APPENDIX 5
Memorandum submitted by Minority Rights
Group International
INTRODUCTION
This submission from Minority Rights Group International
considers in particular the issue identified by the International
Development Committee as "the risk of large scale ethnic
fighting leading to humanitarian disaster".
Information in the submission is largely drawn
from the MRG report "Building Democracy in Iraq", published
on 12 February 2003. This report examines the conditions under
which Iraq could effect a transition to democracy. In so doing,
it considers not just the formal absence of dictatorship, but
also the need to establish those features which are essential
to a genuinely democratic society, including fair representation,
cooperation between communities, the rule of law, personal security
and respect for human rights. The report is based on detailed
interviews with, and analysis from, internationally-renowned experts
in conflict prevention, transitional administration, human rights
and international and comparative constitutional law, including
Yash Ghai (Professor of Public Law at the University of Hong Kong
and until recently Chair of the Kenyan Constitutional Review Commission),
Max van der Stoel (UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq 1991-99, and
former Dutch Foreign Minister and OSCE High Commissioner for National
Minorities 1992-2001), Asma Jahangir (UN Special Rapporteur on
Extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary executions, co-founder of
the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Millennium Peace Prize
laureate) and Donald Horowitz (Professor of Law and Politics at
Duke University School of Law, USA, and global authority on inter-ethnic
issues).
This submission considers the potential risk
posed by inter-ethnic and inter-confessional conflict and the
action necessary to try and avoid it. On the one hand, Iraq has
a recent history of systematic discrimination and violent repression
targeted at particular ethnic and religious groups; on the other,
it has traditionally been a relatively well-integrated society.
However, major political change and international intervention
pursued in Iraq, if not properly informed, may together risk exacerbating
the potential for division.
It should be noted that Minority Rights Group
International takes no position on the legitimacy of the use of
force against Iraq. However, it considers it important that given
the likelihood of major political change in Iraq in the near future,
steps are taken to protect minority rights and safeguard democratic
development.
ETHNIC AND
RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY
IN IRAQ
A brief guide to Iraq's different peoples follows:
PRINCIPAL ETHNIC
AND RELIGIOUS
GROUPS IN
IRAQ
Note: The 1997 census recorded a population
of just over 22 million, although the current population is more
credibly estimated at around 26 million. Due to the lack of credible
census information, the political sensitivity of population estimates
and the tendency of particular communities to exaggerate their
numbers, the figures quoted below are necessarily approximate.
Sunni Arabs
A dominant minority, the Sunni Arabs have constituted
most of Iraq's ruling class from the time of the Hashemite monarchy
onwards. Making up approximately 17% of the population, the Sunni,
particularly those from the north-west, dominate the government,
the Ba'ath Party and the armed forces. They form the majority
in many areas of central and western Iraq.
Shi'a Arabs
The Shi'a form an overall majority in Iraq,
constituting about 55% of the population, but have historically
been marginalized in terms of political and military influence
and have long suffered from discrimination. The Shi'a are most
concentrated in the south and south-east, but also now are a majority
in Baghdad. The Shi'a include the Mada'in, the so-called "Marsh
Arabs", who before the government campaign of repression
following the 1991 Gulf War inhabited the extensive marshlands
at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
Kurds
The Kurds form some 15-22% of Iraq's population,
concentrated overwhelmingly in the Kurdish autonomous region in
the north and north-east of the country, bordering Turkey and
Iran. They constitute a linguistic as well as ethnic minority,
speaking Kurdish rather than Arabic, but are nearly all Sunni
Muslims. The small remaining population of Feili Kurds are, however,
Shi'a, and live in Baghdad and the south-east. The Yezidis speak
Kurdish but observe their own religion.
Turkomans
Making up about 3-4% of Iraq's population, most
of the Turkoman live in the north. They are split between Sunni
and Shi'a Muslim, with only the former generally looking to Turkey
for support.
Assyrians and other Christian minorities
Christian confessions constitute another 3-4%
of Iraqis. Many Assyrians, members of the Nestorian Church, still
live in the north, where they suffered in the Iraqi government's
Anfal campaign. There is also an Assyrian community in Baghdad.
The Chaldeans and smaller groups of Syrian Orthodox, Armenians
and Catholics live mainly in Baghdad.
Jews
Once numbering over 150,000, the Jews of Iraq
have nearly all left or been forced out. Following a major exodus
in the 1960s and 1970s, small communities numbering no more than
a few hundred now remain in Baghdad and the north.
It should be noted, however, that to assert
that present-day Iraq is ruled by Sunni Arabs is a somewhat misleading
statement, both because it implies a level of confessional exclusivity
in an administration in which many Shi'a and some non-Muslims
hold prominent positions, and also because it suggests that Sunnis
as a whole enjoy political dominance when in practice the power
is held by very few. In reality, Iraq's leadership has traditionally
been dominated by a small number of Sunni tribes from North-Western
Iraq, and Saddam Hussein's use of kin networks and patronage to
entrench his personal power has made this factor even more marked.
CIVIL CONFLICT
AND MINORITY
RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
The ethnic and religious diversity of Iraq,
envisaged as a series of divisions or fault lines, has led many
commentators to predict a future of civil conflict for Iraq. The
leading report in the Wall Street Journal on 11 December
2002 began, for example: "If a US-led force succeeds in ousting
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the victors would inherit a traumatized
society full of festering conflicts that didn't start with him
and wouldn't suddenly fade with his departure . . . How can the
nation avoid being dismembered by its neighbours or breaking up
in spasms of violence like the former Yugoslavia?" 1
It is notable, however, that ethnically or religiously
homogenous states are rare, and those that are homogenous are
not markedly more stable than those that are not. In Iraq, while
there is a long history of conflict particularly over relations
between the Kurdish region and the central government, there is
also a longstanding practice of cross-community integration, with
members of the Shi'a and of Christian minorities working in state
institutions, including taking prominent positions in authority.
In many important respects, ethnic and confessional distinctions
do not coincide (most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, for example, sharing
a confessional identity with the Sunni Arabs predominant in Iraq's
government).
This also has an important international dimension.
For example, although southern Iraq is the historical centre of
Shi'a Islam, and many groups of Shi'a believed to be of "Persian"
origin were expelled to Shi'a Iran by the Iraqi government from
the 1970s onwards, the Iraqi Shi'a are mainly Arabs, and see themselves
as distinct from the Farsi-speaking Iranians. There was no significant
rebellion of Iraqi Shi'a during the Iran-Iraq War and only a minority
of Shi'a appear to support the Iranian revolutionary concept of
the velayat i-faqih ("guardianship of the jurist")
or clerical rule.
All these factors work against ethnic or confessional
identities operating as overriding factors in Iraqi politics.
Similarly, the renewed importance of tribal networks, while making
future constitutional arrangements in Iraq yet more complex, also
works against ethnic or religious groups being seen as monolithic
blocks.
A post-totalitarian Iraq will nonetheless have
to deal with the legacy of extreme repression and grave violations
of the rights of minorities. The fact that such violations were
in many cases targeted at specific ethnic or religious groups
(including the genocidal al-Anfal campaign against the
Kurds in 1988) will have increased the chance of future division
in the country.
Human rights violations have continued on an
appalling scale to this day. In the north, outside the Kurdish
autonomous area, the Iraqi government has pursued a policy of
"Arabization", forcibly expelling ethnic Kurds or Turkomans
from key areas particularly in and around the oil centre of Kirkuk,
or coercing people into registering themselves as Arab. Periodic
reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human
rights in Iraq, first appointed in 1991, now comprise over a thousand
pages of reporting revealing a pattern of systematic gross violations.
2 In April 2001 the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,
the UN body that monitors compliance under the International Convention
for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, expressed
further concern over allegations that "the non-Arab population
living in the Kirkuk and Khanaquin areas, especially the Kurds,
Turkmen and Assyrians, have been subjected by local Iraqi authorities
to measures such as forced relocation, denial of equal access
to employment and educational opportunities and limitations in
the exercise of their rights linked to the ownership of real estate".3
IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES
OF MILITARY
ACTION IN
IRAQ FOR
INTER-ETHNIC
AND INTER-CONFESSIONAL
RELATIONS
Perhaps the most immediate danger following
the initiation of an international armed conflict in Iraq would
be action taken by Iraqi security forces against communities perceived
by the regime as constituting a threat. This is exactly what happened
during the 1991 Gulf War, when massive campaigns of repression
particularly in the north and south of the country led to mass
refugee movements and the passing of UN Security Council Resolution
688.
A legacy of both that conflict and ongoing repression
in Iraq is the large number of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
In 2002 the US Committee for Refugees placed Iraq among the 10
countries with the highest number of internally displaced people,
estimated at between 700,000 and 900,000. A mass movement of IDPs
following the initiation of international armed conflict would
have grave consequences for the personal and food security of
large sections of the Iraqi population, which is highly dependent
on state assistance under the "oil-for-food" programme.
Beyond specific campaigns of repression by the
Iraqi government, there are, as noted above, both positive and
negative indicators for more widespread ethnic or religious conflict
in Iraq. During the largely spontaneous Shi'a uprising in 1991,
there were terrible revenge killings of those who were seen as
representatives or agents of the government, but the reports indicate
that the attacks were perpetrated regardless of confessional or
ethnic affiliation. That is to say they appeared political, rather
than sectarian, in character. Political parties representing both
Kurds and Turkomans have resolved to reverse the forced displacement
that in recent years has been committed in the region of Kirkuk
(a town to which both groups historically lay claim), but the
record of relative ethnic and religious tolerance in the Kurdish
autonomous region suggests that this could be achieved without
violations of the rights of Arabs and bodes well for future ethnic
relations. Recent history suggests that perhaps the greatest danger
comes from in-fighting between Kurdish parties, although the two
main parties committed themselves to power-sharing in the Washington
agreement in September 1998.
International experts interviewed for the MRG
report did not wish to exaggerate the risk of a widespread sectarian
conflict in Iraq, although they all agreed the likelihood of revenge
killings taking place and some noted that the risk of a wider
civil war would increase if international actors had their proxies
in the theatre, a reference in part to the support of armed groups
by neighbouring states.
The interviewees all generally agreed that if
there were an international peace-keeping or administrative presence
in Iraq during a transition phase, it would be preferable if it
was a neutral UN force. It is important to note that this is a
separate question from the identity of, or mandate for, international
belligerents in any war with Iraq, although the two are obviously
connected, as Mr van der Stoel pointed out: "The USA will
be less inclined to share influence if only very few countries,
perhaps only Britain, really contribute to the second war against
Iraq". This caution has also been voiced by Chris Patten,
the EU Commissioner for External Relations, who has drawn attention
to the fact that UN involvement will make it much easier to get
reconstruction aid from the EU, the world's largest development
donor. He said on 13 January: "I would find it much more
difficult to get the approval of member states and the European
Parliament if the military intervention that had occasioned the
need for development aid did not have a UN mandate." 4
When Mr van der Stoel was UN Special Rapporteur
on Iraq, he called for the deployment of human rights monitors
in the country. The role of human rights monitors is essentially
to observe and report on human rights violations—they are
not peace-keeping forces—but the presence of monitors can
itself function as a deterrent to the commission of violations
and build confidence, as was demonstrated in El Salvador. A prominent
group of Arab academics, lawyers and journalists from a number
of Middle-Eastern states also called in January 2003 for "the
stationing across Iraq of human rights monitors from the United
Nations and the Arab League, to oversee the peaceful transition
of power in the country".5
LONGER-TERM
IMPERATIVES FOR
BUILDING INCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY IN
IRAQ
There has already been considerable debate about
the basic elements of the constitutional order in a post-totalitarian
Iraq, including the desirability of a federal or unitary structure
for the state, possible elements of a federation, the extent of
regional or ethnic autonomy, and priorities for institutional
reform. The US State Department has sponsored conferences of Iraqi
opposition groups in exile, although agreement on detailed proposals
has proved elusive.
However, many of the current proposals being
debated in the US and UK governments appear to ignore issues which
are central to the construction of long-term inter-ethnic and
inter-confessional harmony, including: the danger of dividing
the country into ethnic or religious "cantons"; the
protection of regional minorities in the constituent parts of
any new Iraqi federation; the likely tendency for political parties
to be constituted along communal lines in the early phase of a
transition; and the all-important issue of the appropriate representation
of all Iraq's communities in central government and administration.
The recent international experience of constitution-building in
post-conflict societies, from Lebanon to Bosnia and Herzegovina,
has shown how in many situations the crude formulae for power-sharing
adopted can have the effect of exacerbating and entrenching ethnic
or confessional differences.
In order to avoid these dangers and create conditions
for a peaceful transition after any conflict, Minority Rights
Group International has drawn up seven ground rules for building
democracy in Iraq (see below). A vital role for the international
community in a transitional phase would be to provide technical
support in constitutional design aimed at promoting cooperation
between communities while allowing strongly-felt identities to
be expressed and protected.
GROUND RULES
FOR BUILDING
INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY
IN IRAQ
Minority Rights Group International recommends:
1. The people of Iraq must be central to
the determination of the form and process for constructing democracy
in Iraq, including decisions over the structure of any transitional
administration, the choice of representatives, the design of a
constitutional process, and the form and content of a new constitution.
The self-determination of the Iraqi people is the overriding criterion
for creating democracy in Iraq.
2. A constitution-making process should
be designed, based on a wide-ranging consultation with the people
of Iraq, in which all Iraq's ethnic and religious communities
are represented. The process should consider constitutional options
which facilitate cooperation between communities, including:
— electoral laws which encourage political
parties to appeal across sectarian lines, for example requiring
them to nominate a proportion of candidates from minority communities;
— an electoral system which requires
parties or candidates for federal office to secure a minimum distribution
of votes in addition to number of votes;
— the devolution of power to enable
regional self-governance where it is desired by the local population,
with regional autonomy based on territorial rather than ethnic
or confessional lines; and
— the establishment of a federal structure
for Iraq, taking into account particularly the long-held aspirations
of the Kurds for self-government, while ensuring the protection
of the rights of regional minorities within each of the constituent
parts of the federation.
In addition to drafting a constitution, the
constitutional process should have as explicit aims the development
of education in democracy and the promotion of public knowledge
about the constitution to facilitate its implementation and protection.
3. A new constitution should conform to
international standards on human rights, including minority rights.
It should establish equality for all before the law, incorporate
specific protection for the identity of ethnic, religious and
linguistic minorities, and establish mechanisms for the protection
of the constitution, including an independent judiciary with powers
of constitutional review, a national human rights institution,
civilian control of the police and armed forces, and dispersal
of power.
4. Authorities in Iraq should undertake
special measures to counteract long-standing discrimination against
the Shi'a and against the Kurds and other members of ethnic and
religious minorities, and promote their participation in government
and other public institutions. A major programme should be implemented
to facilitate the return of internally-displaced persons or refugees
to their homes, or to resettle them, as determined by the expressed
wishes of the persons themselves.
5. In the interim period following a conflict,
any transitional administration should be sufficiently mandated
and equipped to ensure personal security (including food security),
human rights and the rule of law. Human rights monitors should
be deployed across Iraq to monitor compliance with international
human rights and humanitarian law standards and build confidence.
Any external forces should have a clear UN mandate and be international
in composition to ensure credibility and neutrality in the eyes
of the Iraqi people.
6. All authorities in Iraq should comply
with the international standards to which Iraq is a party, including
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,
the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. UN and international forces that may be present
in Iraq should also comply with the full range of international
human rights and humanitarian law standards and institute mechanisms
for monitoring compliance and dealing with violations.
7. Individuals responsible for the commission
of war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity in Iraq,
irrespective of their nationality, should be brought to justice
according to international standards for fair trial. The Iraqi
people should determine a system of transitional justice to ensure
reparation for past crimes and end impunity, including the consideration
of mechanisms such as truth commissions, statutory reparation
programmes, administrative measures and criminal prosecutions.
The constitution of a criminal tribunal with international involvement
should also be considered as part of a transitional justice programme,
in consultation with the UN.
Minority Rights Group International
10 February 2003
NOTES
1. "Ethnic, Religious, Political Rifts
Test U.S. Hopes for a Stable Iraq", Street Journal,
11 December 2002.
2. For a useful summary, see the statement
of UN Special Rapporteur Max van der Stoel to the 55th session
of the UN Commission on Human Rights, 31 March 1999. The Special
Rapporteur's latest report was dated 20 August 2002, UN General
Assembly A/57/325. Andreas Mavrommatis took over as Special Rapporteur
from Max van der Stoel in late 1999.
3. Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination, Concluding observations: Iraq, 12 April 2001,
CERD/C/304/Add.80.
4. "Patten warns US over aid for Iraq",
Guardian, 14 January 2003.
5. Reuters, 2 January 2003; Associated Press,
January 2003. The "Arab intellectuals" initiative was
principally aimed at avoiding an international armed conflict
by calling for the resignation of Saddam Hussein.
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