suit.</p>
<p>This is partly because of social media. In the past year, the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf">UN reports</a>, fighters have used the encrypted communications app Telegram to set up online slave auctions, circulating photos of captured Yazidi women, including their age, marital status, current location and price.</p>
<p>Recently, a member of Islamic State attempted to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/isis-fighters-appear-to-be-trying-to-sell-their-sex-slaves-on-the-internet/2016/05/28/b3d1edea-24fe-11e6-9e7f-57890b612299_story.html">sell two enslaved women on Facebook</a>. Displaced female Syrian refugees in Lebanon have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/30/syrians-forced-sexual-slavery-lebanon">traded on WhatsApp</a>, and Islamic State <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-isis-became-the-worlds-deadliest-tech-start-up">relies increasingly</a> on secure apps such as Surespot and Threema for its communications. </p>
<h2>How the UN can help</h2>
<p>Faced with this, what can the Security Council possibly do?</p>
<p>The answer is quite a lot, according to a <a href="http://unu.edu/fighting-human-trafficking-in-conflict">new report</a> published by United Nations University (which I co-wrote). Published with support from the UK Mission to the United Nations and others, and drawing on input from more than 100 experts from across sectors and around the world, the report argues that the Security Council has significant untapped leverage on this issue.</p>
<p>For a start, the Security Council could clearly denounce involvement with this crime against humanity, and encourage states to punish any of their nationals who are involved. The council could also consider a special international tribunal to address Islamic State’s war crimes and crimes against humanity, including enslavement.</p>
<p>There is a lot the council could do to monitor and disrupt human trafficking connected to armed conflicts. This would involve mechanisms to monitor specific groups’ involvement in trafficking, as well as online and real-word hotspots. Members of the council should figure out why existing sanctions that already apply to involvement in human trafficking – including those for <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/1267">Islamic State</a>, <a href="http://www.un.org/press/en/2014/sc11410.doc.htm">Boko Haram</a> and in <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/1970#current%20sanctions%20measures">Libya</a>, the <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/1533">Democratic Republic of Congo</a> and <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/751">Somalia</a> – are not being used effectively to address it.</p>
<p>The council could also help protect those displaced by conflict – at present at a high of more than <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/unhcrsharedmedia/2016/2016-06-20-global-trends/2016-06-14-Global-Trends-2015.pdf">65 million people</a>. These people are especially vulnerable to human trafficking. UN agencies and states can do more to identify, assist and protect civilians in trafficking hot spots, through rapid reaction capabilities, reporting task forces and information campaigns.</p>
<h2>Enlisting the private sector</h2>
<p>The Council can also encourage the private sector to help. The Security Council could work with the financial, technology and recruitment sectors to develop guidance to prevent their value-chains being tainted by human trafficking in conflict. The council has taken <a href="http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/un-throws-weight-behind-effort-curb-conflict-minerals">similar steps</a> to prevent industry from profiting from conflict minerals. Why not do the same in relation to human trafficking in conflict?</p>
<p>The technology sector has another key role to play. Social media providers may be able to use location data and content to identify people vulnerable to trafficking, and warn them of particular risks. The London Metropolitan Police has released online <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/jan/12/syrian-mothers-urge-uk-women-not-to-take-their-families-to-war-zone-video">videos</a> of Syrian migrant women warning foreigners about the realities of life under Islamic State, to counter fraudulent recruitment and trafficking. Social media providers can ensure these messages get to the right audience.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"770916272347512832"}"></div></p>
<p>Nadia Murad Basee Taha’s testimony last December was powerful and moving. Her appointment as a goodwill ambassador signals the UN’s ongoing commitment to support victims.</p>
<p>Now it is up to the Security Council to take action, with partners in the private sector and beyond, to ensure that more people do not suffer her terrible fate. Without such steps, all the council’s applause will ring hollow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Cockayne works for United Nations University. The report cited here received funding from the Permanent Mission of the UK to the UN, the Permanent Mission of Liechtenstein to the UN, Thomson Reuters and Grace Farms Foundation.</span></em></p>Slavery is making a comeback, thanks to Islamic State and Boko Haram. But the UN can help.James Cockayne, Head of Office at the United Nations, United Nations UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/640222016-08-21T17:53:27Z2016-08-21T17:53:27ZMigration is the story of most of us because ‘we all move’: a visit to Lesbos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134757/original/image-20160819-30363-oye9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A child plays in the Kara Tepe camp close to Mytilene on Lesbos island</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This is a story about people and movement. We all move, physically and
emotionally. We are moved by others and circumstance. We move in thoughts, in countries, in loyalties, between forefathers and mothers from different places and cultures. We could all be placed in vulnerable positions that force us to move. In 2016 so far – as at August 18 – the UNHCR <a href="http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php">reported</a> that 161,599 people moved by sea to reach Europe. </p>
<p>Recently I travelled with my husband Paul to the Greek island of Lesbos. Paul is supporting an initiative with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Changemakerslab/">Changemakers Lab</a> to provide skills and opportunities to locals and refugees with events like the “Startup Weekend”. Paul has been supportive of such collaborative initiatives in South Africa and has been involved in this particular initiative for the past year. In the course of our stay we met people from both Lesbos and other parts of the world who have told us their stories.</p>
<p>It began with us walking off the plane and visiting a self-sustaining refugee camp
called <a href="http://www.lesvossolidarity.org">Pikpa</a>. The people of Pikpa manage themselves by cooking their own food, arranging initiatives and upcycling life vests into bags and pouches. Monies from the sale of items go towards sustainability of the camp. <a href="http://www.msf.gr/en">Medecins Sans Frontiers</a> has a strong presence because Pikpa is home to some of the most vulnerable refugees.</p>
<p>At the Mayor’s office we got a letter allowing us access to
the next camp – <a href="http://alkhair.org/kara-tepe-refugee-camp-lesbos-1/">Kara Tepe</a>. It is run by the local municipality and, like Pikpa, is also home to some of the most vulnerable refugees.</p>
<p>The director of the camp, a man called Stavros, had a unique approach to refugees. He referred to the camp as a hospitality centre while speaking about guests who stayed for an average of nine months before moving to another destination in Europe. Stavros emphasised normal everyday routine with calm, dignity and safety – things we all desire in our daily lives.</p>
<h2>The woman who stopped talking</h2>
<p>At Kara Tepe we met a young man (28 years old) who spoke English. He told us about escaping the <a href="http://www.yazda.org">Yazidi genocide</a> which occurred on August 3 2014 in northern Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (Isis) group <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20113&LangID=E">forcibly transferred</a> Yazidis into Syria after launching its attacks on Iraq’s Sinjar region. Roughly 40,000 Yazidis were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/who-yazidi-isis-iraq-religion-ethnicity-mountains">forced to flee</a> or face slaughter by an encircling group of Isis militants.</p>
<p>The militants killed at least 500 members of this Iraqi ethnic and religious minority, burying some alive and taking hundreds of women as slaves according to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/10/yazidis-islamic-state-massacre_n_5665655.html">news reports</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134759/original/image-20160819-30383-eavkmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Islamic State in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodi Said/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The young man’s wife (23 years old) had stopped speaking. She had a vacant look about her. She had witnessed the genocide in her village.</p>
<p>A few days into our stay we returned to Kara Tepe because we promised the young Yazidi couple that we would visit them again. We met the young man at the entrance to the camp. He was alone. He said his wife had tried to commit suicide and was in hospital.</p>
<p>We subsequently found out that she had several failed attempts at suicide. We took him for a drink before visiting his wife in hospital. She was glad to see us even though she was dazed. She spoke, albeit a little. We spent some time with her and then dropped the husband back at Kara Tepe. Before we left we visited the couple again in hospital.</p>
<p>On our visits to Kara Tepe we met Geert van der Veen, a school teacher from Holland, volunteering with the Dutch NGO <a href="http://www.bootvluchteling.nl">Bootvluchteling</a>. He was spending three of his six weeks’ annual summer vacation driving refugees around the island. He was responsible for taking the young Yazidi man to hospital to visit his wife. </p>
<p>Van der Veen worked eight-hour shifts throughout the day with breaks for rest and sleep. He and others gave their time and energy to help out in small and big ways. We realised that going for one week was not sufficient time to volunteer at a camp. We needed to spend more time with people to develop trust.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134760/original/image-20160819-30377-1g53f2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A little girl stands next to a placard at the Moria refugee camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos, prior to the arrival of Pope Francis, April 16 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Filippo Monteforte/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a third refugee camp in Lesbos called <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/inside-the-moria-refugee-camp-on-greece-s-lesbos-island-1.3221630">Moria</a>. Paul and I spent an afternoon sitting outside Moria, a detention facility managed by the national government, operated by the military and secured with barbed wire. It is a hostile sight on the landscape and access is given only to a couple of organisations, <a href="http://www.rescue.org/country/greece">International Rescue Committee</a> and <a href="https://www.savethechildren.net/">Save the Children</a>. </p>
<h2>Psychological traumas</h2>
<p>People from Kara Tepe and Pikpa are usually transferred from Moria, presenting medical and psychological traumas, or both. People speak about Moria as “very bad”. What that means I can only imagine. </p>
<p>One such person was Lukman. We met him and his family at the canteen outside Moria. He had been staying in Moria for one and a half months and said he could not sleep well there. His wife Zoviat and his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Mydia came on the boat on Wednesday, 13 July 2016.</p>
<p>There were two boats that day. One capsized and a family drowned. Hundreds of people have died crossing that stretch of sea. Lukman’s mother and the couple’s then newborn baby were sent earlier to Lesbos to safety and were now in Germany for the past seven months.</p>
<p>Meeting Lukman, Zoviat and Mydia, I was struck by the precariousness of their lives. Lukman was relieved that his wife and child survived the boat ride from the Turkish coastal city of Izmir to Lesbos. It costs locals €10 for a day trip to Turkey yet refugees pay nothing less than €600 per person to make the treacherous journey to Lesbos. So many lives have become disposable with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/20/eu-refugee-deal-turkey-condemned-council-of-europe">EU restrictions</a>. </p>
<h2>Refugees are dignified people</h2>
<p>Molyvos, a picturesque town on the hill overlooking Turkey, was our home for a
few nights. We had dinner at Tropicana, a family-run restaurant. Taxia, the wife, waitresses in the restaurant. She speaks about how her family and many ethnic Greeks fled Turkey and sought refuge in Greece when Ataturk declared Turkey a nation state in 1921. </p>
<p>Taxia’s family remembers the distrust towards them and how three generations later they are fully assimilated into the island. Of course, assimilation is easier because they share a language and religion but migration is the story of most of us, says Taxia: “We all move”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134762/original/image-20160819-30387-12u29ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Syrian refugee holds onto his children as he struggles to walk off a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yannis Behrakis/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/paradox-eu-turkey-refugee-deal">deal</a> the 28 EU heads of state forged with Turkey on March 18 2016 many refugees have been stuck in Greece and on Lesbos without knowing if and when they can find placement within Europe. Perceptions of hordes of refugees on the island have damaged tourism on the island. But what we saw showed that refugees were dignified people, not beggars. They were organised and registered at one of the camps.</p>
<p>Resentments have been brewing among the locals because their livelihoods have been affected. We hope that an initiative to bring tourists back to the island, creating opportunities for skills and collaboration between islanders and refugees can bridge the gaps that we have failed to bridge. Locals just want to earn an honest living.</p>
<p>At the end of our trip we’d had a memorable time, with a sense of wanting to return. We learnt that we all live with precarity and could become vulnerable at any given time. It is our collective responsibility to find a solution to end wars by ending the arms industry and, failing that, to find ways to help bring people to safety.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64022/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadira Omarjee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Perceptions of hordes of refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos have damaged tourism. But the refugees are dignified people, not beggars. An initiative is needed to bring tourists back to the island.Nadira Omarjee, Visiting scholar of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/481272015-10-08T06:00:31Z2015-10-08T06:00:31ZReport from Iraq: religion lends Yazidis a profound resilience in the face of persecution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96290/original/image-20150926-17736-1hxmcwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pilgrims assemble to visit the mausoleum and shrine of Sheikh Adi in the valley of Lalish.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tyler Fisher</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Iraq’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-yazidis-30280">Yazidis</a> maintain an oral tradition that tallies the massacres inflicted upon them over the centuries. Some say there have been 72, others 73. Whatever the number, genocidal campaigns against this ethno-religious minority are a recurring feature of their history. </p>
<p>Lately, the tally of atrocities has grown. This embattled minority is recovering from the 2014 <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-year-after-massacre-by-islamic-state-iraqs-yazidis-are-clinging-on-44494">pogroms</a> it endured at the hands of Islamic State (IS), which regards the Yazidis as apostates or “devil worshippers”, and the ongoing enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women and children within IS’s self-declared caliphate.</p>
<p>There are about 650,000 Yazidis in Iraq and as many as 2m in the wider diaspora. They forbid both the conversion of outsiders and the desertion of those born into the faith. Their creed combines elements of Sufism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, born at the geographical and theological crossroads of their historic homeland in northern Mesopotamia. </p>
<p>Claiming to follow the world’s oldest religion, they are essentially monotheistic but revere an array of angels, both good and malevolent. These beliefs have made them a particular target for jihadists.</p>
<p>As part of a broader effort to build an inclusive and responsive public institution of higher learning at Iraqi Kurdistan’s Soran University, we sought out Yazidi perspectives in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh and Soran. Throughout September 2015, we spoke with Yazidi survivors, laymen and clergy in northern Iraq about what the latest wave of persecution means for their faith.</p>
<h2>Prophecy fulfilled</h2>
<p>One refugee camp we visited on the outskirts of Rwanduz houses ten Yazidi families. The Kurdish Peshmerga and allied local militias have wrested control of their home villages, Sinûnê and Khana Sor, from IS forces, but it is still too dangerous for them to go home. </p>
<p>Regarding matters of religion, they express a chastened equanimity. After all, they say, the present suffering was prophesied.</p>
<p>The oldest man at the camp, Sado Elyas, put it this way: “A hundred years ago, the white-bearded elders (<em>kuchk</em>) foretold that the present generation would face an onslaught of persecution. They described the IS attack exactly: some Yazidis would escape to the mountain and later be rescued.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96780/original/image-20150930-5787-1ax9chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96780/original/image-20150930-5787-1ax9chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96780/original/image-20150930-5787-1ax9chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96780/original/image-20150930-5787-1ax9chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96780/original/image-20150930-5787-1ax9chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96780/original/image-20150930-5787-1ax9chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96780/original/image-20150930-5787-1ax9chm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sado Elyas and Khalid Qasim discuss Yazidi prophecies at the refugee camp near Rwanduz, Iraqi Kurdistan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tyler Fisher</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The experience, he said, has reminded this community of the importance of their traditions: “Over time, people lost faith in the elders and viewed them as perpetually gloomy naysayers. The youth forgot them amid the distractions of new technologies. But what happened last year showed us that we need to listen again to the elders.”</p>
<p>His nephew, Khalid Qasim, added his own recollection of the prophecy, with a glimmer of hope: “The 100-year-old prophecy also said that circumstances for the Yazidis will deteriorate even further, but after <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/07/25/ISIS-destroys-tombs-of-two-prophets-in-Mosul.html">the destruction of Yunus’s (Jonah’s) tomb in Mosul</a>, the Yazidis’ situation will begin to improve.”</p>
<p>There is an air of fatalism in the reaction of these refugees to the terrible events of recent years. But while their heartache is all too apparent, the IS rampage has in fact renewed their confidence in their faith and their optimism for their community’s prospects.</p>
<h2>Rituals resumed</h2>
<p>On September 23, we joined a steady stream of barefoot pilgrims, young and old, at the valley of Lalish, the Yazidis’ most sacred site. The valley is a mere 30 miles from the front lines of the Islamic State, but the Yazidis defiantly observed their annual Éida Hejya, or Pilgrimage Festival, this year. Last year’s pilgrimage was cancelled due to the security situation and out of respect for the many in mourning. Wednesday, the Yazidis’ weekly holy day and the first day of Creation, marked the restoration of this rite. </p>
<p>The gathering in Lalish was deliberately low-key, subdued but not sombre. Pilgrims reverently kissed the primeval trees, which they trace back to Eden on this site, and knelt on the stones where they believe the scales of the Final Judgement will stand. </p>
<p>Yet they also skipped around the catafalque of their foremost saint, Sheikh Adi, made wishes by tossing handkerchiefs, and scattered sweets around freshly baptised toddlers.</p>
<p>The baptisms at the Kanîya Spî (White Spring) of Lalish are a striking demonstration of the Yazidis’ resolute hope and confidence concerning their ultimate survival as a people. While international headlines depict them as a culture on the brink of extinction, they perceive themselves as a nation divinely spared. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96292/original/image-20150926-17699-dx5k8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96292/original/image-20150926-17699-dx5k8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96292/original/image-20150926-17699-dx5k8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96292/original/image-20150926-17699-dx5k8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96292/original/image-20150926-17699-dx5k8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96292/original/image-20150926-17699-dx5k8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96292/original/image-20150926-17699-dx5k8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1104&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sheikh Dashti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tyler Fisher</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Many empires have arisen and vanished, but we have remained,” Sheikh Dashti reflected in the shade of the shrine at Lalish. “Yazidis are created by God. We are God’s nation. We only rely on God to protect us. No matter how many persecutions are unleashed on us, we believe that we will be preserved, because we bear God’s name, as God’s nation.” </p>
<p>A priestly teacher among the Yazidis, Sheikh Dashti summarised in this way a doctrine from which Yazidis draw strength and reassurance. Indeed, it is fundamental to their identity. The name Yazidi itself derives from a phrase that points to the Creator: <em>Êz dî</em>, “the One who created me.” </p>
<h2>A brief sojourn</h2>
<p>Zêrê, a mother of eight, defied the odds and escaped from the province of Sinjar with all of her children. They now live as refugees in Dohuk and visited Lalish for the pilgrimage. </p>
<p>“I tell my children to look to the future, rather than focus on our present ordeal,” she told us. “I comfort them by reminding them that God is with us. God will protect them. Whatever happens, it is God’s will.” Her family hopes to return to their village when the forces of the Islamic State are decisively driven from the region.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96783/original/image-20150930-5798-o2s0f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96783/original/image-20150930-5798-o2s0f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96783/original/image-20150930-5798-o2s0f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96783/original/image-20150930-5798-o2s0f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96783/original/image-20150930-5798-o2s0f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96783/original/image-20150930-5798-o2s0f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96783/original/image-20150930-5798-o2s0f3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luqman Suliman explains Yazidi concepts of suffering to Tyler Fisher at the principal Yazidi shrine in Lalish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nahro Zagros</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By turning their hopes to a brighter future, ancient traditions, and transcendent designs, the Yazidis are reframing their suffering as a momentary tribulation. At Lalish, Luqman Suliman, a schoolteacher in nearby Sheikhan, cited a Yazidi proverb to express this: “For us, this world is a wayside inn. You are a visitor today; tomorrow you leave; other visitors will arrive.” </p>
<p>The cluster of shrines and sleeping quarters in the valley of Lalish is a vivid illustration of this philosophy. By custom, only one family resides at the site, while the surrounding apartments serve as temporary lodgings for pilgrims and other wayfarers. But in the months following the Sinjar massacres, refugee tents <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iraq-yazidis-20141018-story.html">filled the courtyards and rooftops of the shrines</a>. </p>
<p>The tents folded as refugees acquired longer-term accommodation, and now the valley echoes again with murmured wishes and brief outbreaks of jubilation – proof that the Yazidis’ distinctive religion, which has made them a target for so much persecution, is also a source of profound resilience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48127/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tyler Fisher serves on Soran University's Board of Advisers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nahro Zagros does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>They’ve been persecuted for hundreds of years, and most recently by Islamic State – but the Yazidis now living in Iraq’s refugee camps are remarkably circumspect.Tyler Fisher, Lecturer in Peninsular Spanish Literary Studies, UCLNahro Zagros, Vice President, Soran UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461652015-08-17T14:05:49Z2015-08-17T14:05:49ZThe treatment of Yazidi women highlights a historical issue: what makes someone human?<p>The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html?ref=world&_r=0">recent revelations</a> about the savage treatment of Yazidi women at the hands of Islamic State, or ISIS, fighters is the latest in a shocking set of disclosures regarding the group’s behavior. It sadly echoes the the abject treatment and sexual abuse reportedly suffered by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/15/world/middleeast/isis-held-us-aid-worker-as-sex-slave-before-death.html?ref=world&_r=0">Kayla Mueller</a>, the American hostage who died in February while being held by ISIS.</p>
<p>For Americans, the disclosure is all the more uncomfortable because the reported trade in these women recalls many of the attributes of slavery as practiced in the US until the American Civil War – a controversial <a href="http://www.bpnews.net/44186/obama-draws-pushback-on-isis-crusades-slavery">comparison</a> made by President Obama himself earlier in the year.</p>
<p>The horror of the systematically brutal treatment of these women cannot be rationalized by any religious philosophy. And it conforms to a general perception of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html">radical Jihadism as a medieval one </a>that defies conventional conceptions of what we like to call “modernity.” </p>
<p>But the behavior of ISIS raises a broader question: what does it mean to be “human” in the modern world?</p>
<h2>Being human</h2>
<p>The answer may seem obvious to most of us. Being human is defined physically. It is being a member of a species. </p>
<p>Those with a more metaphysical approach might define it philosophically. As René Descartes said, <a href="http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/descartes-i-think-therefore-i-am">“I think; therefore I am.”</a> </p>
<p>Others might focus on the legal aspects, as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights that was first proclaimed in 1948. It states that all humans have inalienable, fundamental human rights that <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Introduction.aspx">must be protected.</a> </p>
<p>But the sorry fact is that the definition of who is a human – and thus worthy of our concern – has always been contested and it still is today. </p>
<p>And the most important point is that this definition has had an enormous effect on when and where countries act to save lives; where and when they provide aid; and who is enslaved and abused. </p>
<p>The answer to these questions essentially distinguishes between who is human – and thus vulnerable and worthy of our protection and resources – and who is not. </p>
<h2>Humanitarian intervention and gunboat diplomacy</h2>
<p>Let’s take the example of humanitarian intervention and civilian protection. </p>
<p>Over a decade ago, George Washington University political scientist Martha Finnemore wrote a short but highly informative book on the <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100775070">history of military intervention.</a>. In it she pointed out that the reasons that countries – or the international community as a whole – intervene has altered dramatically over time. </p>
<p>For example, the Europeans did so initially to collect sovereign debt in the early and mid-1800s – mostly from Latin America. They would sail in and seize any taxes that had been collected and stored in customs houses. That was a perfectly acceptable practice at the time. But imagine the gunboats sailing to Argentina today, a country that is officially bankrupt, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-07-17/-no-why-argentina-refuses-to-pay-its-debts">to seize their money from bank vaults!</a> </p>
<p>Indeed, the very idea of humanitarian intervention only developed later, and very selectively – initially to protect people “like us.”</p>
<p>So, for example, a coalition force led by the Russian Empire invaded the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1877 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War_%281877%E2%80%9378%29">to protect orthodox Christian Slavs</a>. Protecting your religious and ethnic brothers and sisters was acceptable. They were human. Others were not.</p>
<p>In fact, the universalizing of the definition of the human to justify intervening where there is no ethnic or religious tie is a relatively recent idea.</p>
<p>It is one that has only really gained traction since the end of the Cold War. </p>
<p>As the United Nation’s “<a href="http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/responsibility.shtml">Responsibility to Protect</a>” initiative makes crystal clear, when it come to humanitarian intervention to protect vulnerable populations, humanity isn’t defined by religion, skin color, gender, race or caste. But that initiative has taken off only in the last 15 years and the principle has been applied only on a <a href="http://www.unric.org/en/responsibility-to-protect/26988-the-responsibly-to-protect-on-a-case-by-case-basis">very limited basis.</a> The multilateral intervention against <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18709571">Muammar Qaddafi’s</a> government in 2011 remains the most prominent example.</p>
<h2>The principle and practice of sexual violence</h2>
<p>Of course, addressing these issues in practice is always more complicated than in principle. And the issue of who is a human is still very much contested today – far more so than many of us might imagine.</p>
<p>Take the example of the inhumane treatment of the Yazidi women, held against their will, sold like chattel and sexually abused. It has all the hallmarks of slavery. Yet while an extreme example, it is by no means unique – either historically or in today’s world. </p>
<p>Historically, we know that women have been enslaved and abused on a mass scale. The treatment of Korean “Comfort Women” during the Second World War is an issue that still divides South Korea and Japan, as <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/south-korea-man-sets-himself-alight-anti-japan-rally-support-comfort-women-1515152">the self-immolation of a South Korean man</a> on August 12 demonstrated. The same kind of sexual violence has been documented in numerous, <a href="http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/about/bgsexualviolence.shtml">more recent wars.</a></p>
<p>So it’s not that sexual violence in war is a new problem. But it has become more documented and prominently discussed in policy circles in recent years. </p>
<p>The UN acknowledged, for example, that rape is a weapon of war and <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/newsevents/pages/rapeweaponwar.aspx">classified it as a war crime only in 2008.</a></p>
<p>This recognition is in large part explained by the fact that we have expanded our definition of the human – and thus become more aware of the issue. </p>
<h2>21 million slaves…at least</h2>
<p>Yet according to the <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/">Global Slavery Index,</a> classifying certain people as not human is still a characteristic feature of many societies, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.</p>
<p>Modern slavery can take many forms: from using children as soldiers to men on fishing boats and women as industrial workers or as prostitutes. In each case it reduces a person to a commodity, denying them their essential humanity. </p>
<p>The United Nations estimates that there are upward of <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48037#.Vc4Uc0Wf7N8">21 million slaves in the world today</a>, while the Global Slavery Index offers the larger figure of <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/">35.8 million</a> – the number changing depending on how they define a slave. </p>
<p>Sadly, these figures suggest that it is the reporting of the problem, rather than its scale, that has changed.</p>
<p>What is disturbingly clear from one major New York Times story is that a Yazidi can be given her freedom by her owner (albeit with ISIS’ definition of the still limited rights of a Muslim woman) and thus <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html?ref=world&_r=0">“become human.”</a></p>
<p>That’s an idea so at odds with contemporary Western thinking it once again begs the question: if you are so opposed to it, what are you willing to do about it?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The recent revelations about the savage treatment of Yazidi women at the hands of Islamic State, or ISIS, fighters is the latest in a shocking set of disclosures regarding the group’s behavior. It sadly…Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/444942015-08-04T10:28:49Z2015-08-04T10:28:49ZA year after massacre by Islamic State, Iraq’s Yazidis are clinging on<p>When Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, <a href="https://theconversation.com/isis-sweeps-across-borders-and-takes-grip-of-an-iraq-collapsing-back-into-civil-war-27886">fell to Islamic State</a> (IS) in June 2014, the aspiring caliphate stepped up its campaign to expand and consolidate its control over the region. It did this in part by trying to exterminate the thinly protected enclaves of assorted ethnic and religious groups on the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28351073">Nineveh Plains</a>. </p>
<p>This entailed a massive assault on the villages of the Sinjar district of northern Iraq, targeting an ethno-religious minority known as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-yazidis-30280">Yazidis</a>. The ensuing assault on Sinjar displaced roughly 200,000 civilians and forced almost 50,000 Yazidis to flee to the mountains. </p>
<p>IS set fire to Yazidi villages, obliterated their shrines with explosives, abducted women and children, and executed men who resisted conversion to Islam. Those Yazidis who escaped to the Sinjar Mountains found themselves besieged by IS forces. Eventually the Kurdish Peshmerga, People’s Protection Units (YPG), and Iraqi military, with support from US airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops, managed to get most of the refugees to camps in Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdish areas of Syria and Turkey.</p>
<p>Public attention has since moved on. The crisis in Sinjar is subsiding, and the Peshmerga have gradually retaken some of the areas that IS had overrun. But the atrocities are still a relentless daily reality for thousands of Yazidis still in captivity, for those in precarious refugee camps and for their relatives abroad, bereaved or longing to be reunited. </p>
<p>Several thousand remain in the mountains, cut off from humanitarian aid – and the threat of annihilation has not abated.</p>
<h2>Reliving history</h2>
<p>Among the groups of the complex Mesopotamian cultural mosaic, the Yazidis have always been particularly vulnerable to religious violence. While even the strictest interpretations of Islamic law permit a degree of tolerance for those the Koran calls “People of the Book” – those who adhere to Abrahamic faiths – the Yazidis fall outside this category. </p>
<p>As long ago as the mid-19th century, Sir Austen Henry Layard <a href="http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/Nineveh_and_Its_Remains_v1_1000095232/323">reported</a> how the Yazidis fled from Ottoman raids, only to be massacred where they sought shelter: they “took refuge in caves, where they were either suffocated by fires lighted at the mouth, or destroyed by discharges of cannon”. </p>
<p>Today, IS considers the Yazidis pagan idolaters or “devil-worshippers”. Under its regime, a Christian resident of Mosul would face the choice of exile, conversion, or execution; a Yazidi would have only the latter two options. This is also the basis on which IS justifies <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/11/iraq-forced-marriage-conversion-yezidis">raping, enslaving, and trafficking Yazidi women and girls</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the impressions that reports from afar might give, IS’s violence is not indiscriminate. By targeting the Yazidis, IS stands not only to capture territory but to shore up its image as a judge of infidels, playing to the gallery of potential allies worldwide. And an especially vulnerable, especially hated sect makes a prime target.</p>
<p>The Yazidis’ situation clearly demands urgent action, but any intervention by the international community must allow the Yazidis to define themselves on their own terms. They have had other identities forced on them before, by turns making them invisible and labelling them as targets. </p>
<p>Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5982421/yazidis-yezidis-iraq-crisis-bombing">declared</a> the Yazidis Arab by ethnicity and their religion a sect of Sunni Islam. This was part of a massive push to Arabise Iraq that included forced resettlements and official disregard for the Yazidis’ distinct linguistic, ethnic, and religious culture. </p>
<p>Equally, labelling the Yazidis as a splinter group of Sunni Islam has exposed them to new dangers, since perceived apostates face even harsher persecution from radicals than “pagans” do.</p>
<h2>Getting out</h2>
<p>Today, things are very different. Yazidis are already being granted asylum in Europe and North America. Germany, which already has a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28725310">substantial Yazidi population</a>, recently <a href="http://www.jspacenews.com/op-ed-yazidis-forgotten-international-community/">agreed</a> to take in 1,000 refugees. </p>
<p>Armenia, too, has been a destination for Yazidi emigrants for generations. A new Yazidi temple is <a href="http://www.armradio.am/en/2015/07/23/new-yezidi-temple-to-be-built-in-armenia/">due to be built there</a>, and Armenia’s <a href="http://ezidipress.com/en/new-armenian-draft-constitution-to-include-quota-for-yezidis/">draft constitution might pave the way for proportional representation</a> for the 40,000 Yazidis that now reside within its borders. This has all the hallmarks of a sustainable home away from their ancestral home.</p>
<p>But despite these encouraging steps, prospects abroad are grim for the Yazidis. We spoke to Dawud Khetari, a Yazidi historian from the Sheikhan region of northern Iraq, who managed only the weakest hint of optimism: “Yes, we will preserve our culture, but it will not be the same. We will lose our language. We will lose our traditions when far away from the burial grounds and pilgrimage sites.” </p>
<p>The Yazidis’ ancestral lands in Iraq, which include a sacred spring and valley, mausoleums and shrines, are vital for their continuity. Protecting these sites is no small task. One measure would be to secure the most significant holy sites in the Sinjar and Sheikhan regions to protect pilgrimages and traditional learning. Kerim Suleman, formerly a spiritual leader within the Yazidi community and currently director of the Lalish Cultural Centre in Dohuk, told us that: “we need a wall. We need boots on the ground, an international peacekeeping force.”</p>
<p>That may seem far-fetched, but it’s hardly unprecedented. A force protecting it could resemble the international <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/09/iraq-shiite-leaders-pan-shiite-project.html">militias</a> that are currently mobilising to protect Shia shrines from IS, or the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29843876">co-operative security</a> at Jerusalem’s holy sites.</p>
<h2>Down, not out</h2>
<p>In one sense, the assaults by IS are nothing new for the Yazidis, but the advanced weaponry that IS captured in Mosul and then unleashed on Yazidi villages meant the scale of the 2014 attacks was far worse than anything seen before. </p>
<p>But on the flip side, advanced military technology greatly assisted the rescue of Yazidis from Mount Sinjar. Advanced communication meant the world was aware of the attacks as they unfolded; it may yet help the scattered Yazidis to organise across the diaspora. And advanced security and surveillance capacities could preserve the sites the Yazidis hold most sacred. </p>
<p>The outside world might never know the full extent of the atrocities inflicted on the Yazidis in the past year, and no single remedy will be fully effective or fully satisfactory. Still, we can begin to repair the damage. Even in the face of genocide, this resilient community can once again defy the odds – if it only gets the help it needs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tyler Fisher serves on Soran University's Board of Advisers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Muslih Mustafa and Nahro Zagros do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Persecuted for generations, the Yazidis have weathered their latest storm with astonishing resolve.Tyler Fisher, Lecturer in Peninsular Spanish Literary Studies, UCLMuslih Mustafa, President, Soran UniversityNahro Zagros, Vice President, Soran UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/304272014-08-12T15:44:25Z2014-08-12T15:44:25ZIraq needs a new, more inclusive leader to fight the Islamic State<p>One of the defining moments in the growth of the Islamic State (IS) was when its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced in a mosque in Mosul at the end of June that an <a href="https://theconversation.com/isis-does-not-have-enough-public-support-to-extend-its-caliphate-in-iraq-28940">Islamic Caliphate was being established</a> and that he would be the caliph. </p>
<p>That was not long after ISIS/ISIL, as it was previously known, had overrun much of north-west Iraq while consolidating its base in Syria, the latter greatly aided by other Islamist paramilitary groups being willing to accept its leadership. </p>
<p>The chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, announced at the time that the Iraqi government under its prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, <a href="http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140703/DEFREG02/307030022/Dempsey-Iraqi-Military-Can-t-Regain-Lost-Territory-Its-Own">did not have the ability to regain lost territory</a>. There was widespread criticism of Maliki’s failure to put together an all-embracing government after the inconclusive general election at the end of April. </p>
<p>Six weeks later, the Islamic State has consolidated its hold on territory while acting brutally against minorities, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-yazidis-30280">especially the Yazidis</a>, and has now threatened the previously secure Kurdish region and especially its capital of Irbil. These two, in combination, have been enough to prompt external humanitarian airdrops to the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar and US Navy air-strikes on IS artillery close to Irbil. </p>
<p>The progress of IS has also prompted a political crisis in Baghdad, with the Iraqi president, Fouad Massoum, calling on the deputy speaker of the Parliament, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28748366">Haider al-Abadi</a>, to form an inclusive government. For the moment, Maliki is contesting this – but he has lost much support including, crucially, that of the cleric <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12135160">Moqtada al Sadr</a>, who controls a powerful Shia militia as well as leading a substantial bloc of seats in the parliament. Under the <a href="http://www.iraqinationality.gov.iq/attach/iraqi_constitution.pdf">Iraqi constitution</a>, Maliki can remain prime minister for 30 days while Abadi forms a government, giving him plenty of time to mount challenges at a time when the US has relatively little influence over him.</p>
<h2>US military options</h2>
<p>President Obama is clear in his determination to avoid “boots on the ground” but that will prove difficult if not impossible if the current carrier-based operation is to be maintained for more than a couple of weeks.</p>
<p>In addition to several hundred US troops officially in Iraq, there will already be Special Forces operating in the Kurdish region, providing intelligence and aiding target acquisition. There will also be units available to rescue aircrew should any planes be lost. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/us-arms-kurds-iraq_n_5667284.html">Arms going to the Kurds</a>, as well as longer-term support for Special Forces would mean a forward operating base in the region with full protection, medevac facilities and substantial logistic support. According to a <a href="http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20140808/NEWS08/308080084/Why-Obama-s-campaign-in-Iraq-could-require-15-000-troops">Military Times estimate</a>, this could require up to 10-15,000 troops. </p>
<p>The US <a href="http://www.militarytimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2014308080074">already has substantial forces in the region</a> including more than 40 strike aircraft on the USS George H W Bush, at the centre of a carrier battle group that includes a cruiser and three destroyers armed with cruise missiles. A substantial Amphibious Ready Group centred on the USS Bataan is in the Persian Gulf and another aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, and its battle group are due to head to the region at the end of the month but are on stand-by for earlier deployment if need be. </p>
<p>If this wasn’t enough, the US Air Force’s Central Command group (<a href="http://www.centaf.af.mil/">AFCENT</a>) has scores more bombers, interceptors, intelligence, transport and tanker aircraft and drones available, many of them based in Qatar and Turkey but with the base on the UK territory of Diego Garcia providing further support.</p>
<h2>Limits to US power</h2>
<p>Obama may be determined to limit US involvement to protecting the Kurds and religious minorities, rather than aim to defeat the Islamic State but he will be under increasing pressure to go much further. This is because one of the most ominous signs for the US and its allies is that since the declaration of a Caliphate and its rapid expansion in Syria and Iraq, IS has already become a beacon for other Jihadist groups <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fighters-abandoning-al-qaeda-affiliates-to-join-islamic-state-us-officials-say/2014/08/09/c5321d10-1f08-11e4-ae54-0cfe1f974f8a_story.html">previously operating under the al-Qaida banner</a>. These include groups of fighters in Yemen and North Africa. </p>
<p>Obama’s problem is that any action taken against IS over and above limited protection of the Kurds can be presented by the IS propagandists as yet more evidence of the “far enemy’s insatiable appetite for waging war on Islam” – this is already a feature of posts on Jihadist websites. But if Maliki hangs onto power in Baghdad, then any prospect of Iraqi forces being effective in countering IS is little more than a pipedream.</p>
<p>US intervention has now started. There is a certain irony in that the aircraft attacking the Islamic State in Iraq are flying off the US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, named after the president who ordered planes to strike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq 24 years ago, in August 1990, following the occupation of Kuwait. To add to that irony, he was also the father of the President, George W Bush, who led the more recent Iraq War from 2003, a theatre of war that provided training for jihadist paramilitaries – many of whom are now at the core of the Islamic State’s forces.</p>
<p>If Maliki does stand down and a more inclusive government comes to power in Baghdad, then IS may find its popularity waning, but Washington does not have much influence in that direction. Iran, though, does, and may well want to see an end to Maliki’s tenure, given its concern over the growth of the deeply anti-Shi’a Islamic State. This certainly looks to be the case, given that al-Abadi’s appointment <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/12/senior-iranian-official-iraq-haider-al-abadi-prime-minister">has today been welcomed by Ali Shamkhani</a>, the secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most remarkable element of all, and an indication of how the West’s influence in the region has changed, is that what happens in Iraq may be far more dependent on decisions made not in Washington but in Tehran.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Rogers has received funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development. He lectures regularly at the Royal College of Defence Studies. He will be giving a talk at the Edinburgh Festival on Wednesday, August 27 on the theme of “A Century on the Edge, 1945-2045 – from Cold War to Hot World”.</span></em></p>One of the defining moments in the growth of the Islamic State (IS) was when its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced in a mosque in Mosul at the end of June that an Islamic Caliphate was being established…Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/303372014-08-09T08:27:15Z2014-08-09T08:27:15ZUS airstrikes against Islamic State show once again there are no good options in Middle East<p>Barack Obama’s decision to authorise the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/08/us-iraq-air-strikes-isis-irbil">bombing of the forces of the Islamic State</a>, or ISIS as it is commonly known, in northern Iraq has justifiably caught many observers by surprise. After all, the president has devoted six years to <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-d-day-to-today-us-foreign-policy-is-at-a-turning-point-27667">extracting America from military involvement</a> in the region. He has generally preferred to rely on the diplomatic and economic instruments there – whether he is trying to bring Hamas and Israel to the bargaining table or cajole Egypt towards democracy. </p>
<p>Under his stewardship, America has relied on the use of force against militants on a comparatively selective basis – mostly through gathering intelligence, espionage and then drone attacks. So why has he returned to more conventional instruments of war at this point? And what does this action presage for the remainder of his presidency in terms of his Middle Eastern policy?</p>
<p>In Thursday’s news conference, the president reassured the American people that this was an exceptional case, limited in its scope and duration. He justified his actions on both humanitarian and national security grounds.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Airstrikes are authorised.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The humanitarian justification is that the bombing of militants is being co-ordinated with the delivery of aid to tens of thousands of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-yazidis-30280">Yezidis</a> trapped by militants on Mount Sinjar and Christians fleeing Qaraqosh. They, the president insisted, face the realistic prospect of slaughter or starvation without American assistance. In <a href="http://www.vox.com/iraq-crisis/2014/8/7/5981333/john-kerrys-full-statement-on-iraq">his own statement</a>, US secretary of state John Kerry echoed the president’s sentiments. Kerry too uttered the word “genocide” in describing their plight – one regarded as taboo in U.S. foreign policy circles because, once invoked, America is required by its own domestic laws to intervene to protect civilians.</p>
<p>The national security justification is the need to protect Iraq’s Kurds. This has been a consistent theme of the four most recent presidents, predating the unseating of Saddam Hussein. ISIS forces have routed Kurdish fighters, seizing towns around Erbil and the strategically important Mosul Dam. They now threaten to overwhelm the retreating and undersupplied Kurdish forces, and to make significant incursions in the Kurdish region itself. This prospect is alarming to both Europe and the US. The Kurds are considered by both to be among the most stable and unstintingly western-oriented minorities in the Middle East. Their part of Iraq has been exempt from the national epidemic of violence and has flourished economically while the broader economy has wilted. </p>
<p>Indeed, the West has largely failed to support Kurdish claims for independence only because of broader geopolitical fears that doing so will create even more instability in a fragile region. Representative Adam Smith of Washington State, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, put it succinctly when he reportedly said to a New York Times reporter that: “The Kurds are worth helping and defending.”</p>
<p>But Obama has a third concern, one that may outweigh both of these justifications. It is the safety and welfare of Americans living in both Erbil and Baghdad. Until recently, Iraq’s political leadership expressed a breezy confidence that Baghdad was safe from militant forces. That confidence has crumbled – as the result of both its military’s abject performance and the sustained political infighting about the selection of a new government in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/world/middleeast/unrest-in-iraq-narrows-odds-for-maliki-win.html?_r=0">aftermath of April’s election</a>. It is very hard to fight a war successfully when the politicians are in disarray and the military are ineffectual.</p>
<h2>Barrage of criticism</h2>
<p>Under these circumstances, the president is mindful of the domestic barrage of criticism he faced in the aftermath of the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi and the resulting death of four Americans. Military intervention at this point does not ensure that Americans in Iraq will be protected. But it limits the possibility of them being captured or killed. That would truly be a political nightmare for the president. The American public isn’t so concerned about the political sensitivities. But – despite broader reservations – the American public will sympathise with any initiative intended to protect their compatriots.</p>
<p>Inevitably, Obama has encountered <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/congress-divided-over-iraq-strikes-20140808">three sources of criticism</a>. The first is from traditional adventurist Republicans who think that the president isn’t going far enough. Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called for more military action and “the provision of military and other assistance to our Kurdish, Iraqi and Syrian partners.” The second combines those Republicans who generally favour American retrenchment with more liberal peace activists. These two odd political bedfellows consistently demand US military disengagement, suggesting that it is the role of other organizations such as the United Nations to act as the “World’s Policeman” rather than the US.</p>
<p>Finally, perhaps the most significant source of criticism comes from a variety of Shia and Sunnis in Baghdad. <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/08/08/launches-first-airstrikes-iraq/FIXirwcFgqhUslJPvaUAAN/story.html">Sami al-Askeri</a>, advisor to Nouri Al-Maliki, is only one of many who vehemently argue that the president is only intervening now because the lives of non-Muslims are at stake. As far as he is concerned, it is the only reason that – in Obama’s own words - “America is coming to help.”</p>
<p>The two domestic sources of criticism are a routine part of contemporary American politics. It is this third source of criticism that will potentially have the two most enduring effects.</p>
<h2>Western ‘crusade’</h2>
<p>First, the president insists that this is a limited action, a product of the sectarianism plaguing Baghdad and the resulting inability of Iraq’s leadership to get their political act together. But that claim will likely be treated with distain, not only across the Muslim countries of the Middle East but also within the poor Muslim neighborhoods of Europe that have become a fertile recruiting ground for Islamic militants. </p>
<p>Militant leaders have consistently characterised their primary conflict as being with the invading Christian West, even as they have slaughtered fellow Muslims. For them, America’s hasty disengagement from Libya, its failure to act in Syria, and its refusal to take a more aggressive position towards Israeli incursions into Gaza all contrast with its protection of Christian civilians in Iraq. This apparent inconsistency will provide militants with the fodder for their recruitment campaigns. They will inevitably characterise this episode as a one that exposes the West “real” agenda – as crusaders.</p>
<p>A second, less obvious consequence may be felt thousands of miles away – in Ukraine. Russian forces used ethnic solidarity and the protection of minorities as a pretext to invade Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008. They claimed the same in the recent annexation of Crimea. With 20,000 Russian forces now camped on Ukraine’s eastern border, Obama’s decision to protect the Christian and Kurdish minorities in Iraq may provide Vladimir Putin with the current precedent to justify a large scale invasion of Eastern Ukraine in defense of what he has characterised as its oppressed minority.</p>
<p>The president’s domestic support for his limited military action in Iraq may be fully justified on humanitarian grounds. But the shallow support it enjoys at home will become even thinner if it gives Putin the excuse to launch a military offensive. Once again, the Middle East ably demonstrates the complexities of international politics – and that none of the options are good ones, even for the most well-intentioned of policymakers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Reich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Barack Obama’s decision to authorise the bombing of the forces of the Islamic State, or ISIS as it is commonly known, in northern Iraq has justifiably caught many observers by surprise. After all, the…Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.