Yazidis

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) released its latest human rights report for Iraq covering the first half of 2009. The U.N. noted the decrease in violence in Iraq, but that there were still deaths everyday in the country. More importantly, it recorded continued institutional abuses in the justice system, and reminders of the old regime.

In November 2009 Human Rights Watch released a new report detailing the plight of minorities in Ninewa province entitled “On Vulnerable Ground.” The report covers the history of successive governments in Baghdad to Arabize Ninewa by pushing out minorities and Kurds and replacing them with Arabs, and then the ascendancy of Kurds there after the U.S. invasion. They turned around and tried to Kurdicize those same regions to advance their plans to annex the disputed territories there.