Were written by: Ahmed AbdulKadhim Alaskari
Translated by: Bessadi Nourr
Within the programs aiming at
the protection of the various minorities in the Middle East and at expanding
the horizons of activists and defenders of human rights in most of the Arab
countries,
Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has held a training session
on the rights of minorities on 16-18 March 2015 in Tunisia.
The training started through
addressing the work of the organization "MRG" and its history, and addressed
the hate speech and its impact on communities and how it can affect life
seriously, and then put forward the regional human rights mechanisms.
After that, the training moved
toward the possibility of using media for advocacy on minority rights and the mechanisms
dealing with this issue.
In the second day, the first
part of the workshop was devoted to clarify provisions of international
humanitarian law: what is important, what can be submitted to the states and
how humanity can be protected in a time of war, etc. Then trainees were divided
to three different teams to discuss their views on various issues and how they
can be trained to recognize violations of human rights.
When we asked the trainee Ninson
Ibrahim from Syria about the situation of minorities, she stressed that The
situation for minorities is bad in many places over the world, they get
harassed, treated unfair or not being acknowledged as an ethnical or religious
group. But specifically in the ME the situation is unbearable. Genocides are
going on and torture in many different ways. She continued saying:
" I believe this kind of trainings are very valuable, mainly because it
creates a platform for different minority representatives to meet and have a
dialogue. And i think the content of the training was good. But I think more
interaction amongst the participants in form of discussions would generate
better understanding for each other ".
While the trainee Mina Gabriel
from Egypt said that the importance of the subject of minorities is linked to
the importance of minorities themselves. According to him, minorities, either
numerically or ethnically, are not just human beings different from the
majority in color, race, religion or doctrine, etc., but they are a source of
cultural and social diversity that enriches any society. He said that diversity
is a source of wealth, and the minorities in the Arab region were and still are
an important factor for the transfer of other civilizations and cultures of the
region, which is useful in getting to know others in a postmodern world that
moves under the framework of globalization.
He added also that minorities
are a factor of power for community cohesion and interdependence, and that
political science tells us that societies renounce to minorities only during
periods of the dissolution or crash of the states, and the best proof,
according to him, is that what happened in the massacres of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire in the final stages of its collapse. Then he followed by saying,
as for the importance of training held by MRG in Tunisia, that it lies in
finding a way to communicate between actors belonging to different minorities
in the region, and that the objective of the training is networking among
minorities. He thinks that the training has achieved its purpose since we are
in touch between us, and the activation of networking is our responsibility as
the scientific material obtained is very useful and important in the context of
our efforts to activate the citizenship rights and design a better life for
minorities.
The trainee Bassam Alalogi from
Iraq addressed the importance of the subject of minorities in the Arab world to
promote the rights of certain components of the community and to monitor
possible violations by governments or by the laws and regulations of
minorities.
He also stressed the importance
of this training to look closely at the problems faced by minorities in other
countries by listening to the trainees who are of different nationalities in
addition to the practical application of the laws that have been studied in the
session by the discussions taking place in the international law.
It is noteworthy that MRG offer
in the first stage an online training to young for a period of thirteen weeks
in order to develop their abilities and knowledge about international law and
their impact on the international situation and what are the opportunities to
contribute to the protection of minorities and the preservation of their
rights.
