Impact
From testimony to action
Nobody’s Listening was made to do more than inform. It brings survivors’ voices into the rooms where decisions are made, and it has been studied by researchers who wanted to know whether immersive storytelling changes what people think and do. This page sets out what has happened since the premiere in 2020.
Policy and recognition
The VR experience premiered at the Iraqi Parliament in December 2020, at an event co-hosted by the Deputy Speaker and the Women’s Affairs Committee. Before putting on the headset, the Deputy Speaker had told Yazidi women in the room that they should stop dwelling on the past. When he took it off, he spoke instead about apology, responsibility, reparations, psychosocial support and justice for survivors.
Three months later, on 2 March 2021, the Iraqi Parliament adopted the Yazidi Female Survivors Law, the first Iraqi legislation to grant reparations to victims of ISIS atrocity crimes. It was the result of a survivor-led campaign and came from the same parliamentary committee that had hosted the premiere.
“I finally felt like I was being listened to.”Hala Safil, Yazidi survivor, at the Iraqi Parliament premiere
The project has since followed a simple model in diplomatic settings: policymakers experience the VR first, then hear directly from survivors about their circumstances today. After a screening and discussions in Luxembourg, members of the Chamber of Deputies took the issue to the Foreign Affairs Committee, and in November 2022 the Chamber adopted a motion recognising and condemning the Yazidi genocide.
Tenth anniversary · 2024
A nationwide tour of Iraq with the U.S. Department of State
To mark the tenth anniversary of the genocide, a grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Mission Iraq supported the nationwide expansion of the Nobody’s Listening VR experience. With funding and logistical support from the State Department and USAID, the experience toured major universities and cultural institutions across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region in 2024, including the University of Duhok, the Catholic University in Erbil and the General Directorate of Sport Education and School Activities, reaching more than 200 people over several months.
The year closed in November 2024 at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Alina Romanowski, who hosted a presentation of Nobody’s Listening in Baghdad for senior Iraqi officials, diplomats and Yazidi representatives under the theme Witnessing the Past: Immersive Technologies for Genocide Education.
“[It] does not just reflect the past but shines an important light on the Yazidi people’s ongoing struggle for justice, accountability, and the safe return to their homes.”Alina Romanowski, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Baghdad, November 2024
Earlier that year, marking the anniversary at Lalish, Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya also referred to the Nobody’s Listening exhibition at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington DC.
The evidence
The most thorough evaluation of the experience was led by Dr Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin, Prof. Maria Economou, Dr Akrivi Katifori and colleagues, and funded by USAID and IOM. Between December 2020 and March 2021 they worked with 127 non-Yazidi participants in Baghdad, Sulaimani, Erbil, Duhok and Kirkuk, using surveys before and after the experience alongside interviews and field observation.
The findings were consistent across all five cities. Participants knew significantly more about the genocide afterwards and reported markedly higher empathy. Many described a new sense of closeness to survivors, and a willingness to support justice, reconciliation and memorial work. The researchers found this was not driven by shock alone, but by the combination of presence, narrative and evidence.
“The high levels of historical empathy observed suggest that immersive technologies can facilitate not only emotional connection but also historical contextualization and perspective taking.”Mohammed-Amin et al., Heritage, 2025
Mohammed-Amin, R. K., Economou, M., Katifori, A., et al. “Nobody’s Listening: Evaluating the Impact of Immersive VR for Engaging with Difficult Heritage and Human Rights.” Heritage 8, no. 11 (2025): 474. doi.org/10.3390/heritage8110474
The study was carried out during the screenings that IOM Iraq organised in five Iraqi cities in 2020–21:
Education
- Iraq: the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention Studies at the University of Baghdad has built the VR into coursework, and headsets have been donated to the University of Duhok and other institutions.
- United Kingdom: with support from the Home Office and the Mayor of London, the experience reached schools across Leicester and London as part of counter-extremism and citizenship programmes. More than 900 students at Fairfield School of Business in Croydon took part through a Home Office programme.
- Universities: Columbia University, King’s College London, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the University of Connecticut, the University of Southern Queensland and others have used it in teaching on human rights, conflict and diplomacy.
- Australia: the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect in Brisbane brought policymakers and survivors together through the Forgotten Voices of Sinjar programme.
“This is an incredibly moving, affecting exhibition. It takes you beyond what pictures and oral testimonies can do … This will be the way all advocacy is done in the future.”Shiraz Maher, Director, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College London
Memory and archives
In 2023 the project became a permanent digital exhibition on Google Arts & Culture, Nobody’s Listening: Justice for the Yazidi People, developed with the United Nations, the World Health Organization and Google and supported by the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology. It forms part of the UN’s Yazidi Cultural Archives.
In 2024 Nobody’s Listening was featured in the SEMA Virtual Memorial of the Mukwege Foundation and the SEMA Network of Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence, alongside survivors’ initiatives from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bosnia, Ukraine and beyond.
The exhibition was shown at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo to mark the tenth anniversary of the genocide, with Norwegian People’s Aid, the Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution and the Norwegian Yazidi Association.
The project is also the subject of continuing research by Arts + Health @ NYU and the WHO Arts & Health Programme into how immersive art can support survivor wellbeing and empathy-based learning.
Read more
Much of this page is drawn from Empathy Machines, which tells the story of Nobody’s Listening and what it means for the future of human rights advocacy, and from the 2021 report Nobody’s Listening Virtual Reality Exhibition: Impact and Analysis.
Bring the experience, and the conversation that follows it, to your institution.
Work with usEmpathy MachinesNobody’s Listening is produced by Upstream XR · See the project at upstreamxr.com