President Higgins meets with survivor on tenth anniversary of Yazidi genocide

President Higgins meets with survivor on tenth anniversary of Yazidi genocide

Date: Mon 9th Sep, 2024 | 17:13

Uachtarán na hÉireann, President Michael D. Higgins and his wife Sabina today met with representatives of and advocates for the Yazidi community at Áras an Uachtaráin. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the start of the Yazidi genocide, carried out by ISIS in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017.

Those in attendance included Natia Navrouzov, Executive Director of Yazda, and Shireen Khero Khudeeda, a survivor of the genocide who spent three years in captivity.

The Yazidi genocide left 5,000 people dead or missing, with 6,000 women and children taken into slavery and over 400,000 people, two thirds of the Yazidi population, displaced from Northern Iraq.

President Higgins has had a sustained interest in the plight of the Yazidi people, previously meeting with Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad at Áras an Uachtaráin in November 2016. Ms Murad went on to be jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

At the meeting, the representatives of the community spoke with the President of the importance of transitional justice, and of the international community retaining a focus on the Yazidi people to ensure that their experiences are appropriately recorded and their views taken into account in the work to assist their return to their former homeplaces.

ENDS