Washington D.C., Oct 23, 2018 / 11:00 am
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives Oct. 5 a security resolution intended to protect religious minorities in northern Iraq.
"Much is at stake. Iraq and the region risk losing entire minority communities and, with them, the centuries-old healthy pluralism that played the quiet but essential role of holding people of diverse faiths together," Fortenberry said in an Oct. 17 statement.
Assistance for Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, and other communities victimized by the Islamic State must be combined with a plan for local security to facilitate the safe return of these minorities to their homelands, the resolution says.
The Christian and Yazidi minorities of northern Iraq were decimated by the Islamic State in 2014. Iraq's Christian community once numbered 1.5 million, but today less than 200,000 Christians remain.