Photo credit: IOM Iraq/Yad Abdulqader, 2021
THE VR EXPERIENCE
The centrepiece of the immersive exhibition is a ground-breaking virtual reality experience, Nobody’s Listening: The Forgotten Voices of Sinjar. This room-scale interactive experience transports viewers to northern Iraq using a blend of 360-degree documentary film-making, stunning Yazidi artwork and the latest virtual reality technology. A unique branching narrative set in Kocho village, Sinjar, enables users to hear from a young Yazidi woman abducted and sexually enslaved by ISIS, from her brother who survives a massacre, and from an ISIS fighter who attacks the village.
Garden of Religions Workshop
It was a pleasure to partner with Inside Out, Yazda, the Workgroup Garden of Religions for Karlsruhe and Society for Threatened Peoples to show Nobody’s Listening VR and meet with Yazidi youth at the Gardens of Religions in Karlsruhe, Germany. Please check out this video about the event and the importance of strengthening religious freedom, countering extremism and preventing atrocities.
VR IMPACT ANALYSIS Report
In mid 2021, a group of human rights advocates and partner organizations presented a Virtual Reality (VR) exhibition titled “Nobody’s Listening” (NL) in a series of cities across Iraq as a means of supporting the Yazidi community to raise awareness about the genocide they experienced and advocate for greater support and solidarity from the national and international community. This report investigates the impact of the NL VR exhibition, and aims to understand if, and how, the NL VR exhibition can support human rights advocacy for the Yazidi community and persecuted groups more widely.
This report was authored by:
Dr. Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin
Dr. Akrivi Katifori
Prof. Dr. Maria Economou
King’s College London
Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Dr. Bashir Khalil Al-Haddad
VR at Iraqi parliament
Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
Amal Clooney, Barrister
