Nadia Murad Addresses Member States at UNITAD Special Event

On May 12, 2021, the UNITAD team gave a comprehensive briefing on their progress in documenting ISIS’s crimes against the Yazidi community in Iraq. They have begun to exhume mass graves, collect witness testimonies, and reconstruct forensic evidence. This evidence will be available to national courts and some proceedings are already underway. Nadia Murad spoke at the special event and called on the international community to expedite exhumations of mass graves in Sinjar, establish international tribunals, and improve Sinjar’s security.

Watch the full briefing here.

Read her full speech below:

Ambassadors, representatives, Special Advisor Khan: good afternoon. I would like to start by thanking the co-hosts of today’s event. I am also grateful to the members of the Security Council for making UNITAD’s work possible. Special thanks to my friend Karim for tirelessly leading UNITAD’s innovative documentation efforts. It has been an honor working with you. I wish you the best in your new role.

If you had told me when the Security Council was debating UNITAD’s creation that I would be able to bury my brothers within four years, I would not have believed you. I did not think that their remains would be identified or that I would be able to say goodbye and finally lay them to rest. It was too painful to hope when my community had been ignored for so long.

Yet this past February, thanks to multilateral action from member states and the ongoing work of UNITAD, me and many other survivors were able to honor loved ones lost during the Kocho massacre.

Yazidi families wish to return home to Sinjar but living among mass graves is unthinkable. Those who were able to bury relatives in Kocho have gained a piece of closure that is needed to restart our lives. The burial ceremony was a small taste of what comprehensive justice could mean for my community’s healing. It solidified my understanding that accountability is not an abstract legal principle, but something that tangibly affects our everyday lives.

As I recently told Karim, those of us who were able to bury family members earlier this year are considered fortunate. “Fortunate” is difficult to comprehend when you realize that some families identified as many as eight relatives in one mass grave. But the basic dignity of burying a loved one seems like a privilege when the majority of mass graves remain unexhumed. There are thousands of survivors with relatives missing in ISIS captivity or unmarked graves. For many, loss is magnified by uncertainty.

I lost my mother and six of my brothers. I was ripped from my homeland, separated from my sisters and nieces, and sold into sexual slavery alongside too many Yazidi women and children. I may never know what happened to my sisters-in-law or schoolmates. But the horrors I survived pale in comparison to the pain of watching my community continue to suffer.

Seven years have passed. For seven years, more than half of my community has languished in internally displaced camps waiting to return home. For seven years, almost 3,000 women and children have waited to be rescued from captivity and reunited with their families. For seven long years, hundreds of thousands of Yazidi genocide survivors have awaited justice and accountability for the horrific crimes they endured.

I am fearful. Not of ISIS. I am fearful that Yazidis will not receive justice. I worry that mass graves will become landmarks in Sinjar and victims will never receive dignified burials. I am terrified that the world will forget what was done by ISIS, and perpetrators will be free to continue inflicting sexual violence and ethnic cleansing on women and girls like me.

The possibility of repeated persecution is not hypothetical. Yazidis in Iraq were subjected to decades of discrimination and multiple genocides. I cannot help but wonder if accountability for these crimes would have prevented ISIS from repeating history.

The truth is that the evidence collected by UNITAD does not only paint a picture of what happened to Yazidis in 2014. It provides a forecast of what Yazidis, minorities, and women will suffer in the future if you do not act. When we fail to hold terrorist groups accountable for genocide and sexual violence, we invite future groups to commit the same horrendous crimes. This is a dangerous precedent to set.

The United Nations was established to hold parties accountable for genocide and to prevent atrocities. Because of that promise, survivors have put themselves at great personal risk to share their experiences of sexual violence. They have defied taboos and faced stigma in the hopes that you would hold their abusers accountable.

As member states, you have a responsibility to pursue justice for the sake of Yazidis and your own founding principles. Yazidis cannot restart their lives without stable security and governance in Sinjar. We cannot restore our homeland without international support. We cannot begin to heal without trials in national and international courts.

We are thankful to all member states who have supported evidence collection and justice for Yazidis and minorities in Iraq. Now member states have the opportunity to lead the decisive next steps in the path to justice.

With clear evidence that ISIS’s crimes constitute genocide, it is imperative that justice no longer be delayed. I stand before you today to ask you to establish formal legal proceedings. Send the Yazidi case to the ICC or create a court by treaty.

Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government have promised to form special courts to prosecute ISIS. I recognize these efforts by both Baghdad and Erbil. National courts must also abide by international standards. The Yazidi community’s faith in the justice process would be greatly strengthened by oversight from judges versed in international law. For true justice and reconciliation, survivors must see that due process is applied to counts of genocide and sexual violence, not only terrorism.

Evidence reveals that ISIS carefully planned the Yazidi genocide. The international response should be no less thorough. Without accountability, Yazidis are stuck in a cycle of suffering: genocide, sexual violence, impunity, repeat. You all have the power to break this cycle.

Thank you.