KRG to join Iraq in UN racial discrimination review

Shafaq News/ The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will participate in a United Nations review of Iraq's record on racial discrimination, the KRG said on Saturday.

The review, scheduled for Aug. 14-15 in Geneva, will examine Iraq's implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Dindar Zebari, the KRG's Coordinator for International Advocacy, said the region would join the Iraqi government delegation to highlight its efforts in combating racial discrimination.

"The Kurdistan Region will present its laws, regulations, and practical steps to implement international human rights recommendations," Zebari said in a statement.

The KRG's participation, he said, aims to demonstrate its commitment to international human rights standards and to inform the UN committee of its progress in implementing the Kurdistan Regional Government Human Rights Plan (2021-2022). 

After decades of armed conflict, Iraq has enjoyed its most stable period since before the US-led invasion of 2003. However, the country remained fragile and deeply divided as grievances over widespread corruption, unemployment, and poor public services, which drove mass protests in 2019 remained unresolved. Impunity for violent repression of protesters and arrests of journalists covering demonstrations continued in 2023, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2024.

Six years after Iraqi and US-led coalition forces retook the last territory controlled by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), the security situation has largely stabilized. But around 1.16 million Iraqis, including 60 percent of the population of the town of Sinjar, remain internally displaced, mostly across the Kurdistan Region. In April 2023, the Ministry of Migration and Displacement hastily closed the Jeddah 5 camp, the last official camp for internally displaced people in federal Iraq, with little advance notice, and despite concerns about camp residents’ safety if forced to return to their areas of origin.

Since January 2021, Iraqi authorities have repatriated about 10,000 Iraqis unlawfully detained as ISIS suspects and family members in northeast Syria: nearly 7,000 from al-Hol camp, mostly women and children, and about 3,000 men, held in prisons, whom Iraq said it was prosecuting. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and US officials have lauded the returns, though some nongovernmental organizations and UN staff have questioned whether the repatriations meet UN principles for safe and voluntary returns.

In June 2023, the Iraqi parliament introduced a draft child protection law, a vital step in safeguarding children’s rights. Over the last 20 years, rates of child marriage have steadily increased. Poverty, insecurity, and lower educational outcomes for girls have all been associated with the higher rates.

The UN ranked Iraq as the fifth most vulnerable country to global warming and climate change, and its environmental crisis has worsened steadily in scope and severity. Weak environmental protection legislation and dirty industrial practices, such as gas flaring, have contributed to rising cancer rates. A growing environmental movement seeks to address the degradation caused by conflict and resource mismanagement, prepare Iraq for the realities of climate change, and promote its transition away from a fossil-fuels based economy. Like activists across the civil society space, their efforts have been met with harassment, intimidation, and threats.