Dear friends, partners and supporters of the International Society for Human Rights,

I am writing these lines on the evening of 13 June 2025, while travelling by land from Erbil in Iraq to Diyarbakir in Turkey. Over the past few days, I had the opportunity to visit our humanitarian aid work in the refugee camps of Kurdistan with my colleague Khalil Al Rasho. On the night before my return flight to Germany, Israel began its targeted air strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme, which were met with counter strikes by the Iranian regime against the Israeli civilian population a few hours later. This led to the immediate closure of all Iraqi airspace, meaning that I could only return home via south-eastern Turkey. This gave me another opportunity to travel through beautiful and fascinating Kurdistan by car with Khalil. He has been the head of humanitarian aid in the Middle East for the German section of the ISHR for over ten years – and does so with exemplary professionalism, passion and empathy. Whether we met high-ranking government officials, refugee camp workers or shopkeepers near our ISHR office in Shekhan, we were met with warmth, kindness and gratitude everywhere we went. It was clear that Khalil is well known and respected. As the face of our work in Kurdistan, he embodies what we stand for as ISHR: combining professional thematic human rights work with practical assistance for people on the ground.

I was deeply moved to visit some of the refugee camps in Kurdistan where we have been working for many years. Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis who fled the terrible genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia in the Shingal region from early August 2014 onwards still live in the refugee camps. The ISHR delivers relief supplies (wheelchairs, hospital beds, dialysis machines, hygiene items, everyday items such as washing machines, bicycles and sewing machines to secure livelihoods), implements educational projects such as literacy, language (English, German) and IT courses (e.g. MS Office, Photoshop) to offer young people and adults prospects for the future, organises leisure activities such as music lessons, crochet courses and sports programmes (e.g. support for football teams) to promote social and physical skills, equips schools with materials such as textbooks and writing utensils, organises tutoring courses to close educational gaps and supports start-ups, for example by financing small shops such as shoe or grocery stores to enable families to become self-sufficient.

However, aid for Yazidi refugees and other groups (Kurds from Syria, other Syrian refugees, Christian minorities such as Chaldeans and Assyrians, as well as Sunni and Shia Arabs from central and southern Iraq who have fled IS, political persecution or gang warfare) is coming under increasing pressure. Since Trump’s massive budget cuts, which effectively amount to a withdrawal of American support for Kurdistan, the refugee camps have been lacking everything: medical stations can barely be kept running, staff can no longer be paid, and relief supplies can no longer be purchased. Let’s call it what it is: Trump has abandoned the Yazidis and all other refugees in Kurdistan. The fact that large USAID stickers still adorn the walls of the containers, proudly proclaiming ‘From the American People,’ is a farce. Who will fill the gaps in the future to help the 1.8 to 2 million refugees in Kurdistan, according to current estimates?

Israel’s decisive action against Iran, which began on the night before my departure, represents a turning point of global political significance: after many years of unsuccessful international attempts to persuade Iran to moderate its position at the negotiating table and, in particular, to limit its nuclear programme to peaceful use, Israel is taking action. In doing so, it is not only protecting its own existence, which was increasingly threatened by a regime that has declared the destruction of Israel to be its national goal. It is also, in all likelihood, saving the world from a nuclear war – a horror scenario that has unfortunately become increasingly realistic in the recent past. At the same time, the massive weakening of the regime in Tehran offers the chance for real change in Iran. After the Israeli air strikes, some courageous opponents of the regime took to the streets of Tehran and shouted ‘Death to Khamenei’. And on social media, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah, called on the Iranian people to seize this historic opportunity to intensify the protests against the Islamic Republic regime and continue the democracy movement that has sprung up worldwide since the ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ movement. For many years, we at ISHR have been documenting the massive human rights violations in Iran and regularly denouncing the targeted killing of opponents of the regime. Is this the hour of long-awaited change? There are many indications that it is. However, one thing must not be forgotten: every use of weapons leads to appalling human suffering. Israel’s actions have also cost innocent lives in Iran. Israel is taking much more targeted action against the nerve centres of the Iranian regime than the Iranian counter strikes, which indiscriminately target Israeli territory and accept massive civilian casualties. But suffering is suffering. On both sides people die. That is why it is imperative at this hour that we stand alongside the Israeli and the Iranian people, both in the hope of long-awaited, genuine change and in shared mourning and lamentation for the civilian casualties and the suffering caused by the use of weapons.

The prospect of genuine change in Iran also offers a glimmer of hope for Iraq. Without the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which are involved in conflicts with other groups in many parts of the country and contribute to violence and instability, the security situation will improve for all people in Iraq – whether citizens or refugees, whether part of the Sunni, Kurdish or Yazidi communities. Many Yazidi refugees in the camps in Kurdistan hope to return to the Shingal region soon. During my visits, I heard numerous stories: some have already tried, failed and returned to the refugee camps. The unstable security situation is one of the major factors making life in their old homeland difficult. A world without the terrorist regime in Tehran also means a better world for the Yazidis in Kurdistan.
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Warm regards,

Matthias Boehning
Secretary General, ISHR