Thank you so much for having me here, Mr. Chair, members of committee.
My name is Dalal Abdallah, from the Yazidi community here in London, Ontario.
I'm here in front of you today because I was once running for my life in the Gulf War. My parents had to make a split-second decision to walk over to Syria that left five of my siblings behind in Iraq. I spent eight years in the camps in Syria until we were sponsored by the Canadian government. Even though I was a child, I still felt the pain and the struggle around me. I would look up in the sky wishing on those bright stars to go to heaven. Heaven was known to me to be Canada.
August 2014 will never be forgotten. Thousands of Yazidis lost their homes and their culture; some witnessed horrifying mass killings; and some were kidnapped, sold, and endlessly raped by members of ISIS. I remember that day in Canada when I received that call from my brother in Iraq. I picked up the phone and all I could hear was someone crying on the other end and who could hardly speak. He said, Dalal, they are killing everybody. They are taking all the kids, they are taking all the girls, and there are kids dying. I have lost everything. Please help us.
That day was one of the hardest days of my life. I was left speechless. I have heard so many horrifying stories of Yazidi girls coming back from ISIS, one of them being Nadia Murad, who witnessed male members of her family murdered right in front of her eyes. She was kidnapped, sold, and endlessly raped.
Some of the girls have escaped ISIS to return to being left homeless in the streets of Kurdistan. Some come to find some family members and others lost every single member to ISIS. Imagine being a parent to those victims. You, as a parent, cannot provide any help to your child and feel so hopeless. A lot of these girls who have escaped from ISIS have tried to commit suicide.
Without proper treatment, these girls will go through more suffering than they already have. We need to provide urgent humanitarian aid to the Yazidi women and girls upon their rescue, such as an emergency fund for food, clothes, and medical needs; psychological and trauma treatment; education opportunities for our women and youth; educational tools to support trauma therapy and provide new skills, allowing these women to retain self-sufficiency; and connect our support for women with the medical specialists in hospitals, especially for those who require treatment due to physical, sexual, and mental abuse.
We Canadians cannot turn our backs to the most vulnerable. We cannot play deaf to the screams that are crying for our help. I want Canada to open its doors to the Yazidis, especially the girls who have suffered enough at the hands of ISIS. I want everyone in this room to take these girls as your own. If that was your daughter, brother, or sister, what would you do for them?
There was a proposal that was handed by the organization One Free World International to the previous and current governments. I have that document right here in front of me. I want to give a copy to each one of you. We need to take action today. There are thousands of Yazidis, Christians, and other minorities who are left in Kurdistan and who hardly have any humanitarian aid. Canada needs to take accountability for this aid. In a war zone, we need to know where all this aid is going and if it's reaching out to the right people who are really in need of it.
In addition to the ISIL crimes against humanity, the group has also destroyed numerous Yazidi holy sites. Unlike for other Iraqi ethnic groups, ISIL has only given the Yazidi captives two options: convert to Islam or die.
Based on all these available data, compelling evidence suggests that genocide took place in the Sinjar district against the Yazidis ethnic group, which has yet to be fully accounted for, as the Sinjar region remains contested and massive graves remain under ISIL control. I urge Canada to recognize the ISIL campaign against the Yazidi people as an act of genocide.
I want to leave you with the definition of a “genocide”. A “genocide” is “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.” This definition speaks Yazidis to me.
I'm the same little girl who wished upon those bright stars, who once had no hope, no future, waiting for Canada to call my name in the hopes of coming to a beautiful country called Canada. There are thousands of little girls right now waiting for Canada to call their names, to have that chance at a better life. Imagine if that was your little girl crying out for help. Would we still be standing here doing nothing? We Canadians cannot turn our backs on the Yazidis. Canada is our only hope and we need to do something today.
Thank you so much.