ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Practical ways of protecting minority rights in Kurdistan were discussed at a roundtable hosted by the Erbil-based Middle East Research Institute (MERI) on Thursday.
“Our aim is to bring stability into Kurdistan. That would not be possible without a mechanism to protect individual and human rights. Our research is a step towards rebuilding the state,” said MERI president Prof. Dlawar Ala’Aldeen.
He emphasized that the protection of minority rights would be a win-win situation for all people living in Kurdistan, regardless of their ethnic and religious backgrounds.
MERI has proposed its own model for protecting minority rights in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Kurdistan region. Its research has shown that can be achieved through the creation of two parliamentary councils, one for religious minorities and another for ethnic groups.
MERI’s findings are presented in a report titled “Protecting Minorities’ Rights in the Kurdistan Region: A Tailor-made Model.”
“A council for ethnic minorities will represent Turkmen, Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Armenians,” the report recommends, adding that the second council for religious minorities would protect the rights of “Yezidis, Christians, Kaka’is, Zoroastrians, Mandaneans and Baha’is.”
The MERI roundtable was attended by some 40 participants, representing civil society, human rights and minority activists, as well as law experts, members of parliament and representatives of major ethnic and religious minority groups.
Ala’Aldeen said that the current participation of 11 lawmakers from minority groups in the Kurdistan parliament was inadequate and limited.
The major minority groups, including Yezidis, Christians and Turkmens have representatives in the Kurdish parliament. But based on reports, their participation has brought very limited improvements to their communities, since there is no authority to enforce policies related to minority issues.
“The rights of minorities have not been received seriously in the Kurdistan parliament,” said Aydin Maruf Selim, an MP of the Turkmen faction.
Shabaks, Kakais, and Jews are among minority groups that so far have no representatives in the Kurdistan parliament.
“Unfortunately, we as Shabaks have no representative in the Kurdistan parliament. We want our fellow minorities in parliament not to forget Shabaks when working for minority rights,” Hussein Ali Shabak, who represented that Shabak community at the MERI meeting, told Rudaw.
Krmanj Othman, lawyer and advisor to the Kurdistan Region’s Independent Human Rights Commission, said he believed that the councils suggested by MERI would be more effective if an article mentioning them was added to the Kurdish constitution.
Some attendees complained that a lack of political will, cooperation among minority groups and the community’s mentality on minority rights are the biggest challenges in the process of improving coexistence in Kurdistan.
MERI is an Erbil-based non-profit organization that established in 2014 and is focused on policy issues and the system of governance in Kurdistan and Iraq as well as in the rest of the Middle East.
.webp&w=3840&q=75)
