ERBIL, Kurdistan Region —The Kurdish Peshmerga Ministry said on Sunday that it is taking serious any human rights violations by its forces on the frontlines, adding that the soldiers go through special workshops to respect the international humanitarian law.
“Any violation of human rights on the battlefront will be checked by the ministry and we are training our Peshmerga about the international law,” Peshmerga Ministry Chief of Staff Jabar Yawar told reporters at a press conference.
Speaking on the sidelines of a special panel organized by the Erbil-based Middle East Research Institute (MERI) and Geneva Call, Yawar admitted that there might have been “some individual cases by persons who didn’t know the law or lost family members to ISIS,”
Yawar said that frontline Peshmerga commanders and security forces attended the MERI panel/workshop and that his ministry “takes serious reports by the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on the conduct of the Peshmerga.”
He rejected meanwhile some recent reports by Amnesty and HRW which claimed that the Peshmerga had burned Arab homes and forced people from their villages.
“We have given strict instructions to our Peshmerga that they cannot violate human rights in any way and must practice international human rights law,” he said.
“We have booklets about those laws, translated to Kurdish and distributed to the Peshmerga,” he added.
Elisabeth Dicrey Warner, president of Geneva Call said that her organization which has been active in the Kurdistan Region since 2001 works to “prevent atrocities and violation of humanitarian law,”
“We work on trying to improve the protection of civilians during armed conflict. During conflict there are fighters but fighters don’t have the right to do everything,” she said.
Warner said that Geneva Call, which ran the workshop in partnership with MERI, works to “negotiate agreements on the release of child soldiers and prevention of sexual violence.”
“This report is the best way to prove that your armed forces are not like this and don’t have this kind of behavior, this would be the best way to prove that you respect civilians and humanitarian law,” she told reporters.
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