Amal Clooney calls out the UN for the Yazidis

YAZIDI WATCH: Amal Clooney Says U.N. Has Failed Yazidi Women (Lucy Westcott, Newsweek via San Diego Jewish World).

Renowned human rights lawyer Amal Clooney criticized the United Nations for failing to act on behalf of the persecuted Yazidi minority group, thousands of whom remain enslaved by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).

Clooney spoke during a ceremony for Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a 23-year-old Yazidi woman who was kept as an ISIS sex slave for three months before she escaped. On Friday, Murad was appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking for the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said ISIS is committing a genocide against several minority groups in Iraq and Syria, including Yazidis, Turkmen and Christians.

"Make no mistake: What Nadia has told us about is genocide,” Clooney said during a speech on Friday. “And genocide doesn't happen by accident. You have to plan it."

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 ISIS. ISIS believe Yazidis are non-believers as they follow an ancient religion and are not Muslim.

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Good for Ms. Clooney. She is doing a brave thing that is not without personal risk. Background on the Yazidis, their Gnosticism-themed religion, and their tragic fate in the hands of ISIS, is here with many links.