“The world needs tolerance. We should do something to promote tolerance and accepting others. We should rebuild trust in each other,” says Vian Dakhil Saeed Khidthir, the only female Yazidi parliamentarian in Iraq. 

Two years ago, Vian Dakhil’s impassioned and heartfelt speech in the Iraqi Parliament made global headlines. Dakhil appealed to the parliament and the international community to put an end to massacres perpetrated by the Islamic State and rescue the Yazidi refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.  

“There is a campaign of Genocide being waged on the Yazidi constituent. My people are being slaughtered just as all Iraqis were slaughtered… Away from all political disputes, we want humanitarian solidarity. I speak in the name of humanity. Save us, save us!” Emotionally overwhelmed, she collapsed before finishing her appeal. “I cried to convey [the Yazidi refugees'] tears and agony. I wasn’t crying because of myself, I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. I was crying for them, who were thirsty, hungry and heartbroken,” Vian says.

In August 2014 ISIS captured Sinjar and the neighboring towns, killing over 5,000 Yazidi men, according to a joint report by the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and its Assitance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

Vian’s plea eventually reached U.S. President Barack Obama, who then authorized targeted airstrikes and a humanitarian effort in Iraq. “Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, ‘There is no one coming to help!’ Well today, America is coming to help,” reads the official statement by president Obama issued on August 07, 2014. 

In February 2016 the European Parliament unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the Islamic State militant group’s systematic killing and persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East as Genocide.

A week after her address in parliament, Vian almost lost her life. She had no plans to fly to the mountains that day, but at the base, overtaken by how enthusiastically the pilots prepared for the rescue mission, she decided to join them in delivering food and evacuating the stranded Yazidi girls and women. The helicopter crash-landed due to the heavy load. Vian was seriously injured and still walks with a cane, while the Iraqi helicopter pilot died in the crash. “When you consider the situation those people are in, when they call me with ‘Please, Vian, help us!’ my injury means nothing to me,” she says.

From academia to parliament

Vian Dakhil was born in 1971 and raised in Mosul in northern Iraq as the oldest of nine children. She ventured into politics after teaching biology at a local university. Back in 2003 and 2004, some of her Yazidi students became targets in the civil conflict that ensued after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and she stepped in to help. She was first elected to Iraq’s Parliament in 2010 and re-elected for a second term in 2014 on the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s ticket. Ever since, she has worked tirelessly to help tens of thousands of Yazidis who have fallen victim to ISIS. Her main focus is rescuing Yazidi girls and women who are abducted, enslaved and sold at markets like “in the Middle Ages,” she says. “When something like this happens to the Yazidi people, it happens to all of us. We are family; we feel it as deeply as that. The sexual enslavement of Yazidi women is like public rape of our community,” says Vian. 

However, almost two years on the situation in the region remains dire. Over 85 percent of Iraqi Yazidis now live as refugees in Kurdistan. “Those people’s situation is very bad because after 20 months, they still live in tents without any humanitarian aid,” Vian says. “They don’t have schools, they don’t have universities, they don’t have a health center and they don’t have enough basic necessities.” However, Vian is more concerned with the effect the desperate conditions may have on the refugees’ psyche and she fears that “people will lose trust.” 

“Lots of Yazidis are still under ISIS control: about 1,000 children aged six through ten are being held by ISIS and will be forming its new generation,” she says. 

When Vian is not attending parliamentary sessions in Baghdad she stays in Kurdistan, where she visits refugee camps and listens to people who come to her for help. In 2014, Reach All Women in WAR, an international human rights NGO supporting women human rights defenders, gave Vian Dakhil its Anna Politkovskaya Award for her courage in speaking out and campaigning to protect the Yazidi people from ISIS terror.

Tolerance now, more than ever

The Dakhils are all involved in humanitarian activities. Vian’s father is a surgeon. She has four sisters and two brothers who are doctors, another brother who is a lawyer and a sister who is a pharmacist. One of Vian’s sisters manages a local humanitarian organization in Sinjar. 

Apart from helping her sister in Sinjar, Vian frequently travels to Dohuk in Kurdistan, where the largest refugee camp called Sharia Camp currently houses over 18,000 people in 4,000 tents. It opened in 2014 and includes two Arabic and two Kurdish schools. “We now have a school in Sharia Camp where children learn, play, draw and talk about peace. We should teach this generation to live in peace and communicate with each other. The tragedy that befell the Yazidis should make them strong, not weak,” says Vian.

“Now I’m asking for help in saving 3,000 girls from ISIS-occupied territory, we must do something for them. We talk about tolerance and accepting others, this is very important because we live here and if we lose these people’s trust, we won’t have many options. We should rebuild the trust; we should establish peace between the Yazidi people and others. I am asking for more humanitarian help for refuges, not only for Yazidis, but also for many others,” Vian says. She continues her struggle to make many Yazidi and Iraqi voices heard.

On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity will be granted annually to an individual whose actions have had an exceptional impact on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes. The Aurora Prize Laureate will be honored with a $100,000 grant. In addition, that individual will have the unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by selecting an organization that inspired their work to receive a $1,000,000 award. The inaugural Aurora Prize ceremony will take place in Yerevan, Armenia, on April 24, 2016.