Yet Another Genocide at Europe’s Doorsteps? Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Yazidi Women Twenty Years after Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina Cover Image

Yet Another Genocide at Europe’s Doorsteps? Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Yazidi Women Twenty Years after Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina
Yet Another Genocide at Europe’s Doorsteps? Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Yazidi Women Twenty Years after Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Zuzana Pavlekova
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Criminology, Studies in violence and power, Victimology
Published by: Udruženje “Pravnik”
Keywords: Europe; sexual violence; gender-based violence; Rwanda; Bosnia and Herzegovina;

Summary/Abstract: Analyzing existing evidence of sexual violence exercised by IS fighters and their affiliates against Yazidi women in the IS-controlled territories of northern Iraq and Syria between June 2014 and February 2015, this article argues that genocide was demonstrably taking place against female members of the Yazidi community at the given time and place. It identifies three types of acts of sexual violence through which genocide was committed and infers the intent to destroy Yazidis as a group from the juxtaposition of three elements: individual statements of IS-fighters, systemic pattern of abuse, and the official IS policy facilitating and encouraging the acts in question. With up to several thousand Yazidi women remaining in IS captivity, it concludes that it is very likely that genocide continues to take place in the respective territories until today.

  • Issue Year: 6/2015
  • Issue No: 6
  • Page Range: 63-74
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English