My trip to Geneva Switzerland last month, gave me a great opportunity to meet many other Minority Rights leaders and organizers of various agencies and organizations. I was proud to represent the ICGO at the Forum, and the following is a summary of my address:
Dear Mr. President, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
My name is Khassan SAKA,
I am the president of the Iraqi Canadian Group Organization. established as NGO in Windsor Canada since September 2014. I have earned a Master’s degree of International law from Oslo University.
Our organization has been serving and helping the newcomers to Canada and has established many educational programs and health awareness. Beside my trips to Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, we are helping the refugees and displaces people from many countries.
Since the invasion of ISIS in Iraq and Syria in 2014, displaced families have fled away from their cities and villages. They faced starvation, displacement, family killings, torture, and a large part of them were sold in slavery and some were raped. Most were minorities Christians, Yezidis, and most still suffer from mental and psychological illnesses.
A number of them have been accepted as refugees under the UN program to Europe, United States, Canada and other countries.
I am proud to say that Canada has welcomed many, and that our ICGO has been an integral part of assisting many families reside in our great country.
We predict that another 500,000 immigrants will need to come to Canada over the next 2 years, of which over 100,000 will be Arabic speaking and will need assistance from our Organization the ICGO.
The Arabic, Iraqi, Syrian, and all citizens of war-torn countries, whom are innocent victims of such hardship and atrocities, need our help. They need our international help, they need help from individual nations, and they need help from their new local institutions and organizations. We all need to work together, and the organizations, like ICGO, whom are ready to immediately step up and deliver the needed services must be assisted by the larger agencies and governments to get it done. This needs to be a team as the crisis of displaced refugees, and victims of the world is a humanitarian issue for all of us to contribute and assist.
We have to provide justice and fairness, to the families and children whom came from places where there was no justice or fairness! It is up to us to make it right!
To help these innocent victims get their lives on a positive track. Minority cultures needing assistance is nothing new to the UN, as the UN has done a great job over the decades to improve the lives of millions even billions of people since the UN was founded.
This Forum is a tribute to the UN for recognizing the importance of discussing minority issues, as part of the UN mandate to improve the world for the greater good of all humanity.
Minorities, whom are given a chance to start new lives in freedom loving countries, are brave and courageous to take that opportunity. And, with proper re-settlement in their new country (like in my great country of Canada) whom is very gracious and generous with our openness to take in refugees and new immigrants), it becomes a win-win-win situation. The world institutions have less displaced refugees to care for in tents, these minorities coming to Canada (for example) have freedom and safety, and the host country eventually gets productive new citizens to contribute to their society in a positive appreciative manner (growing their GDP), population, and human value and productivity).
While the immigration to a new country from a war-torn country overall can be a very good thing, the process to get to this final win (of perfect re-settlement) is a long and hard road.
And this is where services like the services provided by the ICGO, to help minorities through their re-settlement, is so vitally important to sustain and grow.
In the near future the ICGO will be putting forward a bold proposal to expand our services to reach many more parts of Canada, to be able to further assist the UN and Canada with resettling of immigrants accordingly.
We trust our proposal will have very positive feedback by all, and we shall stay in touch with the appropriate agency representatives and government leaders in the early part of the New Year to discuss further and to hopefully implement as soon as possible.
Thank You.
