- Middle East -

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has been advocating for persecuted ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East since 1969. Until 2011, our work focused mainly on the aspect of repatriating 200,000 stateless Kurds who were expelled in 1962. In 2009, we launched a campaign for the protection of Syrian Kurdish refugees in Germany. In 2011, we worked out a resolution together with the Syrian-Kurdish alliance in exile in Germany, demanding that a new constitution in Syria would have to include specific rights for the Kurds as well as for ethnic and religious minorities such as the Assyrians/Aramaeans/Chaldeans, Armenians, Druze, Ismailis, Baha’i. Against the background of the armed conflict in 2013/2014, we demanded that the borders should be opened for humanitarian aid deliveries to the Kurdish areas. Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East consultant, held countless lectures in Germany, focusing on the desperate situation of the ethnic and religious minorities and the growing stream of refugees. When Joachim Gauck, the German President, visited the border transit camp in Friedland, we addressed him with demands that Germany should accept more refugees from Syria.

Further information Syria

Header photo: Charles Roffey via Flickr