ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Coalition for Just Reparations (C4JR) on Tuesday hosted a press conference in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to mark one year since the passing of the Yazidi Survivors Law (YSL), intended to provide assistance to victims of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq.
C4JR representatives in a statement assessed the progress made thus far by the Iraqi Council of Ministers on implementing the Yazidi Survivors Law in an event at a Baghdad hotel exactly one year after the law's passing.
The alliance highlighted "great progress" regarding the law's implementation, noting several advancements in its enactment such as the "appointment of the Director-General of the Directorate of Survivors' Affairs [a special body established to facilitate implementation of the law], and the opening of a temporary office in Mosul to accommodate this directorate."
Despite progress, however, C4JR affirmed that "substantial effort" is needed to ensure the process's effectiveness, accessibility, and accountability. They emphasized on the need to build upon the achievements of the newly-opened directorate, or else risk the process being halted or reverted.
Kurdistan Democratic Party's (KDP) Shakhawan Abdullah, recently elected as the deputy speaker of the Iraqi parliament, also commented on the law on Tuesday, saying "we will work to implement the law of Yazidi survivors of ISIS terrorist violence."
While emergency funding was allocated to the law's implementation in 2021, no financial means has so far been granted in 2022 according to the alliance.
The Yazidi Survivors Law formally recognizes acts of genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated by ISIS against the Yazidi, Christian, Turkmen, and Shabak communities by ISIS. It envisages a fixed salary, the provision of land, and allocates two percent of public sector jobs.
C4JR is an alliance of 32 Iraqi civil society organizations representing Iraq's linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity and supporting reparation claims of survivors and other victims of crimes perpetrated during the conflict with ISIS.
ISIS seized control of large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria in 2014. Iraq's Yazidis were particularly targeted as the group reigned terror on the religious minority's heartland of Shingal, killing around 5,000 Yazidi men, many of whom were executed and dumped in mass graves, according to the United Nations (UN). Around 7,000 women and girls, some as young as nine, were held in sexual slavery with thousands still missing.
Last week, another painful memory resurfaced for the Yazidi community as the exhumation of mass graves of ISIS victims containing 131 bodies took place in their heartland.
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