In a speech charged with emotion, human rights lawyer and activist Amal Clooney on Friday criticised the United Nations for failing to tackle some of the gravest crimes committed by the Islamic State
In a speech charged with emotion, human rights lawyer and activist Amal Clooney on Friday criticised the United Nations for failing to tackle some of the gravest crimes committed by the Islamic State (IS) against the Yazidi community, thousands of whom remain enslaved by the militant group.
Ms Clooney spoke during a ceremony for Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a 23-year-old Yazidi woman who was kept as an IS sex slave for three months before she escaped. On Friday, Ms Murad was appointed as a goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking for the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
“Make no mistake: What Nadia has told us about is genocide,” Clooney said during the speech on Friday. “And genocide doesn’t happen by accident. You have to plan it.”
Ms Clooney, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London who focuses on international and human rights law, will represent the Yazidis in an International Criminal Court case, in which she plans to seek accountability for the genocide, sexual enslavement and trafficking of Yazidi women and girls by IS. The militant group believes that Yazidis are non-believers as they follow an ancient religion and are not Muslim.
“I am ashamed, as a supporter of the United Nations, that states are failing to prevent, or even punish, genocide because they find that their own interests get in the way. I am ashamed as a lawyer that there is no justice being done and barely a complaint being made about it,” Ms Clooney said on Friday, which was also the International Day of Peace.
“I am ashamed as a woman that girls like Nadia have their bodies sold and used as battlefields. I am ashamed as a human being that we ignore their cries for help,” said Ms Clooney.
Ms Murad retold her story of rape and torture at the hands of IS fighters during the ceremony on Friday, which was attended by a number of trafficking survivors.
