Kurdish Committee for Human Rights in Syria on Item IV 9th session of the Forum on Minority Issues - ohchr 24/25 November 2016 Unites Nations - Geneva Mr Chair, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you about the Kurdish people, which is the majority of indigenous people in its home Kurdistan. It has been turned into what is called today a “minority” because of international policies and partitioning including the [Sykes-Picot] agreement of 1916. My name is Suleiman Ismail, I and my colleagues in the Kurdish Committee for Human Rights in Syria speak on behalf of my colleagues. We, the Kurdish people, continue to live on our historic land. Our people are distributed among four states: Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Our suffering is equal in four countries. They have equally repressive and inhumane in these four countries against us. We are excluded equally in all four countries. The Human Rights Council if the top UN body, and we as a civil society organisation turned to you as we have always knocked on all doors of human rights organisations. Mr Chair, I will not talk about the policy of execution against Kurds in Iran; I will not talk about our towns and villages burned down, our political leaders are arrested in Turkey; I will not talk about the boycott that we are faced with or the fact that we are deprived of our rightful share of central government in Iraq, because time is short. I would just like to talk about the suffering of the Kurdish people in Western Kurdistan annexed by Syria. Successive governments in Syria since the independence have not respected international agreements. Whether they are binding or not: from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or all other instruments. Until this moment where the representative of the Syrian government sits in this [time]. I will not talk about the gross violations of human rights Syrians in general and Kurds in particular, which are thousand amount to crimes against humanity as documented in the reports of the commissions of enquiry set up by the human rights council since the 22 August of 2011. I would like to respectfully ask you as representatives of the Human Rights Council of the OHCHR, as the Forum on minority issues, and I ask the special Rapporteur on Minorities: has the Syrian government since the Ba’ath party took power ever responded seriously to your resolutions on the Syrian government practices against the Kurdish people? Has the Syrian government complied with any Human Rights Council resolution adopted on Syria since 2011? What is the solution as we find this regime continues its crimes against human rights? We would like to recommend to open a local UN office in Qameshli in Western Kurdistan Thank you.