The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking people[12] who are indigenous to Kurdistan who practice Yazidism, a monotheistic Iranian ethnoreligion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition.

[22] The self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) and some other Muslims in the region view the peacock angel as the malevolent creature Lucifer or Shaitan and they consider the Yazidis 'devil worshippers'.

[25] On 3 August 2014, IS militants attacked and took over Sinjar in northern Iraq, a Kurdish-controlled town that was predominantly inhabited by Yazidis,[29] and the surrounding area.

[35] On 10 August, according to statements by the Iraqi government, IS militants buried alive an undefined number of Yazidi women and children in northern Iraq in an attack that killed 500 people.

[36][37][38][39] Those who escaped across the Tigris River into Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria on 10 August gave accounts of how they had seen individuals also attempting to flee who later died.

[citation needed] According to reports from survivors interviewed by OHCHR, on 15 August, the entire male population of the Yazidi village of Khocho, up to 400 men, were rounded up and shot by IS, and up to 1,000 women and children were abducted; on the same day, up to 200 Yazidi men were reportedly executed for refusing conversion in a Tal Afar prison.

[citation needed] The abducted Yazidi women were sold into slave markets with IS "using rape as a weapon of war" according to CNN, with the group having gynaecologists ready to examine the captives.

[47] Haleh Esfandiari, a professor at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, highlighted the abuse of local women by IS militants after they captured an area.

"[49] Yazidi girls in Iraq allegedly raped by IS fighters have committed suicide by jumping to their death from Mount Sinjar, as described in a witness statement.

[50] A United Nations report issued on 2 October 2014, based on 500 interviews with witnesses, said that IS took 450–500 women and girls to Iraq's Nineveh region in August where "150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yazidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be enslaved to IS fighters as a 'reward' or to be sold as sex slaves".

"[53] A month earlier, President of Defend International dedicated her 2014 International Pfeffer Peace Award to the Yazidis, Christians and all residents of Kobane because, she said, facts on the ground demonstrate that these peaceful people are not safe in their enclaves, partly because of their ethnic origin and/or religion and they are therefore in urgent need for immediate attention from the global community.

[61] In June 2017, reports from Vian Dakhil of the Iraqi parliament told of a captured sex slave being fed her own one-year-old child.

"[63] On 3 November 2014, the "price list" for Yazidi and Christian females issued by IS surfaced online, and Dr. Widad Akrawi and her team were the first to verify the authenticity of the document.

[68][69] Writing in mid 2016, Lori Hinnant, Maya Alleruzzo and Balint Szlanko of the Associated Press reported that IS tightened "its grip on the estimated 3,000 women and girls held as sex slaves" even while it was losing territory to Iraqi forces.

Reports covered that Yazidi women and girls were told that they had to abort their previous unborn children since IS fighters were interested only in making Muslim babies.

These destructive intents and acts are described as preventing future procreation and causing severe long-term physical, psychological, and socio-political effects.

[failed verification][81] In October 2024 Fawzia Amin Sido, a Yazidi woman who was kidnapped by IS and sold to a Palestinian IS supporter was rescued from the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Defense Forces.

[90][84] According to The Wall Street Journal, IS appeals to apocalyptic beliefs and claims "justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world".

[92] The New York Times said in August 2015 that "[t]he systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution.

[35] By 6 August, according to reports from survivors, 200 Yazidi children while fleeing to Mount Sinjar had died from thirst, starvation, heat and dehydration.

[35] Fifty thousand Yazidis, besieged by IS on Mount Sinjar, were able to escape after Kurdish People's Protection Units and PKK broke IS siege on the mountains.

Their release occurred following an offensive by U.S.-led air assaults and pressure from Iraqi ground forces who were pushing northward and in the process of retaking Tikrit.

According to General Hiwa Abdullah, a peshmerga commander in Kirkuk, those released were in poor health with signs of abuse and neglect visible.

[107] In March 2016, Iraqi security forces managed to free a group of Yazidi women held hostage by IS in a special operation behind IS's lines in Mosul.

[108][109] In March 2016, the militant group Kurdistan Workers' Party managed to free 51 Yazidis held hostages by IS in an operation called 'Operation Vengeance for Martyrs of Shilo'.

[111] According to a report by Amnesty International, on January 25, 2015, members of a Yazidi militia attacked two Arab villages (Jiri and Sibaya) in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, killing 21 civilians.

ET, the US carried out five additional airstrikes on armed vehicles and a mortar position, enabling 20,000–30,000 Yazidi Iraqis to flee into Syria and later be rescued by Kurdish forces.

[166] In a statement on 14 August 2014, The Pentagon said that the 20 US personnel who had visited the previous day had concluded that a rescue operation was probably unnecessary since there was less danger from exposure or dehydration and the Yazidis were no longer believed to be at risk of attack from IS.

[167][168] Kurdish officials and Yazidi refugees stated that thousands of young, elderly, and disabled individuals on the mountain were still vulnerable, with the governor of Kurdistan's Dahuk province, Farhad Atruchi, saying that the assessment was "not correct" and that although people were suffering, "the international community is not moving".

[186] German courts also prosecuted Taha al-Jumailly, an Iraqi member of the Islamic State, for his involvement in the Yazidi genocide, to include the murder of a five-year-old girl.