Townhall Meeting with the Ezidi Community on the Community-Based Truth Commission

On the evening of Sunday 19 July 2026, members of the project team met with around 50 members of the Shingali Ezidi community in Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany, for the first in a planned series of townhall meetings about the Community-Based Truth Commission (CBTC) for the Ezidi genocide. The exchange was open and frank.

Participants asked searching questions, considered strengths and weaknesses, and shared, at first hand, both hopes for what it might achieve and the depth of frustration felt after nearly twelve years without justice. The evening embodied the principle at the heart of this initiative: a community-based commission has to be built together with the community, through honest conversation.

People standing together for a group photo. Three young attendees have had their faces censored for privacy.

The first townhall meeting with the Ezidi (Yazidi/Yezidi) community in Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany, 19 July 2026.

An evening of questions

North Rhine-Westphalia, a state in Germany, is home to one of the largest Ezidi diaspora communities in the world, and it was here, in a community hall in Rheda-Wiedenbruck, that the project held its first townhall meeting. Participants spoke in their own language, with Farhad Shamo Roto of the research team interpreting throughout the evening, joined by Raminder Kaur (University of Manchester) and Aldo Zammit Borda (City St George’s, University of London).

Today, there is a troubling paradox around the Ezidi genocide: states, the United Nations and courts have widely recognised that the Ezidi people suffered genocide at the hands of Da’esh, and yet very little justice has followed. The Genocide Convention of 1948 places clear legal obligations on states to prevent and punish genocide, but those obligations have not been fulfilled. This year marks twelve years since the attack on Shingal (Sinjar) began, and with every year that passes, justice becomes harder to achieve. Faced with this inaction, there are two possible responses: to give up, or to keep pressing. The CBTC represents the second response.

The Truth Commission, the first of its kind for the Ezidi people, will hold its public hearings in November 2026. Witness victim survivors will testify in their own language, with live interpretation, before a panel of Commissioners who are among the most respected human rights figures in the world, including Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, Judge Navi Pillay, Professor Sima Samar, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk, all serving pro bono. The hearings will be live streamed, and the Commissioners will then issue a report based on the testimony they hear.

Questions and challenges

During the townhall meeting, participants asked many questions and made many comments and suggestions. One participant asked: "I think the whole world already knows what happened. It is about action. So in which ways is this going to be different?"

Another participant pressed the point from a different angle, highlighting that if states have already recognised the genocide, and have ratified the Genocide Convention, why should the community be asked to make yet more effort beyond that recognition? Why do states not simply fulfil the obligations they have undertaken? These are fair challenges, and the response offered was candid. Recognition alone has not moved politicians to act, and there are double standards in international justice; historically, justice after atrocity has been the exception rather than the rule. What often moves politicians to act on international justice issues is pressure, from many quarters but especially through the media, and that is where the CBTC directs its effort.

To date, the world has learned about the Ezidi genocide mainly in the third person, through academics, journalists and UN reports. The CBTC reverses that: it provides a platform for Ezidi victim survivors to speak directly to the world, to the public, to lawyers, to politicians and to the media, and its report is intended to reignite momentum for formal accountability, including domestic prosecutions, universal jurisdiction cases and, potentially, a dedicated international mechanism. In this sense, the CBTC should be thought of as a seed, not a fully grown tree.

A young woman sitting at a seminar table looks sideways and smiles at the camera. Next to and behind her sit several other men.

Some of the participants at the townhall meeting.

Other questions probed the practical arrangements. For instance, one participant asked who funds the project? It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, an academic research and impact funder in the United Kingdom, independent of any state or non-governmental organisation. Will the Commission travel to Shingal? No: because a community-based commission cannot guarantee the protection of those it works with in Shingal, witnesses are being drawn from the Shingali community now living in Europe, where far greater protection can be offered. And what of the psychological burden of testifying? The Commission is implementing a trauma-informed approach in which witnesses meet psychosocial counsellors from the very start of the process and are supported throughout, because the aim, above all, is to help rather than harm.

The discussion was frank about managing expectations and what the Commission cannot promise. It cannot compel alleged perpetrators to appear. It cannot offer concrete guarantees of political outcomes. And while some measure of anonymity can be offered to witnesses who fear for family members still in Iraq, it cannot be absolutely guaranteed in open, live streamed proceedings, which is precisely why participation will always rest on free, informed and ongoing consent.

People at a seminar listening as a female attendee seated among them speaks.

Members of the project team and the Ezidi community.

Hard truths about trust

Some of the most powerful contributions of the evening were challenges grounded in hard experience. One man described filming the genocide from its first days in August 2014, recording hours of footage in the mountains, only for the material to be confiscated by the authorities. Another spoke of testimony given in good faith to earlier initiatives, including UNITAD, and of the fear that evidence has ended up in the wrong hands. A related concern was raised about this project itself, which runs for two years, and whether it too would simply end and leave the community behind. A third participant issued a direct appeal: "What we wish from you is that this commission remains impartial and independent. Do not let any political intervention impact on it."

Underlying these interventions was an important reality that may sometimes be missed: after twelve years of disappointments and betrayals, many in the community have stopped believing that any initiative will deliver. The response offered was honest rather than reassuring. Very little justice has happened so far, and it is often preferable for states if the Ezidi call for justice simply goes silent. The purpose of the Commission is to show that it will not go silent; on the contrary, it is louder than ever. On the question of longevity, the team was clear that while the funded project runs for two years, the commitment behind it does not. Members of the team have been working on justice for the Ezidi people for several years since the 2014 genocide, and the Commission is designed to generate outcomes, including its evidentiary record and report, that will carry forward well beyond the project itself. Its success, however, depends on its being seen as legitimate, impartial and independent, with no predetermined conclusions about responsibility. Like a court of law, if the outcome is decided before the witnesses speak, the process is worthless. The witnesses, and only the witnesses, will tell the world what they saw.

Speaking directly with the community

One participant asked a question about representation that captured why townhall meetings of this kind matter so much. Speaking of individuals who claim to speak for the Ezidi people from Shingal, without knowing them, they asked: "How come those people who do not know anything about us just represent us?"

A CBTC draws its authority not from any government or institution but from the community it serves. That authority cannot be built by consulting only organisations or spokespeople, however valued those partners are. It has to be built together, by sitting in a room with community members in the diaspora where so many Shingali Ezidis now live, answering unscripted questions, hearing hopes and fears at first hand, and being open to challenge. To our knowledge, no comparable initiative has begun with open townhall discussions of this kind. Further townhalls are planned in other parts of Germany, because the Commission is a shared undertaking. The research team can facilitate it, but it can only succeed as a genuine partnership with the Ezidi community, shaped by what the community itself says it needs.

Ways forward

The evening ended with a practical question from the audience: how can the community help make this Commission succeed? In this respect, the project will recruit volunteers and interpreters from within the community. Witness statements will be taken both for the hearings and online, and because the Commission is small, one voice can represent many. Beyond the Commission itself, the wider project is recruiting Ezidi artists, filmmakers, poets and other creatives. This is in recognition of the fact that Ezidi people are not only victim survivors, but also talented multifaceted individuals; and public education about Ezidi religion, culture and life is part of closing the gap in knowledge that made the genocide possible against a misrepresented group. Most of all, the community and the research team can together protect the independence and impartiality on which the Commission’s legitimacy depends.

The hearings will take place in November 2026. Between now and then, the conversations begun in Rheda-Wiedenbruck will continue, in more townhalls, in witness preparation and in the quiet, shared work of building trust within and across communities.