United Nations / Human Rights Council: The KMMK-G’s oral statement to the fourteen session of the Forum on Minority Issues on “Conflict Prevention and the Protection of the Human Rights of Minorities”. Root causes of contemporary conflicts involving minorities Thank you, Madam President, As the recent United Nations and World Bank ground-breaking study shows, the main factors of conflict and violence are often related to the state’s exclusion and injustice’s policies toward minorities. In the Islamic Republic of Iran where a conflict between the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards and the Kurdistan national democratic forces are taking place for over four decades, it shows the intimate link of the conflict to the Iranian state’s hostile, denial, discriminatory and repressive policies towards Kurdish and other minorities in the country. The human rights violations of Kurdish people and other minorities is also intimately linked to Iran’s constitution articles 1, 4, 12, 15 consider only the Twelver Imam Shiasm (Shia-ye-Esna Ashari) as the official religion and Persian as the official language of the country, stating that : “All civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political and other laws and regulations must be based on Islamic principles of Sharia the Shia faith. Thus, in practice, a Kurd, or a Baluchi, an Arab or a Baha’is, is excluded from any significant state position, access to education in mother tongue, and fair share of power. In practice, each year, hundreds of Kurdish citizens are arrested, killed and executed because their civil activism and for their ethnic affiliation. Since January 2021, over 500 Kurdish citizens were arrested, and another 275 civilians were injured or killed by Iranian security forces. Actually, over 55% of Iran’s political prisoners and political executions are Kurds and this atrocity is justified by the state hateful and violent discourses. Madame the president. While the Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibit incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, Iran’s domestic laws promote violence and hate speech and the perpetrators are often promoted. We call on this Forum and on the Special Rapporteur on minority issues to elaborate a report on the situations of hate speech, violence and impunity against minorities in Iran. Thank you very much for your attention Taimoor Aliassi, Kurdistan Human Rights Association -Geneva (KMMK-G) Association of Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran-Geneva (KMMK-G)-www.kmmk-ge.org-info@kmmk-ge.org