The Yezidi center for human rights, together with the Partnership for an open society initiative, held a discussion on the rights of national minorities in Armenia and their protection for the first time in its format. The main problems faced by national minorities were identified.

The head of the Yezidi center for human rights (NGO), Sashik Sultanyan, touched upon the issue of participation of national minorities: " The participation of national minorities in the processes should not be limited to their purely physical presence. Unfortunately, since independence, we have had ineffective and ineffective participation of national minorities in many areas. In particular, we talk about creating a quota system for national minorities, their presence in state structures, but we never say that they, being in a particular apparatus, a state body, what rights and responsibilities they have, and how measurable they are, or these results that they can create, how much they can become the basis for solving the problems of national minorities?

In her speech, Deputy Minister of labor and social Affairs Zhanna Andreasyan touched upon the problem of visibility of national minorities in public life: " Very often, even in our speech, we may not notice how this word becomes exceptional in seemingly ordinary expressions that actually distinguish a group of people in our society and leave another group invisible. We talk about many everyday and mundane things, such as the greeting of Armenian children on June 1, the greeting of Armenian women on March 8, which often seem ordinary and do not cause problems in our ears."

Speaking about the socio-economic problems of national minorities, the expert of the information and analytical center" Hirat " Mraz Azizi noted that they are mostly identical to the problems that exist for all citizens of Armenia, but highlighted a number of cases in which the origin of these problems may be due to national discrimination. In particular, the case of alienation of lands of the Ferik community, cases of illegal alienation of lands, pastures and other property of Yazidis in different years was touched upon.

Yezidi center for human rights expert Isabel Broyan spoke about the problems of education of national minorities, highlighting the problems associated with the absence of Yazidi children from secondary schools, with General attendance, teaching the Yazidi language in the form of a circle, etc. "Our research has shown that many school principals do not make sufficient efforts to ensure the education of children left outside, motivating national traditions and customs."

The forum participants expressed their readiness to make discussions around the problems of national minorities more frequent.

Yezidi Center for Human Rights NGO