I would say that there's an urgency around supporting local-level efforts. I think it's important to continue to advance conversations around the role of the International Criminal Court, but I think we have to be focusing very much on building local-level capacity, the capacity of the Iraqis and the KRG to prosecute for these crimes at the local level. It's not an either-or situation, but there is an urgency.
I'll give you one example. I had the same conversation with a Yazidi gentleman and a Christian gentleman, who both said to me that they anticipated that there would be revenge killings. The Yazidi man I spoke with had lost virtually every single family member. I asked him what would need to exist for him to not feel the same desire for revenge. It was really interesting, because his reply was, well, if someone were held responsible.
I said to him, “You've never seen real accountability in Iraq. Are you really saying that if there were a court case 12 miles away for this man who killed your wife and your children, you would feel as though that would lessen your desire for resorting to the use of guns or something other than the rule of law?” He said yes.
We started asking different people, and people kept coming back with a similar answer: if they actually saw justice through a court, that would counter other options they would be considering to seek justice through more harmful means.
There's something there in what the local requests are for the type of response they would like to see that I think we have to take very seriously. We have to invest more time and resources into understanding what the options are and supporting capacity building. However, I have to underscore again that for this to happen, both the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government have to prioritize these cases. I will again stress that they have to prioritize the cases for all communities that were victimized.