New law offers redress for Yazidis

The Yazidi Female Survivors law was passed in the Iraqi parliament on Monday, offering reparation and redress to survivors of ISIS, among them, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad. The law is also the first official recognition of the acts of genocide against the Yazidis in 2014.

«The passage of Iraq’s Yazidi Survivors Bill is an important first step in acknowledging the gender-based trauma of sexual violence and the need for tangible redress”, said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. Murad is herself a survirvor of sexual violence. She belongs to the religious minority Yazidi, and in 2014,her village in northern Iraq was attacked by ISIS. Her mother at dsix of her brothers were executed and Nadia Murad was abducted and sold as a sex slave together with thousands of other Yezidi girls and women. Since her escape, she has been working to rescue other missing Yezidis and support their reintegration to society through her organisation Nadias Initiative. Still, more than 2000 Yezidis are missing.

It is important that the new law is followed up with support of the reintegrating of survivors, Murad said.