People taking refuge in the Sinjar Mountains
In March 2015, JEN started supplying water using a truck to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Sinjar Mountains in the Nineveh Province, northwestern Iraq.
JEN’s water-supply truck
on a path in the Sinjar Mountains
In August 2014, an radical
armed group took hold of Sinjar city and surrounding villages. The Yazidis, the
old inhabitants of the region, were persecuted by the members of the armed
group, being killed and sold because they believed in a different religion.
Having nowhere to evacuate to, the Yazidis barely fled
to near the top of the Sinjar Mountains, which were surrounded by the armed
group, and took refuge on top of the rough and blowy mountains, suffering from
fear, hunger and thirst.
Still, there were newborns among them. Revîn is one of them. She
was born soon after her family evacuated to the Sinjar Mountains. She is now
four years old. “Revîn” means to “escape” in
Kurdish. Many girls born that year were given this name.
Revîn with a JEN staff
member
Revîn, unlike most other girls of her age, openly told us about
herself. “I’m looking forward to going to school in two years’ time,” she said.
“I have many dreams for the future. One of them is to become a doctor. So I’ll
study hard and do well at school.”
JEN’s June 2018 interview survey on the water
supply activity and the evacuees’ livelihood situations
revealed that most of the people currently living in the Sinjar Mountains were
originally from villages near Sinjar city. In the survey, most of them have
said that even today, after their home villages have been liberated from the
armed group, houses and basic infrastructure have been severely damaged, the
ethnic balance in the nearby villages has been
changed, and the mopping-up operation for the survivors of the armed group is
still going on, and therefore returning home is risky and not feasible.
An evacuee being interviewed in a tent
JEN staff checking a water-storage tank installed in each settlement