Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if it is possible to judge between different horrors but if there is anything worse than young people being shot and killed in conflict zones, it is perhaps the use of rape and sexual violence against women and children, which is part of the human story and seems never to have gone away as something that happens in a systematic fashion as a weapon of war. It has been a common thread in so many conflicts in recent years. I want today to raise the need for proper international mechanisms to find justice for victims in as far as is possible. Trafficking and sex slavery involving innocent civilians has become endemic, as we know, and was endemic as a means for ISIS to terrorise Christians and other religious groups. Colleagues will recall in particular its treatment of the Yazidi minority in the early days of the conflict. To this day, more than 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still missing after they were abducted in late 2014. Those still alive are suspected to be in Syria.Once I met a Yazidi man on a train in France and we struggled to find a language in which to communicate. What he told me about experiences that had befallen people he knew is stuff that I never, ever want to hear again.

Those who wage what they describe as a holy war in the name of their religion have shown no compunction about using depraved tactics, as we know. There has been some international recognition of the scale of the issue in recent years with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 to Dr. Denis Mukwege, a doctor who assists victims of these practices, and Nadia Murad, a woman who was tortured and raped during the genocide committed by ISIS. Unfortunately, there are not adequate international legal mechanisms to achieve justice for these atrocities. The International Criminal Court can, theoretically, deal with cases of planned sexual violence but it is a treaty-bound court and lacks the jurisdiction to investigate crimes and mount prosecutions since it does not have jurisdiction in Syria or Iraq. There is no other international or regional criminal court that can deal with prosecutions but there are alternative options that the Irish Government needs to raise. It would be possible for the UN Security Council to establish an ad hoctribunal to prosecute ISIS fighters who were responsible. There is a precedent for this from the 1990s and the international criminal tribunals established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia are two such examples. UN Security Council Resolution 2379 has mandated an investigative team to collect and preserve evidence for future prosecutions. As the next logical step the Security Council could establish an international criminal tribunal for ISIS that is modelled on the precedents from the 1990s with a tailored mandate.

There has been a lot in the news recently about stripping people of citizenship in terms of ISIS fighters and so forth. That is just a populist, quick-fix solution. Genuine justice needs to be brought to bear on those who have committed or aided and abetted such horrific crimes against women and children. I ask the Leader whether he agrees with me that this is an issue on which Ireland could take a lead.