In September 2020, the Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Governments, in coordination with the UN mission in Iraq, announced an agreement to normalize the situation in Sinjar. 

The UN mission hailed the deal as a “turning page,” and a “first and important step in the right direction”. The Sinjar deal came together after “months of hard work and negotiations” between Erbil and Baghdad, according to KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani.

Baghdad and Erbil have appointed their administrations that have ruled over Nineva’s Sinjar district. The region is crowded with armed forces vying for influence, including the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Sinjar Resistance Units, locally called YBS, and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), as well as federal authorities and Kurdish peshmerga forces. 
 
The agreement aims to expel the different armed groups from the Sinjar region and ease the return of refugees, 80 per cent of whom are still displaced and refuse to return.

According to some local officials in Sinjar and the Iraqi government, there is no hope for implementing the agreement. 

According to Duhok Migration and Refugee Bureau numbers, ISIS terrorist onslaught in 2014 displaced over 360,000 Yazidis. Three hundred thirty-one thousand two hundred Yazidis live inside and outside the camps in Duhok, some of whom migrated abroad, while thousands of women and children remain missing.

There is little media attention on the agreement. Authorities of the region and the international community have largely forgotten the deal. 

The Sinjar region offers strategic importance for all actors in the region. It is a region that would make it easier to control Northern Iraq and an easily navigated gate way into Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. 

Saddam Hussein fired close to 40 Scud Missiles at different Israeli cities in 1991 from Sinjar, as the region gives one the upper hand in case of a clash in the broader region. Turkey also eyes the region with great ambition as it has bases close to Sinjar to prevent the PKK from penetrating its southern borders. 

The PKK maintains its presence in the area to keep its connection with its offshoot in Rojava, the YPJ. The Peshmerga forces in the area help secure KRG’s western borders as its borders.