Women’s Complicity in Genocide-Related Sexual Violence: The Case of Yazidi Women and Girls’ Enslavement (2014-2019)

Abstract

The so-called Islamic State (IS) attacked the Yazidi community in Sinjar in 2014 and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women and girls. Foreign women from across the world traveled to Syria to join IS and participated in committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. As such, this research examined the roles and actions of foreign women members of IS in the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women and girls in Iraq and Syria, in the years 2014-2019, while illuminating the mechanism through which women’s roles expanded, thereby enabling their involvement in sexual slavery. Using content and narrative analysis of a diverse mix of 64 journal articles, court documents, legal summaries of court cases, NGOs’ reports, and newspaper articles, and analyzing them in light of role theory and Relaxation of the Patriarchal Order concept, this research draws several conclusions. The findings revealed that the expansion of women’s roles was driven by IS’s establishment of gender-segregated parallel institutions and structures for role preparation, as well as by on-ground and online foundations, enabling women to interact, recruit, and pursue empowerment. Further, foreign women members of IS, within their roles as housewives, morality police members, propagandists, recruiters, and ideology instillers, were actively involved in the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women and girls. Their actions ranged from ownership and control to religious coercion, punishment, exploitation, sexual abuse, involvement in human trafficking, complicity in killing, and glorification of sexual slavery. Future research could examine the neutralization techniques utilized to justify sexual slavery.