USIP is working with Iraqi minority group leaders to address the challenges faced by ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq. A series of dialogues among civil society leaders and members of parliament has laid the groundwork for future collaboration among these groups, and USIP continues to support minority group representatives in creating sustainable mechanisms to promote their rights.
Iraq’s minority communities--which include Yezidis, Chaldeans and Assyrians, Sabian-Mandaeans, Shebak, Turkomen, and others--face numerous challenges. They have become targets of violence, which increased dramatically post-2003 and continues to cause massive displacement, fueling fears that emigration could ultimately lead to the assimilation and even outright disappearance of some minority groups. Discrimination in education and employment continue to be major challenges, as does the lack of minority self-rule on issues such as school curricula and language of instruction.
Our work
In a series of dialogues, USIP and its partner, the Institute for International Law and Human Rights (IILHR), have worked with representatives of Iraqi minority groups to identify the goals of their communities and explore solutions to the challenges they face. The participants in these dialogues, which included representatives of the Yezidi, Chaldean, Sabian-Mandaean, and Shebak communities, identified the following as their main goals:
- Promoting nondiscrimination and equal rights
- Increasing political participation of minority groups
- Greater self-governance in areas such as education
USIP is now supporting these leaders in creating mechanisms to achieve these goals. Participants in the dialogue are working to form a new alliance of minority civil society organizations to coordinate the work of their organizations based on common goals. USIP is also working closely with minority members of parliament as they seek to create Iraq's first minority parliamentary caucus.
