United Nations human rights lobbyists have today renewed their calls for justice for the Yazidi people, two years after Islamic State launched their brutal campaign against the Yazidis of Sinjar in Iraq.
The Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic said crimes against the Yazidis are "ongoing" and called for the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.
"Two years ago today, in the early hours of 3 August 2014, ISIS fighters left their bases and brutally attacked the Yazidis of Sinjar, a distinct religious group whose beliefs and practice span thousands of years," the commission said today.
In its report, They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, published last month, the commission concluded that IS had committed the crime of genocide a well as other war crimes against the Yazidis.
The commission, set up in 2011 by the Human Rights Council to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights in Syria, said that two years on, more than 3,200 women and children are still held by IS and subjected to "almost-unimaginable violence".
Most are in Syria where Yazidi women and girls continue to be sexually enslaved and Yazidi boys are indoctrinated, trained and used in hostilities, the commission said. Thousands of Yazidi men and boys remain missing.
Nadia Murad, a survivor of the violece, said last month: "We don't need more speeches, we need justice."
The commission said: "She could not be more right. It is the responsibility of the United Nations, and the international community to take action to stop the on-going genocide, to care for its victims, and to bring those responsible to justice."
