Fiona Bruce – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fiona Bruce on 2016-05-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to help create consensus at the UN Security Council for a referral to the International Criminal Court of the acts committed by Daesh in Iraq and Syria as genocide.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

It is not possible to refer Daesh itself to the ICC. Any referral would cover all potential crimes within a specified geographic area, rather than by a specified organisation or set of actors.

We judge that a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the UN Security Council is not practical at this time. When efforts were made to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC in 2014, it was vetoed by Russia and China.

While we continue to draw the attention of the Security Council to the atrocities being committed in Iraq and Syria – on 4 May the Council held a session on the situation in Aleppo at the UK’s request – we expect that any Security Council resolution at this time seeking to refer the situations in Iraq or Syria to the ICC would likewise be blocked. Addition as per PQs 36262 and 35349.