US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday labeled the actions of the Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq as "genocide". The group’s worldview was entirely "based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology,” Kerry said in a speech.
On Monday, the House of Representatives unanimously voted on Monday to declare ISIS’s actions genocide. Kerry’s statement came in response to a deadline the president had set last year for the State Department to decide whether to do the same.Previously, the Obama administration had been reluctant to attach the “genocide” label to the well-documented crimes ISIS has committed against Christians, Yazidis, Shiite Muslims, and Kurds.
A number of United Nations human rights investigators, the European Parliament, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have stated that some of ISIS’s atrocities — including massacres, forced religious conversions, mass rape, and sexual slavery — rose to the level of genocide, particularly against Christians and Yazidis.
Although labeling these actions genocide has little practical consequence, it expands the potential for criminal cases against ISIS members at the International Criminal Court and in Iraqi or Kurdish courts, and some people believe it could have a deterrent effect on ISIS’s international recruitment.
