Title: Yazda Mass Grave Report
Author: Yazda Organization
Place of publication: USA
Publisher: Yazda
Release date: 2018

On January 28, 2016, Yazda published its first report on mass graves in Sinjar, entitled “Mass Graves of Yazidis Killed by the Islamic State Organization or Local Affiliates On or After August 3, 2014” (“2016 Report”)1. The 2016 Report was issued by Yazda prior to the international community’s consensus that the atrocities against Yazidis in Sinjar constituted genocide. One of the stated objectives of the 2016 Report was “to collect evidence of crimes of genocide against the Yazidi people in the effort to secure genocide recognition for the Yazidi case.”2 In June 2016, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic published the findings of its investigation into the Yazidi case. The Commission’s focus on atrocities and enslavement occurring inside Syria had necessitated extending its investigation into Sinjar due to the trans-border nature of the crimes committed by IS. The Commission’s report, published by the United Nations Human Rights Council, was entitled “They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis.”3 The Commission conducted its own research and relied on a number of resources produced by other research entities, one of which was Yazda’s 2016 Report.4 Importantly, the Commission’s report made a strong declaration of recognition of the Yazidi case as genocide, after which the term “Yazidi Genocide” gained traction in international discourse about atrocities committed by IS in Iraq. This report is intended as a complement to the 2016 Report and presents subsequent findings of Yazda’s Genocide Documentation Project in the south of Sinjar Mountain in addition to Tel Afar and Qasr al-Mihrab. As this new report provides data on mass graves discovered since the publication of the 2016 Report—but does not revisit each site reported in the first report—both reports should be consulted together. [1]