UN: ISIS has committed genocide against the Yazidis

A United Nations investigative group has said that the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) group has committed genocide against the Yazidis of Iraq and Syria.

In a report published by the organization's investigative commission on Thursday, June 16, it was stated that ISIS has committed "the most heinous crimes" against members of this religious and ethnic minority, including murder, torture, and sexual slavery.

In this report, researchers from the United Nations Independent Commission have called on major world powers to make greater efforts to rescue at least 3,200 Yazidis held captive by ISIS.

ISIS, an extremist Sunni militant group, considers the Yazidis to be Satanists whose killing, persecution, and enslavement are permissible.

The report warns that ISIS's goal is the "complete destruction" of the group.

In August 2014, ISIS fighters attacked Mount Sinjar in Iraqi Kurdistan, placing the predominantly Yazidi region under siege.

In the first months of their occupation of parts of Iraq, they captured thousands of Yazidis. Many were displaced, and there were reports of widespread ISIS violence against Yazidis, including the killing of many.

Over the past two years, there have been repeated reports of the discovery of mass graves containing hundreds of Yazidi bodies.

Part of the report states that Islamic State militants have enslaved hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of Yazidi women and girls, whom they consider "war booty," into sexual slavery and sold them in slave markets or given them as "gifts" to the militants.

Witit Montarborn, a member of the commission, said many of those who managed to escape ISIS have recounted horrific accounts of brutal rapes that were often carried out on a daily basis, gang rapes, torture and severe beatings.

The United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry has also learned that many of these women committed suicide to escape the tragedies that befell them.

According to this report, children under the age of seven are captured with their mothers and live under the same very poor conditions, being beaten and abused daily by their owners.

Boys over the age of 7 are forcibly separated from their mothers and taken to ISIS camps to undergo military training.

Men and boys over the age of 12 are separated from women and girls and killed if they do not convert to Islam, "with the aim of destroying their Yazidi identity."