Canada’s parliament adopted Tuesday an opposition motion to resettle Yazidi refugees within four months, while declaring ISIL group’s persecution of Yazidis near the Syrian border in northern Iraq a genocide.

Iraqi activist Nadia Murad was on hand for the unanimous vote in the House of Commons.

The government said it is still sorting out a plan for the airlift and does not yet know how many Yazidi refugees Canada will take in over the 120-day period.

But Immigration Minister John McCallum reminded that Canada had managed to resettle more than 25,000 Syrian refugees in just a few months at the start of the year.

“It is important to emphasize that Canada will always be an open country willing to step up and support people in need from all around the world,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in the Commons.

“I am pleased to see Nadia (Murad) again today and reassure her that in the coming months we are committed to bringing in vulnerable Yazidi refugees,” he said.

Murad was taken by the ISIL group from her home village of Kocho near Iraq’s northern town of Sinjar in August 2014 and brought to the city of Mosul.

Among the first things ISIL forced on her was to disavow her Yazidi faith, an ancient religion with more than half a million adherents in Iraq.

Source: AFP