Yazidi genocide

Yazidi genocide
Part of the War in Iraq (2013–2017) and Syrian civil war
Left-to-right from top: Yazidi refugees receiving support from the International Rescue Committee; American relief worker of USAID conversing with Iraqi locals near Sinjar; packaged bundles of water inside of a C-17 Globemaster III prior to an emergency airdrop by the United States Air Force.
Location	Iraq and Syria[1]
Date	June 2014 – December 2017
Target	Yazidis
Attack type	Genocidal massacre; genocidal rape and sexual slavery of women and girls; and forced conversion to Islam
Deaths	~5,000 (per the United Nations)[2][3][4]
Injured	Unknown
Victims	4,200–10,800 kidnapped or captive[5] and 500,000+ displaced
Perpetrator	Islamic State
Defenders	Peshmerga  Iraqi Armed Forces  CJTF–OIR  Kurdistan Workers' Party[6][7][8][9]  People's Protection Units[6][7][8]  Women's Protection Units  Sinjar Alliance

The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017.^[1][10][11] It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking people^[12] who are indigenous to Kurdistan who practice Yazidism, a monotheistic Iranian ethnoreligion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition.

Over a period of three years, Islamic State militants trafficked thousands of Yazidi women and girls and killed thousands of Yazidi men;^[13] the United Nations reported that the Islamic State killed about 5,000 Yazidis^[5] and trafficked about 10,800 Yazidi women and girls in a "forced conversion campaign"^[14][15] throughout Iraq. By 2015, upwards of 71% of the global Yazidi population was displaced by the genocide, with most Yazidi refugees having fled to Iraq's Kurdistan Region and Syria's Rojava.^[16][17] The persecution of Yazidis, along with other religious minorities, took place after the Islamic State's Northern Iraq offensive of June 2014.^[18][19]

Amidst numerous atrocities committed by the Islamic State, the Yazidi genocide attracted international attention and prompted the United States to establish CJTF–OIR, a military coalition consisting of many Western countries and Turkey, Morocco, and Jordan. Additionally, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia made emergency airdrops to support Yazidi refugees who had become trapped in the Sinjar Mountains due to the Islamic State's Northern Iraq offensive of August 2014. During the Sinjar massacre, in which the Islamic State killed and abducted thousands of trapped Yazidis, the United States and the United Kingdom began carrying out airstrikes on the advancing Islamic State militants, while the People's Defense Units and the Kurdistan Workers' Party jointly formed a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the rest of the Yazidi refugees from the Sinjar Mountains.^[20]

The United Nations, and several other organizations, including the Council of Europe and the European Union, have designated the anti-Yazidi campaign by the Islamic State as a genocide,^[1] as have the United States, Canada, Armenia, and Iraq.^[1][10]