We document
We gather survivors' testimonies and record what happened to each family and each village, so the evidence outlives the people who deny it.
Survivor-led · Sinjar, Iraq
We survived.
We survived.
Now we lead.
A survivor-led alliance of young Yazidis. We were children when the genocide took us. Today we document what happened and decide our own future.
Sinjar, Iraq The Yazidi genocide memorial.
August 2014
The genocide we survived
On 3 August 2014, ISIS attacked Sinjar, the Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq. Within days thousands of Yazidis were killed. Thousands more, overwhelmingly women and children, were abducted and enslaved.
Many of us were those children. We were taken, separated from everyone we loved, and made to forget who we are. We found our way back. This alliance is what we built with what remained.
The United Nations and parliaments around the world have recognized these crimes as genocide.
3 Aug 2014
The day the genocide began, in Sinjar
6,417
Yazidis abducted, most of them women and children
≈2,600
Still missing today, their families still waiting
80+
Mass grave sites found across the district
Abductees: KRG Office of Abductees' Affairs. Other figures from UN investigations and Yazidi rights documentation.
Sinjar district · August 2014
What happened, and where
Press play to follow the genocide across Sinjar, in the order it unfolded.
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The events are listed below in order.
Fig. 1 Locations are approximate. Figures are documented estimates from UN investigations, survivor testimony and reporting, and are still being established by survivors, investigators and families.
Who we are
A survivor-led alliance
We are young Yazidis who survived the genocide as children. We work to empower survivors, defend our rights, and build partnerships with local and international institutions.
We are not subjects of someone else's report. We organize, we document, and we speak for ourselves.
We were children when we were taken. We refuse to be only a story others tell. We speak, we organize, and we decide for ourselves.
Our work
What we do
We advocate
We press for recognition, for the search for the missing, and for the Yazidi Survivors Law to be fully carried out.
We connect survivors
We link survivors to legal, medical and psychological support, and to each other.
Stand with us
Ways to help
You do not have to be Yazidi to stand with survivors.
We need your help to keep this project going. If you can support the work with funding or a donation, or know someone who can, please reach out to us.
Email us
info.yazidichildsurvivors@gmail.com
Stay with us
Leave us your address
We write rarely, and only when there is something worth telling: a grave opened, a name returned, a law finally carried out. Your address stays with the alliance and goes to nobody else.
This form needs JavaScript. Write to us instead and we will add you to the list: info.yazidichildsurvivors@gmail.com