Fighting Genocide: Catherine van Kampen calls for accountability for crimes against Yazidis
Catherine van Kampen was watching CNN in August 2014 when the news broke that the Islamic State Group had launched a brutal and sweeping attack on the Yazidis in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. More than 400,000 Yazidis fled their homes, and tens of thousands became stranded on Mount Sinjar.
“I was sitting with my colleagues, and I turned to two of them, and I said, ‘Who are the Yazidis, and what is Mount Sinjar?’” says van Kampen, the managing director of staff attorneys and senior counsel at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann in New York City. “Now, it’s 11 years later, and I have done extensive work with the Yazidi community.”
The Yazidis are an ancient religious minority that were targeted by the Islamic State Group because of their faith. They are Kurdish-language speakers, and their name has also been transliterated as “Yezidi.”
During the 2014 attack, the Islamic State Group killed more than 5,000 Yazidi men and elders and kidnapped more than 6,000 women and children. The terrorist group trained the boys to become soldiers and tortured and trafficked the women and girls.
The United Nations—first through a commission in 2016 and then through a special investigations team in 2021—determined that the crimes committed against the Yazidis constituted genocide.
During this time, van Kampen began researching the cyber exploitation of the Yazidis. She discovered the Islamic State Group used social media to conduct human trafficking of Yazidi women and children, including through online slave auctions. The terrorist group also used social media to recruit fighters with the promise of slaves.
“So many women were posted on Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram and YouTube,” van Kampen says. “These are crimes against humanity. These are part of how genocide happens. It goes to the heart of destroying a community by destroying its future.”
Van Kampen became a pro bono legal adviser to the Yazidi Legal Network, which is based in Amsterdam and helps Yazidis seek justice for the crimes committed by the Islamic State Group.
She also became involved with NL Helpt Yezidis, a nonprofit organization that provides emergency aid and support to Yazidi refugees. She helped Wahhab Hassoo, the Yazidi human rights activist who co-founded the Amsterdam-based group, launch the Yezidi Genocide Justice Campaign. In 2022, they co-authored a report that calls for an international investigation into global social media and technology companies for their role in the Islamic State Group’s genocide against the Yazidis, and they have shared it with international groups and officials.
“I am very thankful for Catherine and the unimaginable efforts she put in to help my community,” Hassoo says. “Not many other people are trying to help us, despite the genocide that has been recognized internationally and despite the fact that almost 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still missing.”
Van Kampen invited Hassoo to join her at the ABA International Law Section’s annual conference in April. They spoke about their work during a panel on cyber exploitation and its disparate impact on women, children and minorities.
“As a non-Yazidi and as someone who is far from Iraq, far from our community, the way that Catherine fights together with us is something very inspiring,” Hassoo says.
From left: Hope Rikkelman, Catherine van Kampen, Dani Pinter, Star Kashman and Wahhab Hassoo at an ABA conference in April. (Photo courtesy of Catherine van Kampen)
Serving others
Advocating for social justice has been an integral part of van Kampen’s life and career. She was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and raised Catholic. She went to an all-girls Catholic school, where she had opportunities to volunteer in a soup kitchen, work with children with severe disabilities and fix homes in Appalachia.
She also had the opportunity to delve into international culture and causes. Through her school’s student exchange program, she took a gap year after graduation and studied Dutch in the Netherlands.
“Our educators believe very much in our connectedness to the world around us and that we have a responsibility to learn about our world,” van Kampen says.
Van Kampen graduated with her bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University in 1988. She handled public relations, advertising and marketing for international economic development clients at FCB Global in New York City while raising her children and going to law school at night.
While at Seton Hall Law, van Kampen worked in the Center for Social Justice’s immigrants’ rights clinic. Her clients included so-called mail-order brides and other women who were brought to the United States but then abused or abandoned by their husbands.
“The women who are in those situations, they really need a public servant,” van Kampen says. “And the service that legal aid and clinics provide, it could be their last stop.”
Van Kampen, who received her JD in 1998, left her public relations career to work on cross-border litigation involving a Dutch client at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. She handled similar assignments for other large firms with Dutch clients for several years before returning to Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann in 2008.
Helping women and children
As van Kampen built her legal career, she stayed committed to protecting the rights of immigrant women and children. Many of them, she says, suffer the most severe violence.
“I don’t want to see injustice toward anyone: men, women, boys, girls,” van Kampen says. “But the implications of a mother being an asylum-seeker and having children—she’s not just thinking about herself. She’s also concerned for her children.”
As part of her international pro bono work, van Kampen helped several nonprofit organizations incorporate in the United States. This includes the Bring Hope Humanitarian Foundation, which was founded in 2015 in Sweden and northern Iraq to deliver aid to refugees. It also includes Free a Girl, a nonprofit started in the Netherlands that protects minors from sexual exploitation.
In 2022, van Kampen co-founded her own nonprofit, Female Advocacy Foundation International. It supports women and girls in conflict and war zones through trauma care, humanitarian aid and legal education.
She also brings attention to international issues in her bar service. As a member of the New York City Bar Association’s United Nations Committee, she helped spearhead the International Law Conference on the Status of Women. The conference was held for five consecutive years in conjunction with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Van Kampen chairs the ABA International Law Section’s Women’s Interest Network, which focuses on the advancement of legal rights of women around the world.
“She’s an incredible, dynamic source of inspiration,” says Linda Strite Murnane, a longtime ABA leader who met van Kampen through the section. “All the work she has done for the Yazidi women and other victims of human trafficking and her tireless efforts to improve the practice of law through the New York City bar and the ABA are just amazing. I don’t know how she does it all.”
Justice for Yazidis
Van Kampen continues to call for accountability for the crimes committed against the Yazidi community. She assisted with last year’s Yazidi Genocide Survivors’ Conference at Amsterdam Law School. She also has presented twice to the ABA International Law Section.
“As lawyers, we are the front line,” says van Kampen, who lives in New Jersey with her husband, Evert. “If we don’t care about human rights, righting wrongs and finding justice in whatever form it manifests itself, then we are failing as a profession.”
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