ACSYA Inc. Statement on Indigenous Peoples' Day 2021

Today, 9 August, is International Day of the World's Indigenous People. This day aims to increase awareness about the protection and promotion of the rights of all indigenous peoples.

According to UNESCO, there are approximately 370-500 million indigenous peoples in the world's cultural and biological landscape. Although they make up less than 5 per-cent of the world's population, indigenous peoples speak the major share of the world's almost 7,000 languages and adhere to an incredible 5,000 distinct cultures. Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of millennia-old cultures that are unique. They have also retained social and cultural characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.

As we mark Indigenous Peoples' Day 2021, we highlight the fact that many indigenous peoples continue to be confronted with a number of disproportionate challenges posing a threat to their very existence. As an indigenous people who inhabit a contiguous geographical area spanning adjacent parts of northern Iraq, north-western Iran, south-eastern Turkey, and north-eastern Syria (effectively Assyria and northern Mesopotamia)— the Assyrians face a wide range of human rights violations on a day-to-day basis. This includes experiences of arbitrary arrests, cultural appropriation, discrimination, dispossession of territory, economic and social disadvantages, forced demographic change, marginalization, policies of forced assimilation, systemic racism, violence, and a host of other abuses.

Existing Issues

Indigenous Assyrians frequently raise concerns regarding systemic discrimination and outright racism in their home countries. This discrimination manifests itself in a number of ways such as frequent and unnecessary questioning or intimidation by police or regional intelligence agencies. In most extreme cases, these forms of discrimination lead to gross violations of human rights, such as arbitrary arrests, prolonged detention, and violence.

In northern Iraq, particularly in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI), Assyrian cultural heritage sites are strongly threatened by erosion, looting, urban expansion, vandalism, lack of comprehensive heritage management planning, and armed conflict. Although these sites maintain connections to cultural identity and are highly significant, particularly among First Nation peoples (indigenous Assyrians) and their collective memory— authorities have rendered little to no protections for these sites.

Within the United Nations framework, the Assyrians do not currently hold any official indigenous status. According to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), the Assyrians are also characterised as an "unrepresented people". As a result, the Assyrians do not enjoy full participation in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. This disadvantages Assyrians immensely in a number of key-areas: social exclusion within their indigenous territories, including economic development, education, health care, justice system, technology, and housing.

Related Publications

R. Edward, N. Yakou, J. Arabou, Assyrian Cultural Heritage at Risk in Northern Iraq (2020).

Acknowledgment of Country

As an Australian-based Assyrian organisation, ACSYA Inc. acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the various lands on which its team lives and works on, and pays its respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders, past, present and emerging.