The report said that “ISIS has committed the crime of genocide as well as multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Yazidis, thousands of whom are held captive in the Syrian Arab Republic, where they are subjected to almost unimaginable horrors.”
It also said that, although mass killings of men and women have taken place, ISIS forces were primarily committing genocide in other ways. These include “sexual slavery, enslavement, torture; forced conversion; the separation of Yazidi men and women; and the transfer of Yazidi children from their own families, cutting them off from beliefs and practices of their own religious community, and erasing their identity as Yazidis.”
“Genocide has occurred and is ongoing”, said Paulo Pinheiro, the Chair of the Commission, in a statement to the press in Geneva, Switzerland. “ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child, or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities.” He also said that “the crime of genocide must trigger much more assertive action at the political level, including at the Security Council.” The report itself says that, “in line with each State’s individual obligations under the Genocide Convention,” the UN Security Council should “refer the situation to possibly the International Criminal Court (the ICC) or an ad hoc tribunal.”
It also made a number of recommendations to the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, the governments of Syria and Iraq, organizations working with internally displaced Yazidis and Yazidi refugees, and the wider international community.
This report is the first time that a senior UN body has said that ISIS forces are committing genocide against the Yazidi population. It did not, however, investigate ISIS crimes against Christians and other religious minorities in the region.
In March, the US House unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution declaring that systemic violence committed by ISIS against Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, constitutes genocide. Shortly after, Secretary of State John Kerry held a press conference at which he also recognized ISIS’ actions as genocide. He called for an independent international investigation (such as the one that just released its report), and for criminal charges to be brought against those responsible for the genocide.
What remains to be seen, now, is whether a UN investigative committee will come to the same conclusion about ISIS’ persecution of Christians in the region and, in either case, whether the Security Council will refer the cases to the ICC and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Rico says they won't, and the Yazidis will be fucked... (Oh, but it's The Religion of Peace, right?)
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