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Minority Rights Group says “new refugee flight only a matter of time”

Human rights organization annual index places Syria, Somalia, Iraq as countries where peoples are most under threat · Turkey becomes major riser since 2015

 
Threats on African and Asian peoples, vulnerability of IDPs, and the lack of an appropriate response to both situations "makes a new refugee flight only a matter of time." Minority Rights Group (MRG) executive director Mark Lattimer said this as the human rights organization released its 11th Peoples Under Threat annual index.

Lattimer recalled that "the situation in the two most significant refugee embarkation points for Europe, Libya and Turkey, is rapidly deteriorating." Furthermore, "just in South Sudan and Iraq, for example, there are 5 million internally displaced victims of ethnic or sectarian persecution, but the UN’s crisis response plans are barely one-quarter funded."

Syria, Somalia and Iraq are leading the Peoples Under Threat 2016 index. In those three countries, as well as in the next 10 in MRG's list, "mass killings" are now taking place. The full list includes Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Burma, the Central African Republic, Yemen, Libya and Nigeria.

Regarding Syria, MRG points out that most of the deaths are being caused by bombardments by Syrian and Russian aircraft, and warns that West Kurdistan's cantons, "the closest to a functioning democracy the country possesses, are threatened by powerful enemies: to the south by ISIS and to the north by Turkey."

Turkey is precisely the index's major riser, going up from number 52 one year ago to number 34 now. MRG's report claims that the Turkish government's "heavy repression" against pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) has "effectively denied much of Turkey’s Kurdish population a democratic voice." Most threatened communities, according to the report, are the Kurds, Alevis, Roma, Armenians and other Christian groups.

Other major risers are North Korea (because of the repression on political and social targets and religious minorities), Venezuela (threats against indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants) and Cameroon (against western and southern peoples) and Ukraine (because of the impact of the conflict in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea).