Tag: Genocide

Netherlands joins UN Security Council to shine light on IS genocide

January 11, 2018 Global News -- No Particular Country Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Lord Alton, Middle East, Netherlands, Syria, UK, UN, Yazidis

A church in Karamles, a town near Mosul, after IS was pushed out in October 2016. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The Netherlands has just joined the UN Security Council as a temporary member for a year. Ten days before, its Foreign Minister, Halbe Zijlstra, published a letter explaining the Dutch government’s response on the use by politicians of the term “genocide”. The Dutch Parliament had had several debates on the . . . Read More

UN ‘overlooked’ IS crime of forced displacement

October 17, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Rex Tillerson, Syria, UN, Yazidis

Iraqi Christians ask the international community for help as they are facing annihilation by Islamic State. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Campaigners for Christian and Yazidi victims of the Islamic State group welcomed the UN’s decision last month to recognise the Islamic State group’s crimes as “genocide”, but human rights advocate Ewelina Ochab questions why “forced displacement” wasn’t included. The UN Security Council voted unanimously to create an investigative team to . . . Read More

Hungary’s response to urgent need to help persecuted Christians ‘stay in their homelands’

October 13, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Ankawa, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bartella, Erbil, Genocide, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Kurds, Middle East, Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh, Soviet Union, Syria, Tel Skuf, Viktor Orbán

Referring to his country’s experience of oppression during the Soviet Union era, the Hungarian Prime Minister has once again explained why his government has been the first – and so far the only – government to specifically address the persecution of Christians around the world. Yesterday (12 October) he pledged . . . Read More

‘Milestone’ as UN votes to create team to collect evidence of IS’s crimes

September 22, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Antonio Guterres, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Jan Figel, Lord Alton, Middle East, Rex Tillerson, Syria, UN, Yazidis

Desecrated church I in Qaraqosh, Iraq. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Campaigners for Christian and Yazidi victims of the Islamic State group welcomed a vote at the United Nations yesterday (21 September), hailed as a “milestone” in their efforts to bring perpetrators of atrocities to justice. The UN Security Council voted unanimously to create an investigative team to collect evidence of . . . Read More

IS guilty of genocide, says US Secretary of State

August 17, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Afghanistan, Al-Shabaab, Andrew Brunson, Blasphemy, Donald Trump, Genocide, Iran, Iraq, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Lord Alton, NATO, Pakistan, Qatar, Rex Tillerson, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Taliban, Turkey, USA, Wahhabism, Yemen

The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has stressed that the actions of the Islamic State (IS) group against Christians, Yazidis and Shia Muslims constitute genocide, and also criticised America’s ally, Saudi Arabia, for religious freedom violations. Tillerson made his “genocide” comments in the preface to the State Department’s annual . . . Read More

Central African Republic: ‘early warning signs of genocide’ warns UN aid chief

August 8, 2017 Central African Republic Anti-balaka, Bangassou, Bangui, Bocaranga, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, Genocide, Seleka, UN, Zemio

The UN has warned of the risk of genocide in the Central African Republic (CAR), saying the situation there has deteriorated in recent months. “Violence is intensifying, risking a repeat of the devastating destructive crisis that gripped the country four years ago… The early warning signs of a genocide are . . . Read More

‘Risk of genocide’ linked with level of religious freedom

July 25, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Genocide, Houthis, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, UN, Yemen

The civil war in Yemen has displaced over 3 million people like this woman who is sitting under a makeshift shelter at a camp for internally displaced persons in the northern district of Abs in Yemen's Hajjah province, on July 23, 2017 (Photo: STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)

Yemen is the country where the risk of genocide, or mass killing, rose most last year, says Minority Rights Group International (MRG) in its 2017 Peoples Under Threat index, which also includes a large number of countries in which it is most difficult to live as a Christian. Nine of . . . Read More

Government silence on IS’s genocide ’empowers oppressors’

April 24, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Genocide, Islamic State, UK

A British Member of Parliament has criticised the UK government for failing to declare the actions of Islamic State against Christians, Yazidis and others “genocide”, suggesting that this omission enables oppressors to act with impunity. Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, who proposed a motion in parliament exactly one year ago that . . . Read More

Iraq urged to allow UN investigation into genocide

March 10, 2017 Iraq Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Jizya, Middle East, Rape, Torture, UN, Yazidis

International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has called upon the Iraqi government to allow a UN investigation into the treatment of Yazidis by the so-called Islamic State (IS), reports Reuters. A year ago, the UK Parliament joined US Secretary of State John Kerry, the US House of Representatives, the EU . . . Read More

‘UN failing religious minorities and Christian converts’

February 15, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Blasphemy, China, Genocide, Indonesia, Islamic State, Myanmar, Pakistan, Religious freedom, Saudi Arabia, UN

The suffering of persecuted Christians around the world is exacerbated by the failure of UN bodies to fulfil their obligations to uphold religious freedom, a damning report has claimed. The 27-page report, starkly entitled The UN’s Failure to Promote and Protect Religious Freedom, argues that concerns about the protection of . . . Read More

Catching Our Eye