The Yazidi Genocide: Aftermath For The Yazidi Women

The Syrian Accountability Project invites you all to a discussion on the aftermath of the Yazidi genocide. This discussion will revolve around a 2019 decision by the Yazidi Supreme Spiritual Council which has excluded Yazidi women from returning to their community if they chose to bring their children born out of ISIS rape. The Yazidis are a small, secular community in northern Iraq, in the Sinjar region. The decision they made was based on a religious one, where in Islam, the child retains the religion of the father. The Council concluded the children born of ISIS rape were not allowed as a member of the Yazidi community, leaving both the children and the mothers in a limbo. 

A team of writers from both Syracuse University College of Law and University of Michigan Law School collaborated in forming this white paper. The paper discusses the decision and how it affected the Yazidi women and children. It analyzes what it means for Iraq to be signatory to four different international treaties and how the legislation the country’s still working on can be altered to be inclusive of the Yazidi women in receiving reparations and support. 

Professor David M. Crane: Professor Crane was the Founding Chief Prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal for West Africa called the Special Court for Sierra Leone. He is also a retired member of the Senior Executive Service of the United States, a drafter of the Department of Defense’s Law of War Program, and a retired professor at Syracuse University College of Law. He founded Syrian Accountability Project and the Journal of Global Rights and Organization and Impunity Watch News at Syracuse University College of Law.

Professor James Johnson: Professor Johnson joined the Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2003 as Senior Trial Attorney and was named Chief of Prosecutions in 2006. After he left the SCSL in 2012 he served for three years as President and CEO of the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York. Since 2013 he has been an Adjunct Professor of Law and Director of the Henry T. King War Crimes Research Office, Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2018, he launched the Yemen Accountability Project under which 70 CWRU law students are preparing case files for the eventual prosecution of persons responsible for atrocities in Yemen.