Human Rights Council Forum on Minority Issues Eighth session, 24-25 November 2015 Fourth Item Mr. President, good day, My name is Nareen Shammo, I am an activist and journalist from the Yazidi people in Iraq. I participated in the Forum on Minority Issues in 2014 with a speech on the tragedy of my people. I presented the complete reality, and since then the reality has not changed, rather worsened. We lost communication with most of the abducted, and until this moment, we don’t know anything about them; whether they were all transferred to Syria or whether the men were killed. We are, though, aware of dozens of girls who committed suicide as a result of their continued enslavement after they lost the hope for liberation. At the beginning of the current year, operations of physical and sexual assaults on many older women began and they were taken as serves and maids into the houses of the Emirs of ISIS. They also use Yazidi girls as trophies in their ISIS[-organized] religious competitions. The children are in terrorist training camps in Syria. They deform their humanity and brainwash them to become dangerous ISIS elements in the future. With regards to Yazidi survivors, they live in tents without support, and psychological and medical rehabilitation. They desperately need all kinds of support. As for the displaced and refugees, sir, their situation has become more difficult, and today nearly half a million Yazidis live in tents in the Kurdistan province in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. A policy of silencing is practiced against the activists among them, through intimidation and direct and indirect threats by the authorities. In regards to the genocide of my people, until today the case of the troops withdrawing from Sinjar, and the rest of the Yazidi, Christian and Shabak regions in the Nineveh Plains, has not been looked at and investigated. We strongly demand for an immediate investigation, as well as the formation of an international committee to investigate the situation of the mass graves in Sinjar. What happened to my people is genocide by all accounts, therefore we demand an official recognition by the security council, and the international criminal court of these crimes. I am here demanding in the name of my people that [you] look more seriously into the situation in Iraq and that all necessary measures are taken to guarantee the safety of the Yazidis and the minorities. The grave reality calls for the provision of international protection or the embrace of my people in countries guaranteeing their safety and their rights.