A UN team on Sunday began to exhume Yazidi mass graves in northern Iraq where Nobel laureate Nadia Murad believes her mother was buried.
The team began their work in the villages of Solage and Kojo in Sinjar district, home to the ethno-religious Yazidi minority whose members were killed in their thousands by ISIS six years ago after the extremists seized large parts of Iraq and Syria.
Ms Murad is one of many Yazidis who hope to identify missing relatives and friends among the bodies exhumed and give them a proper burial.
“For six long years, I and other survivors were denied the right to bury our loved ones with dignity," she said on Twitter.
"Today, I am overwhelmed with emotion as the mass grave where she [lies] beside other Yazidi women is finally exhumed."
Ms Murad is from Kojo, the site of the worst massacre that took place after Yazidi villagers refused to convert to Islam.
ISIS took hundreds of women captive and killed more than 400 men in the village.
For several years, Sinjar was the site of what the UN called an ISIS-led genocidal campaign against the Yazidis.
The extremists shot, beheaded or burnt alive the group’s members and kidnapped thousands, especially its women, many of whom were forced into sexual slavery.
The UN team dealing with ISIS atrocities in Iraq, or Unitad, said it has completed preparations for DNA samples to be collected from families to help identify the exhumed remains.
"Unitad previously supported the exhumation of 16 mass graves in Kojo," the team said on Twitter.
"The 17th grave opened today will contribute additional evidence in support of ongoing investigations into the massacre against Yazidis that took place there."
Yazidi genocide survivors also want justice for the crimes committed in Sinjar, but remains unclear whether the evidence recovered will be sent to a court of law.
Iraqi President Barham Salih renewed his call for Parliament to approve the Yazidi female survivors bill and to expand it to other groups that were victim to ISIS.
The bill aims to recognise the 2014 events as a “genocide” and to declare August 3, the day ISIS attacked Sinjar, as a national holiday of remembrance.
“The tragedy of the Yazidis is a tragedy for all," Mr Salih tweeted.
"ISIS crimes must be punished, and victory for the victims is a national and moral duty."
Six years after the massacre, most of the 400,000 Yazidis in Iraq are still displaced.
Thousands of members are still unaccounted for and most of the community has yet to return home.
Iraq, which declared victory over ISIS in 2017, has yet to call the group's crimes against the Yazidis “genocide”, despite the UN’s recognition.
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Starring: Amir El-Masry, Pierce Brosnan
Director: Athale
Rating: 4/5
Qosty Byogaani
Starring: Hani Razmzi, Maya Nasir and Hassan Hosny
Four stars
HIV on the rise in the region
A 2019 United Nations special analysis on Aids reveals 37 per cent of new HIV infections in the Mena region are from people injecting drugs.
New HIV infections have also risen by 29 per cent in western Europe and Asia, and by 7 per cent in Latin America, but declined elsewhere.
Egypt has shown the highest increase in recorded cases of HIV since 2010, up by 196 per cent.
Access to HIV testing, treatment and care in the region is well below the global average.
Few statistics have been published on the number of cases in the UAE, although a UNAIDS report said 1.5 per cent of the prison population has the virus.
What are the GCSE grade equivalents?
- Grade 9 = above an A*
- Grade 8 = between grades A* and A
- Grade 7 = grade A
- Grade 6 = just above a grade B
- Grade 5 = between grades B and C
- Grade 4 = grade C
- Grade 3 = between grades D and E
- Grade 2 = between grades E and F
- Grade 1 = between grades F and G
What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
- An arms embargo
- A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
- A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
- A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
- Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
Frankenstein in Baghdad
Ahmed Saadawi
Penguin Press
A timeline of the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language
- 2018: Formal work begins
- November 2021: First 17 volumes launched
- November 2022: Additional 19 volumes released
- October 2023: Another 31 volumes released
- November 2024: All 127 volumes completed
Washmen Profile
Date Started: May 2015
Founders: Rami Shaar and Jad Halaoui
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Laundry
Employees: 170
Funding: about $8m
Funders: Addventure, B&Y Partners, Clara Ventures, Cedar Mundi Partners, Henkel Ventures
What is an ETF?
An exchange traded fund is a type of investment fund that can be traded quickly and easily, just like stocks and shares. They come with no upfront costs aside from your brokerage's dealing charges and annual fees, which are far lower than on traditional mutual investment funds. Charges are as low as 0.03 per cent on one of the very cheapest (and most popular), Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with the maximum around 0.75 per cent.
There is no fund manager deciding which stocks and other assets to invest in, instead they passively track their chosen index, country, region or commodity, regardless of whether it goes up or down.
The first ETF was launched as recently as 1993, but the sector boasted $5.78 billion in assets under management at the end of September as inflows hit record highs, according to the latest figures from ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five largest providers BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisers, Deutsche Bank X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
While the best-known track major indices such as MSCI World, the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, you can also invest in specific countries or regions, large, medium or small companies, government bonds, gold, crude oil, cocoa, water, carbon, cattle, corn futures, currency shifts or even a stock market crash.
If you go
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Funchal via Lisbon, with a connecting flight with Air Portugal. Economy class returns cost from Dh3,845 return including taxes.
The trip
The WalkMe app can be downloaded from the usual sources. If you don’t fancy doing the trip yourself, then Explore offers an eight-day levada trails tour from Dh3,050, not including flights.
The hotel
There isn’t another hotel anywhere in Madeira that matches the history and luxury of the Belmond Reid's Palace in Funchal. Doubles from Dh1,400 per night including taxes.
