Yazidi genocide
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.
| Yazidi genocide | |
|---|---|
| Part of the War in Iraq (2013–2017) and Syrian civil war | |
Left-to-right from top: Yazidi refugees receiving support from the International Rescue Committee; American relief worker of USAID conversing with Iraqi locals near Sinjar; packaged bundles of water inside of a C-17 Globemaster III prior to an emergency airdrop by the United States Air Force. | |
| Location | Iraq and Syria |
| Date | June 2014 – December 2017 |
| Target | Yazidi people |
Attack type | Genocidal massacre; genocidal rape and sexual slavery of women and girls; and forced conversion to Islam |
| Deaths | ~5,000 (per the United Nations) |
| Injured | Unknown |
| Victims | 4,200–10,800 kidnapped or captive and 500,000+ displaced |
| Perpetrator | Islamic State |
| Defenders | |
| Motive | Islamic fundamentalism |
| Part of a series on |
| Genocide |
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| Issues |
| 15th–19th century genocides |
| Early 20th century genocides |
| World War II (1939–1945) |
| Cold War (1940s–1991) |
| Contemporary genocides |
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Amidst numerous atrocities committed by the Islamic State, the Yazidi genocide attracted international attention and prompted the United States to establish CJTF–OIR, a large military coalition consisting of many Western countries and Turkey, Morocco, and Jordan. Additionally, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia made emergency airdrops to support Yazidi refugees who had become trapped in the Sinjar Mountains due to the Islamic State's Northern Iraq offensive of August 2014. During the Sinjar massacre, in which the Islamic State killed and abducted thousands of the trapped Yazidis, the United States and the United Kingdom began carrying out airstrikes on the advancing Islamic State militants, while the People's Defense Units and the Kurdistan Workers' Party jointly formed a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the rest of the Yazidi refugees from the Sinjar Mountains.
In addition to the United Nations, several countries and organizations have designated the anti-Yazidi campaign of the Islamic State as a definite genocide. These include: the Council of Europe and the European Union, the United States, Canada, Armenia, and Iraq.