A UN commission has ruled that Islamic State is committing genocide against Yazidis in Syria. “Genocide has occurred and is ongoing,” stated commission chairman Paulo Pinheiro.
Islamic State “has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities”.
The independent commission’s report They Came to Destroy Isis Crimes Against Yazidis focuses on Syria where the majority of women, girls and young boys were taken after their capture during Islamic State’s August 2014 offensive against the Sinjar area of northern Iraq.
Since then they have been enslaved, used as sex slaves, tortured, degraded, and subjected to “conditions of life that bring about a slow death.”
Yazidis are forced to renounce their faith and convert to the puritan ideology of Islamic State. Women and girls are sold in slave markets and traded between fighters. Survivors who have escaped describe brutal rapes, gang rapes and punishments for resisting.
Women and girls are denied food and water by owners and have committed suicide. The report argues Islamic State is determined to “erase” Yazidis in ways specified in the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Islamic State, which considers Yazidis infidels, insists their faith is the motivation for harsh treatment.
Mr Pinheiro called on states to honour their obligations under the Genocide Convention “to prevent and punish genocide”. However, by urging the Security Council to refer the overall situation in Syria to the International Court, he doomed such an effort to failure as it would be vetoed by Russia and China.
Barrister Amal Clooney could have a better chance of success because she is focusing her case on the Yazidis.
She is set to represent Nadia Murad (21), a Yazidi victim of rape and enslavement who escaped captivity, and Yazda, an advocacy group, in a drive to prosecute Islamic State at the court.
