French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has urged the United Nations Security Council to set up a special fund and pledge military protection so that Middle Eastern Christian refugees and other minorities can return home when international forces defeat the Islamic State (IS) terrorists who drove them out.
The fund could be used “to rebuild homes and places of worship,” he told the Council in New York on 27 March. “France has strong historic ties with the Middle East, and especially Eastern Christians, and a long tradition protecting minorities … we intend to remain faithful to it.”
Declaring his conviction that IS will ultimately be defeated, Mr Fabius urged countries with armed forces fighting the jihadists to make the protection of minorities in Iraq and Syria “a primary goal of the military action of the coalition and local forces”.
As part of a French “action plan” for the Middle East, he also suggested countries in the region should join the International Criminal Court and help bring war crimes charges there against IS leaders. The crime of “cultural genocide” should be added to the charge list against them, he said, because of the destruction of ancient Assyrian artworks in Iraqi cities such as Mosul and Nimrud.
“There is truly a danger that minorities will disappear entirely,” he said. “We are the international community; we must no longer collectively represent a sort of powerless power.”
There was no vote on Mr Fabius’s appeal but participants welcomed the initiative and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a high-level panel would assess the plan. Mr Fabius offered to host a conference in Paris to present the panel’s findings.
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