IOM: Thousands of Iraqi Yazidis are afraid to return to their villages

Thousands of Iraq’s Yazidis are still afraid to return to their villages and prefer to live in tents on the Sinjar Plateau, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said.

IOM’s spokesperson, Joel Millman, said in a press conference held in Geneva on Tuesday that “rebuilding their lives in their areas is a huge challenge for [the Yazidis], especially since they have nothing at all. Their savings have been depleted, their homes looted and destroyed and their livelihood wiped out.”

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Millman further explained that millions of Iraqis suffer from post-conflict realities in war-ravaged areas, adding that the IOM provided non-food items to more than 600 Yazidi families in villages around Sinjar, situated 120km west of Mosul in northern Iraq, as well as basic household items.

He explained that, for the first time since the conflict against Daesh ended, the organisation has been able to reach Hardan, a village 30km east of Sinjar where more than 300 families used to live but to which only 60 had returned.

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“The village was one of the villages attacked by the Islamic State terrorist organization in 2014, where 70 people were killed and 376 kidnapped; many of whom are still missing. The terrorist group executed hundreds of thousands of Yazidis and enslaved thousands of women and children, forcing hundreds of thousands to escape to Mount Sinjar,” Millman added.