Extremist group captured and enslaved about 7,000 women and girls from minority groups in northern Iraq
For Sarab Essa, a member of Iraq’s Yazidi minority that was enslaved and brutalised by ISIS, securing a monthly payment through a compensation programme is a small victory in a long and arduous journey towards healing and justice.
“The monthly payment is appreciated, but it’s not enough,” Ms Essa, 21, who spent five years in captivity, told media.
“We need more than just financial compensation to rebuild our lives and reclaim our dignity.”
In March 2021, the Iraqi parliament approved a law that recognised the crimes committed by ISIS against Yazidi, Christian and Shiite Shabak and Turkmen minorities as genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Yazidi Female Survivors Law aims to provide “compensation, financially and morally” and to “secure a decent life” for survivors through rehabilitation and care.
It covers compensation and reforms for survivors, including monthly payments, the provision of medical and psychological care, the granting of residential land, the right to education without restrictions on age, as well as prioritising survivors when it comes to public sector employment.
The law also states that the government will continue to search for those still in captivity, co-ordinate steps to identify bodies in mass graves and ensure that perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity are held accountable.
Three years on, the main progress has been in the area of monthly payments, which have been disbursed to some survivors.
However, other crucial forms of compensations have not materialised, leaving Yazidi women such as Ms Essa continuing their fight for justice.
Ms Essa was about 12 when she and her two sisters were captured in mid-2014 by ISIS, which took control of about a third of the country. They were then sold into slavery.
Thousands of Yazidi women and children were enslaved by the extremists, along with others from Christian, Shiite Turkmen and Shiite Shabak communities.
ISIS took thousands of Yazidis captive from their ancestral homeland of Sinjar, near the Syrian border, and surrounding areas and proceeded to kill the rest.
Thousands of young women were forced into sexual slavery by the extremists while mass graves containing the bodies of thousands killed are still being uncovered.
Ms Essa was sold many times by the families of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria, where the terrorist group also overran lands.
“They were the hardest days of my life,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “Every day passed as if it was a year. The living conditions were difficult and life was tough.”
“I was a child and my whole life revolved around my childhood,” she said. “Their brutality deprived me of the chance to live my childhood and made it a tough one.”
She was reunited with her family in July 2019 while her two sisters returned in 2016 and 2020.
Like others, Ms Essa applied for compensation under the government programme in September 2022, when the application portal was first launched.
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