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International Interparliamentary
Consultation on the Kurds
FOREWORD
An International Interparliamentary Conference on Kurdish Human Rights, organized jointly by the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, Fondation France-Liberatés and the Kurdish Institute of Paris, was held on 27 February, 1991, at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing Room in Washington D.C.. The purpose of this conference was to bring together parliamentarians from Europe and the United States sensitive to human rights issues, in order to examine the fate of the Kurdish people in the context of the Gulf crisis and to review the means by which Western governments could be persuaded to give greater priority to this issue within the framework of their Middle-East policy.
Chance so ordained that this conference, programmed well in advance, took place only a few hours before the end of hoshlities in the Gulf war was declared. This, of course, lent even greater relevance to the conference but, at the same time, diverted the attention of the media away from the conference, resulting in less press and television coverage than expected. However, the conference was able to better inform several influential members of the Senate and increase their awareness of the plight of the Kurds, particularly in Iraq. To that end, the conference proved very valuable, because these members were to play an important role in modifying the American administration's policy during the Kurdish tragedy of April 1991.
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