Yazidi Cultural Archives launch

Pioneering digital archives of the culture of the Yazidis, a minority community in northern Iraq thatsuffered genocide at the hands of the Da’esh in 2014, were published today by the United Nations (UN) on Google’s Arts and Culture platform. The Yazidi Cultural Archives, which are globally accessible and available in English and Arabic, comprise four online exhibitions created by 16 Yazidi women working in collaboration with Yazda, a community-led organisation that protects and champions Yazidis and other religious and ethnic minority communities, together with Community Jameel, CULTURUNNERS, the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology and Nobody’s Listening. An evaluation of the impact of the archives on the psychological wellbeing of participants is being supported by New York University (NYU) Arts and Health initiative and the World Health Organisation (WHO) Arts and Health programme.

A meeting to celebrate the archives was held at Yazda headquarters in Duhok, Iraq on October 20, 2022 and the archives will officially be launched at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France on October 26, 2022.