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Yazidi women after slavery: trauma

Mental health care and support services are in short supply for the traumatized women who have escaped from ISIS slavery to the camps around Dohuk, exacerbating their long term trauma.

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“I would kill myself, if it weren’t for my kids.” Sari, 30, told me. She sat close to the gas heater, feet curled under her on the mattress on the floor, in a camp for displaced people near Dohuk in the Kurdish region of Iraq. As snow fell, she told me how the extremist armed group the Islamic State abducted her and her family from their village in Iraq.

Khanke_IDP_camp.jpg
Khanke_IDP_camp.jpg

The Khanke IDP camp outside Dohuk, home to more than 18,000 Yazidis. Photo: Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch.