Wonderful. Thank you very much, Michael. I appreciate that.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. It's a real honour, especially as a Canadian human rights lawyer, to be able to contribute to your discussion today.
As was mentioned, I travelled to Iraq on behalf of our centre first to document and do the first analysis of the crimes committed by ISIS. The determination we reached was that the Islamic State had committed genocide against the Yazidi and crimes against humanity against a broader group of religious minorities in Iraq, with a particular focus on Nineveh, which is, as you know, where the majority of Iraq's minorities lived. I subsequently travelled back to better examine the current risks facing civilians, both religious minorities and others, including Sunni Arabs living in Nineveh, and to understand the obligations to help protect these communities going forward.
I want to start by providing three overarching points.
First, it's important to recall that genocide did take place and is still occurring for the over 3,000 women and children, primarily Yazidi, who are being held. They are the victims of an ongoing genocide.
The second point is that our obligations to prevent these crimes, not just genocide but also crimes against humanity, are enduring obligations. They are ones we need to be thinking about as we look forward, because these particular communities, which have been targeted and marginalized for over a decade, continue to remain at risk.
Third, as we talk about what is happening in Iraq, we also need to focus on how the Canadian government and other governments can better prioritize the prevention of mass atrocities. This includes improving our ability to do early warning and early action, as well as issues such as the processes by which one determines whether or not crimes have taken place.
Very briefly, as I mentioned, in the summer of 2014 the self-proclaimed Islamic State committed genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing against religious minorities in Nineveh. Hundreds of thousands of people were driven from their homes, mostly into exile in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and thousands were killed and kidnapped. Nearly two years later, these communities remain at risk of future atrocities. ISIS continues to perpetrate genocide against an estimated 3,200 Yazidi women and children who are still being held. Though we've seen governments declare that genocide has occurred, if the label of genocide and crimes against humanity is truly going to have substantial meaning for the victims of these crimes and those still at risk, there's an urgent need to focus on how to protect these victims today and to protect vulnerable communities, using a full range of diplomatic, development, and defensive options available.
Degrading and defeating ISIS militarily will remove a formidable threat to their existence, yet for these communities, their vulnerability will persist and possibly grow after the defeat of the Islamic State. Protecting civilians from recurrence of atrocities will require, therefore, more than just a military strategy. It requires planning for post-liberation Iraq, including that of stabilizing areas to allow for the safe return of displaced Iraqis and ensuring the legal and physical protection of minorities. It also requires tackling the conditions that allowed ISIS to rise, and that enhanced the vulnerabilities of these communities. The failure to do so may very well undermine achieving the long-term goals of the counter-ISIS strategy.
This is particularly true for Nineveh. I really have to stress that Nineveh is unique in comparison to the rest of the country because of the specific vulnerabilities minorities face there. Pre-existing tensions may be exacerbated in the absence of a clear plan for a post-ISIS security provision and political administration, and new fissures emerge, leading to violence and further atrocities.
In that regard, through our visits to Iraq we have identified a couple of areas where we believe that minorities in particular face a heightened risk. The first is what I have already mentioned, the ongoing threat posed by the Islamic State. As I mentioned, women and children continue to be held by them. We also see that the Islamic State continues to control land, and that those who seek to return home are deterred at times in part by the existence of mortar fire, given the ongoing conflict, but also by the widespread existence of explosive devices. I travelled to the north part of Sinjar on the mountain, and this is an extremely dire situation that prohibits a lot of people from returning home or from harvesting their fields because of the existence of explosive devices. That particularly affects religious minorities.
A second key risk we have identified is the risk of future extremist groups. The most common retort you hear from religious minorities when you speak to them is that ISIS is only the latest iteration of that phenomenon. They believe that in the wake of ISIS, a new extremist group will emerge.
I think it's really important to underscore that when I've been interviewing survivors, the trend that emerges is that the perpetrators of these crimes were local fighters. They were neighbours. They were people who they knew or they were other Iraqis or Syrians. Yes, there are foreign fighters, but this is very much a local conflict for which the local context is really important. Religious minorities understand that implicitly. They understand that their security is contingent on domestic political actors addressing the underlying grievances, particularly of Sunni Arabs, and the political insecurity and rampant culture of impunity that exists in Iraq. As a result, these minorities have very little faith in the Iraqi government's ability or will to address those grievances, and similarly are concerned about the intentions of the Kurdish regional government. They're also very distrustful of their Sunni Arab neighbours, which I'll mention shortly. They are nervous that ISIS fighters may very well be able to evade justice. They talk a lot about the concerns about sleeper cells and their neighbours turning on them once again.
A third concern that we highlighted is the proliferation of underregulated and unregulated religion- and sex-specific militias. Understandably, religious minorities are very concerned about their physical protection. They feel that both the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga failed to protect them as ISIS was attacking their particular communities. They feel a deep sense of betrayal. As a result, they're seeking to arm themselves to protect themselves from possible future extremists, but they're also seeking to arm themselves to ensure that they will have political and economic influence in the future. This is one means by which they're trying to assert some control in a disputed area.
What is worrying—we met with a number of militias from different communities—is the lack of a clear command and control structure and also the divided patronage that these groups have. The allegiances that they might ascribe to the peshmerga or to the Iraqi security forces and the central government are very weak. We were repeatedly told about the potential for conflict and fighting, including even within particular religious groups where you would have different factions, for example, of Christian militias that might begin fighting with each other. There was also a concern about the influx of weapons and the inability to disarm people afterwards should there be a national force created. There was concerns about fighting between religious groups. As you might know, there have been pre-existing tensions, including over property, between certain groups such as the Christians and Shabak.
There are a number of reasons why these sex-specific and religious-specific militias are particularly worrying, in addition to the fact that they lack, in many cases, the adequate training in human rights and humanitarian law standards, and that there have been calls for revenge among some of the militia groups and their supporters.
We have highlighted, as a fourth risk, a risk to Sunni Arabs. The reason we highlighted that was because we had so frequently in our trips to Iraq been told that religious minorities may very well seek revenge against those who they perceive to have supported ISIS or believe to have committed crimes. That was a very widespread perception. In many cases, people said they simply did not think that Sunni Arabs would return home. Yet, as many of you know, Nineveh is a multiethnic region in which Sunni Arabs had lived. Many people would argue to us that Sunni Arabs were not from Nineveh, and that they came there as a result of Saddam Hussein's Arabization process, so therefore people will not return home. Sunni Arabs that we spoke to said that they did want to return home, so there's a real concern about the potential for revenge killings. We've already seen destruction of property and attacks on some Sunni Arabs over the course of the past year that would lend credence to that.
Finally, we highlighted risks to civilians that we saw emerging during the counter-ISIL operation in Mosul. Unfortunately, many of those have come to reality, including the use of civilians as human shields, challenges around the securing of evacuation routes, and concerns about the use of Shia militias and where they might be deployed not just in regard to Mosul but also in regard to areas nearby, such as Tal Afar, where there is believed to be a Sunni population.
Those were the five areas of risk that we see as being challenges for religious minorities going forward.
Very briefly, with regard to the action needed going forward, we feel it's critical that there be effective civilian protection, which is ingrained within a sustained strategy of using military and non-military tools to respond to the evolving situations on the ground. It's important to try to anticipate where there might be flashpoints, and identify vulnerable communities, those that seek to return home, and ensure their protection both in the immediate and long term. There needs to be continuous monitoring and analysis of the warning signs and risk indicators on the ground. Of course we've stressed the need for day-after planning. It's unfortunate to see that not enough day-after planning has taken place.
We feel four core priority areas need to be addressed, both in the immediate and long term.
The first is ensuring that the international community, Iraqi government, and KRG ensure the physical security of all people living within Nineveh. Many of our recommendations focused on the counter-ISIL strategy. As a result, right now we seem to see events on the ground outpacing the need for more appropriate training. I think the most critical going forward is the need to ensure that we have local Iraqi forces trained—police forces, in particular—that represent each of the communities in Nineveh and that are able to be deployed to help stabilize areas that are going to be newly liberated or have already been liberated.
It's very important that we ensure that security forces that are on the ground already in areas like Sinjar are protecting local communities. There is a struggle right now among many Kurdish factions in Sinjar, which has created heightened vulnerabilities for the Yazidis who have returned home or who were able to remain.
The second area we focused our efforts on has been ensuring that there is an investment in stabilization, reconstruction, and reconciliation to address the immediate risks and the long-term drivers. We need to ensure that there is rule by law and not rule by gun going forward.
I can speak a little further about some of the reconciliation efforts that we feel should be scaled up, but of course the most immediate concerns are the provision of security and ensuring that there is political administration of newly liberated areas that takes into account the specific needs of religious minorities and allows them to actually be represented. They're very fearful that their voices will not be heard and that Kurdish or other Iraqi voices will kind of silence them.
The third is the need for pursuing justice and accountability. With that, we're quite preoccupied with trying to ensure that there's an international independent investigation created that allows for the gathering, analysis, and preservation of evidence for future criminal prosecutions but also for a whole host of transitional justice purposes, be that seeking remedies, a truth and reconciliation process, or helping family members identify their loved ones. Right now the efforts that have been taken thus far, though commendable, fall well short of what they should. We still have mass graves exposed, and we don't see a rigorous process under way to analyze evidence in accordance with international standards to meet the ever-growing needs, on a daily basis, of victims. I have to stress—I know there has been a lot of focus on the role of the International Criminal Court—that this is a local conflict, and we need to see a local emphasis on justice and accountability.
The fourth and final one is the need to secure a political resolution, between the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish regional government, to the disputed areas. Religious minorities live in a precarious part of Iraq, where their needs have consistently been neglected, they have consistently been marginalized, and they have been made into pawns by both the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish regional government, who have been struggling to seek control of Nineveh. That has to be addressed going forward. We can't continue to say that later, 10 years from now, we'll deal with this. It has to be dealt with today, because it is exactly what speaks to who is going to provide physical protection and who is going to be responsible for politically administering an area where minorities live.
I'll conclude by saying that I think Canada has a very unique role to play in each of those four areas with regard to the response, and I'm happy to speak more directly to that.
I also think that part of the discussion about what has happened in Iraq and what needs to happen must include a conversation about how to create better structures in all governments on how to do early warning analysis and response so that we don't find ourselves in a situation again, in five or 10 years, where we're talking about genocide and crimes against humanity committed against religious minorities in Iraq.
Thank you very much.
