Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited the Yazidi homeland of the Sinjar (Shengal) area in northern Iraq on Thursday after meeting with Kurdish leaders in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah on Wednesday.
The Sinjar normalisation agreement should be implemented to provide suitable conditions for the return of displaced Yazidis, Baerbock said.
The minister told Kurdish news network Rudaw that Germany would stand with displaced Yazidi people and help them to return to their homelands. Berlin has recently recognised the Islamic State (ISIS) crimes against Yazidis as genocide.
“The world has to know that a mass killing occurred in a place called Sinjar eight years ago. Men, women and children from this area were all killed. Their women and children were kidnapped. We could not ignore the massacre of Yazidis. We have stood with the victims and done anything needed so that the next generation does not forget it,” she said.
Baerbock arrived in Baghdad on Tuesday for her three-day trip to Iraq nearly 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion. Part of the visit’s significance comes from being the highest level diplomatic connection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) by Germany.
The following day she met with Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) President Nechirvan Barzani, Vice President Qubad Talabani, and other top Kurdish officials. The minister discussed internal political tensions in the region as well as the relations between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad.
“The German government supports a unified Kurdistan region, so the political parties must solve the region’s internal problems,” the German Foreign Minister said.
