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Danielle Conaghy

International Order
Introduction of event

Since June 2014, the spread of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) over northern Iraq

has caused over 2 million people to be displaced has resulted in severe human rights abuses. The

genocide of the religious minority and highly persecuted Yezidi people began on August 3rd,

2014 when ISIS attacked Yezidi villages and murdered thousands of Yezidi people. They

attacked a region around Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq, near the Syrian border that was

home to about 400,000 Yezidi people. ISIS sieged Sinjar City and the surrounding villages

within a few hours, kidnapping and killing all Yazidis who could not flee. Those who could flee

escaped to Mount Sinjar, where they were surrounded by ISIS for days, enduring sweltering heat

up to 122 degrees and denied access to food, water, and medical care. At the request of the Iraqi

government, the US began conducting air strikes, which allowed Kurdish forces to open a safe

corridor to allow surviving Yazidis to flee through Syria into the Kurdistan region of Iraq,

where many now reside in refugee camps. But many people were forced to remain. An estimated

2.5% of the Yazidi population was either killed or kidnapped over that week, a total of 9,900

people murdered during those days and 7,000 women kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. It

has been estimated that 3,100 Yazidis were murdered execution styleeither shot, beheaded, or

burned alivewhile the rest died on Mount Sinjar from starvation, dehydration, or injuries

during the ISIS siege. (2) Atrocities committed by ISIS terrorists have included targeted

execution, forced conversion, rape, sexual enslavement, child abduction, and destruction of

locations of religious and cultural significance.

The full scope of the genocide is unknown as thousands of people remain unaccounted

for. All Yazidis were targeted but children were disproportionately affected, making up 93% of
those who died on Mount Sinjar and only 18% of those who escaped captivity. (1) ISIS has

implemented a strict death of conversion policy against the Yazidis. These sufferings at the

hands of ISIS terrorists implicate the international law on genocide.

History

An estimated 23 million Yezidis have been killed by Muslims and other self-proclaimed

enemies over the last 700 years. There is a belief that if a Muslim slays a Yezidi great awards

await him or her in Heaven. If a Muslim man slays a Yezidi, he is told that he will be rewarded

with 72 virgins in the next world. (3) Just 200 years ago there was 2 million Yezidis, but it is

now estimated to be less than one million worldwide. Twenty years ago, Saddam Hussein

instigated at pogrom of Yezidi extermination by calling them devil worshipers and triggered

persecution of Yezidis by Iraqi Muslims. Husseins goal was a systematic cultural genocide of

the Yezidis. Under his regime, Yezidis were forced from their villages, their farmland taken,

denied jobs and medical care, approximately 250 Yezidi villages were destroyed, and the river

Dejala, which was the water supply for Yazidi communities, was contaminated by poisons, and

all sacred sights of the Yezidis were vandalized.

The Yezidis are sought to be the caretakers of the oldest religion on Earth, whose

beliefs and practices incorporate elements of Christianity, Islam, and other monotheistic

religions. In 2007, four trucks driven by Kurdish Moslems loaded with explosives drove into

Sinjar and detonated, leaving 500 Yazidis dead, 200 injured, and creating 200 orphans.

Violation of human rights


For an atrocity to constitute as genocide, there are five enumerated acts that must be

committed with specific intent to destroy in part or in whole, a nation, ethnic, racial, or religious

group as such. (4) The five enumerated acts are; (a) killing members of group; (b) causing

serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group

conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing

measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the

group. ISIS genocidaires are guilty of all five. (4)

The destruction of Yazidi culture highlights that the Yezidis were targeted because of

their beliefs. ISIS created propaganda against Yazidi people

As of July, 2017 an estimated 2,500-3,200 Yazidi people remain in ISIS captivity. ISIS

members stand guilty not only of innumerable war crimes and crimes against humanity, but of a

manifest pattern of genocide. Under the ICC Rome Statute, the Yazidis are a protected group,

both ethnic and religious. Under the Genocide Convention and the standards of the Rome

Statute, ISIS members formed the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Yazidis as a group.

During the ISIS takeover of Sinjar City, Yezidi men and boys were separated from women. The

men and boys were further separated by religious identity and slaughtered. Such separation and

massacre of a group has been found by international courts in the past to be genocide under the

Rome State, Article 6(a). The foot soldiers and the ISIS leadership who planned these large-scale

attacks are culpable for the mass killings and kidnappings of Yazidi people.

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a statutorily protected group constitutes

genocide under Article 6(b) of the ICC Rome Statute. The ISIS genocidaires in this case engaged

in torture, rape, sexual violence or inhuman or degrading treatment of protected group


members. These violent acts are performed to intimidate, scare, and control a community. The

torture level distributed by ISIS members was based on religion, if a Yazidi converted she was

sold as a bride to an ISIS fighter, and if not, she was kept as a sex slave to face daily rape and a

slow death. (7) Numerous Yazidi suicides have been reported because of trauma and the

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwandas judgments stated that rape and sexual violence

[are] one of the worst ways of inflict[ing] harm on a victim as he or she suffers both bodily and

mental harm.(8)

Under Article 6(c) of the ICC Rome Statute, deliberately inflicting conditions of life

calculated to destroy members of a statutorily protected group, constitutes as legal genocide.

This includes forced starvation or malnutrition, systematic expulsion from homes and shelters,

the reduction of essential medical services, and rape. ISIS genocidaires guilty of these conditions

and thus proves intent of ISIS to destroy Yazidi people.

Article 6 (d) of the ICC Rome Statute states that measures imposed to prevent births of a

statutorily protected group with the intent to destroy the group in part or whole constitutes as

genocide. Under Article 6(d) this crime can be committed though direct measures to prevent

birth such as sterilization, forced abortions and indirect measures such as rape and sexual assault.

ISIS doctors performed abortions on captured pregnant Yazidi women to prevent infidel

children and there are reports of a doctor sitting on one woman in attempt to kill her unborn

baby. Rape and sexual assault can also qualify under article 6(d) to prevent births. This argument

was introduced during the Bosnian case at the ICJ, there has not been a successful definitive

ruling on this argument. (9) But with the extreme decrease in Yezidi births due to sexual

violence this argument could be upheld. The International Criminal Tribune for the Former

Yugoslavia decisions acknowledged that rape is a birth prevention tactic as well, and a tactic to
transmit a new ethnic identity to the child. (9) The Yazidis were a closed ethno-religious group

that only married and procreated within their community. ISIS has the intent to lower the

birthrate of legitimate Yazidi community members and increase the birth rate of their own

caliphate. This tactic is backed by the idea that if a Yazidi woman has a child of her master than

she has, from this perspective, given birth to her master. The child has the free man status of its

father and she is a slave. This is a major violation of article 4- freedom from slavery and forced

labor, and article 5 the Ban on Torture in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The ISIS

objective was to prevent anymore Yazidi births and to kill or convert all existing Yazidi people,

therefor trying to eradicate the Yazidi population in part or in whole.

Article 6(e) genocide by forcibly transferring children- further provides evidence for

ISIS members to be tried for genocide. Through forced abductions of Yazidi children, they have

tried to destroy Yazidi culture and religion by molding them into jihadists, and making them into

child soldiers to be sent into firefights to kill their own people and other Kurds. This forced

removal of children from one group to another causing a change of identity constitutes as

genocide under Article 6 (e).

According to Yezidi Human Rights Organization International, a non-Profit Organization

that defends and protects human rights, and offers and entirely different perspective, a major

issue is that, KRG forces, under Kurdistan Senator and recent President Masoud Barzani, are

fighting anti- ISIS fighters, like the Iraqi forces. This organization reports that former ISIS

fighters have also sought refuge and are given safe haven in Kurdistan and that Yazidi refuges

are still in great danger in Kurdistan. It also reports that Barzini is in collaboration with ISIS, and

is forcing Yazidi people whom are eligible to vote for the referendum election on Oct 25th 2017
to vote yes for an independent Kurdistan. (10) Information from this website conflicts with

information obtained from most news reports that Kurdish forces are arresting ISIS members.

Article 33(1) of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees prohibits expulsion or

return of a refugee to the frontiers of territories where their life or freedom would be threatened

because their race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group, or political opinion. (6)

--In June of 2014, 40 militias in Iraq combined to form the Popular Mobilization Forces, also

known as Popular Mobilization Units. In 2016 President Fuad Masum of Iraq passed a law to

incorporate PMU in the countries armed forces.--

Thus, since June 2017 the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that now hosts many

of the Yazidi refugees, are expelling families and KRG forces are returning them back to Sinjar

to as punishment for their relatives active participation in Iraqi government forces. Yazidi

families being forced back to their home where access to basic goods and services is very

limited, mass graves and unexploded devices exist, and their safety is still at high risk because of

their relatives actions is a form of collective punishment which is prohibited under international

law.

No Criminal authorities are currently investigating or prosecuting ISIS members for

crimes against humanity and war crimes. Neither Iraq nor Syria are parties to the Rome Statute,

which sets up ICC hearings and ad hoc tribunals. (11) A Genocide Committee in Dohuk, a

major city in Iraqi Kurdistan, is attempting to document the crimes, but the committee has no

link to the Kurdistan Regional Governments judiciary. Similarly, in Baghdad there has been no

judicial investigations against captured ISIS members for war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The Iraq Council of Ministers recognize that crimes committed by ISIS were acts of genocide,
but Iraq has no provisions in its domestic law for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and

genocide.

Recommendations

Yezidi victims of human rights abuses have a right to justice and to safety. Iraq should

incorporate war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide into their penal code and

investigate credible allegations of abuses by ISIS. Iraq will not become a party to the ICC in fear

that it will implicate members of their own Iraqi forces.

The Kurdish Regional Government should exercise their authority to establish a tribunal that

complies with international laws to allow for prosecution of the crimes perpetrated by

ISIS genocidaires within its territory. According to the authority granted to domestic

enforcement by the Genocide Convention Article 6, the KRG has authority to prosecute the

Genocide of the Yazidi people in absence of international judicial intervention.

The international community should provide financial, logistical, professional, and technical

support to establish this tribunal and fund investigations. (13) Countries that support Iraqs war

against ISIS including ran, Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia and European states

should support Iraqi efforts to investigate and prosecute these crimes. To let this atrocity pass

without acting for justice for the Yazidi victims is a huge stain on the governments who have

committed ourselves to supporting justice wherever grave atrocities may occur and protecting all

people from extermination. (12)


Resources

(2) http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002297
(3) http://www.yeziditruth.org/yezidi_genocide
(4) 3 Rome Statute, art. 6; see also ICC Elements of Crimes, art. 6 (adopting the structure of the
elements of genocide from the Rome Statute)
(5) https://mobile.almasdarnews.com/article/law-passes-making-pmu-part-iraqs-national-forces/
(5) "Islamic State: The caliphate strikes back". The Economist. 23 May 2015. Retrieved 25 May
2015.
(6) International Law Book Page 246 paragraph 5
(7) 40 Ford Sypher, Rape and Sexual Slavery Inside an ISIS Prison, THE DAILY BEAST (Aug.
28, 2014),
(8) 1 Prosecutor v. Akayesu, (Case No. ICTR-96-4-T), Judgment, 2 September 1998, para. 731.
(9) The Trial Chamber of the Yugoslavia Tribunal found that [t]he systematic rape of
womenis in some cases intended to transmit a new ethnic identity to the child.
(10) http://www.yezidihumanrights.org/news.php
(11) https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/21/un-panel-reports-isis-crimes-yezidis
(12) https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/21/un-panel-reports-isis-crimes-yezidis
(13) https://law.vanderbilt.edu/academics/academic-programs/international-legal-
studies/Yazidi_Genocide_Opinion_KRG_4.15.pdf

Reports indicate that ISIS doctors performed abortions on women who were previously pregnant
with infidel children.45 One woman described how an ISIS doctor sat on her stomach, aiming
to kill her unborn child.46 T

The internationals community is failing to collect evidence and document things that have
happened here.

KILLIN (1)
Furthermore, an array of individuals can be held liable for the genocidal killing. From the foot-
soldiers who conducted mass killing and kidnappings to the ISIS organizations leadership that
planned the large scale attacks, all can be held culpable.

It is evident that international laws have failed to protect people in this case. A tribunal should be
created by the international community

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