U.S. weighs ‘genocide’ label for IS in Iraq — and more than a word may be at stake

U.S. weighs ‘genocide’ label for IS in Iraq — and more than a word may be at stake

U.S. weighs ‘genocide’ label for IS in Iraq — and more than a word may be at stake
 A Yazidi girl, fleeing the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, rests at the Iraqi-Syrian border crossing last year. (Photo: Youssef Boudlal/Reuters)
The Obama administration is moving to designate the Islamic State’s murderous attacks on the Yazidi in Iraq an act of “genocide,” an extremely rare move intended to ratchet up international pressure against the terror organization, administration officials tell Yahoo News.

The action, which sources say could be announced by Secretary of State John Kerry in the next few weeks, has been pushed by top officials at the human rights and religious freedom offices at the State Department.
It has also been prodded by a report to be released today by the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The report documents horrific mass killings and sexual slavery targeting the small Yazidi community, as well as crimes against other ethnic minorities, by IS forces who swept through Northern Iraq last year.
“What we found is there was a deliberate attempt by the forces of the Islamic State to not only ethnically cleanse the Yazidi population [forcibly remove them from their lands] but to exterminate them,” said Cameron Hudson, the director of the museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, which commissioned the report. 
“And as they are continuing to hold, kidnap and enslave the [Yazidi ] women and children, this a crime that is still being committed,” he said.
The move to invoke the powerfully evocative “genocide” label comes amid continuing internal discussions among senior officials at the White House, the State Department and other agencies about the legal implications of such a statement. A loosely worded 1948 treaty calls on signatory nations, including the United States, to take unspecified actions to “prevent and to punish” the “odious scourge” of genocide