The team now has 107 members, compared with only five when it was first deployed in Iraq, Khan told the Security Council in a briefing on Tuesday. "One year after our deployment to Iraq, I am pleased to inform the Council the team is now fully operational."
The team has also managed to maintain a good gender balance with 53 percent of its substantive and support staff being women, and more than 50 percent of its senior leadership being women. At the same time, geographical diversity has been met as all regional groups of the United Nations are being represented by the team, according to Khan.
The establishment of this core infrastructure has provided a basis for significant progress in the collection and gathering and analysis of digital, testimonial and forensic evidence, he said.
The team has also expanded the scope of investigations to make sure that all the diverse communities in Iraq, regardless of race, religion, tribe or ethnic origin, will be covered by investigations, he added.
The investigative team has identified a number of individual Islamic State (IS) members as primary targets for further investigations. In relation to the Yezidi community alone, it has identified over 160 perpetrators of massacres against the Yezidis, according to Khan.
"We are focusing our work to build solid cases, hopefully in relation to each of those that may be presented to domestic courts -- Iraq (courts), of course, as the primary intended recipients, but any courts that are willing and able to hold Da'esh members accountable," he said, using the Arabic-language acronym of the IS.