Ezidi activists boost their efforts to put the issue of missing Ezidis, at the hand of the extremist jihadists of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria ISIS, in a legal framework by amendment of law of the Kurdistan parliament of Iraq.
Law number 3 in 1999 issued by the Kurdish parliament regarding rights of the missing from 1980 to 1991 due to the policies and campaigns of the Iraqi regime hen, led by Saddam Hussein, head of Ba’th party.
“We want the Kurdistan region to enlist missing Ezidis and those abducted by Daesh in the law of the missing to guarantee their rights,” said Kachi Kocho, a resident of Kocho village, who 30 members of her family are still missing at the hands of ISIS.
Kocho has no idea her relatives were brought to what destiny so she works hard to guarantee their rights legally.
On August 3, 2014, ISIS took over Mosul and committed genocide against the ethno-religious Ezidi minority. Thousands were slaughtered and hundreds of thousands fled to Shingal Mount and camps in the adjacent Kurdish region.
Kurdistan Regional Government KRG office for liberation of abducted Ezidis states that 6417 Ezidis, mainly women and Children, were enslave by IS fighters yet up today 2,700 of them are missing.
Over 80 mass graves tens of individual graves were found in Shingal and its suburbs yet few of it have been exhumed.
An Ezidi girl in a ceremony for commemoration of August 2014 Genocide at the hands of Daesh. Photo by Yazda Organization
Law for the missing in Iraqi Kurdistan sates following four years, a missing person can be registered dead upon a request of the family or relatives and certificate of death can be issued.
Khairi Ali, head of Ezidi organization for documentation in Shingal, said they have held several meetings and workshops with government official, legal experts and relatives of the abducted and the missing about amendment of the law which will become a support for the relatives in the international community.
“A draft to be prepared soon and we hope an article about missing Ezidis to be included to the law and the MPs to vote for it unanimously,” Ali said.
Iraqi law number 78 in 1980 for guardian of the minors, can determine the death of a missing person once proof provided or following four years of disappearance.
Hadia Murad, Ezidi MP of the Kurdish regional parliament, said the Kurdish law is composed of five articles about Kurdish missing people so “we want to add article for the Ezidis abducted gone missing on August 3, 2014.”
Murad says relative of the missing Ezidis were involved in the process and they will try to ass the amendment of the law to the agenda of a session of the Kurdish parliament soon.
Early March, Iraqi parliament ratified a law for reparation of Ezidi and other religious minority women and men survivors of ISIS atrocities. The Ezidi Female Survivors Law, referred to the Iraqi parliament by the Iraqi President Barham Salih in March 2019, provides support and rehabilitation for the community, particularly the female members who escaped Islamic State abduction and slavery.
