Arameans interact again with UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues
On Wednesday, 18 March 2015, the World Council of Arameans (Syriacs) (“WCA”) participated again in the Interactive Dialogue with the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Ms. Rita Izsák, during the 28th Session of the Human Rights Council at the UN Office in Geneva. After the UN Member States gave their statement, the WCA was again allowed to speak as number 1 on the list of NGOs. Mr. Jacob Harman, the WCA Delegate from Sweden, presented our statement that reads:
Click here to download the PDF version. The video of this statement will be posted soon.
Thank you, Mr. President!
We thank and commend the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues for her balanced report and for her tireless efforts to ensure the recognition, protection and equality of minorities.
Distinguished members of the Human Rights Council, we appeal to you with growing concern as the original population of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
Throughout the past centuries, the Aramean (otherwise known as Syriac) people have been decimated, oppressed and marginalized in their homeland, where they were reduced from a substantial majority to a small minority.
Then, in the past century and again during this past decade, they have suffered from ethnic cleansing and genocides in their increasingly islamized native countries from which they have been uprooted.
Today, the last Aramean Christian populations of Turkey, Syria and Iraq are a threatened minority, where they are fighting for survival in the lands that have been built up for more than 3,000 years by the blood, sweat and tears of their own forefathers.
The Arameans are not appreciated, recognized, protected or supported in their native countries. In fact, they are still pressured or expected to give up their distinct identity.
Therefore we must concede that international law has not been able to protect minorities with a distinct ethnic, religious and linguistic background, despite all the existing international charters, conventions, covenants, treaties and mechanisms that otherwise guarantee the “equal rights and self-determination of peoples,” as the Charter of the United Nations stipulates.
To conclude, our NGO recommends three points to be considered and implemented as the inevitable solution for the critical survival of the Aramean people in the Middle East:
1. All UN Member States should recognize the existence and legal status of the Aramean people. First and foremost, we ask recognition from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. This begins with inclusion in their constitutions and by sponsoring the Arameans to protect their ethno-religious identity. We are pleased to acknowledge that in September 2014 the State of Israel was the first UN Member State to grant official recognition and support to its Aramean minority.
2. By virtue of the legal right of self-determination, UN Member States are called upon to support the Arameans in freely pursueing their economic, social and cultural development.
3. UN Member States should seriously consider the establishment of a home for the persecuted Christians of the Middle East, that is a Christian State, where they can protect themselves and preserve their ethnic, religious and linguistic identity in the land of their forefathers.
Thank you, Mr. President!
