DHC’s Statement at the Human Rights Council’s side event on Iraq’s displacement crisis - Addressing the violations of today& the challenges of tomorrow -

Palais des Nations, Room XXV
16:00- 17:00

There is no other way to express it: The United Nations is just appalled by the serious violations of international human rights law and of international humanitarian law to which the peoples of Iraq are subjected on a daily bases including indiscriminate killing, arbitrary detention, torture, and the most intimate of attacks, in the form of SGBV inflicted on women and girls in particular but also on men and boys.

The plight of the Yezidi and other minority communities at the hands of ISIL’s horrific crimes perpetrated in both Syria and Iraq – defies description.  The violations of international law, of religious tenet and of mutual regard that is required for such cruelty to be affected are impossible to recount and disturbing to contemplate – regardless they are as wholly unacceptable as they are wholly avoidable.

The United Nations, including, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN mission in Iraq, regularly gathers evidence that reveals the extent this hatred.  We monitor and report on our findings including through the issuance of thematic and periodic reports such our Protection of Civilian reports.

During my own recent visit to Iraq, I had the privilege of meeting personally with victims/ survivors of these atrocities including members of the Yezidi communities.

I can only concur with many others the available information suggests that the atrocities committed against the Yezidi community may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even genocide.  But I have to admit, that the voices of the individual victim will never leave me.

You may be aware that in March last year, the OHCHR conducted an investigation into the human rights situation in Iraq.  We gathered information about the killing of members of the Yezidi community and the evidence of vile acts that caused them serious bodily and/or mental harm.  This information reveals we believe the intent of the perpetrators – those acting under the banner of ISIL - to destroy the Yezidi as a group – because theirs is an identity based on their religious beliefs.  Whether or not these atrocities fulfil all required elements of for a legal finding that genocide has been perpetrated is the business of a duly convened tribunal - a court with the jurisdiction to prosecute genocide. That being said, let me be very clear, that our investigation found that, if confirmed by a court, such conduct may amount to genocide.

UNAMI/OHCHR in Erbil is preparing a further report documenting these serious human rights violations and abuses suffered by Yezidi civilians subsequent to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attack on Sinjar District in August 2014. 

To this end, we have interviewed those resident in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kurdistan’s Dohuk Governorate; whose stories offer a snapshot of the grave atrocities suffered by thousands of Yezidi including: forcible displacement, summary executions, conflict-related sexual violence and sexual slavery, and ill-treatment.

The blight of this conflict and the heinous intent of its perpetrators – ISIL - was made tragically clear to us:
The Yezidi men told us of forcible removal; of months of harsh detention; they told us that they have been subjected to mock executions; one had witnessed a pregnant woman being stoned to death. Another reported that his entire family: his wife, his daughters, his son, had been abducted by ISIL, and he knows not where they are.  The abductors have been in contact, but he cannot afford the 30,000 USD ransom being demanded for their release.

The Yezidi women told us in separate interviews – because it is unspeakably difficult for them to speak in front of their husbands - that they too - along with their children - had been forcibly captured; detained in the most horrendous conditions, even when pregnant.  Of their detention in a former prison – surrounded by the corpses - bodies of people who clearly had been summarily executed.  These people evident by the nature of their dress and included children and older women. 

The Yezidi women talked us through their experiences of sexual slavery – and we suspect at least 3,000 more women and girls have been subjected to this practice. 

The women told us of their imprisonment for this purpose over the course of more than a year, involving them being sold in successive human markets, reportedly to nationals from Iraq, Syria and Palestine.

This sexual slavery involved the cruelest of treatment, rape under most denigrating of circumstances and physical battery, all in front of their children, to such an extent that it was evident to us that the children themselves now bear not only the physical scars of deprivation – given that for many weeks they were without any food to speak of, but also because those children show visible signs of their deep trauma to which they have been subjected.

We are advised that ISIL loyalists abducted approximately 6,386 Yezidi on 3 August 2014 (3,537 women and 2,859 men).  As of mid-May 2016, reportedly 2,587 Yezidi have managed to escape captivity (934 women; 325 men; 658 girls; 670 boys), leaving 3,799 captive nearly two years later (1,935 women and 1,864 men). UNAMI/OHCHR is not able to verify these figures independently.

While, our reporting of these matters seems such a small act to make in the face of such ferocious assault, it is only through documentation and corroboration that will we ensure we will not forget, we will not turn blind eye but instead preserve the evidence to which the leaders of these atrocities must one day be held fully accountable.  Documenting, preserving that evidence is part of reconciliation. 

It is why we urge the Iraqi authorities to to fully assess the risk of genocide and to spare no effort in their pursuit of accountability for the atrocity crimes being committed in the country.

We continue to press the government – at all levels – to abide by law consistent with the principles of the statute of the International Criminal Court. And we call on the government to accede to its authority.

However, it is important to stress that all of Iraq’s communities suffer from lack of access to essential services needed to manage the consequences of human rights abuse even though such psycho-social care is urgently needed in particular for the hundreds upon hundreds of children who have been made to witness such atrocities.

Your excellencies, friends

The International Organization for Displacement reports that in Iraq 3.3 million people are internally displaced. Seventy-seven percent of these have been forced out of just two Governorates: Anbar and Ninewa.

IDP numbers continue to rise fast. More than 48,000 individuals have fled Fallujah and its surroundings as of 22 May (48,240 IOM/DTM) with our partners reporting further sharp increases due to the fact that families are fleeing from Fallujah urban areas in the last few days.

Of course, humanitarian actors are scaling up response efforts for Fallujah IDPs: with rapid deployment of emergency and life saving interventions across the arrival sites.  

Yet the core drivers of this conflict remain unaddressed.

As the High Commissioner has said, the obscene casualty figures, with which we are far too familiar, accurately reflect the loss of life.  But they do not fully reflect the indignity with which the peoples of Iraq are living life on a daily basis. They do not tell the story of Iraqis’ lack of access to essential services, to the infrastructure that is essential for peace and stability, to even water, sanitation, health care.

Protection for the people of Iraq is a complicated business, and it’s layered and multi-dimensional.
Yes, it needs the protection of military action decisively to defeat ISIL, but it means, protection and it means so, so much more.

The challenges of Iraq are much more than military alone. It is not just a matter of winning the “war against ISIL”. Of course military action is needed to end the blight of this conflict, but it is not sufficient. Concrete steps must be taken now to plan the “day after”.

And that plan must be of such a character that it wins the confidence of the peoples of Iraq in that plan – or else, the day after will be followed by the day before, more of the same.

It must be a well resourced plan of practical compassion for humanitarian relief, provision of essential services, public infrastructure, access to justice, and delivery of the practices of reconciliation for all the peoples of Iraq. Without these steps, there really will be no “day after”.

And this is a burden that the international community must shoulder too, because it is not one that the people of Iraq can bear on their own.

Iraq’s leaders it seems have a long memory but are short of sight. It is as if Iraq is a vehicle travelling over rocky land, with a large rearview mirror and only a keyhole for a windscreen despite a vicious contest for the steering wheel.

Leadership that references only the past and the present is a contradiction in terms.  What Iraq urgently needs is a coherent vision of a peaceful and prosperous future – one that is articulated, developed, committed to publicly, and amounts to a concrete, shared, deliverable road map for the broadening of inclusion and deepening of fairness.

Only by taking concrete steps, that win the trust and confidence of the people of Iraq, can there be peace. And those steps must be founded on broadening inclusion and deepening fairness:

Broadening inclusion requires that the leaders of Iraq – at all levels and of all groups - by both word and action – exercise a far greater duty to peace and justice than to grievance and vengeance.

There must be a greater emphasis on capacity building for the rule of law and for the application of human rights principles and standards. There must be strong and appropriately resourced interventions designed to build local, regional and national dialogue on inclusion, on diversity, on appreciating the other and on the concept of peaceful coexistence. In particular, strategic direction for transitional justice is needed with urgency.

And this is not only an agenda for a sovereign Iraq, inclusive of all communities. It is also a needed recognition of that face that Iraq is by population age a very young country.  With a median age of 19, a whole generation is entering adulthood currently deprived of fair access to quality health, security, justice and education.  Investment in young people is as vital and critical as any other initiative that might be deemed important to the future of Iraq.

Deepening of fairness requires that the rule of law be established across Iraq. Today judicial independence is absent. Arbitrary detention; detention without charge flurishes. People’s right to silence is not upheld and their right to representation in courts commonly discarded.

There is the use of confessions exacted under torture, and now there is pressure in such an ill-equipped criminal justice system for reintroduction of the death penalty actively.

The point is, the rule of law is not an ideal or a luxury. Without it the people will have no confidence in the integrity of Iraq. And so long as the rule of law is elusive, Iraq will continue to be stolen from under the very eyes of Iraqis.  Such is the intransigent and widespread nature of corruption, that for all the billions of dollars invested in Iraq, it is hard to see any consistent benefit to its people – the men and women, young people and children – of Iraq themselves.

Sitting in one of the hundreds of tents that make up the IDP camp we visited in Dohuk barely a month ago, we sat in private with two women as they described the horror of their life under Daesh.  Then we were interrupted by a little girl who crept into the tent.  On her entrance, her mother forced herself to stop crying.  However, she went on to explain to me that the little girl’s face – which is twisted to one side in a permanent grimace – was the result of her bearing witness to the repeated sexual degradation of her mother while being threatened too with the same treatment – despite the fact that she is merely 4 years old.

Even the youngest child knows that what is happening in Iraq to the Yazidis among others is intolerable, inexcusable and must stop.