On April 20, 2016, the British Parliament unanimously voted to declare that the treatment of Yazidis, Christians, and other ethnic and religious minorities by ISIL (also known as ISIS, and referred to as Daesh in the motion) in northern Iraq and Syria amounted to genocide. Parliament also moved to refer the issue to the United Nations Security Council “with a view to conferring jurisdiction upon the International Criminal Court so that perpetrators can be brought to justice.” According to a news article, the United Kingdom Foreign Office instructed its ministers and parliamentarians to abstain from the vote, stating that the issue is one for the court and not the government. Tobias Ellwood, the Foreign Office minister indicated that “this ultimately is a matter for courts to decide. It is not for governments to be the prosecutor, the judge or indeed jury.” The Foreign Office’s legal department has a long standing policy dating back to the passage of the Genocide Convention in 1948 of refusing to give a legal description to potential war crimes. Previously, the United States, the European Parliament, and the Council of Europe have all declared ISIL’s treatment of the groups to be genocide.