The UK Parliament declared Islamic State violence against ethnic and religious minorities in Syria and Iraq as genocide, and urged the government to approach the UN Security Council for this issue.
Eyewitnesses have recounted numerous cases of ISIS atrocities, such as children beheaded before their parents, Christians tortured, killed, and crucified, in northern Iraq and Syria where the militant group is holding large territories.
The government of UK had abstained from calling ISIS violence as genocide, and maintained that it was up to international courts to decide.
The motion was introduced by MP Fiona Bruce, and passed by 278-0 votes, despite government's efforts to oppose it. Bruce urged the parliament to call it genocide and then refer the case to International Criminal Court (ICC).
"That is why supporting this motion is so important," she said during the debate. "It is about doing justice and about seeing justice being done."
"Recognizing the actions of Daesh as genocide should therefore help inject further momentum into the international efforts to stop the killings," she reiterated.
Bruce told the parliament that a Yazidi teenage girl had testified before her that every girl over the age of eight was raped by ISIS.
"She spoke of witnessing her friends being raped and hearing their screams, of seeing a girl aged nine being raped by so many men that she died," said Bruce.
The European Parliament, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and US Secretary of State John Kerry, have all called the ISIS activities as genocide.
The United Nations says that Islamic State took captive about 7,000 Yazidi women and girls in 2014, and still holds 3,500 as slaves. The group has also committed violence against Christians and Shiite Muslims.
"The British people are horrified by what they hear and see regarding the treatment of these minority groups in Syria and in Iraq, and they rightly expect that this House will use whatever tools are available to us to work to bring this to an end and achieve peace in this troubled part of the world," said Conservative MP Derek Thomas.
"A tool available to us today is to recognize these evil acts as genocide and to use our position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council so that this situation can be investigated by the international criminal court."
A number of faith-based organizations have come in support of labeling ISIS atrocities as genocide, so that communities that are on the verge of extinction in Middle East can be protected.
"We are witnessing nothing short of genocide being committed with horrifying cruelty against Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, Whole communities face annihilation and look to the international community for support," Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury said in a statement.
