Advocacy  

The Case for Hazara Representation in International Bodies

In October 2025, the UN Human Rights Council adopted resolution A/HRC/60/L.9, establishing the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Afghanistan - the first dedicated international accountability body for the country since the Taliban's return to power in 2021. The resolution was a genuine step forward. It mandated the collection, consolidation, and preservation of evidence of international crimes committed in Afghanistan. It authorized the Secretary-General to appoint staff. It directed the mechanism to cooperate with the International Criminal Court.

What it did not include was explicit language on Hazara-specific mandate provisions. The call for "full and meaningful inclusion of Hazaras in all processes concerning Afghanistan" - formally submitted to the Human Rights Council by Minority Rights Group in March 2025 - was filtered through an international NGO that, whatever its record of genuine advocacy, is not a Hazara organization. The resolution text reflects what outsiders argued on behalf of Hazaras. It does not reflect what Hazaras argued for themselves.

That gap - between being the subject of international processes and being a participant in them - is what this article is about.

What Formal Representation Actually Means

It is worth being precise about terms, because the discussion sometimes collapses formal representation into general visibility. They are not the same thing.

Formal representation in international bodies takes several specific forms. ECOSOC consultative status is the baseline - it gives civil society organizations the right to attend meetings, deliver oral statements, submit written communications, and access the documentation networks of the UN system. Observer status in bodies like the UNHCR Executive Committee allows organizations to participate in plenary sessions and deliver statements in the NGO/civil society dialogue. Advisory roles in investigative mechanisms give community organizations a formal input channel into evidence-gathering, mandate interpretation, and reporting priorities. Designated seats in advisory bodies - the model used by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues - go further, embedding community-nominated representatives directly in the structure of a UN body.

None of these positions are currently held by any Hazara individual or organization in a Hazara-specific capacity. Extensive research into the ECOSOC NGO consultative status database, UNHCR ExCom membership and observer lists, and the composition records of relevant HRC mechanisms finds no documented instance of a Hazara organization holding formal advisory, consultative, or observer status in any UN body.

This is not a minor procedural gap. It means that every document the UN produces about Hazaras - every asylum guidance note, every investigative mechanism mandate, every ExCom conclusion on Afghan refugees - is produced without formal Hazara community input at any stage.

What does exist is advocacy access. Hazara civil society organizations submit statements to Human Rights Council sessions, attend side events as NGO participants, and respond to calls for submissions from Special Procedures. This is meaningful. It is also structurally different from formal representation. The difference between submitting a statement to a process and holding a recognized role in that process is the difference between writing a letter to a committee and sitting on it.

International NGOs - Human Rights Watch, Minority Rights Group, New Lines Institute, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute - fill part of this gap. They have formal standing. They advocate for Hazara inclusion. They do this work seriously. But they are not Hazara organizations. When MRG delivers a statement at HRC 59 calling for Hazara inclusion in UN processes, the call is made by an organization whose leadership and institutional priorities are determined entirely outside the Hazara community. The interests of Hazaras are being represented, at best. They are not being expressed.

What Is Being Decided Without Them

Three processes illustrate the concrete consequences of this structural gap.

The UNHCR Guidance Note on Afghanistan. Updated in September 2025, this document governs how asylum systems in more than 100 countries assess Afghan refugee claims. It identifies Hazaras among at-risk groups. Whether Hazaras are listed as a categorical at-risk group warranting presumptive refugee status, or assessed case-by-case, directly shapes rejection rates and return decisions across dozens of jurisdictions. Between 2023 and 2025, over 2.6 million Afghans were forcibly deported from Pakistan and Iran. Amnesty International documented in December 2025 that these deportations violated the principle of non-refoulement. Hazaras are disproportionately at risk in those deportations because they face specific targeting upon return - IS-KP attacks on Shia Hazara communities, Taliban land seizures in Hazara-populated districts, and the revocation of the Law on Personal Affairs of Shi'a Muslims, which previously provided legal protections tied to Hazara religious identity.

The Guidance Note was produced without a formal Hazara community input channel. The document's framing of Hazara risk - how specifically it disaggregates Hazara persecution from general Afghan persecution, how clearly it establishes the ethnic and religious specificity of the threat - was shaped by the same international organizations that filter all Hazara concerns upward.

The IIMAA mandate and composition. As of this writing, the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Afghanistan's composition is not fully public. The Secretary-General was authorized to appoint staff "as expeditiously as possible." Whether any Hazara experts, community representatives, or civil society figures with Hazara-specific expertise are embedded in the mechanism is not confirmed. This matters because investigative mechanisms shape their own evidence priorities in practice. The UN Investigative Team for Accountability of Daesh, which the IIMAA was modeled on, developed community consultation processes over time. The question for the IIMAA is whether Hazara community consultation is built into the mechanism's structure from the outset, or whether it becomes an afterthought that advocates work to retrofit later.

UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett's 2025 report (A/HRC/59/25) is worth reading carefully on this point. Bennett documented Hazara-specific findings with unusual specificity: 14 male Shia Hazara civilians killed in Sang-e Takht district, Daykundi Province on September 12, 2024; the "triple axis of persecution" facing Hazara women at the intersection of ethnic, religious, and gender identity; forced displacement from ancestral lands with Taliban-affiliated populations resettled in Hazara-populated districts. This level of specificity came despite the fact that the Taliban barred Bennett from entering Afghanistan in August 2024. All of his reporting has since been conducted from outside the country. The information infrastructure supporting his work - what reaches him, in what form, with what degree of verification - matters enormously for what ends up in the official record. Hazara organizations are not formally embedded in that infrastructure.

The SSAR and the mass deportation response. The Solutions Strategy for Afghan Refugees sets UNHCR's and host governments' operational priorities in Pakistan and Iran - precisely the two countries conducting mass deportations of Afghans. Whether Hazara-specific non-refoulement arguments receive adequate emphasis, whether repatriation programs include differentiated Hazara risk assessments, whether the protection environment in those countries is evaluated with Hazara persecution patterns specifically in view - all of this is shaped in the SSAR framework. No formal Hazara civil society representation exists in SSAR governance structures. The mass deportation crisis of 2023-2025, affecting millions of Afghans including disproportionate numbers of Hazaras, did not trigger a UNHCR ExCom emergency session or special protection mechanism for the community. Partly this reflects geopolitics. It also reflects the absence of any Hazara organization with standing to formally request emergency action.

The Organizations Doing This Work

The structural gap is not a capacity problem. Hazara civil society organizations exist. Several have sustained international advocacy records.

Hazara International has engaged directly with UN representatives including the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and documented advocacy at the international level through at least 2024. The World Hazara Council sent an open letter to the UN in August 2025 specifically regarding forced evictions of Hazaras in Bamiyan. The Hazara Resource Platform, a 501(c)(3) organization with presence across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Europe, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, participated in the 18th International Human Rights Summit at the UN in July 2024 and focuses explicitly on policy advocacy in national and international forums. The Hazara Inquiry - a cross-party UK parliamentary body that published a formal report in September 2022 - delivered that report to UK, US, Canadian, and Dutch government officials as well as to UN and ICC representatives, and received an official UK government response in August 2024 acknowledging the report's contribution to raising awareness. The Canadian Hazara Advocacy Group made a formal written submission to OHCHR. Australian organizations including the Australian Hazara Advocacy Network and the Federation of Hazara Council of Australia have engaged with UN human rights mechanisms.

These organizations are not nascent or peripheral. They are producing advocacy at the international level, reaching UN mechanisms, influencing governments, and documenting conditions on the ground. What they lack is not capacity. What they lack is formal standing.

The distinction matters because it determines what kind of engagement is available. With ECOSOC consultative status, an organization can attend sessions, deliver oral statements in plenary, submit written communications as formal UN documents, and access the administrative infrastructure of the UN system. Without it, the same organization writes letters, attends side events, and submits statements to calls for input - all of which compete with every other stakeholder for attention, have no formal status in the record, and can be deprioritized in any given review cycle without procedural consequence.

What Formal Representation Looks Like - The Precedents

Three models are worth examining carefully, because the argument for Hazara formal representation does not require inventing a new mechanism. It requires applying existing ones.

The UNPFII model. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, established in 2000, has 16 members. Eight are nominated by governments through the five UN regional groups. Eight are nominated directly by indigenous peoples' organizations and appointed by the ECOSOC President. This 50/50 split is unique in the UN system. It establishes, as formal UN practice, the principle that affected communities can nominate their own representatives to sit on a UN advisory body alongside state nominees. This is not a peripheral forum. It is an advisory body to ECOSOC dealing with economic and social development, culture, environment, education, health, and human rights.

No equivalent mechanism exists for ethnic or religious minorities - as distinct from indigenous peoples - in the UN human rights system. The UN Forum on Minority Issues, established by HRC Resolution 6/15, meets annually and allows minority representatives to participate and present submissions. It is a forum, not a decision-making or advisory body. Participation does not confer formal status or a sustained input channel.

The UNPFII model establishes the principle that formal community nomination to a UN body is achievable within the existing UN architecture. Extending this principle to bodies examining situations of genocide and ethnic persecution against specific non-indigenous communities is a logical and defensible extension. It required decades of indigenous advocacy to create the UNPFII. The argument for applying the principle in the Hazara context is that the IIMAA - a newly established mechanism with composition still being determined - represents an opportunity to build community consultation in from the outset rather than retrofit it after the fact.

The World Uyghur Congress model. The World Uyghur Congress, established in 2004 in Munich, coordinates more than 34 Uyghur organizations across more than 20 countries with democratically elected leadership. It is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. It delivers oral statements in HRC plenary sessions, submits written reports, organizes side events, and has built two decades of sustained institutional relationships with member states and Special Procedures. This is not ECOSOC consultative status in the formal sense, but it is organized, consistent, and recognized engagement that gives Uyghur civil society a sustained voice in the HRC system rather than an episodic one.

The existing Hazara organizations are not federated under a single umbrella structure with formal democratic governance and sustained HRC engagement protocols. The infrastructure for that kind of federation exists - the World Hazara Council and other organizations represent its constituent parts. The WUC model suggests that building and formalizing that umbrella structure, and then pursuing ECOSOC consultative status through it, is a realistic pathway. The Uyghur case also demonstrates that sustained institutional engagement builds cumulative credibility: the WUC's ability to shape HRC proceedings in 2025 reflects 20 years of consistent presence, not a single well-timed intervention.

The Rohingya precedent and its limits. The Rohingya case is frequently cited as a model, and it is instructive - but partly for what it illustrates about gaps rather than successes. The Advisory Commission on Rakhine State in 2016-2017 was an instrument of the Myanmar government. Rohingya representatives were not included on it. The subsequent UN Fact-Finding Mission and the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar were not created because Rohingya civil society held formal standing - they were created through state-level political action in the HRC. What Rohingya civil society has achieved since is meaningful: Rohingya advocates including Noor Azizah addressed the HRC in 2025 on conditions for safe voluntary return. But this engagement came after the mechanism existed, not in shaping what it would be.

The lesson for the Hazara case is not to replicate the sequence. The IIMAA is newly established. Hazara organizations have the opportunity - which Rohingya civil society did not have in 2018 - to push for formal consultation structures before the mechanism's operational practices are set.

The IIMAA Window

The resolution establishing the IIMAA, adopted October 6, 2025, is the most time-sensitive concrete opportunity in this article. The mechanism was modeled on UNITAD and the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar. Both of those mechanisms developed community consultation processes - but the structure of those processes was not specified in the founding resolutions. They were worked out in the mechanisms' early operational phases. The IIMAA is in that phase now.

The specific issue is mandate language on Hazara genocide specificity. The October 2025 resolution gives the IIMAA a broad mandate over "international crimes and the most serious violations of international law" committed in Afghanistan. This is the right mandate scope. It is also a mandate that could be operationalized in ways that disaggregate the Hazara case with precision, or ways that submerge it in aggregate Afghanistan reporting.

The New Lines Institute's legal analysis, produced by more than 12 international law experts, concluded that Taliban and IS-KP actions against Hazaras meet the legal definition of genocide under the 1948 Convention. Bennett's Special Rapporteur reports document an "institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity, and exclusion." The evidence base for treating the Hazara case as a genocide investigation - not merely a human rights monitoring matter - exists. Whether the IIMAA's evidence collection and file preparation processes treat it as such depends on who shapes those processes in the mechanism's first operational year.

Hazara civil society organizations have the strongest possible argument for formal consultation in this specific context: they have the community knowledge, the documentation networks, and the ground-level information that the mechanism cannot generate from Geneva or New York. Bennett has been barred from Afghanistan since August 2024. The IIMAA will face the same access constraints. The organizations with verified sources inside Afghanistan - in Daykundi, Bamyan, Ghazni, Uruzgan - are Hazara civil society organizations. Making that case directly to the IIMAA's leadership, as organizations seeking formal advisory engagement rather than as external advocates, is the correct approach and the timely one.

The Argument, Plainly

Hazara communities are among the most extensively documented subjects in the UN human rights system. Bennett's reports, UNAMA's attack tracking database, the New Lines Institute's genocide analysis, and UNHCR's refugee guidance all contain detailed Hazara-specific material. The documentation problem has been substantially addressed by the work of many organizations over four years.

The participation problem has not been addressed at all.

The pathway forward has two elements. The first is ECOSOC consultative status for Hazara civil society organizations - the foundational credential that converts advocacy access into formal standing in the UN system. The second is a formal Hazara consultation structure in the IIMAA - the most immediate and consequential opportunity available, given the mechanism's composition is not yet set and its operational practices are not yet fixed.

Neither requires a new UN resolution. Neither requires a sympathetic government to champion a new body. Both require Hazara civil society organizations to pursue what the UN system already makes available. The WUC pursued ECOSOC-adjacent standing and sustained HRC engagement over two decades. The Hazara organizations have the foundation to do the same. The IIMAA window is the reason to start now.

The international community has spent four years producing reports about what is happening to Hazaras. It is past time that Hazaras were in the room where those reports are shaped.

Primary Sources