August 3, 2014 was a day like no other for Pari Ibrahim. She was in the Netherlands when frantic phone calls and texts starting coming in. Relatives and friends were telling her that ISIS had invaded their homeland in the district of Sinjar, in northern Iraq. They had started killing Yezidi men and taking Yezidi women and children to be sold into marriage and sexual slavery.
Members of this ancient ethnoreligious minority often say that ISIS’ atrocities amount to the 74th genocide against them. And they spurred Pari to start the Free Yezidi Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. She had just received a James Foley Humanitarian Award before we spoke.
We discussed her work locating, supporting, and empowering these women. She wouldn’t share many details on the rescue operations or the networks and intelligence used to guide them. But she told me that some 2,500 women remain captive, and the trafficking networks have grown more complex.
One women was found in Gaza, forced to marry a Hamas fighter. Others are in hiding in Syria’s Al-Hol refugee camp, too afraid to identify themselves amid the followers of ISIS inside. And about 11 years later, some of the Yezidi girls who were captured when they were very young may not even remember who they are anymore.
This is the third part of a three-part series on women who have been wrongly imprisoned. Watch part one here and part two here.
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