III 
114TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 75 
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
MARCH 15, 2016 
Received and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations 
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
Expressing the sense of Congress that the atrocities per-
petrated by ISIL against religious and ethnic minorities 
in Iraq and Syria include war crimes, crimes against 
humanity, and genocide. 
Whereas Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities 
have been an integral part of the cultural fabric of the 
Middle East for millennia; 
Whereas the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 
(ISIL) and associated extremists are committing egre-
gious atrocities against ethnic and religious minorities in 
Iraq 
and 
Syria, 
including 
Christians 
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(including Assyrian Chaldean Syriac, Armenian, and 
Melkite communities, among others), Yezidis, Turkmen, 
Shabak, Sabaean-Mandeans, and Kaka‘i, among others; 
Whereas ISIL specifically targets these religious and ethnic 
minorities, intending to kill them or force their submis-
sion, conversion, or expulsion; 
Whereas religious and ethnic minorities have been murdered, 
subjugated, forced to emigrate, and subjected to grievous 
bodily and psychological harm, kidnapping, human traf-
ficking, torture, and rape; 
Whereas ISIL engages in, and publicly argues in favor of, the 
sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women, including pre- 
pubescent girls; 
Whereas ISIL atrocities against Christians, Yezidis, and 
other minorities have included mass murder, crucifixions, 
beheadings, rape, torture, enslavement, the kidnaping of 
children, and other violence deliberately calculated to 
eliminate their communities from the so-called Islamic 
State; 
Whereas ISIL has deliberately destroyed and looted numer-
ous cultural sites, religious shrines, churches, mon-
asteries, and museums in order to eradicate the cultures 
of ethnic and religious minorities from the territory it at-
tempts to control; 
Whereas these atrocities have been undertaken with the spe-
cific intent to bring about the eradication of those com-
munities and the destruction of their cultural heritage; 
Whereas ISIL operations have in fact driven minority reli-
gious and ethnic communities from their ancestral home-
lands; 
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Whereas under applicable international law referenced in sec-
tion 2441 of Title 18 of the United States Code, murder, 
torture, mutilation, rape, cruel treatment, and hostage- 
taking of non-combatants constitute war crimes; 
Whereas crimes against humanity, as defined by the Inter-
national Military Tribunal convened at Nuremberg in 
1945, and in various international instruments since 
then, include murder, extermination, enslavement, depor-
tation, and other inhumane acts committed against any 
civilian population, as well as persecution on political, ra-
cial, or religious grounds in connection with such crimes; 
Whereas the United Nations Convention on the Prevention 
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signed and 
ratified by the United States, defines genocide as ‘‘any 
of the following acts committed with the intent to de-
stroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or 
religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the 
group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to 
members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the 
group conditions of life calculated to bring about its 
physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing 
measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) 
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another 
group’’; 
Whereas on August 7, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry 
declared that ‘‘ISIL’s campaign of terror against the in-
nocent, including Yezidi and Christian minorities, and its 
grotesque and targeted acts of violence bear all the warn-
ing signs and hallmarks of genocide’’; 
Whereas in August 2014, the United States conducted tar-
geted airstrikes and humanitarian assistance operations 
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to help break the siege of Mount Sinjar, saving the lives 
of thousands of Yezidi men, women, and children; 
Whereas His Holiness, Pope Francis, has noted that ‘‘entire 
communities, especially—but not only—Christians and 
Yezidis have suffered and are still suffering inhuman vio-
lence because of their ethnic and religious identity’’ and 
that, for Christians being killed for their faith in the 
Middle East, ‘‘a form of genocide—I insist on the word— 
is taking place, and it must end’’; 
Whereas a March 13, 2015, report by the Office of the 
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 
detailed ‘‘acts of violence perpetrated [by ISIL] against 
civilians because of their affiliation or perceived affili-
ation to an ethnic or religious group’’ and stated that 
‘‘[i]t is reasonable to conclude that some of these inci-
dents, considering the overall information, may constitute 
genocide’’; 
Whereas in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Com-
mittee on May 13, 2015, Dominican Sister Diana 
Momeka, whose convent was driven from Mosul, Iraq, de-
scribed the ISIL offensive as ‘‘cultural and human geno-
cide’’ and stated that today ‘‘[t]he only Christians that 
remain in the Plain of Nineveh are those who are held 
as hostages’’; 
Whereas in December 2015, the United States Holocaust Me-
morial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention 
of Genocide issued a report focused on the treatment of 
minorities in Nineveh from June to August 2014, which 
found that ISIL had ‘‘targeted civilians based on group 
identity, committing mass atrocities to control, expel, and 
exterminate ethnic and religious minorities’’ and, in that 
context, ‘‘committed crimes against humanity, war 
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crimes, and ethnic cleansing against [Christian, Yezidi, 
Turkmen, Shabak, Sabaean-Mandean, and Kaka’i] com-
munities in Nineva’’ and ‘‘perpetrated genocide against 
the Yezidi people’’; 
Whereas on December 7, 2015, the United States Commis-
sion on International Religious Freedom called on the 
United States Government ‘‘to designate the Christian, 
Yezidi, Shi’a, Turkmen, and Shabak communities of Iraq 
and Syria as victims of genocide by ISIL’’ and urged 
world leaders ‘‘to condemn the genocidal actions and 
crimes against humanity of ISIL that have been directed 
at these groups and other ethnic and religious groups’’; 
Whereas on February 3, 2016, the European Parliament ex-
pressed the view that ISIL ‘‘is committing genocide 
against Christians and Yezidis, and other religious and 
ethnic minorities’’; 
Whereas Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s violence against 
the Syrian people has attracted foreign fighters from 
around the world, who have supported and committed 
ISIL atrocities; and 
Whereas according to some estimates, the conflict among all 
parties to the Syrian civil war has killed 470,000 and dis-
placed 11 million people: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
concurring), That— 
(1) the atrocities perpetrated by ISIL against 
Christians, Yezidis, and other religious and ethnic 
minorities in Iraq and Syria constitute war crimes, 
crimes against humanity, and genocide; 
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(2) all governments, including the United 
States, and international organizations, including 
the United Nations and the Office of the Secretary- 
General, should call ISIL atrocities by their rightful 
names: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and 
genocide; 
(3) the member states of the United Nations 
should coordinate urgently on measures to prevent 
further war crimes, crimes against humanity, and 
genocide in Iraq and Syria, and to punish those re-
sponsible for these ongoing crimes, including by the 
collection and preservation of evidence and, if nec-
essary, the establishment and operation of appro-
priate tribunals; 
(4) the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the 
Lebanese Republic, the Republic of Turkey, and the 
Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq are to be 
commended for, and supported in, their efforts to 
shelter and protect those fleeing the violence of ISIL 
and other combatants until they can safely return to 
their homes in Iraq and Syria; and 
(5) the protracted Syrian civil war and the in-
discriminate violence of the Assad regime have con-
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tributed to the growth of ISIL and will continue to 
do so as long as this conflict continues. 
Passed the House of Representatives March 14, 
2016. 
Attest: 
KAREN L. HAAS, 
Clerk. 
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