The recent conviction of a French national for genocide against the Yazidi people is being hailed as a landmark victory for international law. It isn't. It is a procedural band-aid on a gaping wound of geopolitical failure.
While the press rushes to congratulate a French courtroom for finally acknowledging the horrors of the Islamic State, they are ignoring the uncomfortable reality: convicting one mid-level radical in a comfortable European court is not "justice." It is a PR exercise designed to make the West feel better about its own paralysis during the actual slaughter.
If we want to talk about the Yazidis, let’s stop pretending that a life sentence in a French prison for one man balances the scales for a systematic attempt to erase an entire culture. The "lazy consensus" here is that the law has triumphed. In reality, the law is just performing an autopsy on a body it failed to protect.
The Jurisdictional Illusion
The legal community loves the word "universal jurisdiction." It sounds grand. It implies that no matter where you hide, the long arm of the law will find you. In practice, it is a tool of selective morality.
The conviction of "Sabrine S." or any other returnee is handled as a criminal anomaly rather than a failure of global security. We treat these cases like standard domestic murders with extra paperwork. By the time a case reaches a court in Paris or Frankfurt, the evidence is often years old, the witnesses are traumatized and displaced, and the actual infrastructure that allowed the genocide to happen remains largely unaddressed.
International law operates on a lag. By the time the "genocide" label is officially applied in a sentencing document, the political utility of that label has evaporated. We are prosecuting the ghosts of a caliphate while the survivors still live in tents.
The Myth of Symbolic Restitution
The media frames these trials as "giving a voice to the victims." Ask a Yazidi survivor in a camp in Duhok if a verdict in Paris puts food on their table or finds their missing sisters.
The focus on individual criminal responsibility—while legally necessary—often obscures the collective responsibility of the states that allowed the Islamic State to rise. We obsess over the "French IS member" because it fits a neat narrative of domestic radicalization. It’s easier to prosecute a single person for genocide than to admit that the global community watched the Sinjar massacre in real-time and did the bare minimum.
Why the "Genocide" Label is Losing Its Teeth
Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, the definition requires "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
- Intent is easy to prove with IS: They wrote it down in their own pamphlets.
- The Act is documented: Mass graves don't lie.
- The Result: Total displacement.
So why does it take a decade to get a conviction? Because the legal bar for "genocide" has become a tool for political posturing rather than immediate intervention. We use the word as a historical marker, not a call to action. If a court calls it genocide ten years after the fact, it costs the state nothing. If they called it genocide in August 2014, they would have been legally obligated to act.
The courts are being used to provide a "moral cleanup" for political inaction.
The Cost of Professionalized Sympathy
I have seen the way these international legal bodies operate. They are filled with well-meaning bureaucrats who believe that a 200-page judgment is a shield against future atrocities. It isn’t.
The Yazidi people don't need "recognition" from a French judge; they need a sovereign security guarantee, the rebuilding of their homes, and the return of the thousands of women still missing. A conviction in Europe provides none of that. It provides a headline. It provides a sense of closure for the French public, who can now say, "We dealt with our radicals."
The reality is that these trials are incredibly expensive. Millions are spent on legal teams, experts, and specialized investigators. Imagine a scenario where those millions were instead funneled into the direct defense and economic autonomy of the Yazidi community in Iraq. Instead, we spend the money on the theater of the courtroom.
The Failure of the "Returnee" Narrative
The competitor articles focus heavily on the "French" aspect of the perpetrator. This is a distraction. By focusing on the nationality of the IS member, we domesticate a global tragedy. We turn a genocide into a story about French social policy and the failure of integration.
This isn't about French radicalization. This is about a nihilistic death cult that operated with impunity because it was geostrategically inconvenient to stop them early.
When we focus on the individual's "path to radicalization," we humanize the perpetrator in a way that shifts the focus away from the victims. We start asking "How did this happen to her?" instead of "Why is the victim still suffering?"
Stop Asking if the Verdict is "Fair"
People always ask: "Is a life sentence enough?"
It’s the wrong question. No sentence is "enough" for genocide. The search for a "fair" sentence in a vacuum is a fool’s errand. The real question is: Does this conviction prevent the next Sinjar?
The answer is a resounding no.
The current legal framework treats genocide like a series of individual crimes. It isn't. It's a systemic failure. Until we move away from the "landmark conviction" model and toward a model of immediate, enforceable intervention and massive reparations funded by the states that failed to intervene, we are just playing dress-up in robes.
The Brutal Truth of International Law
- Law follows power: We only prosecute the losers of history who don't have a powerful state sponsor.
- Symbolism is cheap: Calling it "genocide" in a courtroom costs nothing. Rebuilding a destroyed civilization costs everything.
- Victims are props: In the courtroom, the survivor is an evidentiary tool. Once the verdict is read, the cameras leave, and the survivor goes back to a camp.
We are witnessing the "NGO-ization" of justice. We have turned the pursuit of accountability into a career path for European lawyers while the actual site of the crime remains a geopolitical playground for regional powers.
The Hard Choice
If we actually cared about the Yazidis, we would stop celebrating these crumbs of "justice."
We would demand that the wealth of the individuals and organizations that funded the Islamic State be seized and handed directly to the survivors—not kept in government coffers or spent on "de-radicalization" programs that don't work.
We would admit that the French court is not the hero of this story. The heroes are the survivors who have to live with the consequences of our collective failure every single day, regardless of what a judge in Paris decides.
Stop cheering for the "conviction." Start asking why the perpetrators were allowed to pack their bags and head to the Middle East in the first place. Start asking why the "genocide" is only recognized once the threat to the West has been neutralized.
Justice isn't a verdict. Justice is the presence of the things that were taken away. Everything else is just paperwork.
Go look at a map of Sinjar today. Then tell me how much that French verdict actually matters.
