Germany opens its doors to Yazidi women and children enslaved by Isis

From the outside, the shelter looks like a disused old people’s home. Inside, it is more like a busy playgroup. Children with new backpacks queue in pairs against a wall covered in their artwork, waiting to be taken to swimming lessons; football and skipping competitions take place in the corridors while groups of women, babies on their laps, sit huddled together on their phones.

The shelter, in a sleepy village hundreds of miles outside Stuttgart, is one of several dozen that has opened across the German region of Baden-Württemberg since spring last year as part of a special-quota project designed to support some of the estimated 2,500 women and children who have escaped after being held hostage by Islamic State.

Security at the shelter is tight. The only clue as to who is inside comes when a teenage boy shouts instructions in Kurdish to a child attempting to ride a bike in the empty car park.

“These women and children have been enslaved by Isis, who believe they are their owners. They are victims and witnesses to war crimes, so we protect them by running our mission in a secret, secure way,” says Dr Michael Blume, the head of the programme.