After the US Has Declared ISIS Guilty of Genocide, What Next?
ICC Note: The United States recently identified the actions of the Islamic State as genocide, specifically against minority christians. Now that this first and crucial step has taken place, what is next? The United states along withe the international community has several options in helping Christians in Iraq and Syria and action must be taken. If pluralism is eliminated entirely from the Levant, the geographic area will become a launching pad for terrorism, creating a huge national security problem for the United States, as was explained by the Heritage Foundation and the National Review Institute.
05/18/2016 Iraq/Syria (Ankawa): The United States—and the international community—has several options to help Christians in Iraq and Syria, now that the US has declared that they are victims of a genocide being carried out by the Islamic State group.
The Heritage Foundation and the National Review Institute cosponsored a conference in Washington, D.C., Wednesday examining that topic.
Action is urgent, panelists agreed, for a number of reasons. For Thomas F. Farr, who directs the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center, it’s a national security issue for the United States. The Middle East loses its prospects for stability if it’s emptied of Christianity and Christians, he explained.
“Allowing Iraq and Syria to become majoritarian states in which there is no pluralism is to condemn them to instability and a launching pad for terrorism,” he said.
Olivia Enos, research associate in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, said that ISIS is trafficking in Yazidi women and the profits are being used to fund terrorism.
“The US is a signatory to the UN Convention on Genocide, and under that convention we are supposed to punish perpetrators of genocide and protect victims of genocide,” Enos said. “The US should be considering specific military, legal and refugee assistance.”
Because most financial transactions pass thru the Federal Reserve and are dollar-denominated, there are legal tools that the US Treasury Department has that would allow it to “go after known rights abusers who are facilitating genocide.”
…