“The lack of effective government action to protect these communities from abuses has established Iraq among the most dangerous places on earth for religious minorities,” said Felice D. Gaer, chairperson of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, in a December 16 statement.
The commission said it was making the recommendation in part because of what it called the Iraqi government’s toleration of the abuse against “Iraq’s smallest, most vulnerable religious minorities.”
The report noted there have been recent moves of reconciliation between Iraqi Shia and Sunni Muslim communities, though attacks and tense relations between the two factions still exist. Perhaps more worrying, the report said, is the situation of Iraqi Christians, particularly Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, and members of two other minority groups, the Sabean Mandaeans and the Yazidis.
The commission urged the Iraq government to “establish, fund, train, and deploy police units for vulnerable minority communities that are as representative as possible of those communities”. It should also ensure that Iraqi government revenues are neither “directed to nor indirectly support any militia” and other organizations involved “in severe human rights abuses.”
In making the recommendations, the commission noted that the religious groups about which it is concerned do not receive official protection, nor do they have militia forces or tribal structures to guard against insecurity.
“Their members continue to experience targeted violence and to flee to other areas within Iraq or other countries, where the minorities represent a disproportionately high percentage among Iraqi refugees,” the report said.
Another dynamic, the report said, was that such groups are caught between forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central Iraqi government for control of northern Iraq, where most of their communities are located.
It is estimated that up to half of the 800,000 Christians who lived in Iraq at the beginning of the 2003 invasion by U.S. and allied forces have since fled the country, prompting concern about whether there will be much of a Christian community left in Iraq in the future.
The U.S. commission was created in 1998 to give independent policy recommendations to the U.S. government, and monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief outside the United States.
