How could the U.S. acknowledge that Christians in Syria and Iraq are being subjected to genocide by the Islamic State (ISIS) and then apparently do nothing to stop it?
In an article she wrote for the Wall Street Journal, Nina Shea, director of Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, noted the incongruity of U.S. statement and its actual action.
"Six months ago, Secretary of State John Kerry officially designated Islamic State as 'responsible for genocide' against Christians, Yazidis, and other vulnerable groups in areas under ISIS control in Syria and Iraq," wrote Shea, an international human rights lawyer and international Christian religious freedom advocate.
"So why has the Obama administration entrusted the survival of these people—and so much valuable American aid—to a troubled office at the United Nations, which, like its parent organisation, has never even acknowledged that the genocide exists?" she asked.
Shea then accused the U.N.'s lead agency for aiding refugees, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), of marginalising "Christians and others targeted by ISIS for eradication in two critical programs: refugee housing in the region and Syrian refugee resettlement abroad."
Shea noted that the Obama administration's expanded refugee programme for Syria depends on refugee referrals from the UNHCR, a body that, according to her, has consistently underrepresented Syria's genocide survivors.
U.S. State Department records show that of 12,587 Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, only 68 were Christians and 24 were members of the Yazidi sect. That means that only 0.5 percent of the admitted refugees were Christians, even though they have long constituted 10 percent of Syria's population.
She then cited a press conference last year when the U.N.'s then-high commissioner for refugees António Guterres was asked to explain the "disproportionately low number of Syrian Christians resettled abroad."
Guterres reportedly replied that Syria's Christians should not be resettled because they are part of the "DNA of the Middle East."
Shea wrote that the real reason only very few Christians and Yazidis are seeking shelter in U.N. refugee camps is because they fear violence from Muslims.
She cited a statement made by Stephen Rasche, the resettlement official for the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese in Erbil, Iraq, who told the U.S. Congress last month that in Erbil "there are no Christians who will enter the U.N. camps for fear of violence against them."
Erbil's archdiocese has reported that U.N. aid bypasses them even though they oversee care for 70,000 people displaced by ISIS, including half of Nineveh's Christians, according to Shea.
Rasche warned Congress that the Christian community in Syria faces extinction without more assistance, Shea noted.
