Beyond the Courtroom: What Ezidi Testimony can Teach us about Justice after Genocide

This blog post examines the role of survivor testimony in pursuing justice after genocide, using the Ezidi case as a lens. While criminal prosecutions are important, they are limited in scope and do not adequately capture the full impact of genocide on communities. The author argues that survivor testimony serves multiple crucial functions beyond legal evidence: it preserves collective memory, documents lived experiences, educates future generations, and helps communities understand the historical context of persecution. An informal truth commission complementing criminal accountability mechanisms could address this gap by centering survivor voices within their own cultural frameworks. The post emphasises that effective justice must be meaningful and linked to reparations, while acknowledging the urgency of recording survivor testimony as memories fade and communities continue to face displacement.

On 3 August 2014, Da’esh (ISIS/ISIL) fighters swept across the Shingal region of northern Iraq and launched a campaign of violence that devastated the Ezidi community. Thousands of men and older women were killed, women and girls were abducted into sexual slavery, and entire communities were displaced from lands that they had inhabited for generations. More than a decade later, many survivors are still waiting for meaningful justice.

Although the atrocities committed against the Ezidi people have been widely recognised as genocide, accountability has remained limited. A small number of prosecutions have taken place, mostly in European courts, while thousands of Ezidis remain missing or unaccounted for. For many survivors, the gap between recognition and justice remains painfully wide.

Yet justice is not only about prosecutions and convictions. It is also about who gets to tell the story of what happened, whose voices are heard, and how those experiences become part of the historical record. This raises an important question: what role should survivor testimony play in shaping justice after genocide?

Art workshop painting by Qasim Alsharqy

I propose Ezidi survivor testimony should be understood as more than evidence for criminal proceedings. Testimony is also a form of knowledge. It preserves memory, explains the lived realities of violence, and helps future generations understand both what happened and why it matters. Any future informal truth commission established in response to the Yazidi genocide should therefore place survivor voices at its centre.

The international response to the Ezidi genocide has produced important investigative and accountability mechanisms. UNITAD collected extensive evidence relating to crimes committed by Da’esh before its mandate ended in 2024. Yet many survivors continue to feel that formal justice mechanisms have not fully addressed their experiences. Criminal trials are essential, but they are necessarily limited. Courts focus on proving specific offences against specific individuals. Survivors often carry broader stories of communal destruction, cultural loss, displacement, and resilience that do not fit neatly within the boundaries of a criminal case.

This is where truth-telling processes can play a different role. Unlike criminal proceedings, they can create space for communities to explain not only what happened, but what those events meant. They can help preserve collective memory and ensure that survivor experiences are publicly recognised rather than reduced to pieces of evidence.

To understand why testimony matters so deeply in the Ezidi context, it is necessary to appreciate the concept of Ferman. Ezidi oral tradition records numerous historical episodes of persecution and attempted destruction. For many, the 2014 genocide is not viewed as an isolated event. It is understood as part of a much longer history of survival. The memory of previous persecutions has been passed from generation to generation and forms an important part of Ezidi identity.

A postcard showing a group of Yazidis in Jabal Sinjar on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Source: Commons Wikimedia

This historical perspective challenges some of the assumptions that often shape transitional justice initiatives. Many truth and reconciliation processes are designed around the idea of moving from a violent past towards a more peaceful future. For communities whose history includes repeated cycles of persecution, the relationship between memory and justice is often more complex. Listening to survivors therefore requires an understanding of the cultural frameworks through which they interpret their experiences.

The work of philosopher Miranda Fricker is particularly helpful here. Her concept of epistemic injustice explores what happens when people are not recognised as credible knowers of their own experiences. In the Ezidi context, survivors have often had to overcome multiple barriers before their voices were taken seriously. Women who survived sexual enslavement have frequently faced scepticism, cultural misunderstandings, and practical obstacles to participation in accountability processes.

Despite these challenges, survivors have produced invaluable knowledge about the structures of captivity, the realities of life under Da’esh control, and the strategies that enabled survival and resistance. Their testimony has contributed directly to criminal prosecutions and public understanding of the genocide. Yet survivors are often treated primarily as witnesses rather than as experts on their own experiences.

An informal truth commission could help address this gap. Such a process would not replace criminal accountability. Instead, it would complement it by creating space for survivors to speak in their own terms and within their own cultural frameworks. It would allow testimony to serve not only legal purposes but also historical, educational, and community-building functions.

Several principles should guide any future initiative. First, survivor participation must be meaningful rather than symbolic. Survivors should help shape the questions, priorities, and outputs of the process. Second, testimony collection should respect the importance of oral traditions within Ezidi culture while also ensuring that testimonies are preserved for future generations. Third, the process should connect Ezidi communities in Iraq with those living in the diaspora, while remaining attentive to differences in access, resources, and lived experience.

An effective truth commission must also engage seriously with the issue of reparations. Recognition alone is not enough. Survivors continue to face the consequences of displacement, loss of family members, destruction of property, and the ongoing search for missing loved ones. Truth-telling should therefore be linked to practical discussions about repair, recovery, and long-term support.

Perhaps most importantly, an informal truth commission could help produce something that courts alone cannot: a shared historical record shaped by the voices of those who lived through the genocide. Such a record would not simply document atrocities. It would preserve memory, strengthen community identity, and contribute to a broader understanding of the Yazidi experience.

The opportunity to preserve survivor testimony will not remain open indefinitely. Memories fade, survivors age, and communities continue to face displacement and uncertainty. The changing international landscape makes this work more urgent, not less.

For the Ezidi community, being heard is not simply a therapeutic exercise or an evidential necessity. It is part of the struggle for justice itself. Listening to survivors means recognising them not only as victims of genocide, but also as custodians of memory, history, and knowledge. Any future truth commission that fails to place those voices at its centre risks reproducing the very marginalisation it seeks to address.

References

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

OHCHR (2024). Ten Years After the Yazidi Genocide: UN Syria Commission of Inquiry Calls for Justice. United Nations Human Rights Council.

UNITAD (2021). Report to the Security Council, S/2021/419. United Nations.

Yazda (2024). Ten Years After Genocide: The Yazidi Struggle to Recover and Overcome. Yazidi Justice Committee.

Sajib Hosen