After pressure from the United Nations, the Council of Ministers of Iraq agreed to the transfer of ancestral lands to Yazidi population, who had been persistently denied this right for 47 years.

According to the Iraqi News Agency, the decree guarantees that Yazidis will own their houses and agricultural land in the Sinjar district of Nineveh province in the north of the country, where the majority of Yazidis live.

Dr. Ghazi Faisal Hussein, director of the Iraqi Center for Strategic Studies, explained to Sky News Arabia and local Yazidi online media the legal and constitutional aspects of this step:

"The rights of Yazidis as citizens to own property, be it real estate, agricultural land or other property for the construction of houses, are part of the rights of every Iraqi with constitutional and from a legal point of view. The deprivation, which lasted for years, is illegal and violates all constitutions and human rights.

Even in the provisional Constitutions before 2003, there is no article concerning the deprivation of property rights of Yazidis or representatives of other nationalities and religions in Iraq.

The return to the legality of ownership of Yazidi homes and lands is a correction of the catastrophic mistake made by successive Governments towards the Yazidis, who are indigenous to Iraq, and reflects a form of dangerous religious, ethnic and social discrimination.

The decision to ban the ownership of Yazidis was made in 1975, after clashes between the government and Kurdish groups seeking self-government, when Yazidis were mistakenly considered Kurds, and at that time many of them were deported from the villages in which they lived. Many Yazidis living in the Sinjar Mountain area have died, and many have been relocated to residential complexes in the north and south of Jebel Sinjar, preventing them from owning their legitimate lands and houses."

Also, this decision will be followed by other decisions within the powers of the new Prime Minister of Iraq, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. All draft laws will be aimed at taking care of the rights of children of national minorities of Iraq and ensuring their rights within the framework of the principle of full citizenship, justice and equality.

Since 2018, the UN has been dealing with the land and property rights of Yazidis in Sinjar, registering more than 14,500 applications for ownership and issuing certificates of land ownership to confirm the rights to work for Yazidis, using modern digital technologies, in order to support property issues.v

Mlêtê Êzidî