The Yazidi community is most appreciative for the supportive action taken by Western nations in response to the genocidal attack perpetrated by ISIS in August 2014. Yazidis faced the most devastating attack of the 21st century when the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS) targeted them last year with the intent of extermination. Thousands of defenseless Yazidi civilians found themselves trapped on Mount Sinjar where they faced horrific conditions.

ISIL considers the Yazidis as infidels – so called Mushrkiin or devil-worshipers and on this basis, attacked them in their houses in Sinjar, killing men and elders. ISIL then abducted the women and children. The females including young girls were trafficked sex slaves or gifted to ISIL commanders, while young males were sent to camps being forced to convert to Islam, indoctrinated with ISIL’s extremist views and given military training. Those who refused or resisted were killed. By removing the entire Yazidi population from their homeland, inflicting the mental and bodily harm of sexual violence to the women and young girls ISIL ensured that they would not be able to go back to their communities. By forcing the young males to change their religion and to become ISIL fighters, ISIL sought to annihilate the religious identity, traditions and the very existence of the Yazidis. During the attack on the Nineveh Plains, ISIL also destroyed19 Yazidi religious holy places. Yazda estimates ISIS killed 3000, enslaved 5,000-7,000, mostly women and children, and forcefully displaced 400,000 Yazidis (90 percent of the entire Yazidi population in Iraq). More than 3,000 women and children remain in captivity.

The Yazidis, who account for less than three percent of Iraq’s population were single out by ISIS and thousands of radical members of neighboring Muslim tribes whom Yazidis coexisted with for centuries. Iraq and Syrian minorities have all been subject of great suffering on the hands of the radical groups, Yazidi are probably the most affect group. While the turmoil in Syria and Iraq has resulted in mass displacement of civilians in both countries, the Yazidi remain one of the most vulnerable, underserved communities. Immigration Authorities has not addressed the crisis of Yazidi refugees in Turkey and Syria, and since August of last year only a dozen of Yazidis have managed to migrate to safer countries through legal immigration paths set by the UNHCR.

Given the history of persecution against the Yazidi people and the conditions in which they live in in the camps inTurkey and Syria, we believe that a quota should be allocated for Yazidis under refugee resettlement programs.

Yazda submits this report, on behalf of approximately 16,376 Yazidi refugees currently displaced to Turkey and Syria, to countries that agreed to resettle refugees from Turkey and Syria; and request that a quota is to be granted to Yazidi refugees and their petition through UNHCR be expedited. Yazda also urge EU members, USA, Canada and Australia to grant Yazidis refugees priority in their immigration scheme and prompt Yazidis refugees’ interviews who registered with UNHCR since many Yazidis interviews has been delayed as far as 2022.

Conditions in Kurdistan territories of Turkey for the Yazidis have been worsening further in the aftermath of the military conflict in Southeast of Turkey between Turks and the Kurds. On September 30, 2015, a large Turkish force (some five thousand Turkish soldiers) established a military base inside Nusaybin Refugee camp, a camp that houses some three thousands Yazidi refugees, such action and other warfare’s actions near the four major Yazidi Refugee camps put Yazidi refugees’ lives at further greater danger.

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