It is now more than a year since Islamic State attacked the towns around Mount Sinjar, leaving thousands of families in the hands of Isis.
Just as the fight to end sexual violence in conflict was gaining worldwide attention thanks to a star-studded global summit in London, Isis embarked on a campaign of mass rape across northern Iraq and Syria. Estimates vary, but thousands of people are thought to have been kidnapped and taken hostage by the militant group. The vast majority were women and girls, many of whom were raped, sold and dispersed among fighters.
In August 2014, refugees in Duhok’s camps began giving credible evidence of the kind of torture and violence that William Hague and Angelina Jolie Pitt had vowed the world would no longer stand for at the summit two months earlier. Since then, the UK’s tiny Yazidi diaspora has been frantically working to help the hundreds of thousands displaced around Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey. Many are involved in the networks working to locate and rescue those still in captivity. Boys are harder to get out, such is their growing role in the war machine, but hundreds of girls have now escaped; sold or rescued by networks of smugglers.
Though freed from living under the black flag of Isis, their lives are unrecognisable. The gaps in the pledges made at last year’s ending sexual violence conference and the reality of the services being provided to survivors are shamefully stark. Attempting to help plug this gap is 17-year-old Rozen Khalil, a Yazidi refugee living in Coventry who started a petition asking the UK government to help Isis survivors.
Her request is simple: provide those who have managed to escape with healthcare facilities either in the UK or within the camps in which they are living, and help the Yazidi communities trying to rescue their loved ones.
Though various agencies are pitching up their flags and giving the escapees money and basic supplies as part of the wider refugee crisis, only Germany has developed a co-ordinated response, taking survivors out of Iraq to receive specialist healthcare.
The UK government says its money is going into helping establish women’s centres and training security forces.
“Support to survivors is at the heart of the UK’s fight to end sexual violence in conflict,” Middle East minister Tobias Ellwood said. “So far, the UK has provided training in prevention of and response to sexual violence to over 1,000 Kurdish peshmerga, trained hundreds of activists in refugee camps on support for victims, and funded support to Syrian practitioners gathering evidence to allow future prosecutions.”
Overall, the UK has committed £59.5m to help those who have fled Isis in Iraq.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office told me that more than £670,000 has been earmarked for projects promoting “community action” on preventing sexual violence and supporting survivors.
The Department for International Development is supporting sexual and gender-based violence programmes through the UK’s £9m contribution to the Iraq Humanitarian Pooled Fund.
The training given to Peshmerga fighters is significant, being on the frontline of rescues as they recapture territory, but many Yazidis are furious there have been no consequences for the generals who allowed Isis into the towns around Sinjar in the first place.
It’s also worth noting that the UK prosecuting authorities have so far failed to add rape to the charge sheets of the (few) British Isis fighters they have jailed. This is despite the fighters’ boasts on social media, heard in court, for condoms for the “war booty”, and is a worrying signal for the legal battle ahead.
Back on the ground in Duhok, Rozen’s relatives say the community is desperate – and largely unaware the UK is doing anything for the survivors. Of the Isis escapees still there, none spoken to say they have received the specialist health and counselling services they urgently need.
Among the 20,000 refugees the UK has pledged to take from refugee camps around Syria over the next five years, the Yazidi escapees must be prioritised as the most vulnerable and devastated survivors of Isis attacks.
We owe them much more than what Rozen has petitioned for – there is a lot more the UK could and should be doing. The Yazidi community has been pleading with us to help – we have to listen.