In Episode 4 of The FoRB Podcast, Merilin Kiviorg and Dmytro Vovk invite Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law to discuss political, legal, and social responses to the 2014 Yazidi genocide committed by ISIS. Jocelyn elaborates on the roots of the genocide and addresses the challenges and threats Yazidi communities have faced post-genocide. She also discusses state responsibility and measures, often ineffective, implemented by the Iraqi government and other national and international actors to hold perpetrators accountable. Jocelyn further explains why detention camps for former ISIS members and their families can foster a new circle of violence and how the Yazidi genocide has changed our understanding of international criminal law.
Timeline:
1:36 – Introducing the topic
4:23 – Who Yazidis are (religion, ethnicity, and caste system)
12:39 – The long-standing history of persecutions and violence against Yazidi people
13:34 – Religio-ethnic nature of the ISIS atrocities against Yazidi
15:32 – State responsibility and individual criminal accountability for the genocide of the Yazidi
21:33 – Why does the Iraq legal system address the genocide of Yazidis ineffectively?
24:24 – Yazidis’ access to asylum due to the genocide (and the recent EU Court of Justice’s decision on Afghan women)
26:10 – More about state responsibility and the genocides of Yazidis
29:50 – Yazidis in the post-genocidal situation
34:14 – Detention camps for suspected ISIS members and their families
40:21 – How the Yazidi case has changed our understanding of international criminal law