ERBIL, Kurdistan Region- Yezidis should, alongside other ethnic and religious minorities, be granted positions in the Kurdistan Regional Government currently being formed by Prime Minister-elect Masrour Barzani, the highest Yezidi religious authority, said on Sunday.
“Currently, efforts to form the Kurdistan Regional Government’s ninth cabinet by PM-elect Mr. Masrour Barzani are underway. The Yezidis are watching these developments closely,” the Yezidi Supreme Spiritual Council said in a statement on Sunday.
The Council said Yezidi attention to cabinet formation has been raised due to recent visits by Barzani to Turkmen and Christians, two minority groups in the Region, promising them ministries and other positions in the new KRG.
Barzani promised during the visits that “everyone’s rights [in the next cabinet] will be protected.” Whether this promise extends to Yezidis is unclear, as prior to the Council's Sunday statement, Barzani had yet to speak explicitly of their potential participation.
Yezidis, who come predominantly from Shingal and the Sheikhan district of Duhok, are a Kurdish-speaking ethnoreligious minority. Despite this, they are not recognized as a group distinct from the majority Kurdish population by Regional authorities.
The Yezidi Council asks for who they call “Yezidi Kurds” to be given positions of all rankings in the new cabinet as undersecretaries of ministries, director generals, advisers, administrators and diplomats of the Region.
Underrepresented groups of all stripes have been demanding more significant stakes in the Regional government. Women MPs, for example, are seeking a 30 percent share.
Yazidis bore the brunt of the Islamic State (ISIS)’s acts of genocide when they swept across swathes of northern Iraq, including Shingal from 2014 onwards. Thousands of Yezidi women were held as captives of sexual slavery, while nearly 3,000 Yezidis kidnapped by ISIS are still missing, according to the Yezidi Affairs Office in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowment.
Many are displaced from their land of origin, living in IDP camps in Duhok province, lacking basic provisions or in tents atop Mount Shingal, too fearful to return to where they do not believe their safety is guaranteed.
Prominent Yezidi political figures raised their plight and needs in a meeting with new US Ambassador to Iraq Matthew Tueller last Sunday to discuss missing persons, survivors’ rights, transitional justice, the reconstruction of Yezidi areas and possible reparations.
Yezidis have long expressed concern about a lack of institutional political representation. According to the 2019 annual report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom published June 21, a 2018 ruling by the Federal Supreme Court decreed that Yezidi representation in Iraqi parliament should be increased from one seat to five, to ensure that representation would be proportional to the population. Parliament failed to implement the ruling ahead of the 2018 elections.
The report, however, is less critical of Yezidi representation in the KRG, where “their voices…had more weight, particularly in local governance and KRG decision making.”
Tasked on June 12 by new President of the Kurdistan Region Nechirvan Barzani to form the next Kurdistan Regional Government within 30 days, time for the PM-elect to form his cabinet is running out fast.
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