The ISIS attack on Sinjar in August 2014

During the summer of 2014, ISIS took over Nineveh governorate in northern Iraq, home to most of Iraq’s minority groups. These minorities were systematically targeted by ISIS in a violent campaign to ‘purify’ the region of non-Islamic influences. The Yazidi community in the area of Mount Sinjar, consisting of approximately 400,000 people, was singled out for particularly brutal treatment.

On 3 August 2014, ISIS launched a coordinated attack on Sinjar City and surrounding towns and villages, forcing the Yazidis to seek refuge on Mount Sinjar. Those who could not flee in time were either killed or kidnapped. As ISIS encircled the mountain on 4 August, tens of thousands of Yazidis remained trapped without water, food or shelters in temperatures rising above 50ºC. US airstrikes and humanitarian aid airdrops began on 8 August. Most Yazidis were evacuated between 9-13 August when a safe corridor was opened by Kurdish forces, allowing them to flee through Syria into the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (Fig 1).

Evidence from a retrospective household survey

Almost 3 years after the ISIS attack on Sinjar, the vast majority of Yazidis remain displaced in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In a recent paper, we presented the findings from a retrospective household survey that we conducted in November and December 2015 to estimate the number and demographic profile of Yazidis killed and kidnapped by ISIS (Cetorelli et al. 2017).

Our survey covered the displaced Yazidi population from Sinjar sheltered in camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. We interviewed a systematic random sample of 1,300 in-camp households and recorded information about killings and kidnappings of household members by ISIS. Verbal informed consent was obtained from all interviewees after explaining the purpose of the survey, its confidentiality and the voluntary nature of participation.

Using these data, we estimated that 9,900 (95% confidence interval (CI): 7,000 – 13,900) Yazidis were either killed or kidnapped over the course of a few days in August 2014, amounting to roughly 2.5% of the entire Yazidi population of Sinjar at the time of the attack. Of this total, an estimated 3,100 (95% CI: 2,100 – 4,400) were killed, with nearly half of them executed by gunshot, beheading or being burned alive, while the rest died from lack of water and food or injuries during the ISIS siege on Mount Sinjar. An estimated 6,800 (95% CI: 4,200 – 10,800) were kidnapped, with over one third still missing at the time of the survey. Escapees recounted the abuses they had suffered, including forced religious conversion, torture and sex slavery (Fig 2).

Nearly 1% of the nuclear families in our sample had all members either killed or kidnapped, but were reported in the survey because at least one family member managed to escape ISIS captivity. This suggests that our analysis may have underestimated the actual toll of killings and kidnappings because of the unknown number of families who were still in captivity or had died in their entirety with no one surviving to report.

The Yazidis were likely to be killed and kidnapped by ISIS irrespective of age and sex, but we found that children under 15 years were disproportionately affected. Children accounted for nearly all those who died on Mount Sinjar during the ISIS siege, and were also much less likely to escape captivity following kidnapping compared to adults. Several accounts confirm that girls were sold or gifted to ISIS fighters, while boys were forced into ISIS training (Fig 3).

Conclusion

Our survey has a number of limitations, including inference from a sample of displaced households to the whole Yazidi population of Sinjar, and uncertainty of that population’s exact size at the time of the attack. Nevertheless, our estimates are consistent with other existing evidence, including the lists compiled by local authorities and human rights organisations. According to those lists, the number of Yazidis killed is between 2,500 and 5,000 and the number of those kidnapped is over 6,000. The fact that multiple independent sources arrived at similar estimates increases our confidence in the general findings.

Combined with other existing evidence, our survey can support a formal genocide investigation by an appointed judicial authority, and highlights the need for the international community to keep attention focused on the rescue, assistance and protection of the Yazidi community.

References

Cetorelli, V., Sasson, I., Shabila, N. and Burnham, G. (2017) Mortality and Kidnapping Estimates for the Yazidi Population in the Area of Mount Sinjar, Iraq, in August 2014: A Retrospective Household Survey. PLoS Med 14(5): e1002297.

OHCHR (2016) “They Came to Destroy”: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis. A/HRC/32/CRP.2.

UNAMI/OHCHR (2016) A Call for Accountability and Protection: Yezidi Survivors of Atrocities Committed by ISIL. UNAMI/OHCHR Report.

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These famous words, written over 2,000 years ago, suggest that all are equal in the face of death. But what may have been true then is no longer true in our current day and age. We can now anticipate how long people will live, and will outlive others,—, based on their social characteristics. In the United States, as in most other countries of the world, women live longer than men, whites longer than African Americans (Acciai et al ), and the rich and well-educated longer than those with low socio-economic status. All of these differences are encapsulated in significant gaps in life expectancy at birth—the average age at which infants born today will die if exposed to the current (group-specific) death risks.

Education gap in life expectancy

Educational attainment has become the single most important predictor of longevity in America. Whereas the gender and black-white gaps in life expectancy have diminished in recent decades, the gap between those with a college degree and those without a high-school diploma has doubled for men and more than tripled for women since 1990. At age 25, college-educated white men can expect to live an additional 57.3 years, 11.9 years longer than their low-educated counterparts who did not finish high school (Figure 1). Among white women, the same gap increased from 2.5 years in 1990 to 9.3 years in 2010 (among African American men and women the education gap in life expectancy was 8.6 and 4.7 years, respectively, in 2010).

The most troubling finding is that since 1990 life expectancy for those without a high-school diploma has declined by 3.1 years for white women and 0.6 years for white men (but continued to increase for African Americans at all levels of education). Such a sustained decline in life expectancy is unprecedented in the United States and in the industrialized nations, in times of peace. Furthermore, among white Americans who have completed high school, life expectancy increased by a mere six months in the decade since 2000—a very modest improvement compared with the rate of increase throughout most of the twentieth century. The only group to experience a significant rise in longevity since 1990 are those with some college education and especially those with a college degree, for whom life expectancy increased by about 4.5 years. In other words, the education gap in longevity is widening, and not only between those at the top and those at the bottom. There is a clear relationship between education and mortality in which each additional year of schooling reduces the risk of death—all the way from elementary school up to advanced university degrees.

Uncertainty in the length of life

Although life expectancy is a very useful measure of longevity, it does not fully capture the uncertainty associated with an individual life span. Imagine two populations with the same life expectancy of 75 years. In the first, everyone dies exactly on their 75^th birthday; in the second, half of the population dies at age 50 and the other half at 100. In which population would you rather live? Clearly, the latter scenario entails tremendous uncertainty, from an individual standpoint, whereas the former does not. In real populations the differences are not quite as dramatic, but the basic principle is the same—those with greater dispersion around the life expectancy face greater uncertainty as to the length of their life.

As it turns out, there are significant differences between the various education groups not only in life expectancy, but also in the dispersion of ages at death. College-educated Americans live longer than any other education group, on average, and their deaths are narrowly concentrated around their already-higher life expectancy. By contrast, lower education groups face much greater uncertainty regarding how long they will live—and this uncertainty has been on the rise since 1990. This is because many more of them now die from premature and preventable causes of death. Excess mortality at younger ages translates into greater uncertainty in length of life. For example, a white man without a high school diploma is as likely to die at age 60 as he is at age 90, whereas his college-educated counterpart is roughly eight times more likely to die at 90 than at 60 (Figure 2).

Betting on how long we will live

Implicit in many of the choices we make throughout the life course is our expectation of how long we will live: the number of years spent in the workforce before retirement, whether and for how long to take that mortgage, and the amount of savings needed for old age, among other decisions. The great majority of college-educated individuals can expect to live longer lives and with a greater degree of certainty. Low-educated individuals, on the other hand, live shorter and more precarious lives in which planning ahead is often futile. For them, early retirement could be their only option to enjoy a few years outside the workforce, or, equally likely, condemn them to several decades of poverty.

This poses a major concern not only for individuals, but also for the social and economic institutions planning for our old age. The Social Security Administration and programs such as Medicare immediately come to mind, but the problem of rising uncertainty in length of life—at least for some groups in the population—permeates to local authorities, non-profit organizations, and the private sector. It also raises several questions about distributive justice: first, whether the inequality in life expectancy can be reduced by preventing premature deaths among the low educated, which will also act to reduce the uncertainty in their life spans; second, if we find a certain degree of inequality acceptable as a society—as we do in multiple other social and economic domains—whether we should compensate high-risk groups by instituting a differential retirement age, so they too can reap the benefits of their life-long contributions to Social Security before it is too late.

References

ACCIAI F., NOAH A., FIREBAUGH G. (2015) Black-White Mortality Differentials in the United States, N-IUSSP, July 14

Sasson I. (2016) “Trends in Life Expectancy and Lifespan Variation by Educational Attainment: United States, 1990-2010”, Demography, 53(2): 269-293

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