Home Is the People Around You

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency

Adiba Qasim is from the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. In August 2014, her village was stormed by Islamic State militants who killed and enslaved thousands of Yazidis. Adiba and her family managed to escape just before the militants arrived. She was 19 years old. “At 7:00 in the morning, relatives called my father and said: ‘We are now coming to the North, because the Islamic State are 3:00 in the morning attacked us and many people have been killed and it is very difficult. So, run away! Get out of your house’!” She was haunted by the knowledge that many of her friends and relatives were taken captive by Islamic State – and held as sex slaves. Some survived – and when they were freed, Adiba was there to help.