UN conference to discuss plight of minorities persecuted by IS

A UN conference on minorities persecuted by the Islamic State group will be held on September 8 in Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday.

“I will preside with my Jordanian counterpart over a UN conference to draw conclusions and propose a course of action,” said Fabius.

The UN Security Council launched a debate on the subject in March.

Some 60 nations will be represented at the conference, including several countries from the Middle East, as well as a wide range of NGOs and UN agencies.

Fabius said in March that every effort should be made to ensure that persecuted communities — notably the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, and Christian Yazidis — should be able to return home.

Only around 400,000 Yazidis remain in Iraq, compared to 1.4 million in 1987, which Fabius blamed on a “barbaric enterprise of ethnic and religious eradication”.

He called for the creation of an assistance fund to support the return of refugees, as well as the reconstruction of homes and places of worship destroyed by IS.