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YAZIDI WOMEN FIND ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE

September 8^th, 2016

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The Dost Bakery is a small cake business that opened in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) in the autumn of 2015. Dost means “friend” in Kurdish, as the bakery is run by 10 friends. All of them are women who were displaced by ISIS and are now living in and around the Sharia Camp near the city of Dohuk.

After initial start-up help and training from UNDP, the women now run the bakery, serving cake to the displaced communities. The business has since grown, providing other displaced women with important skills and jobs. More than 126 families benefit directly from the project.

“Of course we would love to go back to Sinjar [their home city]. That’s where our life is. All we do here is temporary, we can’t build anything. We will not go back before the situation stabilizes though. It would cost our lives,” says Beyan,* one of the bakers.

In 2014 fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Daesh, attacked the city of Sinjar. Most of the minority Yazidi community were forced to flee for their lives. Large numbers of displaced Yazidis arrived in Dohuk, moving into camps, informal settlements or unfinished buildings.

Projects like these help provide jobs and decent work, as well as a sense of dignity to those fleeing war and persecution. They also help alleviate the pressures on the local communities caused by the influx of displaced people.

In the KRI, the Yazidis are one of the groups most affected by the onslaught of ISIS. Men of the community face a choice between joining the fight or being killed. Even children are trained to fight, and women are often trafficked into sexual slavery, or forced to adhere to fundamentalist religious beliefs.

Many of the Dost bakers bear the physical and mental scars of life-threatening violence. For them, getting back on track means rebuilding their lives through work and a sense of purpose.