On this anniversary of Yazidi Atrocities: Not one on the 400 UK members of ISIS who murdered and enslaved Yazidis and other minorities in Syria and Northern Iraq - and who have returned to the UK - has been brought to justice for their genocidal crimes. In @UKParliament Ministers have repeatedly been asked about the failure to bring genocidaires to justice, about evidence collected and now gathering dust in a storage facility. I went to Sinjar and heard and saw firsthand from Yazidi survivors whose suffering is compounded by the scandalous impunity of the perpetrators. New @FCDOGovUK Minister @StewartWood - Lord Wood of Anfield - has provided the following answer to my written parliamentary question (HL2620). Question:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the value of funding they provided for the establishment and running of the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIL (UNITAD) until it was closed in 2024; and what conversations they have had with their counterparts on how to continue using the evidence gathered by UNITAD to ensure justice for the Yazidis and other ethno-religious minorities targeted by Daesh. (HL2620) Tabled on: 23 July 2026 Answer:
Lord Wood of Anfield: The UK played a leading role in the establishment of the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD) and remains committed to securing justice for survivors of Daesh crimes following UNITAD's closure. The UK paid its share of the UNITAD operating expenses on the UN budget. The UK continues to work with the Governments of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, alongside international partners, to help ensure that Daesh members are held accountable for the crimes they have committed. The UK also continues to support survivor-centred implementation of the Yazidi Survivors' Law (2021). Date and time of answer: 31 Jul 2026 at 15:02. — The UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) @HumanRightsCtte published its landmark report titled "Accountability for Daesh Crimes" on 13 May 2025. committees.parliament.uk/com… The cross-party parliamentary committee called for a complete "reset" of the UK's legal approach, warning that British Daesh fighters must not escape justice. The report concluded that the UK has fallen short of meeting its international obligations to punish genocide and support affected British nationals. The core takeaways include: Zero Prosecutions for Core International Crimes -while nearly half of the 850 people of national security concern who left the UK for the Syrian conflict have returned, not a single British Daesh member has been successfully prosecuted in UK courts for international crimes (such as genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity). Terrorism Laws: Returnees have historically only been prosecuted under standard domestic counter-terrorism laws, which fails to legally account for atrocities like the genocide against the Yazidi population. Core Recommendations To close these accountability gaps, the JCHR recommended several critical legal and policy reforms: Expand Universal Jurisdiction; Empower Specialized Units and provide additional resources to the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command and the Crown Prosecution Service to actively investigate war crimes; Address Citizenship Deprivation; Repatriate Detained Children by taking active steps to safeguard and repatriate British children currently in Syria, treating them primarily as victims of trafficking and recognise that leaving to fester in deplorable conditions will merely create another generation of terrorists and genocidaires. @UKHouseofLords @CommonsSpeaker @LordSpeaker @CommonsSpeaker @andyburnham @HelenaKennedyKC @DXW_KC @arminkahelic @alexsobel @Ed_Miliband @SDoughtyMP @HFalconerMP @elliereeves @timfarron @SarahLudford @BrendanOHaraMP