UNHCR's ELIGIBILITY GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSING THE ...

The overall climate results in non-Muslim minority groups fearing to publicly practice their
religion. 230 Members of non-Muslim minority groups also reported employment
discrimination in the public sector due to their religious identity. 231 The US Department of
State’s 2006 International Freedom Report states that
“(T)he combination of discriminatory hiring practices, attacks against non-Muslim
businesses and the overall lack of rule of law, have also had a detrimental economic impact
on the non-Muslim community and contributed to the significant numbers of non-Muslims
who left the country.” 232
a) Christians 233
i) General
The last census covering all of Iraq’s Governorates 234 , in 1987, showed 1.4 million
Christians. Since 2003, the number has decreased and estimates now place the number of
Christians within Iraq at less than one million, with an estimated 700,000 Iraqi Christians
living abroad. 235 Iraqi Christians belong to different churches, including the Chaldean
Catholic Church, 236 the Syriac Orthodox Church, 237 the Syrian Catholic Church, 238 the
230 See, for example, USDOS, International Religious Freedom Report 2006 – Iraq, see above footnote 28.
231 UNAMI HRO, October 2006 Human Rights Report, p. 14, see above footnote 66.
232 USDOS, International Religious Freedom Report 2006 – Iraq, see above footnote 28.
233 Christians in Iraq, in particular Assyrians, Chaldeans and Armenians, consider themselves as both
religious and ethnic minorities; therefore consideration could also be given to persecution on the basis of
ethnicity. See also “Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen428F, Ethnic-Based Christian Groups (Assyrians, Chaldeans,
Armenians)429F, Yazidis430F and Shabak431F in Ethnically Mixed Areas”.
234 A later census was held by the Government of Iraq in October 1997; however, it did not include the three
Northern Governorates of Sulaymaniyah, Erbil and Dahuk. See: UN, Press Briefing on Iraq Demographics,
8 August 2003, http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2003/iraqdemobrf.doc.htm.
235 USDOS, International Religious Freedom Report 2006 – Iraq, see above footnote 28. According to the
local Christians Peace Association about 700,000 Christians remain in Iraq; see: IRIN, Iraq: Christians live in
fear of death squads, see above footnote 228; Judi McLeod, Forgotten Christians of Iraq, 19 October 2006,
Canada Free Press, http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/cover101906.htm. Statistics regarding the number
of Christians currently in Iraq have varied somewhat. The Society for Threatened People, an independent
German human rights organization with consultative status at the Economic and Social Council of the United
Nations (ECOSOC) and participant status at the Council of Europe, estimates that 700,000 Christians were
present in Iraq before 2003, of which at least 500,000 have since fled. The remaining 200,000 have either not
the material means to flee or are afraid of being killed in the attempt to flee. The NGO estimates that the
number of Christians in Baghdad has dropped from 400,000 to just 100,000. In Basrah only about 1,000 out
of formerly 30,000 remain, and in Mosul, which was once inhabited by 80,000 Christians, only a few hundred
are believed to be still there; see: Society for Threatened People, Iraq: Germany must take Christian
refugees!, 22 December 2006, http://www.gfbv.de/pressemit.php?id=788&stayInsideTree=1.
236 Chaldean Catholics have one patriarch (currently Mar Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Babylon in
Baghdad), four archdioceses (in Kirkuk, Mosul, Basrah and Erbil) and five dioceses (in Alqosh, Amadiyah,
Akre, Sulaymaniyah and Zakho). See: The Chaldean Church, The Christians in Iraq,
http://www.byzantines.net/epiphany/chaldean.htm [accessed December 2006].
237 Led by the Patriarch of Antioch, currently Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, who resides in
Damascus, Syria. Often the Church is referred to as the Syrian Orthodox Church. However, in 2000, a Holy
Synod ruled that the name of the church in English should be the Syriac Orthodox Church.
238 The current Patriarch of Antioch and all the East of the Syrians is Mar Ignace Pierre VIII Abdel-Ahad,
who resides in Beirut, Lebanon. The church has two archdioceses in Baghdad and Mosul; see Club Syriac,
History of The Syriac Catholic Church, http://www.clubsyriaque.org/glance-fr.html.
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