SHEKHAN, Duhok — Amina Omer is a 21-year-old Yezidi woman, living at the Mamrashan camp for displaced people in Shekhan, Duhok province. She belongs to a six-member family that needs looking after, so she and her sister work gruelling hours in farmland near the camp to make a living. "We wake up at 3 am and work until midday. It's hot and we get tired. We have to work - we can't survive if we don't. We work for 8000 Iraqi dinars ($6.60). It's low-paying and tiresome work. There is no other job to do except for this one. Me and my family members can't just sit at home and do nothing." Amina and her sister lost their father when he was killed by Islamic State militants who overran the Yezidi town of Shingal in 2014. As an ethnoreligious minority, Yezidis were subject to persecution by ISIS when the extremist group swept through parts of Syria and Iraq. Once a community of some 500,000, the overwhelming majority of Iraq's Yezidis have either sought refuge abroad or remain displaced within the country, some six years after they were forced to leave their homes. Around 360,000 IDPs live in Duhok province alone; most can only access low-paid, seasonal work. Women make up a significant part of the local farming workforce, undertaking farm labour on top of the work they do to raise their families in tough camp conditions. Salar Sheikh Rasheed is a farm owner who hires displaced Yezidis to work on his farm. Of the 60-strong team he employs, 23 are women. "Sometimes, women work harder [than men] because they work silently without making trouble, whereas men leave the farm to smoke cigarettes or talk too much," Rasheed said. Yezidi IDP Ikhlas Qasim performs the same work as her male peers while also tending to her child. "I do what men do: I dig the land, water the farm, fertilize the farm and other work," Qasim said. "Sometimes, we earn less than 100,000 dinars ($83.30) [a month] and cannot afford clothes for our kids or feed them. There is no other work to do." Reporting by Naif Ramadhan
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