Special Adviser Karim Khan QC at UNSC, 15 July 2019
AS DELIVERED
Thank you Mr. President.
If I may, I would like to start by congratulating Peru on assuming the presidency of the Council this month.
It is indeed an honour to present to the Council the second report (see S/2019/407) of the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (UNITAD).
From the outset of our work in Iraq, we have sought to ensure that the experiences and voices of survivors, witnesses and communities are placed at the centre of our work. These survivors come from all communities across Iraq. All communities have been impacted in some way, shape or form by the crimes of Da’esh, and their message has been clear and consistent. Their demand is a simple one, but it goes to the heart of the mandate. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) must be held responsible for the crimes that were committed.
In Mosul to Tikrit, from Erbil to Dahuk and Sinjar, and elsewhere in Iraq, victims have given harrowing accounts to our Team of mass killings, of whole families being wiped out and women and children taken as slaves. The courage those individuals have demonstrated in coming forward and giving their accounts about Da’esh underlines, in very real terms, their commitment to justice, their heroism and the urgency with which we at UNITAD must work, together, if we are to fulfil the hopes, aspirations and promises that were made in September 2017 by the Council in resolution 2379 (2017).
Perhaps most striking, to me at least, has been the fact that when I have engaged with these victim communities among the various components of Iraq, their message is one of seeking not revenge or reprisals, but justice. They seek justice, not as an abstract but rather based on proper, solid evidence — without hearsay or gossip — that can be presented in a court of law and subjected to challenge so that independent and impartial judges may make determinations that will stand the test of time The resilience and the fortitude of the people of Iraq from all communities need to be applauded right at the outset. It is only through fair trials that the corrupt and perverted ideology of Da’esh, as well as its most un-Islamic practices, can be fully and completely exposed in a manner that will brook no answer at all.
Over the past six months, we have sought to harness our resources and the unity of purpose that we have seen in Iraq and the Council in the most effective way. I am pleased to report that since my last briefing to the Council (see S/PV.8412), very significant progress has been made. We are now receiving evidence, information and witness statements in all forms — digital, electronic, documentary — in line with the investigative strategy that I detailed in my previous report (see S/2018/1031).
The Team is expanding rapidly. At the beginning of the year, we had 10 staff members in UNITAD. As of today, we have 79 staff members from all geographical regions of the United Nations. In line with the Secretary-General’s policy on gender parity, I am extremely pleased to announce that more than 55 per cent of the Team is female and more than 50 per cent of the senior leadership of UNITAD is also female.
In May, I was delighted, together with His Excellency the Prime Minister of Iraq, to announce my appointment of Ms. Salama Hasson Al-Khafaji. She is sitting right behind me. I really want to take this opportunity, in this Chamber, to publicly applaud Ms. Salama Hasson Al-Khafaji for her extraordinary commitment to the rule of law and to justice. Already, her experience, wise counsel and sincere efforts to deliver accountability have made a meaningful contribution to the Team. Her appointment shows in a very vivid and obvious manner the support of the Government of Iraq and how, by harnessing the quality, ability and experience of the people of Iraq, we can complement the investigative capacity within Iraq and hopefully also feed evidence into the court systems of other Member States.
In April, we were fortunate in leaving the hotel where we were based and then the engineering compound on the premises of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). We have our own facilities where we can safely store our material and the evidential work product that we generate. Importantly also, we now have videoconference facilities, so that we can use our offices to transmit testimony not only into the courts of Iraq, but also, more immediately, the courts of other Member States.
I want to thank UNAMI and the Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq for their constant support as we move from being a startup entity into the operational stage of our work. All along, we have been endeavouring to move the mandate from the paper of resolution 2379 (2017) into something concrete, and we have done that initially by focusing on three main areas: first, in the Sinjar area, attacks against the Yazidi communities; secondly, in Mosul, which is, as I have said repeatedly, a microcosm in many respects of the crimes of Da’esh, we see crimes against religious minorities and women and children, crimes of sexual slavery and crimes of sexual and genderbased violence; and thirdly, we have been focusing on this awful massacre to create an academy in June 2014. The team is preparing evidentiary files with respect to a broad category of other crimes. This is important because all communities, as I said at the outset, have been targeted by Da’esh. There was no preference or mercy shown whether one was Christian or Yazidi, Shia or Sunni, Kaka’i or Turkmen or Shabak, for that matter. All of those communities suffered horrendously at the hands of that most un-Islamic State.
In conducting the work of UNITAD, we have sought to draw on its independent and impartial status in order to engage with all actors — whether international, regional or local — so that we can get the greatest body of material and collect it in line with international standards. That inclusive and collaborative approach is reflected in the evidence collection that we have undertaken only in the past few weeks. In the past 10 days alone, we have had a team out that has been in the village of Kojo, in Sinjar, collecting evidence or supporting the Iraqi authorities in collecting evidence and giving them guidelines regarding what international standards require so that we have the greatest opportunity to feed evidence into domestic courts, in line with legal considerations.
In northern Iraq, we have been conducting interviews with Yazidis, Turkmen Shia, Christians and Sunni Arabs. It is very encouraging that we have already found very important evidence from individuals and witnesses who had not hitherto given a statement to any investigative entity or non-governmental organization (NGO). In addition, we have received 600,000 videos in the past two weeks that are very relevant to our investigations and more than 15,000 pages of insider ISIL documents that they themselves produced, which were collected from the battlefield by leading investigative journalists.
I have repeatedly stated that the collection of evidence in itself does not represent satisfactorily the culmination of our work. It is not an end in itself, and that needs to be underlined. It is not sufficient for UNITAD simply to have an archive of interesting material, important though that is. To fully deliver on our mandate, we must ensure that our work contributes tangibly to domestic accountability efforts. In recognition of that imperative, the Investigative Team has already held in-depth discussions in recent months in order to create, identify and strengthen potential channels for evidence collected by the Team to feed into domestic proceedings in a manner consistent with UNITAD’s terms of reference.
I am also pleased to be able to inform the Council that a number of other Member States have — at this early stage, six or seven months after our deployment to Iraq in terms of the new year — already approached us in relation to ongoing domestic proceedings within their jurisdictions. Based on our discussions with relevant national authorities, it is my hope that within the next two weeks we will be able to provide tangible support with respect to at least one ongoing case before a national court of a Member State, which would mark an important milestone in the young life of UNITAD.
Our cooperation and collaboration with the Government of Iraq and Iraqi national authorities have remained crucial to the ability to deliver on our mandate. I take this opportunity to express my thanks for the support that has been given to me and to UNITAD by the President of Iraq, the Prime Minister of Iraq, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, the President of the Judicial Council and, indeed, the Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations, who is at this meeting today. In addition, the support of the Kurdistan Regional Government has been unrelenting and extremely significant, and I extend my thanks to the President, Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister of the that Government for the assistance they have provided in the formative stages of UNITAD’s work.
Our effective working-level engagement with Iraqi and local authorities, in line with the terms of reference, has, in my respectful submission, been one of the most notable and greatest successes of UNITAD in these initial stages. Tangible evidence of that cooperation can be found in the collection of forensic material from mass grave sites, in line with international standards, and the transmission of evidence and case files from national and local authorities to the Investigative Team to ensure that our work is conducted in a manner that is complementary to ongoing domestic proceedings. They have also facilitated, in the past few days before I came to this meeting, my visit to some of the detention centres in Iraq. I am also extremely grateful for the unfailing support provided by the relevant national security agencies and the National Operations Centre, which has facilitated our nimble, mobile investigative work in the field of Iraq itself. In short, the cooperation that the Government of Iraq has extended to UNITAD thus far has been, in my considered view, exemplary.
While significant progress has been made in the past six months, I wish to underline that the ability of the Team to deliver on its mandate remains dependent on the consistent and continued support of the Council and the international community more broadly. In that regard, we have been greatly assisted by the very generous contributions to the trust fund that Member States have provided to UNITAD. We have used the funds for very good purposes. They have helped us with exhumations in the field and to purchase the leading technology for DNA analysis, drones and 3-D scanners. They have been used to recruit psychological and psychosocial support for the victims. I would like once again to express my thanks to the Member States that I highlighted in particular in the written report presented to the Council. I am also pleased to announce that last week we were given a commitment by the United Arab Emirates of another generous contribution and the Government of Qatar is planning on financing and supporting an international conference in Doha at the end of this year.
Apart from financial assistance to the trust fund, gratis personnel are sorely needed. I would like to applaud and thank Germany, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Turkey for their very generous contributions to UNITAD, which have filled a need. The latter three — Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Turkey — have promised and made commitments to provide gratis personnel to forensics and other areas. Those contributions are essential not only in further strengthening our capacity to conduct effective investigative activities but also in reinforcing the message that the Council and the international community remain ad idem and united and that the imperative of justice is not simply an incantation but that the Council and international community are committed to ensuring that it is realized by way of not only proper investigations but also fair trials that will stand the test of time.
Through our work in Iraq to date, our engagement with victims, our cooperation with national and regional actors and our dialogue with religious bodies and leaders, two fundamental truths have become apparent.
The first is that, despite the scale, depravity and barbarity that were unleashed by Da’esh on innocent civilians, they have not succeeded in dividing the people of Iraq. Rather, the gaps that existed have been narrowed and a great deal of unity has been created, which, if properly harnessed, can be very important not only to the future of Iraq but also to the continued fulfilment of the UNITAD mandate. The call from all Iraqis for justice is resolute and clear. The courage and strength that we have seen among the religious divides and across political divisions from all parts of the political spectrum and of Iraq and, most notably, the courage of survivors to come forward with unbelievable bravery to recount what has befallen them, what they have seen and what they have known have demonstrated quite eloquently the abject failure of Da’esh to sow lasting division in the territory of Iraq, nor has Da’esh succeeded in intimidating the people of Iraq into silence. Every time a witness comes to UNITAD and gives their account, that is a very eloquent and powerful riposte to Da’esh.
Secondly, we have understood that the ultimate success of our work will depend on our ability to draw on our independent and impartial status to harness this unity of purpose and to make our work a product of a collective endeavour between the Council and the people of Iraq, between the national authorities and local actors and between NGOs and universities. The whole of humanity — all those groups — needs to come together and be harnessed. Hopefully, we will then have an opportunity to deliver on the mandate and ensure justice, not in the abstract but by way of evidence collected by UNITAD that can feed into independent and impartial trials. Only if we succeed in both parts will the full purpose of UNITAD be fulfilled.
I thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to present the second report of the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.