'I think the international community should stand up for its obligations': Human Rights leader demands help to end Yazidi sex slavery

'It is very painful to me when I sit with someone while I still have 3,200 women and girls in captivity that are being raped every day.'

Executive director of the YAZDA advocacy group, Murad Ismael, spoke at a religious freedom conference in Georgetown University last week to call attention to Yazidi sex slaves at the hands of ISIS.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - YAZDA, a humanitarian group aiming for the protection, support and strengthening the Yazidi people, continues to work at freeing the Yazidi minority from the dangers of genocide in the Middle East.

Ismael explained the men are often slaughtered while the women are kidnapped and turned into sex slaves or are slaughtered.

Several thousand of the kidnapped girls and women, Ismael explained, are "being raped every day."

He explained: "For anyone to bring reconciliation I would tell them bring the justice...first before you ask for reconciliation.

"It is very painful to me when I sit with someone while I still have 3,200 women and girls in captivity that are being raped every day. It's very painful to me that you ask me to reconcile."

During the religious liberty conference, other representatives of religious minorities, other human rights activists and factions from both Syria and Iraq contemplated the ways in which religious minorities could be protected from ISIS.

Officials from the Obama administration, including David Saperstein, who claimed the United States is "making progress" in the defeat of ISIS, were present during Ismael's plea to help the Yazidi people.

Several surviving sex slaves have shared their stories with the world, many of whom begged other countries to help their people.

Ismael claimed his community requires justice after facing "genocide" and a "holocaust." He called for non-extremist Muslims to take a stand and fight against the injustices done by ISIS' hand.

"I mean one thing I would have expected all the Muslims in the world to come out and say that the enslavement of the Yazidi women was not right - something that I never heard - that I can challenge whoever wants to bring a question, that the Muslim clerics internationally never came out against the genocide, never came out, never said that the rape of the Yazidi women was not in line with the Sharia for example."

He added ISIS, in his opinion, does not represent Islam or any other religion at all. He claimed a solution to the genocide needs to be discovered - but justice must come first.

"So for the international community to ask me for a solution is not fair," he stated, adding terrorists should be sent to an international criminal court and can never be allowed to participate, in any way, in any government after the fall of the Islamic State.

"I think the international community should stand up for its obligations," Ismael announced. "There must be clear recognition of the genocide with every parliament - with the public.

"The public should know that the Yazidis were subject to genocide."

ISIS destroys entire Yazidi villages and kidnaps girls and women. The men are slaughtered with the elderly and boys young enough for conversion are abducted and brainwashed.

The Yazidi situation in the Middle East is grim but groups like YAZDA refuse to give up hope. Though few sex slaves make it out of ISIS' clutches, the women often fight back or speak out. Perhaps with more awareness, their people can be saved.

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