Laila Khoudeida Interview
Channel: University of Nebraska-Lincoln History Dept.
Date: 2021-02-23

An interview with Laila Khoudeida. Conducted for Dr. James D. Le Sueur's Fall 2019 History Harvest course, which focused on Lincoln, Nebraska's Yazidi community.

Laila Khoudeida is Co-founder and Director of Women Affairs at Yazda. Laila was born and raised in a refugee camp in Syria after her father fled the war in Iraq. Laila and her family lived in refugee camps for nearly ten years. She and her family moved to the United States through UNICEF. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Laila currently works in the mental health field. She became an activist after the Yazidis were targeted for genocide by ISIS and has been involved in addressing the issue of violence against Yazidi women and victims of the Yazidi Genocide in the Middle East. Laila co-founded Yazda, a global Yazidi organization that continues to help Yazidi victims in the aftermath of the fall of Sinjar, Iraq. Laila was part of a Yazidi delegation to hold high-level meetings with representatives at the White House when ISIS carried a genocidal attack against the Yazidi minority in 2014. These efforts resulted in the US intervention to authorize airstrikes targeted at ISIS locations and humanitarian aid airdrops to the thousands of Yazidis that were stranded on Mount Sinjar. Laila has been traveling around the world to create awareness of the Yazidi cause. In March 2020, Laila received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York City Bar Association and Huntington National Bank. Laila also received the Public Citizen of the Year Award from the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) for her advocacy work for the Yazidi community in 2015.

© Department of History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Audio or visual reuse of this interview is prohibited. The material can be cited with acknowledgment of the source.