GENEVA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th October, 2019) The opposition part of the Syrian Constitutional Committee (SCC) has compiled a draft text of the future constitution that would ensure equal rights of all people in Syria, including the Kurds and women, Firas Khalidi, a SCC member and head of the Cairo platform delegation of the Syrian opposition, told Sputnik on Tuesday.
"We have been working for 20 months, we had a lot of discussions, and now we have one document. We had to put together views of people with very different political background - somebody wants presidential republic, somebody wants parliamentary, somebody mixed," Khalidi said.
When drafting the constitution, Khalidi said his team cared for it to cover all of Syria.
When asked whether it meant the Kurds and women as well, he replied "We have had the discussions on all that. And when I say fair enough to cover all Syria, I mean we take care to be democratic. We take care about human rights, women rights, minorities, everyone. We want equal rights for Syrians, we will be all one."
The resolution of the conflict in Syria, in its ninth year now, has been promoted within various mechanisms, including the so-called Astana talks under the mediation of Russia, Iran and Turkey which resulted in a landmark ceasefire agreement and establishment of four de-escalation zones. The initial agreement to form the Constitutional Committee was reached during the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in January 2018 in the Russian city of Sochi.
The 150-member SCC with equal representation of the Syrian government, opposition and civil society will be launched on Wednesday. It has a smaller committee to it consisting of 45 people � 15 from each of the three represented groups � that will prepare constitutional initiatives, while the larger body will be responsible for adopting them.
