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By Shelly Kittleson

BAGHDAD - March marks the one-year anniversary of an Iraqi law meant to grant financial compensation to victims of the Yezidi genocide.

The Iraqi parliament passed the Yezidi Survivors Law one year ago this month after debating it for two years. However, civil society organizations in the country warn that insufficient funds have been allocated to implement it.

Meanwhile, continued insecurity in the Yezidi ethno-religious group's traditional homeland in northwestern Iraq and insufficient funds to implement the law leaves little for IDPs and refugees from the suffering ethno-religious minority to go back to.

The Coalition for Just Reparations (C4JR), an alliance of Iraqi civil society organizations, held a press conference in Baghdad earlier this month to mark the anniversary and claimed no funding had yet been granted for its implementation this year.

A statement issued by the coalition claimed that:" this groundbreaking law is one of the very few examples of states taking deliberate action to specifically address the rights and needs of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence".

It stressed, however, that "any law is only as good as its implementation" and that: "Apart from the preliminary emergency funding allocated in 2021, no financial means have, as of yet, been envisaged to support the sustainable and thorough implementation of the law in 2022." Thousands of members of the ethno-religious group were killed, displaced or abducted after the Islamic State (ISIS) took over their area in the northwestern part of Iraq close to both the Turkish and the Syrian border in August 2014.

Over 2,000 women - many of whom enslaved and tortured sexually, psychologically, and physically by ISIS fighters - remain missing.

Some have been found in recent months in the al-Hol IDP camp thought to house only family members of ISIS in northeastern Syria, infamous for the risks and poor conditions within the camp. Others were taken by ISIS fighters who "married" them to other areas of Syria.

Thousands of Yezidi remain internally displaced within Iraq, most of whom in the Kurdistan Region, almost five years after the country declared victory against ISIS in 2017.

Many others fled abroad with a significant number leaving to Germany, where there had been a large Yezidi community even before the emergence of ISIS. It was a German court that in December of last year held the world's first criminal trial addressing genocide against the Yezidis, leading to the conviction of a man known as Taha Al. J for genocide and crimes against humanity. The case marked the first time a former ISIS member had been convicted of genocide.

Numerous refugees who returned to Iraq on flights from the border between Belarus and Poland late last year, amid freezing conditions and a sealed border, were from the Yezidi minority group.

Some of the Yazidis that arrived in Erbil on humanitarian flights in the autumn said that they did not have funds even for transportation back to the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps that had previously been their homes for years.

Many now watch the open-door policy towards Ukrainians fleeing their home country as well with something akin to despair.

Late last month, the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS (UNITAD) began digging up seven mass graves in the Yezidi-majority town of Sinjar, much of which was destroyed by ISIS and the fighting to retake it from the group.

The presence of several non-state armed groups operating in the Sinjar area also prevents the return of IDPs and remains a source of instability. An agreement signed in late 2020 to remove these groups - including the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which trained and engaged in recruitment for a local branch of fighters - remains unimplemented.

Though bombs are not falling on them and they are no longer being rounded up and shot in mass, many Yezidis fear a slow death in an area filled with painful memories while depending indefinitely on humanitarian aid in camps for survival.

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Iraq: Little to return to for Yezidi IDPs and refugees - General news - ANSAMed - ANSAmed