European Union Agency for Asylum

The Yazidis are a minority ethno-religious group in the Middle East with a long history of suffering persecution.

Estimates of their numbers vary, but the European Union Agency for Asylum reports that between 400,000 and a half million Yazidis lived in northern Iraq prior to recent conflicts.

But in the summer of 2014, ISIS militants swept through their homeland near the Syrian border.

They kidnapped and killed thousands of people.