HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Forum on Minority Issues Geneva, 14 – 15 December 2010 Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the floor. My name is Jian Badrakhan, I am from YASA, the Kurdish Centre for Legal Studies & Consultancy. Our organization advocates the rights of Kurdish people in Syria, whose population is estimated to be about 3 million. Over the last decades, the Syrian government and the Al Bath party, the leader party in Syria since 1963, has excluded the Kurds from effective participation in economic life in the country. Even though the Kurdish region abounds in mineral resources and an excellent agricultural area, Kurds are the poorest people in Syria and the Kurdish region faces a big lack of public service. YA§A e.V. Kurdish Centre for Legal Studies & Consultancy Kurdisches Zentrum für juristische Studien und Beratungen Navenda kurdî ji bo lêkolîn û rawêjkarîya yasayî ‫المركز الكردي للدراسات‬ ‫واالستشارات القانونية‬ Kurds in Syria are poorly represented in public and private sector YASA e.V. employment. They face the most difficulties in the public sector, as Postfach 7624 there are always political examinations preventing the consideration of 53076 Bonn Kurdish applicant. The Political security can recognize the Kurds from their names or addresses and exclude them from the employment. For www.yasa-online.org the public positions in the Kurdish region, the government and the political security department employs Arabs from other regions. On the private sector if Kurds want to do small business or apply for a credit, they need to go like the other citizen of Syria through a bureaucratic and corrupted system, and in additional they have to face ethical disrimination. The disaster for the Kurds in Syria is, that about 120 000 Kurds have lost their Syrian nationality in 1962 and their number has increased to 350 000 Kurds. Those persons have no permission to work and only have a chance to survive through daily work here and there. On 10.09.2008 the president of Syria, Mr Bashar Al Assad has paralysed the economic life in the Kurdish region in Syria through the decree 49, in which he prohibited- transfer, modification or acquisition of any right to a property in the border region or its use for rent or other commercial purpose for a period of more than three years in the name of or for the benefit of an individual or legal entity. As exception the decree gives a prior permission, which practically doesn’t exist. (The Kurdish region has been totally declared as border region).1 1 See the complete text in English under the following link: http://www.kurdwatch.org/pdf/kurdwatch_dekret49_en.pdf And the original in Arabic under the following link: http://www.kurdwatch.org/pdf/kurdwatch_dekret49_ar.pdf