The Uphill Task of Rebuilding for Yazidi Families

Sinjar, 12 December 2022 – Barfi Sardashti greeted 2014 with the arrival of a newborn child and was embracing motherhood. Her happiness, however, would be short-lived with the arrival of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in her hometown of Til Ezer, Sinjar, Iraq a few months later.

On the third of August that year, ISIL launched its offensive in Sinjar, targeting the Yezidis with an attack that would result in the killing of thousands from this minority ethnic community which has long faced persecution and marginalization.

Barfi fled with her Yazidi community, taking refuge in the mountains of Sinjar as ISIL hunted them down – killing the men and enslaving the women before raping them.

For a month, Barfi and her family survived in an internal displacement camp in the mountains with the constant threat of attack from the ISIL group who continued to surround the mountain to ferret out more Yazidi. Barfi recollects her fear, “My youngest daughter was only a few months old and still breastfeeding.”

Food and water became scarce with the large number of people hosted in the camps, so Barfi and her husband had to find a way out to keep the children fed, and safe. When the opportunity came to leave, Barfi, her husband, and their children crammed themselves into the only available transportation out of Sinjar into the Kurdistan territory.

“We were about 15 people on board, it was hot and hard to breathe. ISIL fighters, who had learned that we were fleeing, came after us, shooting,” Barfi recounts.

Barfi’s family managed to escape safely and reached Seje, in Iraqi Kurdistan where they settled amongst 700 other families, in one of the 300 buildings under construction as a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Nylon fabric and pieces of wood were used to separate Barfi’s family from three other families living in the same building. Initially, the family was dependent on the various organizations present at the IDP for their daily needs. Soon though, her husband managed to find work with a construction firm.

In 2016, after two years in the camp, Barfi and her family fled to the mountains again, in fear that the latest ISIL attack might spill over from the attack launched into the neighbouring Mosul, Sinjar and Kirkuk. Her husband left beforehand to scout the area. Barfi has never seen her husband again.

She explains that “He never returned, and I do not know what happened to him. I don’t know if he was kidnapped or killed. I haven't heard from him since.”

When they arrived, yet again, in the mountains, Barfi only had minimal savings to buy a tent. Survival is tenuous at best with cold winters followed by hot summers and a tent provides little or no protection. Access to water was also a significant problem. At first, the soldiers would occasionally distribute rations, but when they didn't, a water tank was several hours away by foot.

Gradually, people returned from the mountains to their villages. The residents of Til Ezer were not so lucky because the area remained insecure, and their homes were destroyed.

Barfi has lived in the mountain IDP camp for six years now, sharing three tents with three families – twenty people in total. 

Barfi continues to harbour hope that she and her children will return home so that she can find a job and send her children to school. Despite the trauma of losing her husband and the pervasive fear of escaping from ISIL fighters, she clings to the hope that there is a normal life for her and her children.

Like other Yazidis from Sinjar, Barfi simply wants to resume a life that has been on hold for so long.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is supporting the rebuilding efforts in Sinjar for returning families by rebuilding homes and infrastructure destroyed by the fighting to make the communities habitable once again.

In the subdistrict of Sinjar alone, IOM has already helped rebuild 200 shelters between 2021 and 2022 with 500 more set to follow in 2023 through Owner Driven support. This is in addition to facilitating voluntary movement for previously internally displaced persons to be able to safely return to their homes.  IOM's intervention is accompanied by economic reintegration projects that allow people to engage in income-generating activities.

International Migrants Day (18 December) is the day designated by the United Nations to raise awareness about the challenges and opportunities presented by global migration in all its forms, to advocate for the rights of migrants to be respected, and encourage the international community to work together to ensure migration is managed in a manner that is safe, orderly and dignified.