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Fewer seats allocated to Iraq’s religious minorities than hoped

 
Iraqi lawmakers allocate only six provincial council seats out of a total of 440 nationwide to the country’s four religious minorities: Christians, Yezidis, Sabians and Shabaks · The small concession was needed to allow provincial elections to go ahead early next year · The UN had recommended a minimum of twelve seats be reserved for minorities.

Iraqi lawmakers have approved new electoral legislation which makes the smallest of concessions to the country's religious minorities. The final version of the text guarantees the Christian community three seats on provincial councils out of a total of 440, despite the fact that Christians make up 3% of the Iraqi population. Other minority religious communities, the largest of which are the Yezidis, the Sabians and the Shabaks, will have to divide the three remaining seats between themselves.

The new law was motivated in part by protests staged by these groups in September, when the Iraqi Parliament approved a law abolishing the quota system that granted minimum representation to minorities. The Christian community was particularly vocal, especially in the city of Mosul, which led to violent attacks by Muslim groups on Christian communities in the days following the protest. Now that the parliament has partially reinstated the quotas, the Christian community has once again voiced its criticism. Christian MP Yunadim Kanna said that the new law "is a degrading decision for the unique minorities of this country. It does not serve public interest and we consider it a major insult for all minorities in Iraq."

After the controversial law was approved in September, the UN urged the Iraqi Parliament to reconsider its decision and allocate a minimum of twelve seats to minorities. Now that the law has been passed, with 106 out of 150 lawmakers, it is up to the Presidential Council to give it the green light.

The issue of quotas is a complicated one because census information is insufficiently accurate. Thousands of Christians have left the country since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government, for example.

According to Minority Rights Group, the Kurds constitute Iraq's principal national minority, but there are also a number of other religious and ethnic communities, including Christians, Turkmen, Chaldeans, Yezidis, Sabians, Assyrians and Shabaks.

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