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KRG Anfal Affairs minister asks British
MPs and NGOs for support
7.4.2007
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April
7, 2007
London, UK, -- Ms Chnar Saad, Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) Minister for Martyrs and
Anfal Affairs, last week and yesterday met British
member of parliament Ann Clwyd and Baroness Emma
Nicholson to ask for assistance for the survivors of
the Anfal campaign and chemical gas attacks.
The minister said, “Ms Clwyd and Baroness Nicholson
had many excellent suggestions and are long-standing
friends of the Kurds and Iraq as a whole. Both have
previously asked the international community to
assist the Anfal survivors. However, unfortunately
so far they have found that the response has not
been positive.”
The minister thanked Ms Clwyd, Tony Blair’s Special
Envoy for Human Rights in Iraq, for her recent visit
to the Kurdistan Region.
Ms. Saad also met several UK-based non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). She said, “We met British NGOs
with expertise in mass grave exhumations, widowhood
and women’s rights, and genocide remembrance and
prevention.”
The minister met Kurdish doctors working in the UK
to discuss how to provide medical assistance to
those with chronic psychological and health problems
resulting from the Anfal genocide campaign in which
chemical weapons were used against civilians.
Ms Saad said that her ministry’s main policies were:
to provide financial assistance to the survivors and
their families; to provide them with better access
to vocational training and education; to give them
better access to psychiatric or medical health care
for their specific illnesses; to carry out research
to gain more quantitative and qualitative data on
the Anfal survivors; and to restart efforts to look
for mass graves.
Ms Saad met Margaret Cox, chief executive of Inforce,
which provides specialist training on digging for
and identifying remains in mass graves. They
discussed the KRG’s training needs in this area and
how to find funding for such a programme.
She discussed with Baroness Nicholson the work of
the Amar Foundation, which she founded in 1991 to
help Iraqi refugees after the Gulf War. They both
hoped that Amar’s work could be extended to the
Kurdistan Region.
The minister also met several NGO representatives.
James M. Smith, chief executive of Aegis Trust,
explained how his organization campaigns against
genocide and has helped to create genocide
memorials. NGOs with expertise in women’s rights
discussed with Ms. Saad how to mobilise and empower
the many Anfal widows in the Kurdistan Region, and
how to gather useful data on their living conditions
and problems. The minister said, “It was very useful
to speak with NGOs that recognize the particular
plight of widows. We hope to be able to collaborate
with them, together with local NGOs in Kurdistan.”
The minister met Margaret Owen, coordinator of
Widows for Peace through Democracy (WPD); Rachel
Bernu, Deputy Director of Kurdish Human Rights
Project (KHRP); Pranjali Acharya, Development
Assistant at KHRP; and Charlotte Onslow, Coordinator
of Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPs).
krg org
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