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Author Biography

Busra Nisa Sarac is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests are focused on gender, political violence and terrorism. She is currently working on the representation of Yazidi women and Sunni Iraqi women’s experiences of violence under ISIS and has presented papers involving gender-based violence against women.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.13.1.1753

Subject Area Keywords

Human security, International security, Iraq, Terrorism / counterterrorism, Violent extremism

Abstract

Although as of early 2019 ISIS has lost all of the territories it occupied, scholarly and media attention has continued to focus on its barbarity and brutal treatment of the women living in its former territories. The extremist group has committed a long list of severe human rights violations since it seized territories in Iraq and Syria. In this article, I aim to illustrate the reporting of this violence against the Yazidi women from 2014 to 2019 by the UK’s national newspapers because the media’s portrayal of these women shapes public opinion and policy towards this group in relation to the violence they have endured. The results indicate that while UK national newspapers give preferential treatment in their coverage of Yazidi women’s experiences of violence, abuse, and torture, they often ignore these women’s agency and activism in terms of the extent to which these women resisted and coped with the atrocities they endured.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Editors of JSS and the Reviewers for critical review of my manuscript and helpful suggestions.

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