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by Martin Fowler
A year ago, on the one-year anniversary of ISIS’ callous murder of 5,000 Yazidi men and enslavement of 7,000 Yazidi women on Mount Sinjar, The Guardian asked its readers, “is Iraq becoming a forgotten humanitarian crisis?”
Today, on the two-year anniversary of the Sinjar Massacre, the answer is clear: the genocide perpetrated by ISIS against the Yazidi minority is already a forgotten humanitarian crisis. In a Newsweek op-ed, GJC Staff Attorney Grant Shubin urges the international community to address the Yazidi atrocity as genocide.
Driven from their homes by ISIS’ frequent attacks, 40,000 Yazidis found themselves trapped on the mountain in August 2014. ISIS killed thousands of Yazidi men and enslaved even more women; those who did not fall into ISIS’ hands faced severe food and water shortages.
In addition to ISIS’ mass killings, their sexual enslavement and rape of Yazidi women constitute genocide and these crimes are prosecutable under international humanitarian law.
Yet, as Shubin notes, the international community focuses on ‘counterterrorism’ – not genocide – in its approach to ISIS, despite ample evidence of the latter and a clear legal responsibility to act to end the genocide.
This collective inaction allows ISIS fighters to continue carrying out genocide with impunity and is an offense to victims of previous genocides, upon whose memories the international community pledged to react more forcefully.
The Yazidi genocide might be forgotten today, but in the future, people will remember our inaction as yet another inadequate and woeful response – a twenty-first century version of the response to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. But there is still time to change this story – to confront and act upon our responsibilities under international humanitarian law to protect human beings from genocide and prosecute those who commit such acts.
Read GJC Staff Attorney Grant Shubin’s Newsweek op-ed, follow us on Tumblr, and engage with us on Twitter and Facebook.
by Jessica Zaccagnino
With the rise of non-state terrorist groups, such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State, the strategic face of war has changed. This shift has subsequently altered the experience of civilians in armed conflict. In this changing landscape, women and girls face distinct horrors in comparison to men.
Groups such as ISIS have been perpetuating genocide against minorities in controlled territories, notably against the Yazidis. These violent extremists target women and men differently when committing crimes of genocide. In addition to systematic murder, ISIS subjects women to sexual slavery, forced marriages, rape, forced impregnation, and other gender-specific crimes of genocide. Despite the distinct tactics that are being used to commit genocide, the gender reality of genocide is often overlooked when enforcing the Genocide Convention. Global Justice Center’s Genocide Project fights against the gender-gap in responding to crimes of genocide perpetrated by extremist groups, like ISIS, and seeks to ensure that the laws of war work for, and not against, women.
On the morning of August 3rd, 2014, ISIS forces entered the Sinjar region in Northern Iraq, only months after declaring itself a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. The region has a high population of Yazidi people, an ethno-religious Kurdish minority that has been heavily targeted by the ISIS insurgency. In Sinjar alone, 5,000 men were killed, thousands of women were systematically raped and sold into sexual slavery, and over 150,000 Yazidis were displaced. When ISIS took Sinjar, men and boys over the age of ten were separated from women and children, and most, as evidence of mass graves suggests, were killed. In the process of fleeing, an estimated 50,000 Yazidis were trapped in the Sinjar Mountains, with ISIS forces surrounding them. Although a majority of those trapped were able to eventually escape the mountainous region, the Sinjar Massacre left thousands dead, and thousands more enslaved. Yazidi women “have been systemically captured, killed, separated from their families, forcibly transferred and displaced, sold and gifted (and resold and re-gifted), raped, tortured, held in slavery and sexual slavery, forcibly married and forcibly converted.” These women have been targeted by ISIS solely on the basis of their gender and ethnicity, and such acts make clear ISIS’ genocidal intent to destroy the group in whole.
Despite the air drops of food, water, and supplies, the Yazidis trapped in the mountain siege survived in grim conditions—circumstances intended by ISIS to destroy the group. In addition to air drops, President Obama invoked the need to “prevent a potential act of genocide” as a justification for launching air strikes to rescue those trapped in the Sinjar Mountains. Just this year, Secretary of State John Kerry officially declared that ISIS is committing genocide. It is vital for the United States to recognize the unique aspects of genocide that specifically target gender within the persecution of Yazidis when taking action against ISIS. Although the United States has taken a big step in declaring ISIS’ genocide, the United States must move beyond words. In fact, the United States is required by the Genocide Convention to take action against genocide. Yet, as the two-year anniversary of Sinjar approaches on August 3rd, the United States has still not taken any necessary further steps to combat ISIS’ genocidal crimes.
Grant Shubin, a Staff Attorney at GJC, and Pari Ibrahim, the Founder and Executive Director of the Free Yazidi Foundation published an op-ed in Newsweek about the state of Yazidi women on the second anniversary of the Sinjar Massacre.
Click here to read the full article.
"Moving the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda from Paper to Practice"
Introduction
Fifteen years ago, the UN Security Council undertook addressing and understanding the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women in its maintenance of international peace and security. To this end, the Council adopted Resolution 1325 (2000), creating the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The Council subsequently adopted seven more resolutions as part of this agenda—Resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015)—which together inform the protection and promotion of women’s rights in conflict and post-conflict settings.
In recognition of the fifteenth anniversary of Resolution 1325 and its creation of the WPS agenda, in 2013, the Council requested a review of 1325’s implementation, which resulted in the publication of the Global Study in October 2015. The Study identifies gaps, challenges, trends, and priorities to consider in moving forward with the WPS agenda. The Study undertakes an in-depth evaluation of the past fifteen years and highlights major successes in addressing gender issues arising in conflict, including the inclusion of a comprehensive list of gender crimes in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC); the appointment of a Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict; and the adoption of General Recommendation No. 30 on women in conflict prevention, conflict, and post-conflict situations by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee). The Global Study also provides essential recommendations for the future of the WPS agenda’s implementation.
Furthermore, the Study acknowledges that significant challenges remain to implementing the WPS agenda. Indeed, obstacles persist due to, for example, a lack of prosecutions of sexual violence crimes; a dearth of National Action Plans (NAPs) on women, peace, and security; and the rise of violent extremism, terrorism, and militarism.
These challenges are rooted in one unaddressed weakness of the WPS agenda: its failure to explicitly incorporate the mandates of international law. This document will thus focus on how the panoply of women’s rights under international law can be used as a tool to achieve the objectives of the WPS agenda in two areas: (1) humanitarian responses to gender crimes and (2) prosecuting and deterring gender crimes. This document will also highlight the need for the Security Council to mainstream and integrate the WPS agenda into all of its work.
