IRF 2026 Plenary Speech - Nuri Kino
- ADFA
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
At the IRF Summit 2026 in Washington, D.C., ADFA’s founder Nuri Kino addressed more than 1,700 participants from 87 countries during the plenary session:
“Fleeing for Faith – Protecting Freedom of Belief for People on the Move.”
Watch the full speech and read the complete transcript here.
"I was abducted when I was three. My parents then made the courageous decision to flee the country. When I was five, my sister and I also arrived in Germany, and for the first couple of months, we lived in a car garage.
My life has been full of trauma, but also of fighting spirit and love—love for our fellow human
beings. When I was eight, in Sweden, my mother taught my sister and me to work as professional cleaners. We helped her clean nightclubs and restaurants at night, and delivered newspapers early in the mornings. We needed every penny to send money back home and help family members and relatives escape persecution, and start a new life in our new home country.
This is far from a unique or particularly harsh refugee story.
Today, I wear black for all the children who, at this very moment, are forced to flee—to survive. I also wear it for my fellow Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people, who are scattered around the world; for Armenians; for those in Iran, those in Ukraine, for minorities and indigenous peoples in Syria; for Christians in Nigeria; and for all other persecuted children, no matter ethnicity or religion.
I have carefully considered which of the hundreds—if not thousands—of refugee children I should mention today. These are children I have met across several continents and countries: children exploited by pedophile networks, children who drowned while fleeing, children left physically and psychologically scarred by war and persecution. They are all worthy of being remembered. I carry faces, names, and tragic destinies with me.
I was going to tell you the story of the boy I met in Beirut, who fled Nineveh in Iraq. He had burn scars all over his face and arms—he had tried to stop his mother from being burned alive after terrorists set her on fire. He could not. She died.
But then I realized that happened more than ten years ago.
Instead, today I have chosen a recent case—one that broke my heart. It is a case my organization is fighting for right now, here in Sweden.
On December 14, 2025, a church leader called me from a small city. She was devastated. A 19-year-old Iraqi Christian boy had been detained by the Swedish police, at his high school, and was about to be forcibly deported to Iraq.
Matyas was nine years old when his father climbed to the roof of their home in Nineveh, Iraq—where families often sleep during the summer—and told them it was time to flee. ISIS was about to take over their city. The escape was dramatic.
Two years later, they arrived in Sweden and began building a new life. This year marks ten years since they came here. Matyas is now one of the top students in his high school—loved and respected by his teachers and classmates. And yet, today, he sits in a detention center.
Christians in Iraq are considered second-class citizens. Despite having survived crimes against humanity and war crimes, they do not have equal rights under the constitution.
Last week, new guidance was issued by the EU Agency for Asylum. According to these guidelines, asylum seekers with links to ISIS may be granted protection in the absence of individual evidence of war crimes. At the same time, Christian asylum seekers from Iraq and Syria are being deported, based on claims that persecution no longer exists.Asylum systems should be thoroughly reviewed. Independent audits are needed to assess the role of subjective judgment and inadequate knowledge in asylum decisions. Given the limited time, I urge you to read my Op-Ed in Newsweek from yesterday.
My suggestion is that we implement a new system, based on AI-supported fact-finding tools under strict human oversight, where everyone has the same opportunity to be granted asylum."
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