News Center- 10 years have passed since ISIS committed a genocide against the Yazidi community in Shengal on August 3,2014. The fate of about 1,300 of Iraq’s missing Yazidi children remains unknown 10 years on from the Islamic State genocide with thousands of others still homeless, living in tents or amid rubble in Sinjar, Save the Children said on Thursday.

According to some figures, ISIS killed 10,000 Yazidis and abducted more than 10,000 Yazidi women and girls and displaced all Yazidis living in Shengal between August 3, 2014 and 2017.

Save the Children also shared the stories of some Yazidis. Behat (17), one of them, is still searching for his missing parents and siblings.

“I held my brother’s hands tightly and I shouted at them (ISIS) not to take him from me. I even shed tears, nonetheless he was taken away. They took him and never brought him back. I didn’t see him again,” Behat told Save the Children.

“I haven’t found any information about my parents. What I want is to find out something about my mother and father.... for someone who hasn’t seen their parents for 10 or 11 years, it is so difficult to remember their faces.”

Ten years on, about 200,000 Yazidis remain displaced from their communities in Iraq, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). Many are still homeless, living in tents in displacement camps with little access to adequate education or healthcare.

‘This tragedy and massacre is not forgotten’

Viyan (15) fled Sinjar as a toddler. She has been living in a tent in a displacement camp in Iraq for almost a decade.

“It is very difficult to live in tents in the heat. In winters, with heavy rain, the tent gets watery...Children have no place to play, they play in the streets, which are full of stray animals... Children get diseases from the dirt. Teenagers and little girls, even though they are around 10 years old, always say that they wish they were dead and didn't have to live like this.

“This tragedy and massacre that has happened to the Yazidi people, it is not forgotten and even now when we go to Sinjar, the bones have not been collected.”

‘I was also one of those who were captured with my whole family’