Iraq, Africa 'most dangerous'

2006-01-20 10:17

New York - Violence and repression directed against the world's minorities have struck hardest in Africa and war-affected areas of the Middle East, according to a report presented at the United Nations.

Minority Rights Group International, a British advocacy organisation, found that violence was targeted at religious, ethnic and other minority groups in three-quarters of the world's conflicts in 2005.

Mark Lattimer, the group's executive director, said: "In every world region, minorities and indigenous peoples have been excluded, repressed and, in many cases, killed by their governments.

"In war today, the targeting of minorities is no longer the exception, but has become the norm."

Major armed conflicts

The group used data collected by the World Bank, conflict prevention institutes and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in preparing its first "State of the World's Minorities" report.

Iraq topped the report's list of areas, where minorities were under threat, scoring the highest total of a combination of factors, which included "major armed conflicts" and "rise of factionalised elites".

Africa was the most concentrated area for minority peoples under threat listed in the report, with nine of the top 15 most dangerous countries from the continent.

Sudan was named as the second most dangerous country for minorities, Somalia third, Afghanistan fourth and Myanmar fifth. Lattimer said the threat against minorities had also greatly increased in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Ivory Coast.

Ethnic, religious groups

While Lattimer acknowledged that Iraq's parliamentary elections were a huge step toward democracy, he said: "the likely result is a political pattern in Iraq, which shows an increased division between different ethnic or religious groups".

He cited a series of mistakes since the United States-led war in 2003, which "helped encourage a division by ethnicity or by religion" starting with the decision to split up membership of the Iraqi governing council by religion.

"He said it has continued with one-sided criticism of insurgent killings of majority Shi'ites, but a failure to criticise human rights violations against minority Sunni civilians "by the governing forces in Iraq".

The report noted that 2005 was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of World War II-era Nazi death camps, where millions of Jews and other minorities perished, and the 10-year anniversary of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Sebrenica.

He said: "Since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, our ability not to predict mass killing or genocide, but to understand the main causal factors that make it much, much, more likely has hugely advanced."

Gay McDougall, a UN independent expert on minority issues, said the 215-page report would give a clearer picture of the problems faced by minorities.

- AP