Human Rights Council, Forum on Minority Issues Ninth session - 24 and 25 November 2016 _ Geneva Intervention by Ms. Sheyma Silawi from Ahwaz Human Rights Organization (AHRO) to the United Nations Human Rights Council Forum on Minority Issues, Agenda item 3. Respecting minority rights as a means of preventing or mitigating the impact of humanitarian crises Thank you Mr./Madam chair for this opportunity: My name is Sheyma Silawi from Ahwaz Human rights Organization. I am speaking on behalf of Ahwazi-Arab ethnic minority and I would like to submit some manifestations of systematic violations of my people's rights by the Islamic Republic and myself and my family’s story and I will offer my recommendations at the end to prevent or mitigate this crisis.  The towns and cities populated by the Ahwazi Arabs in Khuzestan continue to bear the scars of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s where many Ahwazis including my friends and relatives have been killed.  The Ahwazis have continued to be viewed with suspicion and hostility, by Tehran. And are being subjected to a sustained program of land confiscation and ‘ethnic restructuring’ forced assimilation and ‘Persianazation’.  The Islamic Republic has consistently ignored the demands of the Ahwazi-Arab minority to implement Articles 15 and 19 of the 1979 Constitution which guarantee the use regional languages and equal rights of ethnic groups – Iranian regime does not acknowledge and/or recognize the existence of Ahwazi-Arabs as a people, nationality or a community.  The Iranian authorities are encouraging the forced migration of Arabs out of Khuzestan and their replacement with “loyal” ethnic groups, particularly ethnic Persians, erecting separation walls to segregate indigenous Arabs from non-indigenous and privileged migrants. Most Arab villages have no schools. While the illiteracy rate in Iran is about 10%-18%, it is over 50% among Arab men in Khuzestan and even higher for Ahwazi women. Indigenous Ahwazi students drop out of schools at a rate of 30% at elementary level, 50% at secondary and 70% at high school because they are forced to study the “official language”, Farsi, a language which is not their’s.   Residents of war-torn Arab cities of Khafajieh, Falahieh (Shadegan) and Susangard suffer from unusually high rates of skin, heart and kidney disease due to continued storage and use of chemical and biological materials and other related pollutants remaining from the war.