The ground-breaking report, written by a group of distinguished human rights lawyers, seeks to highlight the binding responsibility that states have to prevent genocide on their own soil, even if it is perpetrated by a third party such as the Islamic State (IS). The lawyers, who came together under the title of the Yazidi Justice Commission (YJC), said there is a responsibility under international law for states to prevent the crime of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chairman of the YJC, described the genocide of the Yazidi people as “madness piled on evil”. “The mechanisms that were in place could have saved the Yazidis from what is now part of their past and part of their previous partial destruction,” he said. It is widely accepted that genocide has been attempted against the Yazidis, a religious minority, since 2013 in Iraq and Syria. The report, which followed a three-year investigation that investigated the behavior of 13 countries, concluded that three of them had failed in their duty to take reasonable steps to prevent genocide. In the case of Turkey, the commission went further to accuse its leaders of complicity in the massacres, claiming it had failed to police its borders to stop the free flow of IS fighters, including a significant number of Turkish nationals. Turkish officials have said the criticisms are unfounded. The committee alleged that since April 2014, Turkish officials have turned a blind eye to the sale, transport and enslavement of Yazidi women and children and helped train IS-linked fighters to fight its Kurdish enemies in Syria, thereby strengthening their perpetrators of genocide. British human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy, who wrote the report’s foreword. Photo: David Levenson/Getty Images “Turkish officials knew and/or were willfully blind to evidence that these individuals would use this training to commit prohibited acts against Yazidis,” the report said. The report noted that similar allegations have been made against some Gulf states, including Qatar, but insufficient evidence was provided. The 278-page report acknowledged that until June 2014, Iraq had called on the UN to recognize atrocities committed by Islamic State, but accused the Iraqi government of failing to coordinate with Kurdish authorities or take steps to evacuate Yazidis in safe place. The Syrian government, according to the report, failed to prevent the transfer and detention of enslaved Yazidis on its soil. Turkey’s ambassador to the UK, Ümit Yalçın, said the criticism was unfounded and unfair. He said Turkey “since the early years of the conflict in Syria has played a key role in protecting Syrian citizens and minorities, including the Yazidis, in the region from attacks and violations by terrorist groups. “Turkey has not only opened its doors and become a safe haven for millions of Syrians and Yazidis, but has provided protection to the people of the region through three counter-terrorism operations in Syria. Today the Yazidis live peacefully in areas under the control of the legitimate Syrian opposition in northwestern Syria. “Furthermore, last year many Yazidi families who fled to northwestern Syria tried to return to their homes in northeastern Syria, but [were] prevented from doing so by the PKK/YPG [the initials of the Kurdish groups in Turkey and Syria].” Lady Kennedy, in her joint foreword with Lord Alton, said “there is an ocean of impunity in relation to the Yazidi genocide”, noting that IS as a non-state actor cannot be prosecuted under international law. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Meanwhile, states had “failed in their duty to live up to their responsibilities to prevent genocide for various inhumane reasons.” If they are not held accountable, he wrote, “then the promise of ‘never again’ is hollow.”
