Amal Clooney’s case against ISIL shows how impossible it is to prosecute for war crimes against women

Newsbeat

Earlier this year, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney announced an audacious plan—putting Islamic State leaders on trial for their crimes against women and girls. Clooney is representing the Yazidi women, a religious minority from northern Iraq, whom ISIL deems “infidels” and “spoils of war.” Her clients include women like Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Nobel Peace Prize nominee who was sold as a sex slave to an ISIL commander in 2014 and regularly gang-raped until she lost consciousness. “How can it be that the most serious crimes known to humanity are being carried out before our eyes, but are not being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague?” Clooney asked at the Women in the World summit last month. Addressing the United Nations, she emphasized that “Nadia and others like her are not seeking revenge, they are seeking justice—the opportunity to face their abusers.” While Murad is one of a fortunate few Yazidis who managed to escape their captors—she was eventually smuggled to Stuttgart, Germany—her experience at the mercy of ISIL isn’t unique. The jihadist group’s horrific treatment of women has been widely reported, and nearly 2,000 women have been held captive since ISIL invaded the Yazidi district in 2014. ISIL reportedly trades these women at “slave bazaars,” where their monetary worth is determined by age and attractiveness. According to the Iraqi News, girls aged 1-9 are the most expensive, selling for roughly $170 each. Clooney’s suit is a crucial attempt to make the international community confront these crimes, and to end impunity for sexual violence. Bombing ISIL into oblivion isn’t enough, she has said, because “you can’t kill an idea that way.” By bringing the atrocities against women into plain view, and setting a precedent that perpetrators will be pursued, Clooney is pushing to establish rape as an actionable offense even in times of war, not acceptable collateral damage. “Their lives were destroyed, and their lives will remain destroyed if we don’t say anything,” Murad said. “Despite everything [ISIL] did, they couldn’t take the knowledge I had that I was right, and they were wrong… All of the women and girls who are in their hands have justice on their side. And because I have rights, I will go after my rights.” Clooney is currently trying to gather evidence and testimonies from survivors, but actually bringing ISIL leaders to court may prove almost impossible. First, there’s the difficulty of apprehending them—no easy undertaking, especially while a war is raging. Then there’s the challenge of proving sexual violence. As William Schabas, a professor of international law at Middlesex University, explains, this can be exceptionally difficult in the midst of conflict. It requires gaining access to the place the crimes were perpetrated, identifying witnesses, and convincing them to testify at a trial that probably wouldn’t take place for years. Even in less messy circumstances, actually proving rape in court is a long and expensive process.