Recommendations

To the Kurdistan Regional Government

• Modify the Kurdish constitution to accord legal recognition to Shabaks and Yazidis as distinct ethnic groups.
• Cease repression of political and civil society organizations that oppose Kurdish policies in the disputed territories. Allow such organizations to open offices and to operate freely.
• Ensure that minorities can fully participate in public affairs without fear of retribution for their political views. Cease arbitrarily detaining minority activists.
• Initiate independent and impartial investigations of individuals, including Kurdish security forces, alleged to be responsible for carrying out killings, beatings and torture against minorities. Make the results public and discipline or prosecute, as appropriate, officials who authorized or used excessive force.
• Cease funding private militias to carry out public security responsibilities in minority villages.
• Consult with minority representatives to put in place policies for protection of their communities, and allow municipalities to hire police officers from among their communities, in accordance with existing procedures set out by Iraq’s Ministry of Interior.
• Allow independent Iraqi human rights organizations to work unfettered in the Nineveh Plains.
• Invite the UN independent expert on minority issues to provide an impartial assessment of the situation of Nineveh’s minority communities. 

 To the Government of Iraq

• Protect minorities at all levels of government, including regional and local administrations.
• Create an independent inquiry to determine responsibility for the killings of 40 Chaldo-Assyrian Christians in 2008 and the subsequent displacement of 12,000 Chaldo-Assyrians. The inquiry should not only identify the killers, but also examine the failures of the security services in preventing the attacks.
• Initiate independent and impartial investigations of all killings, beatings, and torture against minorities.

To the United States

• Urge the government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government to investigate allegations of human rights abuses of minorities by Kurdish and Arab officials.
• Emphasize to the Iraqi government the need for a thorough and independent inquiry into the killings of 40 Christians in Mosul in late 2008.