VersionsMemorandum sulla situazione dei Kurdi [Italiano, Roma, 1949]
Memorandum on the situation of the Kurds [English, Paris, 1949]
Mémorandum, sur la situation des Kurdes [Français, Paris, 1948]
Memorandum on the situation of the Kurds and their claims
Among the number of pressing problems which remain unsolved in the Middle East the Kurdish question is one of the most tragic.
It may be well first of all to correct the arbitrary and summary idea that is held of the Kurdish people in many countries - in the measure that they are thought about. There is a tendency to think of them as being without links, without organisation, without power to progress, as composed of mountain tribes - primitive, nomadic and turbulent.
The word « tribes » applied to them in this sense is a foreign word. It does not exist in the Kurdish language. Kurdistan inclus - des towns, villages and clans, whose inhabitants and members - while obliged according to the regions they live in to make seasonable displacements for the needs of their cattle breeding have strong roots in their soil, and love it, practise there in all their variety the sedentary customs which go to make up a stable people, keen to have an organised civic life, progress, social responsibility and spiritual improvement.
Here is a tribute to them : Major Soane in « To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise » says (pages 398, 399) : « Judged as a representative of the human type the Kurd is probably unsurpassable. The Kurds look what they are: the Medes of today, worthy if only they would unite of becoming a great military nation whose austere and hardy . nature could hold in check the more inferior peoples among »…
Memorandum on the situation of the Kurds and their claims
Among the number of pressing problems which remain unsolved in the Middle East the Kurdish question is one of the most tragic.
It may be well first of all to correct the arbitrary and summary idea that is held of the Kurdish people in many countries - in the measure that they are thought about. There is a tendency to think of them as being without links, without organisation, without power to progress, as composed of mountain tribes - primitive, nomadic and turbulent.
The word « tribes » applied to them in this sense is a foreign word. It does not exist in the Kurdish language. Kurdistan inclus - des towns, villages and clans, whose inhabitants and members - while obliged according to the regions they live in to make seasonable displacements for the needs of their cattle breeding have strong roots in their soil, and love it, practise there in all their variety the sedentary customs which go to make up a stable people, keen to have an organised civic life, progress, social responsibility and spiritual improvement.
Here is a tribute to them : Major Soane in « To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise » says (pages 398, 399) : « Judged as a representative of the human type the Kurd is probably unsurpassable. The Kurds look what they are: the Medes of today, worthy if only they would unite of becoming a great military nation whose austere and hardy . nature could hold in check the more inferior peoples among »…
Memorandum on the situation of the Kurds and their claims
Summary of the Memorandum
presented by the Kurdish delegation
in Paris on November th 1948
to His Excellency Mr. Trygve Lie,
Secretary General of the United Nation:
Paris
1949
