ICC Note: The ACLJ is once again asking the UN Human Rights Council why it will not formally identify the genocide being carried out against Christians and other minorities in the Middle East. Despite many international actors identifying the atrocities, the UN has taken no action against the group or on behalf of the victims.

02/15/2017 Iraq/Syria (Christian Post): The American Center for Law and Justice has asked the United Nations Human Rights Council why it continues to be silent and refuses to formally identify Christians and other religious minorities as victims of genocide at the hands of the Islamic State terror group, despite well-documented evidence.

The conservative law group, in partnership with the European Center for Law and Justice, its European affiliate, wrote in its latest submission:

“A declaration by the Human Rights Council that the Islamic State is engaged in genocide and action by this Council calling for the U.N. General Assembly (and other appropriate organs of the U.N.) to follow suit would carry significant weight.

“We need action now. The U.N. must defend the rights of all religious minorities, including the Christians in Iraq, Syria, and any other place where the Islamic State engages in genocide.”

While much of the international community, including the U.S. under former President Barack Obama, recognized Christians and other religious minorities as victims of genocide in the ongoing war in Iraq and Syria, the U.N. has been reluctant to use that terminology.

The United Nations has recognized crimes against humanity and war crimes when it comes to Yazidis, at least in the statements of some of its representatives.

“Genocide has occurred and is ongoing,” said Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, in June 2016.

“ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities,” he added in a press statement issued by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The ACLJ noted that despite filing an urgent testimony nine months ago at the OHCHR explaining the various horrors Christians and other minorities have faced, including beheadings, crucifixions, enslavement, rape, forced conversion, and other forms of violence, a formal recognition of the genocide is still lacking.

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