When Secretary of State John Kerry this week took what many considered a long overdue step and declared that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians and other minorities, it was a good beginning, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has fought for protection of religious minorities in the Middle East.
But there's much more to be done, the group said.
"Secretary of State Kerry has recognized an appropriate name for the actions of ISIS against Christians and other religious minorities: genocide. This recognition is an important first step in the necessary process by the United States, the U.N., and the international community to stop the killing in the Middle East," said Douglas Napier, senior counsel and executive director of ADF International, a division of ADF.
The organization has played a key role in providing evidence and legal analysis to the State Department and U.S. Congress as well as the European Parliament, Council of Europe and United Nations on the atrocities committed by ISIS.
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"As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, the United States has an influential role to play in supporting a referral to the International Criminal Court to condemn and prosecute the perpetrators," Napier explained. "Once it is recognized that genocide is happening, the 147 countries who are party to the U.N. Genocide Convention, including the U.S., have an obligation to do all they can to bring the killing of innocent people to an end."
Kerry's statement came Thursday, many months after the worldwide community largely had already recognized ISIS was committing genocide.
"In my judgment, Daesh (ISIS) is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims," Kerry said in a statement.
Daesh is an adapted acronym of its Arabic name.
He charged the Muslim terror army with "crimes against humanity" and "ethnic cleansing."
The Obama administration had been under pressure from lawmakers to meet a Thursday deadline to make the decision.
The U.S. House previously passed a resolution, 393-0, condemning ISIS atrocities as genocide.
Kerry cited the fact that ISIS targets Christians in Iraq "solely because of their faith."
ADF International previously released an extensive analysis of the genocide issue and provided it to Kerry as part of a report by the Knights of Columbus.
ADF International explained international law sets out strict criteria for using the term "genocide." The U.N. Genocide Convention of 1948 describes it as acts committed with the specific intent to "destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."
The organization said ISIS "deliberately targets religious and ethnic minority groups in the Middle East for destruction."
It said the number of Christians has dropped from 2 million to less than 1 million in Syria under the ISIS attacks and from 1.4 million to fewer than 260,000 in Iraq in just a few years.
"The Yazidis in the region of Kurdistan have been almost entirely wiped out. The atrocities include assassinations of church leaders, torture, mass murders, kidnapping, sexual enslavement and systematic rape of Christian and Yazidi girls and women, and the destruction of churches, monasteries, and cemeteries," the organization said.
ADF said the U.N. and other members of the international community should "start working immediately toward a resolution at the Security Council which refers the situations in Syria and Iraq to the International Criminal Court."
Kerry's statement was only the second time there's been an administration declaration on genocide. The first came in 2004 when Secretary of State Colin Powell described the massacres in Sudan's Darfur region as genocide.
Powell at the time called for the U.N. to investigate and take action.
ADF International Executive Director Doug Napier said the evidence of genocide "is overwhelming."
"Our analysis and the rest of the detailed report provided to Secretary Kerry makes it abundantly clear that the genocide designation is clearly warranted," he said.
The ADF International report sent to Kerry stated: "To date, no adequate steps have been taken to respond to the situation of Christians in Syria and Iraq. In order to change the situation, we first must recognize the persecution of Christians as genocide and not as unrelated single events of persecution or discrimination."