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	Impunity prevails as little progress is made towards securing peace and justice for Syrians by UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria   March 2015   ISIL may have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide: UN report   The so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) may have committed all three of the most serious international crimes – namely war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – according to a report issued by the UN Human Rights Office.   The report, compiled by an investigation team sent to the region by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights late last year, draws on in-depth interviews with more than 100 people who witnessed or survived attacks in Iraq between June 2014 and February 2015. It documents a wide range of violations by ISIL against numerous ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, some of which, it says, may amount to genocide.   It also highlights violations, including killings, torture and abductions, allegedly carried out by the Iraqi Security Forces and associated militia groups.   The report finds that widespread abuses committed by ISIL include killings, torture, rape and sexual slavery, forced religious conversions and the conscription of children. All of these, it says, amount to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some may constitute crimes against humanity and/ or may amount to war crimes.   However, the manifest pattern of the attacks against the Yezidi “pointed to the intent of ISIL to destroy the Yezidi as a group,” the report says. This “strongly suggests” that ISIL may have perpetrated genocide.   The report, requested by the UN Human Rights Council at the initiative of the Government of Iraq, cites the brutal and targeted killings of hundreds of Yezidi men and boys in the Ninewa plains last August.   In numerous Yezidi villages, the population was rounded up. Men and boys over the age of 14 were separated from women and girls. The men were then led away and shot by ISIL, while the women were abducted as the ‘spoils of war.’ “In some instances,” the report found, “villages were entirely emptied of their Yezidi population.”   Some of the Yezidi girls and women who later escaped from captivity described being openly sold, or handed over as “gifts” to ISIL members. Witnesses heard girls – as young as six and nine years old – screaming for help as they were raped in a house used by ISIL fighters. One witness described how two ISIL members sat laughing as two teenage girls were raped in the next room. A pregnant woman, repeatedly raped by an ISIL ‘doctor’ over a period of two and a half months, said he deliberately sat on her stomach. He told her, “this baby should die because it is an infidel; I can make a Muslim baby.”   Boys between the ages of eight and 15 told the mission how they were separated from their mothers and taken to locations in Iraq and Syria. They were forced to convert to Islam and subjected to religious and military training, including how to shoot guns and fire rockets. They were forced to watch videos of beheadings. One child was told, “This is your initiation into jihad….you are an Islamic State boy now.”   Brutal treatment was meted out by ISIL to other ethnic groups, including Christians, Kaka’e, Kurds, Sabea-Mandeans, Shi’a and Turkmen. In a matter of days in June, thousands of Christians fled their homes in fear after ISIL ordered them to convert to Islam, pay a tax, or leave.   Also in June, around 600 males held in Badoush prison, mostly Shi’a, were loaded onto trucks and driven to a ravine, where they were shot by ISIL fighters. Survivors told the UN team that they were saved by other bodies landing on top of them.   Those perceived to be connected with the Government were also targeted. Between 1,500 to 1,700 cadets from Speicher army base, most of whom are reported to have surrendered, were massacred by ISIL fighters on 12 June. The findings of Iraqi Government investigations into both the Badoush and Speicher incidents have yet to be made public.   ISIL fighters are reported to have relied on lists of targets to conduct house-to-house and checkpoint searches. A former policeman stated that when he showed his police ID card to ISIL fighters, one of them slashed the throats of his father, five-year-old son and five-month-old daughter. When he begged them to kill him instead, they told him “we want to make you suffer.” Visit the related web page
	Now more than ever, the protection of civilians needs to be the first priority by United Nations News, agencies   30 January 2015   The task of protecting civilians has become more onerous as conflicts have become increasingly vicious, with the brutalization of women a deplorable persisting trend, a senior UN relief official said today, as she urged the UN Security Council to press all conflict parties to abide by their international obligations towards civilian protection.   Briefing the Council''s open debate, which focused on the vulnerabilities of conflict-affected women and girls, Deputy UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-Wha Kang said that from Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, to the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and many others, civilians caught up in armed conflict are being killed and maimed, fleeing their homes and fearing for their lives.   “Now more than ever, the protection of civilians needs to be at the top of our priorities,” said Ms. Kang, explaining that at the start of 2014, humanitarian organizations appealed for aid to help 52 million people in urgent need of assistance and protection. By the end of the year, the number had gone up by almost 50 per cent to 76 million. Overwhelmingly, these people are civilians affected by conflict – and the majority are women and girls.   Joined at the Council by Helen Durham, Director for International Law and Policy for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and Iwad Elman, of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, Mr. Kang said that currently, the average length of conflict-related displacement is now 17 years.   “One of the worst examples of this is Syria, where half of the population has been displaced…but the numbers are growing elsewhere, for example in Darfur, where 450,000 people were displaced last year, adding to the more than two million people already in internally displaced persons camps (IDP) camps,” she continued, stressing that while the Council has taken action to bolster civilian protection and recognized the specific needs of women and girls, more overall measures are required as “the scourge of sexual violence in armed conflict is far from being rooted out.”   Spotlighting several troubling examples of the “consistent and persistent” brutalization women face, Ms. Kang said that as militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) have captured territory in Iraq and Syria, they have used and punished women to demonstrate their power. Women have been repeatedly raped, forced into marriage and sold into slavery. Nigerian women and girls have given harrowing accounts of their experiences at the hands of Boko Haram, she added.   “Simply, crisis exacerbates gender inequalities. While entire communities suffer the impact of armed conflict, women and girls are often the first to lose their rights to education, to political participation and to livelihoods, among other rights being bluntly violated,” she continued, and such challenges are manifestations of deeper, systemic problems.   “We need to better understand the social, economic and power dynamics which result in the continued enslavement of and use of violence against women, particularly in conflict situations. We must also make concerted efforts to expand women''s representation and participation in rule of law processes and protection mechanisms. Women must be included in the political leadership, security forces and accountability mechanisms in countries,” she said.   To facilitate these efforts on the ground, 17 Women Protection Advisers have been deployed to six UN peacekeeping operations and embedded in the Offices of the Special Representatives. In South Sudan, the UN Mission regularly consults displaced women in the POC sites through consultation groups which have been formed. Those consultations help to ensure that prevention and protection strategies led by the mission take into account the perceptions and security needs of women.   Yet much remained to be done, she said, and while the primary responsibility for protecting and assisting civilians affected by armed conflict lies with the parties to the conflict, many parties have demonstrated complete disregard for their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law.   “In some cases, parties to conflict deliberately target civilians and use tactics designed to cause them the greatest harm possible,” noted Ms. Kang again drawing attention to Boko Haram, which she said had massacred hundreds of civilians and destroyed thousands of homes, schools and medical clinics in Nigeria during the past few weeks. This follows repeated incidents of kidnapping of hundreds of women and children. In Syria and Iraq, all parties have been targeting civilians based on ethnic and religious grounds.   Despite this troubling context, she said, “International law is clear: parties to conflict are responsible for meeting the basic needs of persons under their control. Yet, time and again, we see parties to conflict violating these basic obligations with impunity, with grave consequences for civilians.” As such, conflict parties must be pressed to do more to comply with their legal obligations and ensure accountability whenever such obligations are violated. But the responsibility does not lie solely with the parties themselves.   “This Council and the international community must take steps to tackle the impunity that continues to fuel many conflicts, as well as the endless flow of weapons and arms. There is nothing that emboldens violators more than knowing that they will not be brought to account for their crimes,” she declared, adding: “We also need to build up our collective capacity, to find political solutions to conflicts at an early stage, rather than struggling to cope with the consequences.”   The efforts of humanitarian workers and peacekeepers are no substitute for timely and resolute political action to prevent and resolve conflict. And women must be full participants in the process, Ms. Kang stressed, as she urged stakeholders to be more attuned to the specific threats that civilians are facing and the risk of escalation of violence and violations, often manifested through heightened discrimination and repression of minorities, including against women and girls.   “When we see early warning signs, we must be able to act quickly and effectively,” she concluded, drawing attention to the importance of the Secretary-General''s Human Rights Up Front initiative. http://www.unocha.org/ http://www.icrc.org/en http://www.womenpeacesecurity.org/ Visit the related web page
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