Fawzia Amin Sido Should Never Have Spent a Decade in Captivity

Fawzia Amin Sido was just 11 years old when she and her siblings were taken by ISIS from their village in Northern Iraq in 2014. While her two brothers were sent to a camp to be indoctrinated and trained as child soldiers, Fawzia was subjected to sexual slavery and abuse. After over a year in captivity in Iraq, she was transported to Syria, where she was enslaved by a Palestinian ISIS fighter. She was forced to marry, relinquish her religion, and give birth to two children. Like so many taken at such a vulnerable age, she was brainwashed against her own people and can barely speak her native language.

After more than a decade in captivity, Fawzia was rescued from Gaza, returned to Iraq, and reunited with her family on Oct. 2. Most Yazidis who have escaped captivity have done so from Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Fawzia is the first to be freed from Gaza, which raises concerns about the possibility of other captives being held in neighboring countries.

Fawzia’s story is painfully familiar to me as I, Nadia, was also among thousands of Yazidi women and children taken captive by ISIS in 2014. I know the grief of losing friends and family and the excruciating uncertainty of waiting to hear from loved ones still in captivity.

As the Founder of Nadia’s Initiative, I was made aware of Fawzia’s story and my team was working to bring her home prior to the events of Oct. 7, 2023. Her rescue, which came nearly a year later, was a complex joint operation between multiple countries. Her case is an important reminder of the incredibly complex and tragic nature of the threat still posed by ISIS, as well as the price that women and children continue to pay.

It is also a lesson that ISIS was never just a band of criminals. They are doctors, teachers, engineers—educated citizens connected to families and communities that have enabled the abuse of Yazidi women and children with impunity. In Fawzia’s case, following the death of the ISIS fighter she was forced to marry, his brother came to retrieve her and her children, taking them to Palestine against their will.

Read More: Nadia Murad’s Mission to Protect Survivors

Above all, Fawzia’s freedom is a reminder that thousands of women and children remain in captivity. The international community has failed, time and again, to bring them home and to hold everyone who contributed to these crimes against humanity accountable.

The sad reality is that these crimes persist because the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS did not include a plan for rescuing women and children. Throughout history, women’s bodies have been taken and abused as a “normal” part of war. When conflict erupts, we pay attention to buildings destroyed and lives lost, as we should. But we often forget about the living victims who have experienced—and continue to experience—unthinkable horrors at the hands of terrorists.

And the fact that more than 2,500 women and children continue to be held captive long after the collapse of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria—and there are still hostages being held in Gaza—is proof that you cannot extinguish radical ideology with only military action. You can only do that with accountability and justice.

In 2017, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2379 to establish UNITAD, promising survivors that justice would be served for the victims of ISIS crimes. Evidence was collected and thousands of survivors have risked their lives to share their stories. They are standing by, wanting nothing more than their day in court. However, seven years later, the UNSC has broken that promise, dismantling UNITAD without providing a pathway to justice.

As someone who has lost more members of my own family to ISIS than the number of ISIS members who have been held accountable, this is unacceptable. The world must condemn the brutalization and trafficking of women and children, wherever and whenever it occurs. We must stand united in the fundamental truth that an attack on women anywhere is an attack on women everywhere.

As Sheryl has written, the world’s response to each conflict matters deeply because it sets the precedent for how we respond to the next one. Sexual violence is calculated, targeted, and intended to generate fear. Let’s instead generate justice. We do that by holding perpetrators accountable—in Sudan, Ukraine, Israel, Iraq, and anywhere these heinous crimes occur. That is the only way we will prevent them from happening in the future. We owe it to survivors like Fawzia and to the victims who have been silenced by fear or who are no longer here to tell their own stories.

So let us celebrate the return of Fawzia and make certain that she receives the resources she needs to heal from her horrific experience. But let us also continue fighting to ensure that every woman and child is freed from the darkness of captivity. Our shared humanity demands it.

Nadia Murad is human rights activist. She is a Nobel laureate and was featured in TIME’s 2024 Women of the Year. Sheryl Sandberg is the founder of Lean In and Option B. She was featured in the 2013 TIME100.

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