YouSaid · the spoken record

Clooney

lines on the record
17
first
2019-04-23
most recent
2019-04-23
sittings or episodes
1
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un-security-council

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  1. “Nadia has been given many honours since she decided to bravely speak out about the horrors she and her people have suffered. She has received titles, awards, words of thanks and promises of assistance. But she would trade her Nobel Peace Prize in a heartbeat for the chance to get what she really wants - the chance to face, in a court of law, those who murdered her mother and her brothers and those who brutally and repeatedly raped her. It is time for the Council to make justice its priority so that history can record what happened, so that we can stop it happening again and to truly honour those who, like Nadia, have already suffered too much.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  2. “But the United States, under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, pushed for trials because, the United States said, it was important to create a record of the Nazi system of terrorism. The American prosecutor who opened the trial said that he did so because "the wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated". This is the Council's Nuremberg moment, its chance to stand on the right side ofhistory. The Council owes it to Nadia and to the thousands of women and girls who must watch ISIL members shave off their beards and go back to their normal lives, while they, the Victims, never can.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  3. “Therefore, instead of abandoning international justice we must stand up for it, because justice is not inevitable - it does not just happen and it does not stand a chance if people in power, including those at this table, do not make it a priority. After the Second World War, the victorious nations, namely, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and the United States, asked themselves the same question about the Nazis that we are asking now about ISIL- when it comes to war, should we really care about justice? Mr. Anthony Eden, then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom, took the view that the guilt of the Nazis was so black that they fell outside any judicial process. Others thought that show trials or mass executions would be a better response.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  4. “I agree that we are facing an epidemic of sexual violence and I believe that justice is the antidote. It is therefore my respectful submission to the Council today that, although the draft resolution under consideration would represent a welcome step forward, especially insofar as it strengthens the sanctions regime for those who commit sexual violence, we must go further. If the Council cannot prevent sexual violence in war, then it must at least punish it. As the parents of Kayla Mueller and other American ISIL hostages have put it, when crimes like these are made public in an open court, victims like them can be heard and begin to heal and we can hope thatjustice will put an end to such crimes against humanity.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  5. “With Iraqi support, the EU and like-minded States could do the same for ISIS crimes, or the EU could expand the mandate of the European Public Prosecutor's Office to cover international crimes and set up a new EU court with jurisdiction over them. Fourthly, Iraq could enter into a treaty with the United Nations to set up a hybrid court, as was done for Sierra Leone and Cambodia, to prosecute those responsible for international crimes. None of those solutions comes without complication or cost and none of them would replace the need to have credible trials in national courts alongside any international ones. But the draft resolution the Council is considering today notes the prevalence of sexual violence in wars all over the world and the Council's profound concern about the slow progress in eliminating sexual violence in conflict.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  6. “As members of the Coalition have themselves acknowledged, a military defeat is not on its own an enduring one, because until we kill the idea behind ISIS, it will simply regroup under a new umbrella. Thirdly, if the Council does not act and the Global Coalition does not act, the European Union (EU) can. The EU recently helped to establish a special court in The Hague to deal with international crimes committed in Kosovo. That court has the support of all EU countries, as well as the United States, Canada, Norway, Turkey and Switzerland, and its cases are handled by international prosecutors and judges.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  7. “Survivors of sexual violence can only hope that the Council will find a way through that impasse, but there are other ways that justice can be served. The second option is that like-minded States that believe in justice could set up a court by a treaty. That could be done by States that are members of the Global Coalition against Da'esh, many of which are represented here today. After all, if 79 States can come together to fight ISIS on the battlefield, why can they not establish a court, either in The Hague or somewhere in the region? The Global Coalition has stated that its mission is to "ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS", but that is not possible without justice.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  8. “The United States Government has recently said, through its National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that the ICC is "dead to us" and that those who support certain ICC investigations can be denied entry to the United States, have their assets frozen and may even face arrest. A similarly devastating blow to the ICC was delivered by another permanent member of the Council. A senior Russian official told this Chamber last month that Russia would never refer another situation to the ICC, nor would it ever "help our colleagues in the Security Council to create any more such tribunals". He added, for good measure, that maybe the whole experiment with international justice should never even have been started at all.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  9. “Meanwhile, the Council has itself made clear that the genocide pursued by ISIS through murder and rape represents a threat to international peace and security, and when it reached a similar conclusion about such crimes in Rwanda and Bosnia, it established tribunals to put the perpetrators on trial. But if Al-Baghdadi is arrested today, where will he go? Here are four options for the Council to consider. First, the Council can refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as many Yazidi survivors have called for. Unfortunately, that seems increasingly unlikely.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  10. “They do not provide victims an opportunity to look their abusers in the eye and tell the world what ISIS has done. The charges do not include sexual Violence, and crimes like genocide are not even on the books. That has to change, and there is now a unique opportunity for international accountability, because thousands of ISIS militants are in custody, a United Nations team is collecting evidence and survivors are waiting to testify, but also because people in the region are calling for international trials. In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces has called for "a special international tribunal to prosecute foreign fighters", and in Iraq, the Kurdish regional Government has made a similar plea.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  11. “But the question of bringing them to justice has barely raised a whisper, and yet, if we do not act now, it will be too late. Thousands of perpetrators, including some of the most high-ranking, are held by coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria. Those Forces say that they "lack logistical support to hold them for a long time", and President Trump has warned that if Europe does not find a way to put foreign fighters on trial, the United States will be "forced to release them". Thousands more ISIS members are detained in Iraq, but there, trials that the United Nations says are lacking due process proceed on a single terrorism charge without witnesses and move swiftly to executions. None of those trials stand as a measure ofjustice for Yazidis.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  12. “The ISIS member who allowed it to happen now faces charges of murder as a war crime. Those are important milestones, and I would like to convey special thanks to the German prosecutors I have worked closely with over the past few years for their determination and professionalism in bringing those cases to trial. But let me be very clear. That does not come close to the level of justice the survivors wish for or the scale of the international response that they deserve. Let us remember that the crimes committed by ISIS against women and girls are unlike anything we have witnessed in modern times. ISIS controlled territory the size of the United Kingdom and ruled over 8 million people. More than 40,000 foreign fighters from 110 countries are estimated to have joined ISIS's ranks in Iraq and Syria.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  13. “In France, I represent Yazidi victims in a case against Lafarge, a company that made multi-million dollar payments to ISIS and is the first multinational to be charged with complicity in crimes against humanity committed by the group. In Germany, I represent a Yazidi victim in a case in which the German Supreme Court confirmed that the charges against an ISIS commander responsible for sexual slavery amount to genocide, which is the first judicial recognition of that fact anywhere in the world. Two weeks ago, I was in Munich, where the first trial against an ISIS member for international crimes committed against a Yazidi victim has now begun. In that case, I represent the mother of a 5-year-old Yazidi child who was enslaved, chained outdoors to a window and left to slowly die of thirst in the scorching heat.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  14. “That first step in any criminal inquiry was a cathartic moment for many Yazidi families, and we are encouraged to hear that the investigation in Iraq is now fully under way. We have also seen milestones in national courts around the world. In the United States, I represent Yazidi women and girls who were held in the house of an ISIS member named Umm Sayyaf, along with one of the few non-Yazidi victims of ISIS's sexual violence that we know of, an American hostage named Kayla Mueller, who was held in brutal conditions for over 18 months and raped repeatedly by the head of ISIS, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Umm Sayyaf showed no solidarity with her fellow females. She locked them in a room, instigated their beatings and put makeup on them to prepare them for rape. I am requesting her transfer to the United States to face justice for those crimes.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  15. “We asked that it send a team of investigators to Iraq to gather evidence of ISIS crimes so that, one day, trials would be possible and justice would be within reach. After many months of advocacy, with strong leadership from the United Kingdom and support from Iraq and the United States, Nadia and I sat together in this Chamber (see S/PV.8052) and watched 15 hands go up in favour of adopting resolution 2379 (2017). We welcomed the appointment of an eminent lawyer, Mr. Karim Khan, to lead the Investigative Team established pursuant to Security Council resolution 2379 (2017), and we celebrated the moment four weeks ago when the Team, working alongside the Iraqi authorities, began to exhume mass graves and identify the victims' remains.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  16. “Instead, that day and ever since, she has spoken of only one fear - that when this is all over, the ISIS men willjust shave offtheir beards and go back to their normal lives and that there will be no justice. I am legal counsel to Nadia and other Yazidi women and girls who were kidnapped, bought, sold, enslaved and raped by ISIS, and my brief is the pursuit ofjustice. But it was clear from an early stage that this was going to be a challenge. The world's Powers were focused on a military solution and nobody wished to speak about justice. So we fixed on one imperative - we could not allow the evidence to disappear. Ms. Murad and I therefore came here to the United Nations and we asked the Security Council for help.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source

  17. “Ms. Clooney: I would like to thank the German Government for inviting me to address the Security Council today on the topic of accountability for sexual violence in conflict. It is an honour to be included among such a distinguished panel of speakers. In preparing to deliver these remarks alongside Ms. Nadia Murad - my client, friend and somebody I greatly admire - I thought back to a conversation we had when we first met. Nadia told me of her suffering at the hands of 12 different men ofthe Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham (ISIS) who enslaved and brutalized her. She recounted the murder of her mother and brothers. She showed me threatening messages that she had received from ISIS on her phone. And as she did that, it occurred to me that she never expressed fear for her life or safety.”

    2019-04-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8514 (2019) · source