USA Today /Robert Silverman
The Yazidi people are wondering what happens after the
international community determines that a genocide has been committed.Two years ago, the Islamic State terrorist group invaded
towns and villages in northern Iraq where this religious minority had lived for
centuries, murdering men, sexually enslaving women, and forcibly converting
children. It took the international community nearly two years before speaking
out with clarity. On March 17, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that ISIL
was guilty of genocide, a judgment the U.N. Human Rights Council echoed on June
16.
The genocide continues. Thousands of girls remain enslaved
by ISIL as reports of new atrocities emerge. Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis
have fled their homes and live in tent camps with other displaced Iraqis along
the Turkish-Iraqi border. Although many Yazidis would like to return to their
recently liberated homes in northern Iraq, they fear what awaits them. Some of
their former Iraqi Arab neighbors who had joined in the murder, looting and
rape have melted back into the civilian population. Reinforcing their sense of
loneliness, the Yazidis lack the support of an organized diaspora that could
mobilize international support and aid their resettlement abroad.
The official designation of a mass murder as genocide
actually accomplishes little. The Genocide Convention of 1948 imposes no legal
requirement on its signatory member states to take action. While the U.S.
government continues its military campaign against ISIL, it has no specific
plans for helping Yazidi victims or preventing new atrocities against them.
This is inadequate. That existing capability to take
action has not been utilized signals a failure by the political leadership of
both parties. Rhetorical declaration of genocide must be followed by specific,
effective actions.
First, hold the perpetrators accountable. As the military
campaign liberates more territory in northern Iraq, and as the Iraqis capture
ISIL terrorists, the U.S. government should lay the groundwork for war crimes
prosecutions. Earlier this year, more than a dozen mass graves were uncovered
around Mount Sinjar.
Technical experts should be dispatched to work with Iraqi
and Kurdish officials to preserve key forensic evidence for future trials.
Justice Department training programs to prepare Iraqi prosecutors to conduct
war crimes cases, halted several years ago, should be reinstituted and
expanded. The U.S. should press the United Nations to establish a war crimes
tribunal for the Yazidi genocide.
Second, provide targeted humanitarian support.
Longstanding U.S. policy was to not single out religious minorities for special
treatment but to support their integration into Iraqi society. That approach
should be revised now that the Yazidis have been targeted for genocide.
Yazidis are from poor farming communities and have few
resources. The U.S. Agency for International Development should focus
humanitarian aid on them, including psychiatric counseling for survivors.
Congress should consider expanding the Lautenberg Amendment, which establishes
a presumption of refugee-status eligibility for certain categories of people,
to include the Yazidis, thereby helping those who seek resettlement in the USA.
Third, protect the Yazidis who want to return to their
homes. The future status of the Yazidi homeland around Mount Sinjar is unclear.
Historically part of the Arab majority province of Ninevah, Sinjar is
ethnically Kurdish in part, and the Kurdish regional government would like to
annex it. The U.S. should work with the anti-ISIL coalition and the U.N. to
establish a safe zone in the Sinjar district, deploy a limited number of ground
troops to stabilize the area and allow the safe return of Yazidis and others to
their towns and villages, while its political future is worked out between the
national government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government in Irbil.
Over the past 25 years, the U.S. has designated four mass
killings as genocides: Bosnia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Sudan (2004), and now Iraq
and Syria. Genocide has continued after the introduction of smartphones and
other technology to report it, and following creation of the Atrocities
Prevention Board to elevate the agenda of taking action against it.
The U.S. has allies and resources available to hold
perpetrators accountable, provide targeted aid to victims and protect them as
they return home. Failure to act will speak much louder than rhetorical
declarations.
When Yazidi leader Vian Dakhil received the American
Jewish Committee's Moral Courage Award in June, she pleaded with the
international community "to help Yazidis return to their normal lives, to
comfort and reassure them.”
The missing ingredient is the courage of our convictions.
Robert Silverman, a former Foreign Service officer, is
director of Muslim-Jewish Relations at the American Jewish Committee.
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