Turkey should face charges in front of the international court of justice for being complicit in acts of genocide against the Yazidi people, while Syria and Iraq failed in their duty to prevent the killings, an investigation endorsed by British human rights lawyer
Helena Kennedy has said.
The groundbreaking report,
compiled by a group of prominent human rights lawyers, is seeking to highlight the binding responsibility states have to prevent genocide on their territories, even if they are carried out by a third party such as Islamic State (IS).
The lawyers, grouped under the title of the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC), said there was accountability under international law for states to prevent the crime of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chair of the YJC, described
the genocide of the Yazidi people as “madness heaped on evil”.
“Mechanisms in place could have saved the Yazidis from what is now part of their past, and part of their past partial destruction,” he said.