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individually targeted or face insecurity primarily during community activities. At
the level of the group, violations include forced displacement and cultural cleansing
of towns, villages and other territory from “impure” and “dehumanized” religious
“others”.
50. Indeed, displacement of minority communities continued unabated in 2014 and
2015. In Iraq, visited by the Special Rapporteur in February 2016, the Yezidi
minority have been targeted on the basis of their identity by the Islamic State, and
forced to flee their homes, in particular in Sinjar, Northern Iraq. Other Iraqi
minority communities, including Christians, Turkmen, and certain Sunni Arab
tribes, have also been particularly exposed to attacks by members of the Islamic
State.
51. Violence against minorities during conflict also can lead to long-term
displacement of those minorities. For example, in 1990, the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam expelled the entire Muslim population, estimated to be at least 70,000,
from Northern Sri Lanka, many of whom to date have not been able to ret urn to
those lands.
52. Even outside fully fledged armed conflicts, discrimination against minority
groups in societies may reach such levels that it results in hate -based crimes and
leads to internal displacement. In Myanmar, violence and atrocities commi tted
against the Rohingya, coupled with the Government’s refusal to recognize their
status as an ethnic minority, and denial of their citizenship, has been and is still
pushing the Rohingya to flee to other parts of the country or abroad.
53. Minorities might be disproportionately affected by conflict over their lands or
natural resources. For example, in Nigeria, the Special Rapporteur observed that
competition for land between nomadic pastoralists and local farmers was a major
conflict-generating issue in both Kaduna and Plateau States, which have often been
portrayed as interreligious conflicts (see A/HRC/28/64/Add.2 para. 30).
54. Furthermore, minorities may experience disproportionate effe cts of conflicts
owing to aggravating factors: minorities who are marginalized or poor may live in
the most remote or impoverished regions or neighbourhoods, including in urban
slums where humanitarian protection or even police protection is limited, and t hus
they may experience a disproportionate impact of crises that break out, or owing to
their vulnerability and marginalization, be less well equipped in the face of
emerging conflicts.
G.
Specific human rights challenges facing minorities affected by
humanitarian crises
55. While minorities may be affected in different ways by humanitarian crises
owing to their minority status or indirectly, they may also often face specific human
rights challenges and discrimination during or after potential displace ment or
disruption because of humanitarian crises, owing to their specific position as a
member of a minority group in a society, even when the trigger of their
displacement or changed situation is not directly linked to their affiliation to that
minority group. Indeed, the Special Rapporteur notes that belonging to a minority,
coupled with other potential discriminatory factors, such as gender, can have a
dramatic impact on humanitarian protection afforded to the person.
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