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IRAQ-CONFLICT-YAZIDI-IS-CHILDREN-RIGHTS
Children born to IS fathers not considered Yazidi: council
BAGHDAD, April 28, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Children born to Yazidi women as a
result of rape by Islamic State group fighters will not be permitted to join
the community in northern Iraq, the faith’s Supreme Spiritual Council said.
The Yazidi community once numbered around 500,000 members in the
mountainous Sinjar region of northwest Iraq, but it was ravaged by IS’s 2014
sweep into the area.
Jihadists killed Yazidi men, forced boys to join their ranks as fighters
and abducted and imprisoned thousands of Yazidi women as sex slaves.
The children born of those rapes have been the subject of fierce debate in
the insular community, which only recognises children as Yazidis if both
their parents hail from the sect.
Last week, the head of the Supreme Spiritual Council Hazem Tahsin Said
issued what appeared to be a landmark shift, publishing an order “accepting
all survivors (of IS crimes) and considering what they went through to have
been against their will”.
The decision was hailed as “historic” by Yazidi activists, who understood
it to mean that children born of rape would now be allowed to live among
their Yazidi relatives.
But late Saturday, the Council published a clarification that the decision
“does not include children born of rape, but refers to children born of two
Yazidi parents”.
The Yazidi community had long considered any women marrying outside the
sect to no longer be Yazidi, initially including those assaulted by IS in
2014. But Yazidi spiritual leader Baba Sheikh issued a decision the following
year welcoming those women back home, without resolving the fate of their
children.
Many Yazidi women who were kidnapped by IS have escaped in recent years,
and dozens more fled to safety in the last few months as IS’s “caliphate”
crumbled in Syria.
Those who had children with IS fighters faced a difficult choice: either
remain ex-communicated from their Yazidi relatives, or leave the children
behind.
Dozens who returned to the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar in northwest Iraq in
recent months chose the latter.
In Iraq, children inherit the religious sect and nationality of their
father, so those born to Sunni Muslim men would have the same religion.
Those born to suspected IS fighters who are either missing or dead are at
risk of remaining stateless because of lack of proof of their father’s
identity.
Earlier this month, Iraqi President Barham Saleh proposed a bill to
parliament that would provide reparations for Yazidi female survivors of IS
crimes and establish a court to clarify “civil status” issues.
BSS/AFP/ARS/2005 hrs