Thank you for the question. We will be providing copies of the first report, which provides a more detailed kind of explanation to that.
Let me answer your question by being very clear in saying that, yes, genocide has a very specific legal definition. Because of that legal definition and the focus on the intent to destroy in whole or in part, we, after doing a very rigorous legal analysis, found that genocide had been committed against the Yazidis. We were also very concerned about the treatment of particular Shia communities. We found that crimes against humanity had been committed against a broader group, which included Christians, Shia Turkmen, Shabak, Kaka'i.
I have to say that what I have found unfortunate is the preoccupation with focusing on genocide. Genocide is unique and is the crime of all crimes, but we have obligations towards vulnerable populations that extend beyond genocide. Canada championed the commitment in 2005 to the responsibility to protect, which suggests that all governments have the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. All four of those crimes were committed in Iraq, and all four of those crimes require the international community to take action to prevent and protect communities from them. It's been frustrating to see the focus on genocide, insofar as I think it has created a politicization of the term that is unfortunate.
Having said that, genocide is the one for which we have a convention that creates a clear legal definition and that outlines some obligations. The genocide convention's clearest obligation is to hold perpetrators accountable. That's why one of our recommendations is around accountability, because we're actually doing a pretty bad job at this particular point, two years out, of even achieving that one obligation that's spelled out in the genocide convention.
In regard to the other obligations, the obligation to protect is less clearly defined. But in terms of our actual findings, our report, as you'll see, outlines that there was a very systematic effort to particularly target the Yazidi. When Yazidi were found by the Islamic State, they were shot at; they were raped; we saw an intentional effort to starve tens of thousands of people around Mount Sinjar for the sole purpose of trying to essentially destroy that particular community as a people.
In the course of the rampant sexual violence and sexual slavery, we saw that women were forcibly converted. Their children, if born, would no longer be Yazidi. We saw Yazidi children taken—boys in particular—to be fighters and forcibly converted. Each of the actions committed by the Islamic State showed an intent to destroy this particular community. The actions were married with their actual statements, by which they publicly made it very clear that they were targeting this particular group with the intent to destroy. They were very clear, in their statements, that they did not think the Yazidi should even have existed by 2014; that they should have been long destroyed before then.
When we did the legal analysis and compared the actions against different groups, for each of the categories—it's not necessary that each category be met in the genocide convention, but in this particular case it was—we saw not just the stated intention but the actual actions taking place. That was not necessarily true for the crimes committed against other groups, but I would say that the crimes that were committed against other groups, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing, merit our attention and concern as well.