Widad Akreyi is a Kurdish health expert and human rights activist. She has co-founded the human rights organization Defend International and is the author of several books about both health issues and human rights.
Yazidis, also spelled Yezidis, are a Kurdish-speaking endogamous religious group indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok.
Boko Haram, officially known as Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād, is an Islamist terrorist jihadist organization based in northeastern Nigeria, which is also active in Chad, Niger, northern Cameroon, and Mali. In 2016, the group split, resulting in the emergence of a hostile faction known as the Islamic State's West Africa Province.
The Boko Haram insurgency began in July 2009, when the militant Islamist and jihadist rebel group Boko Haram started an armed rebellion against the government of Nigeria. The conflict is taking place within the context of long-standing issues of religious violence between Nigeria's Muslim and Christian communities, and the insurgents' ultimate aim is to establish an Islamic state in the region.
A series of attacks occurred during Christmas Day church services in northern Nigeria on 25 December 2011. There were bomb blasts and shootings at churches in Madalla, Jos, Gadaka, and Damaturu. A total of 41 people were reported dead.
Women in Syria are active participants in social, economic and political factions of Syrian society. They constitute 49.9% of Syria's population. According to World Bank data from 2021, there are around 10.6 million women in Syria. However, Syrian women and girls still experience challenges, especially since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. They suffer from discrimination, lack of access to suitable healthcare and challenges precipitated by wartime violence.
The Islamic State (IS) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a terroristic manner. Sexual violence, as defined by The World Health Organization includes “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.” IS has used sexual violence to undermine a sense of security within communities, and to raise funds through the sale of captives into sexual slavery.
Yazidis in Germany may refer to people born in or residing in Germany of Yazidi origin, an ethnic group or Kurdish group who are strictly endogamous.
Quasi-state-level jihadist groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, have captured and enslaved women and children, often for sexual slavery. In 2014 in particular, both groups organised mass kidnappings of large numbers of girls and younger women.
The condition of human rights in the territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS) is considered to be among the worst in the world. The Islamic State's policies included acts of genocide, torture and slavery. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) stated in November 2014 that the Islamic State "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey". Many Islamic State actions of extreme criminality, terror, recruitment and other activities have been documented in the Middle East.
Starting in late January 2015, a coalition of West African troops launched an offensive against the Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi-born Yazidi human rights activist based in Germany. In 2014, as part of the Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State, she was abducted from her hometown of Kocho in Iraq and much of her community was massacred. After losing most of her family, Murad was held as an Islamic State sex slave for three months, alongside thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.
The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017. It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking people who are indigenous to Kurdistan who practice Yazidism, a monotheistic Iranian ethnoreligion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition.
Yazda: Global Yazidi Organization, is a United States-based global Yazidi nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO) advocacy, aid, and relief organization. Yazda was established to support the Yazidi, especially in northern Iraq, specifically Sinjar and Nineveh Plain, and northeastern Syria, where the Yazidi community has, as part of a deliberate "military, economic, and political strategy," been the focus of a genocidal campaign by ISIL that included mass murder, the separation of families, forced religious conversions, forced marriages, sexual assault, physical assault, torture, kidnapping, and slavery.
The terrorist group, self-proclaimed Islamic State (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant also known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has committed several fundamental violations of children's rights in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria The conventions protecting children's rights is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is the most ratified international human rights treaty in history which established the widely supported view that children and young persons have the same basic general human rights as adults and also specific rights that recognize their special needs. A further two additional protocols were adopted by the UN General Assembly on 25 May 2000 covering the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. In ISIL's rise in the recent years, they have committed various violations of the and its protocols, which have been signed and ratified by Iraq and Syria.
Kocho is a village in Sinjar District, south of the Sinjar Mountains in the Nineveh Governorate of Iraq. It is considered one of the disputed territories of Northern Iraq and is populated by Yazidis. The village came to international attention in 2014 due to the genocide of Yazidis committed by the Islamic State.
The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict," according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee announcement on 5 October 2018 in Oslo, Norway. "Both laureates have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes," according to the award citation. After reading the citation, Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen told reporters that the impact of this year's award is to highlight sexual abuse with the goal that every level of governance take responsibility to end such crimes and impunities.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 2388 condemned human trafficking, in particular by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (IS), as well as human rights violations by various African terror groups. The resolution was passed in a 15–0 vote, unanimously adopted by members of United Nations Security Council (UNSC). on November 21, 2017.
The persecution of Yazidis has been ongoing since at least the 12th century. Yazidis are an endogamous and mostly Kurmanji-speaking minority, indigenous to Kurdistan. The Yazidi religion is regarded as "devil-worship" by Muslims and Islamists. Yazidis have been persecuted by the surrounding Muslims since the medieval ages, most notably by Safavids, Ottomans, neighbouring Muslim Arab and Kurdish tribes and principalities. After the 2014 Sinjar massacre of thousands of Yazidis by ISIL, which started the ethnic, cultural, and religious genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq, Yazidis still face discrimination from the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Yazidism in Iraq refers to adherents of Yazidism from Iraq who reside mainly in the districts of Shekhan, Simele, Zakho and Tel Kaif, in Bashiqa and Bahzani, and the areas around Sinjar mountains in Sinjar district. According to estimates, the number of Yazidis in Iraq is up to 700,000. According to the Yazda aid organization, just over half a million Yazidis lived throughout Iraq before August 2014.
