More than a decade has passed since the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launched its genocidal campaign against the Yazidis, an ethno-religious minority in northern Iraq. The terrorists’ atrocities displaced over 400,000 Yazidis, with nearly 200,000 remaining in camps across Iraq and Syria. Efforts to rebuild Sinjar—the Yazidi ancestral land—have included emergency livelihoods support and monetary reparations for survivors who meet the eligibility criteria. Yet, systemic challenges, including limited access to basic services and safety concerns, continue to hinder reintegration.
For the Yazidi women who survived horrific acts of sexual violence and bore children from ISIS militants, an additional hurdle complicates their acceptance into the Yazidi community: a 2016 Iraqi law that designates these children as Muslim. While transitional justice efforts have focused on addressing humanitarian and security issues, they have largely ignored the legal reforms necessary to support these women and children.
From 2022 to 2023, the Human Rights Institute at Georgetown Law partnered with an organization dedicated to supporting Yazidi survivors through a community-driven and survivor-centric approach. The research examined how Iraq’s religious identity laws violate the rights of Yazidi women and children, drawing on Iraq’s constitutional protections for ethno-religious minorities, the state’s obligations under international human rights law, and fieldwork interviews conducted in Erbil, Berlin, and The Hague. The findings reinforced the argument that removing barriers to reintegration requires reform of laws that discriminate against ethno-religious minorities in Iraq.
ISIS Used Sexual Violence as a Means to Carry Out Genocide Against Yazidis
On Aug. 3, 2014, ISIS launched its brutal attack on Yazidis in Sinjar. In the weeks that followed, ISIS sought to permanently eradicate the Yazidis through mass killings, forced conversions, and sexual violence. The United Nations and several countries, including the United States, have since recognized these acts as genocide.
ISIS conducted a systematic genocidal campaign: men and older women were executed; younger boys were abducted, forced to convert to a radical version of Islam, given Islamic names, and indoctrinated as child soldiers; and women and girls over the age of nine were enslaved and sexually abused. Hundreds of women are estimated to have borne children fathered by ISIS militants.
The capture, confinement, rape, and impregnation of Yazidi women and girls were not just tactics of war, but central to ISIS’s strategy to destroy the Yazidi people and erase their identity for future generations. Driven by patrilineal ideology, ISIS weaponized sexual violence to eradicate the Yazidi people through impregnation and forced religious conversion. Using sexual violence to destroy an ethnic or religious group is not unique to ISIS; it has been employed throughout history as a tool of extermination.
An ISIS-era Law Prevents Yazidi Survivors from Conveying Their Religion to Their Children Born of Sexual Violence in Conflict
ISIS was defeated in Iraq in 2017, but harmful vestiges of their forced religious conversion and coercion still remain. In 2015, the Iraqi legislature introduced the National Card Law. While administrative in nature and function, the law contained several controversial provisions governing religious legal identity. These provisions designate certain minors as Muslim, regardless of their personal wishes or those of their non-Muslim parents. For Yazidi survivors of sexual violence, and their children born of ISIS rape, this designation as Muslim raises a nearly insurmountable barrier to returning to the Yazidi homeland and former communities.
Article 26(2) of the National Card Law designates all children born to at least one Muslim parent as Muslim. While the provision specifically states that underage children shall follow the religion of the parent who converted to Islam, in practice, any child with at least one Muslim parent—whether through conversion to Islam or otherwise—is legally recognized as Muslim. As Rita Izsák-Ndiaye, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, noted after her visit to Iraq in 2016, “Article 26 states that . . . minors are legally considered as Muslim following the conversion of any parent to Islam. According to the law, any child born in a marriage between a Muslim and a non-Muslim shall take on the Muslim religion.” Since Iraqi law also does not allow for conversion from Islam to other religions, this forced identity has lifelong and generational consequences.
Article 20(2) of the National Card Law similarly designates all “illegitimate children or children whose parents are unknown, absent, missing or deceased or of parents who have discontinued parentage” as Muslim, unless proven otherwise. In practice, a child can be deemed a “foundling” even when the mother is present but the father is not. This means that children born to Yazidi women in captivity whose fathers are unknown, missing, or deceased, are automatically recognized as Muslim, regardless of their Yazidi heritage. The combined effect of these provisions is that any child born from sexual violence by an ISIS militant during the genocidal campaign is legally recognized as Muslim, either under Article 26(2) or under Article 20(2) of the National Card Law.
Notably, a National Identity Card remains essential to obtaining legal recognition as an Iraqi citizen and access to civil rights. All Iraqi citizens, including the Yazidi people, must obtain a National Identity Card to receive basic services like education and healthcare.
The National Card Law Violates Human Rights, Devastating Yazidi Mothers and Their Children
The provisions of the National Card Law violate the fundamental human rights of Yazidi mothers and their children born of sexual violence by ISIS militants. They contradict protections enshrined in Iraq’s Constitution and various international treaties to which Iraq is a State Party. For children born to Yazidi women in ISIS captivity, the right to choose their own religion—guaranteed by Article 18(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—is undermined by provisions of the National Card Law that automatically and permanently designate them as Muslim. Article 2(2) of Iraq’s Constitution similarly guarantees full religious freedom rights to all persons, including those of the Yazidi faith.
The coercive imposition of a Muslim identity owing to the necessity of having a National Identity Card further places Iraq in violation of its international obligations under Article 18(2) of the ICCPR, which states that “[n]o one shall be subject to coercion which would impact his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.” The protection against religious coercion is likewise stipulated in Article 37(2) of the Iraqi Constitution.
By obstructing Yazidi female survivors from passing on their religious identity to their children, the law also denies them equal protection and non-discrimination, as enshrined in Article 26 of the ICCPR and Article 14 of Iraq’s Constitution. Indeed, Yazidi mothers are denied the legal right to confer their own religious identity upon their children—a right that Muslim parents enjoy without similar restrictions.
(The National Card law and its impact on Yazidi mothers and their children are explored in further detail in Michelle X. Liu’s forthcoming article in the Spring 2025 edition of the Northwestern University Journal of Human Rights.)
The other unfortunate consequence for children born to Yazidi mothers as a result of conflict-related sexual violence—and who have been forcibly designated as Muslim under the National Card Law—is that they are largely unable to reintegrate into the Yazidi homeland and community. Shaped by years of isolation and persecution, the Yazidi community has forged a “closed” culture after being subjected to 74 genocides throughout their existence. Furthermore, faith leaders consider a Yazidi a person whose parents are both Yazidi.
Following Iraq’s liberation from ISIS, the Yazidi Spiritual Council announced in 2019 that the community would welcome all survivors and their children, which many understood to include the children born of sexual violence during the war. However, facing backlash from the community and tribal leaders, the council later clarified that this did not include children born from conflict-related sexual violence, citing conflicts with “principles and pillars of the Yazidi religion and social norms.” Jawhar Ali Beg, Deputy to Senior Yazidi Leader Prince Hazem, emphasized the council’s stance: “[W]e cannot accept children of [ISIS]. They are automatically born as Muslims according to Iraqi laws.”
Since then, Yazidi women and their children have found themselves in tenuous circumstances. The discriminatory provisions of the National Card Law have forced Yazidi women who gave birth in ISIS captivity into an impossible choice. Some have made the heart-wrenching decision to return to their communities in Sinjar without their children born during captivity. Others have elected to remain in displacement camps with their children, uncertain and fearful of the future. Some have sought refuge abroad, leaving behind what remains of their community. One interviewee, the director of a non-profit organization, shared the story of a female survivor who chose to remain displaced in Europe because her family would not accept her child. For this survivor, her child being legally Yazidi was crucial for her family’s acceptance.
Absent a legal pathway for children of ISIS militants to choose their religion, or for Yazidi survivors of conflict-related sexual violence to convey their religion to their children, the effects of the genocide persist. By officially designating all children born from these atrocities as Muslim, the law perpetuates ISIS’s goal of erasing the Yazidi identity. As Yazidi journalist Khudar Domli aptly noted, “What ISIS did to them by force, this [National Card] Act does by law.”
Protection of Human Rights and a Pathway Forward Depend on Legal Change to the National Card Law
As recently as December 2024, the Biden administration and the Iraqi government warned that individuals in displacement camps, including women and children, remain susceptible to indoctrination by ISIS. The Islamic State has reportedly targeted these camps to spread propaganda and incite violence against Yazidis, further endangering their safety and security. This development underscores the urgency for removing barriers to reintegration, ensuring that women and children can return to safety.
The Iraqi government is offering $3,000 to individuals who return to Sinjar as part of its push to close displacement camps. However, for Yazidi women and their children, particularly those born from sexual violence during ISIS captivity, reintegration into the community is complex and cannot be realized with mere financial incentives. The protection and realization of their rights depend on changing the discriminatory provisions of the National Card Law. Human rights advocates and religious minority groups in and outside Iraq have consistently highlighted the need to revise Articles 20(2) and 26(2) of the National Card Law, specifically by allowing children born from conflict-related sexual violence to either adopt the mother’s religion or choose their own at the age of majority. Legal experts see this as an essential step toward helping Yazidi survivors, particularly women and their children, gain acceptance and rebuild their lives within their communities.
The barriers imposed by the National Card Law not only prevent many women and children from reuniting with their communities but also exclude them from the ongoing rebuilding efforts across northern Iraq, particularly projects dedicated to supporting women and children. For example, in 2024, Nadia’s Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to rebuilding the Yazidi community in Sinjar and advocating for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, unveiled the region’s first-ever Women’s Center, offering an array of services to help women regain independence as they reintegrate into their community.
In addition to the numerous efforts to empower Yazidi women and children—whether through economic initiatives or educational support—government actors and lawmakers must also remove the legal barriers posed by the National Card Law. Without amending its discriminatory provisions or challenging its constitutionality in Iraq’s courts, the law continues to exclude survivors of ISIS captivity from their community and the region’s rebuilding efforts. Transitional justice efforts must center on human rights and the protection of fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of religion, to secure societal acceptance for Yazidi women and children born of conflict-related sexual violence.