What Iraq needs to do to protect minorities

The alliance of Iraq’s minorities is a step to prevent Iraq from being totally stripped of its minorities.
People from the minority Yazidi sect take refuge in a building in Shikhan January 19, 2015. Islamic State has hounded ethnic and religious minorities in northern Iraq since seizing the city of Mosul in June, killing and displacing thousands of Christians, Shi'ite Shabaks and Turkmen who lived for centuries in one of the most diverse parts of the Middle East. Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls have been captured, raped and tortured, and forced to convert to Islam and marry Islamic State followers, according
People from the minority Yazidi sect take refuge in a building in Shikhan, Jan. 19, 2015. The conflict with the Islamic State has resulted in the killing and displacement of Iraqi minorities, including thousands of Christians, Shabaks and Turkmens. - REUTERS/Ari Jalal
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Ali Mamouri
@AliAlMamouri
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Iraq is losing many of its minorities, and it’s on the brink of losing most of its cultural diversity. Despite this tragic situation, minorities are denied adequate protection and support by the Iraqi government, while the international community is failing to take any serious measures to protect them. They have been abandoned to their own fate in a country expelling its population.

In the early 1900s, the Jewish community in Iraq was one of the largest minorities in the Middle East. According to a statistical study (to which the author contributed) conducted in 2011 by Masarat, an organization that focuses on minorities in Iraq, six Jews remain in Iraq.

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