Self-Esteem and Its Consequences of Internally Displaced Victims of Sexual Violence: From the Perspective of Iraqi Yazidi Female

Self-esteem is the backbone for psychological resilience, and the psychological resilience of a person determines his or her overall resilience nature. Obviously, armed conflict-driven protracted displacements and associated tragic events often possess the potential to alter the self-esteem of individuals with ailing war-related experiences. As far as esteem needs are concerned, in the armed conflict-driven displacements in lower and lower-middle-income countries, the self-esteem needs of the victims of sexual and gender-based violence are not adequately addressed in some instances. To support the arguments, the psychosocial nature of the internally displaced Iraqi Yazidi females was considered, and a detailed narrative review of the documents related to Iraqi Yazidis' displacement, subsequent sexual violence, and Yazidis' psychosocial landscape in post-conflict context was performed. The results of the review have identified the followings: (i) a negative correlation between sexual and gender-based violence and self-esteem; (ii) no correlation between social honour or social pride and the self-esteem of Yazidi females; (iii) negative correlation between self-esteem and psychiatric or psychopathological incidents as well as suicidal intentions among Yazidi females; (iv) fulfilling esteem needs of the Yazidi Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and returnees in Iraq should need further backing to improve the quality and quantity. The aim of this paper is to examine the importance of fulfilling the esteem needs of armed conflict-driven internally displaced populations, especially those, who experience sexual violence during armed conflicts from the context of Iraqi Yazidi female IDPs.