Today We Delivered a Message Directly at the UN: Protect Christians from ISIS Genocide
Today, we took the plight of persecuted Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities to the United Nations Human Rights Council. We spoke out on behalf of the millions of victims of the Islamic State’s historically evil atrocities.
One young woman from Iraq who was forced to be an ISIS sex slave recently said her experience was “more difficult than death” and “can’t be mentioned.”
Christians and other minorities pleading for their lives are saying, “No one cares about us like we are not human” and that they “didn’t feel valued as humans.”
ISIS continues to crucify, behead, and exterminate its victims. This is genocide. And it’s time for the world to lead.
That’s why we once again filed written submissions at the United Nations Human Rights Council last month. We also sent a letter to Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, Ambassador Nikki Haley, urging her to lead the United Nations to recognize the genocide and act to stop it.
And today, though our European affiliate, the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), we presented an oral intervention directly at the U.N.:
In 2016, the ECLJ submitted written and oral testimony to this Council requesting that the United Nations join other international bodies and publicly proclaim that Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria are victims of genocide at the hands of ISIS and deserve international assistance and protection. Since that submission, this body has remained silent while ISIS has continued its systematic reign of terror.
The Christian population in both Iraq and Syria has been annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled Iraq and Syria since the rise of ISIS. In Syria, ISIS has beheaded and stoned men, women, and children for blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy.
The actions of ISIS against Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria clearly embody the definition of genocide as enshrined in the Genocide Convention. The ISIS campaign to destroy these religious minorities and decimate their homelands and cultures undoubtedly meets this definition, yet the world’s premier international body has yet to define it as such.
Following our submission in May 2016, several HRC member states acknowledged that ISIS is committing genocide against religious minorities.
In June 2016, the U.N. mandated a independent international commission of inquiry on Syria, and the commission subsequently released a report declaring that ISIS has committed genocide against the Yazidi people in Syria.
Therefore, the ECLJ urges the U.N. to join other international bodies and publicly proclaim that Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria are victims of genocide and deserving of international assistance and protection.
Every moment that the United Nations remains silent, more of our fellow human beings endure the worst kind of humiliation, degradation, and annihilation at the hands of ISIS. Join our fight to end this historic evil, as we defend persecuted Christians and other religious minorities. Sign our petition today.