A German court on Tuesday issued the first ruling in the world recognizing crimes against the Yazidi community as genocide, in a verdict hailed by activists as a "historic" win for the minority.

The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking group hailing from northern Iraq, have for years been persecuted by so-called Islamic State (ISIS) militants who have killed hundreds of men, raped women and forcibly recruited children as fighters.

The court in Frankfurt sentenced an Iraqi man to life in jail for genocide against the Yazidis, as well as crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes and bodily harm resulting in death.

Taha al-Jumailly, who joined the Islamic State jihadist group in 2013, passed out in the courtroom after the verdict was read out.

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Nadia Murad, a Yazidi survivor and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, thanked Germany for the "historic" ruling. She described it as "a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence and the entire Yazidi community."

Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the non-governmental organization Yazda, said: "This is the outcome every single Yazidi and all genocide survivors were hoping to see.

"We will make sure that more trials such as this take place."

In May, United Nations special investigators reported they had collected "clear and convincing evidence" of genocide by ISIS against the Yazidis. 

Prosecutors say that Jumailly and his now ex-wife, a German woman named Jennifer Wenisch, "purchased" a Yazidi woman and child as household "slaves" while living in then ISIS-occupied Mosul in 2015. 

They later moved to Fallujah, where Jumailly is accused of chaining a five-year-old girl to a window outdoors in heat rising to 50 degrees Celsius as a punishment for wetting her mattress, leading her to die of thirst. 

In a separate trial, Wenisch was sentenced to 10 years in jail in October for "crimes against humanity in the form of enslavement" and aiding and abetting the girl's killing by failing to offer help.

Going by the name Nora B., the child's mother testified in both Munich and Frankfurt about the torment inflicted on her daughter. She also described being raped multiple times by ISIS jihadists after they invaded her village in the Sinjar mountains in northwestern Iraq in August 2014. 

Speaking to AFP in a statement through one of her lawyers, Nora B., who is in witness protection, said she was "relieved" by the ruling. 

London-based human rights lawyer Amal Clooney is part of the team representing Nora B., who has been at the forefront of a campaign for ISIS crimes against the Yazidis to be recognized as genocide.

"This is the moment Yazidis have been waiting for," said Clooney in a statement. 

"There is no more denying it – ISIS is guilty of genocide. 

Germany is home to a large Yazidi community and is one of several countries that have taken legal action over such abuses.

Previously, the country has charged several German and foreign nationals with war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out abroad, using the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows offences to be prosecuted even if they were committed in a foreign country.