Born in Captivity: The Children ISIS Left Behind and the State That Refuses to Recognize Them
Born in Captivity: The Children ISIS Left Behind and the State That Refuses to Recognize Them By Hussein Zainulabdeen | Independent Researcher — Iraqi Minority Rights | husseinmonitor.com She was 24 years old, living in an overcrowded displacement camp in Sheikhan, Iraq, looking at pictures of her two children — a six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl. It had been four months since she last saw them. To come home, she had left them behind. This is the impossible choice that Iraqi law imposes on Yazidi women who survived ISIS captivity and bore children during it: return to your community, or keep your children. The law does not allow both. The Legal Trap Under Iraq's National Card Law, a child born to one Muslim parent — even as a result of rape — must be registered as Muslim. For Yazidi women who were sexually enslaved by ISIS fighters, this means that any child born in captivity is automatically designated Muslim under Iraqi law, regardless of the mother...