The Yazidis Between Constitutional Protection and Actual Violation: An Analytical Study of the Effects of Genocide

Abstract

This study examines the status of the Yazidis in Iraq within the constitutional framework and analyzes the effectiveness of constitutional guarantees in protecting their religious rights. It employs the genocide committed against the Yazidis in 2014 as a practical case study to assess the ability of constitutional provisions to prevent violations in reality and to highlight the serious consequences resulting from that crime. The research problem lies in the absence of an explicit constitutional provision directly protecting the Yazidis, as well as the existence of a significant gap between the theoretical constitutional protection indirectly provided by the Iraqi Constitution of 2005 and the actual reality in which such protection proved ineffective. This gap demonstrates the limitations of the constitutional safeguards system in providing practical protection for religious minorities.

The importance of this research stems from its attempt to move beyond merely describing violations or documenting the suffering of the Yazidis. Instead, it offers a constitutional analytical approach to evaluate the effectiveness of the Iraqi constitutional framework itself and to reconsider the extent to which the Constitution is capable of protecting the rights and freedoms of religious minorities with distinct religious and cultural identities. The study aims to analyze the constitutional status of the Yazidis, identify the nature of constitutional protection afforded to religious minorities under existing provisions, and highlight the constitutional gaps within the Constitution of the Republic of Iraq (2005) that allowed violations to escalate into genocide. Based on this analysis, the research proposes constitutional, legislative, and institutional reforms intended to strengthen the protection of religious minorities and prevent the recurrence of such crimes in the future.