ICC Note: After an inundation of articles and indictments against Secretary Kerry and the Obama Administration for stating they would NOT declare genocide against Christians and minorities in Iraq and Syria, Secretary Kerry was forced to make the declaration today as scheduled.  The State Department’s announcement join a chorus of top leaders throughout the world and echoes the unanimous US House of Representatives Resolution.  ICC’s advocacy department has worked with lawmakers and human rights groups to apply pressure on the Administration. This is a great step in ensuring the protection of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities who have been cleansed from their communities by the Islamic State (ISIS). Kerry showed leadership in asserting this declaration. 

3/17/2016 Washington, D.C. (CNN) – Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that the United States has determined that ISIS’ action against the Yazidis and other minority groups in Iraq and Syria constitutes genocide.

“My purpose here today is to assert in my judgment, (ISIS) is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control including Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims,” he said, during a news conference at the State Department.

Kerry said in 2014, ISIS trapped Yazidis killed them, enslaved thousands of Yazidi women and girls “selling them at auction, raping them at will and destroying the communities in which they had lived for countless generations,” executed Christians “solely for their faith” and also “forced Christian women and girls into slavery.”

“Without our intervention, it is clear that those people would have been slaughtered,” he said.

This is the first time that the United States has declared a genocide since Darfur in 2004.

. . .