Topic: UN's Role of Addressing Sectarian and Ethnic Conflict within a Nation
Country: Turkey
Delegate Name: Parker Bush
School: Forest Hills Northern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Turkey position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
Ever since the United Nations was founded in 1945, their goal was to achieve world peace. Today, many problems between countries or within countries are resolved politically. However, in some cases the UN has not been able to resolve all violence and turmoil through out the world. Many of these problems through out the world deal with ethnic conflict in which the UN has not fully resolved. The UN has failed to take part or conflict within the following terms; 1994 Rwandan Genocide, the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre and the 1970-1971 Yahya Khan of Pakistan. Such conflicts have been hurting these countries and surrounding countries. Turkey feels that the UN should take part in resolving these world wide issues and should address sectarian and ethnic conflict within a nation.
Turkey, fully aware of ethnic conflict in other countries, due to a particular group in power, believes that ethnicity and race should not be discriminated against or treated unjustly. Republic of Turkey has two main ethnic groups, Turkish and Kurdish, who cooperate well with each other. These two main forces don’t put a burden on Turkey. Therefore Turkey should be known as a country who addresses the problems of sectarian and ethnic conflict within a nation. Turkey is also willing to help promote the UN’s role of addressing these problems.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Meaning there shouldn’t be discrimination toward a certain ethnic group or unfair treatment of certain ethnicities. Turkey believes that in order to solve ethnic conflict the UN must portray a better role in making the awareness of the problem. To do this they must promote peaceful government and anti-poverty programs along with spreading awareness to neighboring nations about the topic at hand. With the help of the UN Turkey believes we can, together, eliminate sectarian and ethnic conflict.
To address this awful conflict, which is conflicting much of the world, Turkey, itself, has a few proposals. First proposal is enforcing stricter punishment on any person or group of people who commit or support sectarian and ethnic conflict. By enforcing greater punishment on people who commit these crimes will hopefully persuade them not to. Many times ethnicities are discriminated against due to their poverty. Anti- poverty programs could help these less fortunate people be equal. This delicate situation needs to be handled with care. To fix this problem the governments of the whole global economy need to share the same ideas and help promote the problems of sectarian and ethnic conflict within a nation.
