ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Belgian parliament unanimously voted on Thursday to recognize the suffering of the Yazidis at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 as a genocide. The move also included providing assistance to the ethnoreligious group.
The parliament said in a tweet that all 139 members of the legislature who attended the meeting voted for the recognition.
Netherlands recognized the genocide last week. This followed the approval of a resolution by Belgium on June 30.
More than 6,000 Yazidis were kidnapped when ISIS attacked their heartland of Shingal in Nineveh province, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yazidis. Over 2,000 Yazidis remain missing.
Els Van Hoof, a member of the Belgian Parliament for the Christian Democratic and Flemish (CD&V) party told Rudaw on Wednesday that “we are encouraging our foreign ministry to try and recognize this as a genocide legally on the European scale.”
“If the Yazidi genocide is recognized legally, then the perpetrators will be punished, right now neither the International Court of Justice nor any other court has recognized it,” she added.
It is not clear what kind of aid Belgium will provide to the Yazidis.
