KRG 'stands' with Yezidi community, Kurdistan PM says in meeting with activist

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Sunday met with Yezidi (Ezidi) activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, reiterating Erbil’s support for the minority group.

“We reflected on yesterday’s reburial of 104 Yazidi victims of ISIS in Kocho and I emphasized that we’re all wounded by the losses,” Prime Minister Barzani said in a tweeted statement. “We also reviewed ways to collectively accelerate justice through @UNITAD_Iraq.”

Read More: Sinjar re-buries the remains of more than 100 Yezidi "Kocho victims"

The Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL (UNITAD) was established by UN Security Council Resolution 2379 in 2017 “to support domestic efforts to hold ISIL (ISIS) accountable by collecting, preserving, and storing evidence in Iraq of acts that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by the terrorist group.”

In March 2019, the Iraqi government, the KRG, and UNITAD marked the beginning of national efforts to unearth the first mass graves of Yezidi victims of the Islamic State.

Last week, a memorial service for 104 Yezidi victims of the so-called Islamic State was held in Baghdad, attended by senior officials. The remains were transferred to the village of Kocho, where the burial site is located. The victims’ remains had been sent to a forensic lab in Baghdad for medical assessment and as part of the effort to identify the dead.

Displaced Ezidis

Prime Minister Barzani also assured Murad that the Kurdistan Regional Government “stands” with the Ezidi community and “wants to see a safe and dignified return of all Yazidis to their ancestral home,” he added in his tweets.

“In this regard, I reaffirmed our support for the full implementation of the Sinjar Agreement,” the premier concluded.

Over 400,000 displaced Yezidis live outside their home of Shingal, mainly being sheltered within displacement camps in the Kurdistan Region’s refugee camps. Since the rise of the terror group in 2014, the KRG reports that it has hosted over 1.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees.

In early October 2020, the Federal Government of Iraq and the KRG announced they had reached an agreement to restore and normalize the situation in the Sinjar (Shingal) area, where competing armed groups are active, namely the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

The agreement involves understandings on security, civil administration, reconstruction and service rehabilitation, and the return of IDPs.

Read More: KRG and Baghdad reach administrative, security agreement on Sinjar

Another aspect of the meeting between the Kurdish leader and the top Turkish defense official was the bilateral relations between the Kurdistan Region and Turkey, mainly economic cooperation such as trade and investment.

Editing by Khrush Najari