March 10 to March 12, 2017, the “Capacity Building: Kurdischer Nationalrat in Syrien” project, supported by the German Foreign Ministry and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA), provided another training workshop in Erbil (Kurdistan – Iraq) for representatives of the Kurdish National Council (KNC). Apart from the KNC’s president, Ibrahim Biro, and the chairman of its External Relations Committee, Kamiran Hajo, many highranking representatives of the KNC member parties took part.
As a sequel to trainings during the previous year, the workshop resumed deliberating the benefits of implementing a federal system to Syria. Different options of decentralisation and power sharing, illustrated also by consideration of various examples like India, Great Britain, Sudan and Iraq, have been reviewed and discussed. Especially the prerequisites needed for a federal system to be successful and to stabilise a nation and society have been worked out. Once more, the necessity of a suitable form of representation of interests for all groups living in Syria, in particular for those who have been denied their part in cultural, social and political rights so far, has become apparent in this context.
In practical training units, the participants have prepared themselves for negotiations and for developing shared solutions against the background of a multiplicity of often contradictory interests.
The theoretical and practical training units have been directed by Prof. Dr. Eva Maria Belser, expert for comparative constitutional law and administrative law at the University of Fribourg (Swiss), and Dr. Soeren Keil, expert for political science and international relations at the Canterbury Christ Church University in Great Britain.
In May 2017, the deliberations shall be continued in a follow-up workshop with members of the Syrian arabic opposition.
Capacity Buidling: Kurdischer Nationalrat in Syrien
Berlin, March 2017