Observers demand fair Kurdish representation within Syrian Constitutional Committee
ERBIL, KRG, Iraq (North Press) – On Tuesday, observers of the work of the Syrian Constitutional Committee stressed the need to increase the Kurdish representation within the committee.
“The Kurdish representation in the committee is very weak, the Kurds must be represented according to the number of population and their sacrifices,” representative of the Human Rights Committee (MAF), Mahmoud Ayoub, said.
Mahmoud Ayoub considered that “the formation of a small group of the opposition and regime delegations, under the auspices of the United Nations, to draft the Syrian constitution, is a step towards the process of writing the constitution.”
“The exclusion of academics specializing in the international law in the small body confirms that the constitution will be written in accordance with the interests of the countries controlling the Syrian issue and it will not express the Syrians’ aspirations,” he added.
The representative of the Kurdish National Council in Syria (ENKS) within the Syrian Coalition, Imad Barho, does not deny the weak Kurdish representation in the Constitutional Committee, saying, “The representation does not match with the number of the Kurds in Syria. However, the presence of one representative means that nothing will pass without his defense of the Kurdish cause.”
Abdulhakim Bashar, one of the ENKS leaders and an opponent to the Autonomous Administration, is considered the only Kurdish member of the Constitutional Committee.
“Pedersen adopts the international and regional agreements to push the Constitutional Committee forward towards writing the constitution or amending the current constitution of Syria,” Barho added.
“It is imperative for the Constitutional Committee to represent all communities and societal forces from the Syrian people, including representatives of the Autonomous Administration and civil society organizations in northeast Syria,” Farouk Hajji, Executive Director of Berchav Organization for Development and Media, said.
“There were previous messages directed to the organizers of the meetings of the Constitutional Committee, but they were not answered. Those messages included the necessity of including political figures from the Autonomous Administration or personalities from civil society in the committee,” he told North Press.
Hajji believes that pessimism dominates those who follow the meetings of the Constitutional Committee, including the members who attend these meetings themselves.
Hajji stated that the distribution of seats in the Constitutional Committee between delegates from the Syrian government and the opposition “shows the cohesion of the government delegation due to the centralization of the decision, unlike the inconsistent opposition delegation.