The defeat of a force responsible for genocide is a significant achievement. Yet survivors may continue to face insecurity, displacement, missing relatives and lasting psychological harm. What does protection mean for a community whose immediate persecutors have lost territorial control, but whose members cannot safely return home or rebuild their lives?
The experience of the Êzîdîs, also commonly known as Yazidis, brings this problem into focus. More than a decade after the genocide, rebuilding requires attention to the conditions in which survivors live. Reconstructing institutions and infrastructure matters, but recovery also depends on justice, security, meaningful participation and opportunities for a sustainable future. Two questions deserve particular attention: who should coordinate rebuilding, and how should its success be assessed?
The responsibility to rebuild
The 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) formulated the Responsibility to Protect through responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild. Chapter 5 recognised that protective intervention should be followed by sustained attention to security, reconciliation and development. Protection was therefore conceived as a continuing undertaking extending beyond the immediate crisis.[1]
The explicit responsibility to rebuild subsequently received less attention within Responsibility to Protect (R2P). As Athanasios Stathopoulos explains, it was not included in the R2P paragraphs of the 2005 World Summit Outcome. He also cautions that expansive approaches to rebuilding can undermine self-determination and create disproportionate expectations of external intervention.[2]
These concerns require careful treatment. The responsibility to rebuild should not be presented as a comprehensive legal obligation requiring every intervening state to reconstruct an affected society. Specific obligations depend on applicable law, institutional mandates and the circumstances of each actor. Nevertheless, rebuilding provides a valuable framework for asking whether protection remains effective after immediate violence has ended. Applying this framework to post-genocide recovery does not require treating all military action against ISIS as an R2P intervention.
James Pattison’s work on justice after war examines precisely this question of allocation: which actors should bear responsibility for reconstruction? His discussion challenges the assumption that participation in fighting alone supplies a satisfactory answer.[3]
The Êzîdî experience
ISIS’s attack on Şingal, or Sinjar, in August 2014 inflicted profound harm on the Êzîdî community. Analysis of the documented atrocities under the Genocide Convention establishes the genocidal character of the campaign.[4] Recognising that destruction raises a further question: what conditions must be restored for the community to recover?
Important accountability work has occurred. UNITAD, the United Nations investigative team established to support accountability for ISIS crimes in Iraq, assisted national investigations and prosecutions. Before its closure, it reported that at least 15 cases it supported had resulted in convictions. This demonstrates the practical value of cooperation across jurisdictions.[5]
UNITAD’s mandate ended in September 2024. Its archive was transferred to the United Nations Secretariat, and substantial materials were delivered to Iraqi authorities. Evidence preservation therefore remains an important achievement, although an archive cannot itself conduct investigations, prosecute suspects or provide sustained support to survivors.[6]
The wider recovery remains unfinished. In August 2025, the United Nations reported that more than 200,000 Yazidis remained displaced and approximately 2,600 remained missing. These figures illustrate the scale of unresolved needs at the time of that reporting, more than a decade after the attack.[7]
Who is responsible for recovery
The first difficulty concerns the allocation of responsibility. Rebuilding involves numerous institutions, but survivors need a clear account of who is responsible for connecting their work and addressing gaps.
Iraqi authorities, international organisations, foreign governments, national courts and civil-society groups perform different functions. Such diversity can contribute expertise and resources. Difficulties arise when institutional boundaries leave survivors without an effective route to assistance.
Consider a displaced family contemplating return. Housing reconstruction may be supported by one programme, while security, public services and employment depend on other institutions. Progress in housing alone may leave return impracticable. Similarly, tracing a missing relative may require coordination across borders and between investigative, humanitarian and forensic bodies.
A workable approach would allocate responsibilities by function, taking account of legal obligations, mandates, control, commitments and capacity. It should be possible to identify who must act when a particular part of recovery fails. Survivors should not carry the burden of navigating every gap between institutions.
What counts as successful rebuilding
The second difficulty concerns how progress is assessed. Buildings repaired, funds spent and beneficiaries registered indicate activity, but do not necessarily establish recovery.
Comparative research illustrates this distinction. Remaking Rwanda, edited by Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf, examines reconstruction alongside governance, justice, economic development and memory. It raises questions about the depth and durability of recovery despite substantial institutional achievements.[8]
Likewise, Janine Natalya Clark’s research on trials and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia shows why criminal courts cannot alone deliver reconciliation. Accountability forms part of a broader process requiring other institutions and approaches.[9]
These experiences should not be treated as templates for Iraq. They support a more limited proposition: rebuilding a state’s institutional architecture does not automatically rebuild relationships, trust or community life.
Rebuilding should therefore be considered across eight connected dimensions: security and institutional stability; justice and accountability; truth, acknowledgement and missing persons; reconciliation and social repair; safe, voluntary and dignified return; reparations and socio-economic recovery; physical and psychological rehabilitation; and guarantees of non-recurrence with meaningful Êzîdî participation. These dimensions offer a way to assess whether separate initiatives are collectively improving survivors’ lives, rather than a new legal test.
Rebuilding through survivor participation
Survivors’ agency should remain central to rebuilding. Participation should extend beyond consultation to meaningful influence over decisions affecting security, justice, return and recovery.
Return must also remain a choice. Some families may wish to rebuild their lives in Şingal, while others may decide to remain elsewhere. The relevant measure is whether people possess a realistic opportunity to return safely and with dignity, rather than whether programmes maximise return numbers.[10]
Ultimately, the condition of the affected community should guide the assessment of rebuilding. For families awaiting information about missing relatives, survivors needing rehabilitation and displaced people unable to return safely, the end of immediate violence leaves substantial work unfinished. A renewed responsibility to rebuild would make that continuing work more visible, better coordinated and more accountable to those it is intended to assist. I will explore these questions further in an article planned for the near future.
References
Bibliography
Clark JN, International Trials and Reconciliation: Assessing the Impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Routledge 2014)
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (International Development Research Centre 2001)
Ismail H, ‘The Responsibility of ISIS for Crimes against the Êzîdîs’ (2024) 5(1) JICL 33
Pattison J, ‘Jus Post Bellum and the Responsibility to Rebuild’ (2015) 45 BJPolS 635
Stathopoulos A, ‘Post-Intervention Reconstruction and the Responsibility to Rebuild’ (2022) 11 Soc Sci, article 368, DOI: 10.3390/socsci11080368
Straus S and Waldorf L (eds), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (University of Wisconsin Press 2011)
UNAMI, ‘Iraq | SRSG Dr. Mohamed Al Hassan Visits Sharya Yazidi IDP Camp in Duhok Governorate’ (United Nations in Iraq, 3 August 2025) <https://iraq.un.org/en/299069-iraq-srsg-dr-mohamed-al-hassan-visits-sharya-yazidi-idp-camp-duhok-governorate> accessed 12 October 2026
UNITAD, ‘UNITAD Archive Delivered to the United Nations Secretariat’ (United Nations in Iraq, 31 August 2024) <https://iraq.un.org/en/277744-unitad-archive-delivered-united-nations-secretariat> accessed 12 October 2026
‘UNITAD and Iraq: Cooperation with Third States’ (United Nations in Iraq, 15 September 2024) <https://iraq.un.org/en/278694-unitad-and-iraq-cooperation-third-states> accessed 12 October 2026
‘Statement from the Acting Special Adviser and Head of UNITAD on the Conclusion of the UNITAD Mandate’ (United Nations in Iraq, 16 September 2024) <https://iraq.un.org/en/278785-statement-acting-special-adviser-and-head-unitad-conclusion-unitad-mandate> accessed 12 October 2026
UN document
UNGA Res 60/1, ‘2005 World Summit Outcome’ (16 September 2005) UN Doc A/RES/60/1
[1] International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (International Development Research Centre 2001) paras 5.1–5.4.
[2] UNGA Res 60/1, ‘2005 World Summit Outcome’ (16 September 2005) UN Doc A/RES/60/1, paras 138–39; Athanasios Stathopoulos, ‘Post-Intervention Reconstruction and the Responsibility to Rebuild’ (2022) 11 Soc Sci, article 368, DOI: 10.3390/socsci11080368.
[3] James Pattison, ‘Jus Post Bellum and the Responsibility to Rebuild’ (2015) 45 BJPolS 635.
[4] Hoshman Ismail, ‘The Responsibility of ISIS for Crimes against the Êzîdîs’ (2024) 5(1) JICL 33, 68–70.
[5] UNITAD, ‘UNITAD and Iraq: Cooperation with Third States’ (United Nations in Iraq, 15 September 2024) <https://iraq.un.org/en/278694-unitad-and-iraq-cooperation-third-states> accessed 12 October 2026.
[6] UNITAD, ‘Statement from the Acting Special Adviser and Head of UNITAD on the Conclusion of the UNITAD Mandate’ (United Nations in Iraq, 16 September 2024) <https://iraq.un.org/en/278785-statement-acting-special-adviser-and-head-unitad-conclusion-unitad-mandate> accessed 12 October 2026; UNITAD, ‘UNITAD Archive Delivered to the United Nations Secretariat’ (United Nations in Iraq, 31 August 2024) <https://iraq.un.org/en/277744-unitad-archive-delivered-united-nations-secretariat> accessed 12 October 2026.
[7] UNAMI, ‘Iraq | SRSG Dr. Mohamed Al Hassan Visits Sharya Yazidi IDP Camp in Duhok Governorate’ (United Nations in Iraq, 3 August 2025) <https://iraq.un.org/en/299069-iraq-srsg-dr-mohamed-al-hassan-visits-sharya-yazidi-idp-camp-duhok-governorate> accessed 12 October 2026.
[8] Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf (eds), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (University of Wisconsin Press 2011).
[9] Janine Natalya Clark, International Trials and Reconciliation: Assessing the Impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Routledge 2014).
[10] UNAMI (n 7).