By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor After a two year long impasse, the Iraqi Parliament enacted law recompensing Yazidi and other similarly stationed ethnic groups for the genocide and other crimes against humanity they suffered at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It is hard to imagine how any human being could be made whole after having suffered such inhumanity prosecuted against these people. The Iraqi Government does deserve praise for making a credible and genuine effort to afford them a promise of compensation and opportunities to earn a more promising and just future within their country and society in general. Iraqi President Barham Salih tweeted the legislation, “is a victory for the victims [and] our daughters who have been subjected to the most heinous violations and crimes of ISIS genocide.” The law provides recognition by the Iraqi Government of the genocide, which up until then was only officially so by the Kurdistan Regional Government in the North. In August of 2014 ISIL attacked Sinjar district in Northwestern Iraq, resident to hundreds of thousands of Yazidis. Many who were able fled into the mountainous areas to escape the conflict only to consequently suffer exposure to elements, lack of food and water supplies, and the continual threat from homicide, abduction into sexual slavery, forced marriage, impression into military service, and other inhumane treatment by marauding terrorist forces. The first few days of the siege cost over three thousand civilian lives and beset their community with in too many cases years of humiliation, abuse and kidnappings. The original draft of the legislation provided compensation for Yazidi women victimized by ISIL but after further deliberation on expanding the scope of benefits offered the bill was extended to other ethnic and religious groups, such as Turkmen, Shabak, and Christians of both sexes. An official directorate was formed to process applications from individual victims and to dispense compensation to those approved. I tried to locate for you the reader a translation of the law into the English but was successful only in finding one of an earlier draft. Much of what is offered below persisted into the final law so it conveys much of the substance of the measure and the framework provided. Translation was made by Dr. Amy L. Beam on March 3, 2021, via ekurd.net and “should not be considered the final legal wording or numbering.”
Article 1For the purpose of this law…
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