Friday, July 13, 2018

 

Mr. Ashur Eskrya, President of the Assyrian Aid Society-Iraq, participated in the 11th session of the Experts Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, from July 9th – 13th 2018, with the participation of representatives of indigenous peoples, representatives of international organization, Representatives of Member States of the United Nations, the Human Rights Council and the Permanent Forum of Indigenous Peoples.

 

The session included discussing the topics related to the indigenous peoples, where AAS-Iraq participated in several statement delivered by Mr. Ashur Eskrya and included the mechanisms required to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the good practice and lessons learned for our people as one of the Indigenous peoples, as well as the future work of the Expert Mechanism, including focus of future thematic studies on the situation of our People and submitting proposals to the Human Rights Council for its consideration and approval, as well as the importance of protecting and re-preserving the Assyrian monuments targeted by the terrorist organization of ISIS, for its importance to the human civilization and indigenous peoples as a cultural heritage of the Christian Assyrians.

 

The Society also participated in the side event organized by UNESCO, where Mr. Ashur addressed the reality of the process of Syriac Education and the importance of education in the mother tongue of the indigenous peoples.

 

On the sidelines of the 11th Session of the Experts Mechanism, Mr. Ashur met with the Western Armenia Foundation, represented by Mr. Armenian, President of Western Armenia. He also met with Mr. Wissam Al-Saliby, representative of the World Evangelical Alliance to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

 

At the conclusion of the session, Mr. Eskrya delivered a version of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People translated into Syriac language to the documents section associated with the Permanent Forum of Indigenous Peoples to be added to the United Nations Archive. It is noteworthy that Deacon Andrius Youkhanna gratefully translated the Declaration from Arabic.