Ukrainian Women and Children
The Women Refugees Advocacy Project is currently working with Persons Against Non-State Torture in Nova Scotia to raise support for women and children as they struggle to survive in war-torn Ukraine.
Please help women and children in war-torn Ukraine
The Women Refugees Advocacy Project held our fourth fundraiser for Ukrainian women and children, this time online. A Fundrazr campaign was launched online May 15, 2024 and closed July 10, 2024. Funds raised have gone to urgent life-saving needs. Thank you to all who contributed!
The brutal invasion of Ukraine has been going on for more than two years and the needs of Ukrainians are greater than ever. Contributions go directly to Maria Dmytriyeva, a director of the Democracy Development Centre NGO, and her courageous team of women working inside Ukraine. Funds are used at their discretion, enabling them to better meet the unpredictable needs of war.
Yazidi Women and Girls
WRAP has been primarily devoted to recognizing and responding to the devastating trauma inflicted on Yazidi women and girls by ISIS, perpetrators of genocide against the Yazidi people in Sinjar, Iraq. Our film The Least We Can Do has been screened in a number of festivals, see the Documentary Film page for festival listings and also for film distribution.
Also, WRAP continues to work on small projects. One with an Afghan-Canadian filmmaker to provide support to women refugees who recently arrived in Canada from Afghanistan. Others in support of a Ukrainian NGO, a women’s network helping women and children living inside war-torn Ukraine.
The Least We Can Do
The Least We Can Do is a documentary about the struggle to obtain trauma care for the Yazidi women and girl survivors of ISIS. Created by filmmaker Moira Simpson with members of the Women Refugees Advocacy Project, the film features Adiba, a Yazidi survivor, and Rev. Majed El Shafie, the founder of One Free World International. For more information please see our Documentary Film page.
The Yazidi Advocacy Project
Hundreds of thousands of Yazidi people were displaced into refugee camps in Iraq as they ran for their lives to escape the 2014 genocide by ISIS. WRAP is now urging the Canadian government to assist the Yazidi who are returning to their devastated homeland in Sinjar in Northern Iraq/Kurdistan.
“The Yazidi communities are being pushed to return to Sinjar Mountain without any help or support from the local governments and without any kind of international protection and they don’t even have the basic support of life. There is the feeling that the International Community has forgotten them.”
Rev. Majed El Shafie, One Free World International
The Yazidi are returning to a land shattered by ISIS: bombed out buildings, the infrastructure destroyed. No security, almost no clean water, electricity, hospitals, homes or schools. Deeply inadequate medical care. They are experiencing oppressive Covid-19 policies and procedures which interfere with medical care and the Yazidi women and girls are suffering ongoing severe trauma from torture. Add to this bleak picture that ISIS planted hundreds of thousands of landmines in 2017 as they retreated from Sinjar during the war.
Documentary
Completed as of July 2020, The Least We Can Do follows a small group of women in British Columbia, Canada, who are relieved when the Canadian government votes to bring Yazidi women and girls as refugees to Canada and provide them with comprehensive trauma care for their unimaginable suffering.
The women are horrified to later discover the government has not followed through on all its promises. The Yazidi were brought to Canada and then neglected. Trauma services are inadequate, unplanned and failing. As the group urges the government to keep its promise, they encounter unexpected support along the way.
Featuring Yazidi survivor Adiba and Rev. Majed El Shafie founder of One Free World International, Senator Mobina Jaffer, and MP Jenny Kwan. The action takes place in Vancouver and Ottawa, and is illuminated through text and photographs from the war in Northern Iraq and news stories in Canada, US, Germany and the Middle East.
Please see our documentary page.
Why we formed WRAP
The Women Refugees Advocacy group formed to alert Canadians to the plight of Yazidi women and girl refugees to Canada who have survived extreme torture and genocide. With your help, we petitioned the federal government to keep their initial promise and provide them with comprehensive trauma care.
The government has yet to answer our call for specialized services, and continues to expect these women and girls to use existing services. Meanwhile, they speak a unique language and there are very few translators in Canada. And they have suffered such extreme torture that existing counselling services cannot meet their needs. Services here are inadequate, unplanned and failing.
Petition delivered to Parliament
On October 29, 2018, Women Refugees Advocacy Project members with Yazidi women from BC and Ontario delivered the Yazidi trauma care petition to Jenny Kwan, MP, at the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa.
Ms. Kwan held a press conference in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery where many of us spoke. Later that same day, Jenny Kwan stood up in the House of Commons and gave a passionate speech on the importance of trauma care for the survivors of ISIS genocide and torture, and tabled the petition. There was clapping in the House and we waved from our seats in the Public Gallery while holding our hands over our hearts in response.
Thank you to all the people who signed and co-signed the petition!
Genocide against the Yazidi
In August 2014, ISIS extremists began a campaign of genocide against the Yazidi religious minority in Northern Iraq. ISIS/Daesh murdered Yazidi men and captured over 6,800 Yazidi women and young girls to systematically enslave, serial and gang rape and, in many cases, murder.
Canada responds
On October 25, 2016, the Canadian parliament voted unanimously to bring Yazidi survivors of ISIS enslavement to Canada as refugees. At that time, the government promised the Yazidi refugee program would include social and psychological supports, such as trauma counselling, for “the unimaginable trauma” the Yazidi women and girls had suffered.¹
What went wrong?
Fast forward to March 2018 and the public learns that this promise was not kept: ‘“Where is the Canadian government?”’ a Yazidi refugee, survivor of ISIS enslavement and rape, asks a New York Times reporter.²
The refugee, a member of a minority religious group targeted for genocide by ISIS, has been living in Toronto in a basement apartment with her young son since July 2017, reliving the torture she experienced during her captivity. ‘“They told us they would help us with psychologist,”’ she says. ‘“We haven’t see anything from them. Aren’t we human?”’³
Herstory
Early in 2017 we formed the BC Working Group for Yazidi Women and Girls to lobby Ministers in Parliament in response to the survivors’ situation at that time. We later changed our name to Women Refugees Advocacy Project (WRAP). In 2018 we learned through articles in Chatelaine and The New York Times that the Yazidi women and children were not receiving the trauma care promised. Quite the contrary.
In these articles we read of Reverend Majed El Shafie and the efforts of One Free World International to assist the traumatized Yazidi women living in Canada. WRAP decided to formally petition the government to provide a comprehensive program of trauma care.
We contacted Anna-Lee Chiprout of OFWI to discuss our petition and to learn more about the current situation of the Yazidi refugees in Canada. Anna-Lee confirmed that the Yazidi women were not receiving the supports they were promised and encouraged us to keep going. She offered to consult Majed El Shafie, saying he could come to Vancouver to bring awareness to the plight of Yazidi women and girls in Canada and also those still in Iraq.⁴
After watching Freedom Fighter, a documentary featuring Majed El Shafie’s human rights work, we decided to embrace their offer. Please see our Events page.
To contact us wrapforjustice@gmail.com
Footnotes:
1. Canada will take in 1,200 primarily Yazidi refugees, by Terry Pedwell, February 21, 2017, Macleans. ‘“As many have experienced unimaginable trauma, both physical and emotional, many will have unique psychological and social needs such as trauma counselling,”’ [Minister of Immigration and Refugees] Hussen said.
2. Canada Struggles as It Opens Its Arms to Victims of ISIS, by Catherine Porter, New York Times, March 16, 2018.
3. ‘Please Take Us Back To Iraq’: A Yazidi Family’s Traumatic First Days In Canada, by Naomi Buck, Chatelaine, December 8, 2017.
4. The Yazidis are in danger of extinction and Ottawa’s stopped helping, by Barbara Kay, National Post, June 19, 2018.
Header image credit: Aveen Ismail