I en række lande og organisationer har der været debat om brug af ordet folkedrab i forbindelse med overgrebet mod yazidi-befolkningsgruppen. Debatten i forskellige lande og organisationer viser hvilke argumenter og interesser, der er på spil. Her er to citater, der stiller skarpt på modsætningerne:
Lord Alton, engelsk parlamentariker. Interview i det engelske dagblad The Guardian, 19. april 2016:
“Parliament – as Congress and the European parliament have done – needs to force the government’s hand. Otherwise we might as well rip up the genocide convention as a worthless piece of paper. If what is happening to groups like the Yazidis and Assyrian Christians doesn’t meet the high technical standard of what constitutes a genocide, it’s hard to imagine what would.”
Greg Stanton, president of Genocide Watch og tidligere president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Hans synspunkt er gengivet i dagbladet Washington Post:
“Stanton believes the word is underused, and that there have been 55 genocides since the Holocaust – including the crimes perpetrated by ISIS. ….“Essentially people don’t care. The bystander phenomenon is why genocide continues. As long as we don’t call it the right name, nothing will be done about it. That’s what worries me.”