Members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, representing the world’s largest organization of experts on genocide, have called upon the U.S. Congress to declare that the crimes committed by the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, constitute genocide in violation of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Genocide is the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. The Islamic State is committing genocide against religious groups that do not conform to the Islamic State’s totalitarian definition of “true Islam.” The Islamic State’s mass murders of Chaldean, Assyrian, Melkite Greek, and Coptic Christians, Yazidis, Shia Muslims, Sunni Kurds and other religious groups meet even the strictest definition of genocide.