New York City, N.Y., Apr 30, 2016 / 15:39 pm
Advocates delivered hundreds of thousands of signatures to the United Nations on Friday, calling on the body to declare that genocide is occurring against Christians and other religious minorities.
"We're here at the United Nations headquarters to file more than 400,000 signatures from citizens from all over the world asking the Security Council of the United Nations to declare what's happening right now with ISIS in Syria and Iraq a genocide," Ignacio Arsuaga, president of the advocacy group CitizenGO, stated at a Friday press conference outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
The petition asked the U.N. to "take a step forward to protect Christians and other religious minorities that live there," so that "religious freedom may prevail in that region of the world." It was delivered to the office of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday.
Religious leaders like Nigerian Bishop Joseph Danlami Bagobiri and Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo, Syria joined representatives of CitizenGO outside the U.N. The event was part of a three day-long conference on international religious freedom, #WeAreN2016, or "we are all Nazarenes."