Thuringia, a state in Germany, has become the second in the country to ban deportations of Yazidis.
The announcement specifically concerns Yazidi women and minors, with Thuringia deciding to suspend such deportations to Iraq until at least April.
Germany is currently home to over 200,000 Yazidis, making it the largest Yazidi diaspora community worldwide. According to InfoMigrants, the growth of the Yazidi population in Europe can be traced back to 2014 when the extremist organisation Islamic State (IS) invaded the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq, displacing the Yazidi community that had resided there for centuries.
Acknowledging the atrocities committed by IS against the Yazidi community from 2014 to 2018, Germany officially recognised the events as genocide last year. As the European Parliament estimates, between 300,000 and 700,000 Yazidis lived in Iraq before the IS invasion, sparking a mass exodus as they fled their homes to escape a purge of what the extremist group deemed “un-Islamic influences” in the region.
Before Thuringia’s announcement, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany was the only region to impose a ban on the deportation of members of the Yazidi minority. Despite official recognition of the Yazidi genocide, government data show that less than half of Iraqi Yazidis in Germany have their asylum claims fully accepted.
A significant number of Yazidis are still awaiting final decisions, and of the 4,706 asylum cases filed by Iraqi Yazidis in Germany, 2,420 have faced rejection. In October, the Yazidis staged protests outside the German lower house of parliament (Bundestag) and other government buildings after their petition for international protection was rejected.
Concerns among the protesters included fear of repatriation to Iraq, particularly after a government decision to allow the return of individuals whose asylum applications had been rejected. Some protesters even resorted to a hunger strike.
With the decline of IS influence in Iraq, fewer Iraqi Yazidis have been able to secure asylum in Germany. In 2022, approximately 48.6 per cent of Yazidis were granted asylum, according to data from the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA).
Moreover, Germany, identified as the main destination for asylum seekers within the EU+, received around 244,000 applications out of nearly one million submitted to EU+ countries in 2022. The term EU+ refers to the 27 EU Member States plus Norway and Switzerland.
In November 2023 alone, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) approved 35,316 initial asylum applications, contributing to a cumulative yearly total of 304,581 such applications.
Over the same period, the Federal Office concluded 242,185 asylum procedures. From January to November 2023, Germany recorded a total of 325,801 asylum seekers, comprising 304,581 initial applications and 21,220 subsequent applications.
