The coalition is advocating on behalf of all the minorities in the region who were victims of ISIS, not just Christians, insisted Robert Nicholson of the Philos Project, one of the sponsors of the document.
"We're very much focused on the broader community of genocide victims," he told CNA. "This isn't only about protecting Christians."
"Since the genocide has been recognized, we are still waiting, but no big steps have been taken and not a lot has been changed," Yazidi genocide survivor Nadia Murad stated at the U.S. Capitol at a Thursday event marking the one-year anniversary of the declaration.
"The mass graves that they found, they are still not being protected. There has not been an effort to investigate the mass graves and recognize the victims," she said.
ISIS still holds much of the Sinjar region where the Yazidis lived, Murad said, as well as thousands of Yazidi captives including around 1,000 children who are being "trained and brainwashed" in Syria to become suicide bombers.
What can be done about all this? The Genocide Coalition is asking the Trump administration to take three steps.
First, the U.S. should work to help secure the region and resettle many of these minorities displaced from their homes, providing them the assistance they need to make a living.
The Defense and State Departments should work "to secure, stabilize, and revitalize the ancestral homelands of indigenous religious minority communities targeted by ISIS for genocide in northern Iraq – particularly in the Sinjar, Nineveh Plain, and Tal Afar areas."
Additionally, the U.S. must make sure that humanitarian aid from the U.S. and UN reaches those who need it most, the coalition said.
The Christians in Erbil have not received much aid from the U.S. and UN and are reliant on groups like the Knights of Columbus for food, water, shelter, blankets, and medical needs.
Andrew Walther, vice president of strategic planning at the Knights of Columbus, noted on Thursday that on his trips to Iraq in the last year, staff of the U.S. government and the UN admitted that they had not dispersed money to displaced Christians living in Erbil. One family told Walther they had received only two kilos of lamb from the UN.
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This aid must also "include funding for trusted faith-based" groups that are "close to the people" like Caritas International and Catholic Relief Services, Steve Colecchi, director of the Office of International Justice and Peace at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said on Thursday.
Private investment should also be encouraged once the communities are rebuilt and local businesses re-open, he added.
Stephen Hollingshead of The Haven Project of the group In Defense of Christians said that Western businesses should trade, provide mentorship, and do business with Iraqi entrepreneurs to help them "earn their daily bread," which is what many of the displaced want.
The U.S. must also "bring to justice both the perpetrators of this genocide and their accessories," the coalition insists. This would include the "collaborators, affiliates, financiers, and facilitators" of ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Robert Nicholson of the Philos Project, one of the signers of the document, explained that the U.S. could push for an international tribunal to be set up to try ISIS perpetrators for their crimes.
"When impunity prevails, violence will proliferate," Naomi Kikoler of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said. She noted that atrocities in Iraq have continued for years because perpetrators have not been held accountable.