Ten years after the Yazidi genocide: UN Syria Commission of Inquiry calls for justice, including accountability and effective remedies, for ISIL crimes

GENEVA (3 August 2024) - Ten years after ISIL attacked the Yazidi people of Sinjar, killing, displacing and capturing men, women, boys and girls and destroying the 400,000-strong community, the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic calls for justice and accountability for ISIL crimes. In a position paper the Commission says that survivors and victims of the Yazidi genocide and ISIL crimes, as well as women and children held solely for their perceived affiliation to ISIL should be immediately released from unlawful detention in Northeast Syria and repatriated where possible and supported to rebuild their lives.

“The tragedy of the Yazidis, still ongoing, is also another urgent reminder that alleged members of ISIL from third country states in Northeast Syria detention should be repatriated and prosecuted for international crimes, including gender-based crimes, in national courts. We emphasize that survivors should be central to these efforts,” said Commission Chair Paulo Pinheiro.

On 3 August 2014, ISIL started its devastating assault on the Yazidi people of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq close to the border with Syria. The Commission documented how ISIL committed genocide as well as multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes through mass executions, forced religious conversions to Islam, enslavement and widespread sexual violence against women and girls. Following the attack on Sinjar, ISIL forcibly transferred thousands of captured Yazidis into Syria where girls as young as nine were subjected to sexual slavery and Yazidi boys as young as seven were forcibly trained for combat roles and suicide missions.

During its control over areas of Northeast Syria, ISIL systematically discriminated against women and girls as a matter of policy. ISIL members subjected Yazidi women and girls to enslavement, torture, inhuman treatment, murder and rape, including through sexual slavery, as part of their genocidal campaign. Women and girls were stoned on charges of adultery and were forced into marriage with fighters. ISIL placed women and girls under the control of male relatives, restricted their freedom of movement and removed them from public life. Those found to violate ISIL’s strict dress code, most commonly women and girls and including some as young as ten, were flogged in punishment.

“The self-administration and the states making up the Global Coalition Against Da’esh (ISIL) must step up human rights-compliant efforts to identify and release Yazidi people held in the camps in the Noertheast” said Commissioner Hanny Megally, adding “Yazidis should be provided with meaningful choices regarding return to Iraq, reunification with family members or settlement in third countries with their children. Member states must facilitate these opportunities”

For those wishing to remain in Syria or return to Iraq, the international community should provide adequate funding of humanitarian responses including gender- and age-sensitive health, education, shelter, livelihoods, psychosocial, reintegration and rehabilitation programmes for the Yazidi community.

After the fall of Baghouz in March 2019 when ISIL lost its territorial hold in Syria, tens of thousands of people, mostly women and young boys and girls, assumed to be family members of ISIL fighters with many enslaved Yazidi women and girls among them, were detained in internment camps, including Al Hawl and Rawj in Northeast Syria. Today, some 44,000 women and children remain in these detention camps in Northeast Syria, including around 27,000 children. Two thirds are foreigners, from Iraq and more than 60 other countries. They are not able to leave and are detained indefinitely.

“Captured Yazidi women, girls, and boys, survivors and victims of the Yazidi genocide and other ISIL crimes, are still held alongside their persecutors in these dehumanising conditions in the Northeast Syria camps today. The international community should be supporting their recovery and well-being and pursuit of justice, not perpetuating the atrocities they have survived”, said Commissioner Lynn Welchman.

Read full text of position paper by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic

Read 2016 report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic: “They came to destroy”: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis

Background: The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic was established on 22 August 2011 by the Human Rights Council through resolution S-17/1.The mandate of the Commission is to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law since March 2011 in the Syrian Arab Republic. The Human Rights Council also tasked the Commission with establishing the facts and circumstances that may amount to such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and, where possible, to identify those responsible with a view of ensuring that perpetrators of violations, including those that may constitute crimes against humanity, are held accountable. The Human Rights Council has repeatedly extended the Commission's mandate since then, most recently until 31 March 2025.

Get more information on the work of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

For media requests, please contact: Johan Eriksson, UN Syria Commission of Inquiry Media Adviser, at +41 76 691 0411 / johan.eriksson@un.org; or Todd Pitman, Media Adviser, Investigative Mandates, at +41 76 691 17 61 / todd.pitman@un.org; or Pascal Sim, Human Rights Council Media Officer at +41 22 917 9763 / simp@un.org