The Slow Slog of Genocide: New Understandings of Yezidi Approaches to Survival and Justice

Abstract

There is a misconception that the crime that is genocide ends when the immediate killing ends. Yet, the Rome Statute Article1 (c) argues that genocide includes “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy”1. This article argues this slow, grinding aspect of genocide must be interpreted with attention to (a) how communities themselves articulate this violence and (b) how the international community, nation-state and aid organizations respond to this violence. In light of Native activists and academics’ work on mass violence, this article adapts aspects of their work alongside Yezidi frameworks to expose how the slow slog of genocide continues through three gaps in international response: (1) the lack of appropriate conditions of life (2) the abandonment and radicalization of those in Al-Hol style camps; and (3) how Yezidi are practicing survivance. Through interviews, it reveals how Yezidi “conditions of life” and Al-Hol’s radicalization incubate genocide and how Yezidis practice “survivance” through spiritual and legal resistance. As such, this article offers a new interpretation of the Yezidi case – one that insists justice requires not only prosecuting killers but also necessitates restoring the “conditions of survival”.