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It's On U was a campaign launched in 2015 in order to draw attention to ISIS's crimes against the Yazidis and bring ISIS before the International Criminal Court (ICC) so it could be charged with genocide.
In late August 2015, Luis Moreno Ocampo, former Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Kerry Propper, financial entrepreneur, activist and producer of the documentary film Watchers of the Sky , filmmaker Taylor Krauss, and Uncommon Union co-founder Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown, traveled to Northern Iraq to support the co-founder of Yazda, Murad Ismael. [1] The group met with surviving victims in refugee camps, Yazidi religious leaders, and members of the Kurdistan regional government, including the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Interior, and the Office of Genocide Documentation.
On September 26, 2015, the group supported Yazda to bring a case against ISIS for genocide crimes to the ICC in The Hague. The report detailed atrocities IS fighters in northern Iraq have perpetrated since August 2014. [2]
During this time the group launched a campaign called "It's On U" to lobby heads of state to recognize the genocide, engage key government officials, and encourage the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to refer the case to the ICC.
In November 2015, Nadia Murad teamed up with Murad Ismael and made a speech at the UNSC. This public appearance gained Nadia Murad recognition as "the face of the Yazidi Genocide." Subsequently, Ismael and Murad traveled around the world meeting with heads of state to ask for their financial and political support.
At the beginning of 2016, the "It's On U" campaign partnered with Global Citizen and RYOT to help reach over a million millennials. Signed petitions from the campaign called on Iraq to refer the case to the ICC.
In May the team traveled to London. The signatures were hand-delivered by Nadia Murad, Philippe Sands, Luis Moreno Ocampo, British MPs, representatives from Yazda, Global Citizen, and Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown to the Iraqi ambassador to the UK.
During this time Amal Clooney worked with It's On U and others to help provide pro bono legal services to Nadia Murad and Yazda. On June 5, 2016, Amal Clooney officially became counsel to them to help bring justice to the Yazidi community for the genocide committed by ISIS. [3]
Sinjar is a town in the Sinjar District of the Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. It is located about five kilometers south of the Sinjar Mountains. Its population in 2013 was estimated at 88,023, and is predominantly Yazidi.
Luis Moreno Ocampo is an Argentine lawyer who served as the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2003 to 2012. Previously, he had played a major role in Argentina's democratic transition (1983–1991).
Amal Clooney is a Lebanese–British barrister. Notable clients of hers include former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko, Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad, and the journalists Maria Ressa, Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova and Mohamed Fahmy.
The Sinjar massacre marked the beginning of the genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, the killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children. It took place in August 2014 in Sinjar city and Sinjar District in Iraq's Nineveh Governorate and was perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The massacre began with ISIL attacking and capturing Sinjar and neighboring towns on 3 August, during its Northern Iraq offensive.
The persecution of Christians by the Islamic State involves the systematic mass murder of Christian minorities, within the regions of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Libya controlled by the Islamic terrorist group Islamic State. Persecution of Christian minorities climaxed following the Syrian civil war and later by its spillover.
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.
The Ezidkhan Command for Liberating Sinjar, known as the Sinjar Alliance, is a joint command of two - initially three - Yazidi militias, the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ), and the Êzîdxan Women's Units (YJÊ). Both of the remaining two militias are supported by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is a Yazidi human rights activist who lives in Germany. In 2014, she was kidnapped from her hometown Kocho and held by the Islamic State for three months.
The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State throughout Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017. It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. The Yazidi people, who are non-Arabs, are indigenous to Kurdistan and adhere to Yazidism, which is an Iranian religion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition. Over a period of three years, Islamic State militants trafficked thousands of Yazidi women and girls and killed thousands of Yazidi men; the United Nations reported that the Islamic State killed about 5,000 Yazidis and trafficked about 10,800 Yazidi women and girls in a "forced conversion campaign" throughout Iraq. By 2015, upwards of 71% of the global Yazidi population was displaced by the genocide, with most Yazidi refugees having fled to Iraq's Kurdistan Region and Syria's Rojava. The persecution of Yazidis, along with other religious minorities, took place after the Islamic State's Northern Iraq offensive of June 2014.
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 Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq or CYCI foundation is a Canadian non-profit organization that aims to free Christian and Yazidi women captured and forced into sex slavery by ISIS.
Nareen Shammo is a Yazidi investigative journalist and a human rights defender.
Lamiya Haji Bashar is a Yazidi human rights activist. She was awarded the Sakharov Prize jointly with Nadia Murad in 2016.
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 August 15, 2018, Turkish airstrikes on Sinjar were two airstrikes on İsmail Özden, a leading member of the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ). Four others were killed in the airstrike.
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.
The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State is an autobiographical book by Nadia Murad in which she describes how she was captured and enslaved by the Islamic State during the Second Iraqi Civil War. The book eventually led to the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Murad.
Nadia’s Initiative is a nonprofit organization founded in 2018 by Nadia Murad that advocates for survivors of sexual violence and aims to rebuild communities in crisis. The launch of this organization was prompted by the Sinjar massacre, a religious persecution of the Yazidi people in Sinjar, Iraq by ISIS in 2014.
On Her Shoulders is a 2018 American documentary film. It was directed by Alexandria Bombach and produced by Hayley Pappas, Brock Williams and Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown under the banner of RYOT Films. The film follows Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad on her three-month tour of Berlin, New York, and Canada, as she met with politicians and journalists to alert the world to the massacres and kidnapping happening in her native land. In 2014, at the age of 19, Murad had been kidnapped with hundreds of other women and girls by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and held as a sex slave; she managed to escape. Also appearing in the film are Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon, Murad Ismael, Simone Monasebian, Michelle Rempel, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Ahmed Khudida Burjus, Amal Clooney, and Luis Moreno Ocampo.
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.
