On 18 September 2025, SACTJ held a learning exchange with a delegation of Yazidi youth leaders at Community House. The Yazidi people, a Kurdish religious minority from northern Iraq, were the target of a genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State (ISIS) starting in 2014. This genocide involved mass killings, the systematic sexual enslavement of thousands of women and girls, and the destruction of their cultural sites. The discussion centred on the challenges of pursuing transitional justice in both the South African and Yazidi contexts.
The learning exchange included a critical examination of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). While the TRC is widely considered to have fulfilled its specific mandate of establishing a record of apartheid-era gross human rights violations, the period following its conclusion has been defined by a systemic failure in implementation. There was political interference that halted prosecutions for apartheid-era crimes. From 2003 to 2017, there was no progress on approximately 300 cases forwarded by the DOJ&CD to the National Prosecuting Authority for investigation. This ongoing impunity, coupled with the state’s failure to implement a meaningful reparations policy, has meant that the structural economic inequalities of apartheid remain largely unaddressed.
For the Yazidi leaders, whose communities continue to seek accountability for genocide and the conditions for a secure return to their land, the South African case demonstrates that a truth-seeking process, without subsequent political will for prosecutions and reparations, is insufficient. The significance of a coalition like SACTJ is its role in documenting these systemic failures and challenging the state’s inaction.
This learning exchange functions as a means to analyse the obstacles that emerge after a formal truth process concludes. It underscores that civil society must create platforms for affected communities to articulate their demands for accountability and reparations against state efforts to evade these obligations.
Thank you to the Yazidi youth leaders for this visit, and the International Organisation for Migration for supporting this important exchange.
