Recognition for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

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That this House regrets that the recent BBC documentary, Once Upon a Time in Iraq, barely mentioned the experience of the Kurds and the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, although it contains about a sixth of the population of the country and was one of the principal victims of the Baathist regime before 2003; agrees with Bashar Warda, the Chaldean archbishop of Erbil, that minority communities such as the Christians and the Yezedis feel voiceless and being airbrushed out of a major BBC documentary is wounding and damaging; notes that the BBC does not claim the documentary is a definitive history of the Iraq War or its people and believes, however, that such large omissions give a misleading impression of the dynamics of Iraqi politics and Kurdistan’s vital role in helping stabilise Iraq’s democratic process after 2003, as well as sheltering persecuted religious groups and over a million internally displaced people and refugees from Syria; further believes that Kurdistani perspectives and information on its democratic aspirations, religious pluralism, gender equality, and reforming Iraq could have better provided viewers with a more nuanced picture; and urges the BBC to commission a documentary on the experience of Kurdistan to give its viewers a more comprehensive picture of Iraq.