09/17/2018 Washington D.C. (International Christian Concern) – The third and final regular session for the United Nations Human Rights Council began last week and will continue until September 28th. Testimonies are expected asking that the UN designate the persecution of Christians in Iraq and Syria by ISIS as genocide.
There is much disappointment among Syrian and Iraqi Christians, as well as Yazidis, regarding the United Nations response to the crisis sparked by ISIS’s genocide. For example, a UN investigative team started working this past August—nearly a year after the Security Council created it. The passage of a year’s time meant that evidence of ISIS’s crimes against religious minorities could be contaminated or disappeared during the interlude.
UN aid has also been slow to reach the Christians and Yazidis displaced by ISIS—if it ever arrived at all. A lack of accountability for the UN’s failure to reach vulnerable people clearly targeted for genocide has further deepened the challenges which persecuted religious minorities are facing in the Middle East.
For interviews with Claire Evans, ICC’s Regional Manager, please contact Olivia Miller, Communications Coordinator: press@persecution.org.
