On Monday, United Nations (U.N.) investigators declared the ISIS offensive in
2014 against the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq an act of genocide. C


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U.N. Investigators Declare 2014 ISIS Offensive Against Yazidis An Act Of
Genocide

 

(New York, N.Y.) – On Monday, United Nations (U.N.) investigators declared
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the ISIS offensive in 2014 against the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq an
act of genocide. Citing “clear and compelling evidence,” the U.N. concluded
that ISIS developed chemical weapons and used mustard gas against the Yazidis
and engaged in the mass killing of thousands of Yazidi civilians. Karim Kahn,
head of the U.N. investigation team, said that with clear evidence, ISIS
attempted “to destroy the Yazidi, physically and biologically,” and that it
mandated that the minority group convert or be killed. Today, ISIScontinues
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 to carry out crimes against the Yazidis, with thousands of Yazidi women and
children still separated from their families or missing.

 

Earlier this year, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) launched a report
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and hosted awebinar
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titledWestern Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide. Both the report,
authored by authored by CEP Strategic Advisor Liam Duffy, and webinar
highlighted the Yazidi survivors’ ongoing fight for justice and the
underexplored role of Westerners in the atrocities of the Yazidi genocide.

 

The crimes committed by ISIS represent one of the clearest examples of
genocide committed in recent memory. The campaign was a carefully orchestrated,
pre-planned, and systematic attempt to destroy a minority community, through
mass executions of men of fighting age and the mass kidnapping and trafficking
of Yazidi women and children into slavery as the ‘spoils of war’. More than
3,000 Yazidis are thought to have been killed in the initial assault, many in
mass executions, with almost 7,000 Yazidi women and children kidnapped and
enslaved throughout ISIS’s so-called caliphate. Apart from the human
atrocities, in a textbook campaign of ethnic cleansing, ISIS embarked on the
intentional destruction of Yazidi spiritual, cultural sites and temples in
Sinjar and Bashiqa-Bahzani. A total of 68 Yazidi temples, shrines, and cultural
sites were destroyed.

 

To read CEP’s report Western Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide, please
clickhere
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.

 

To watch the webinar launching CEP’s report, please click here
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.

 

To read CEP’s ISIS resource, please click here
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