Agenda Item:7 - human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories A/HRC/46/63, A/HRC/46/64, A/HRC/46/65

General Debate

Statement by: International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD)

Delivered by Laura Calderón Pachón / GICJ

18 March 2021

Thank you, President,

We welcome the High Commissioner’s reports on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and we share her concern with regards to the expansion of the Israeli activity’s settlements and their violations of the rights of Palestinian people, as well as the absence of accountability for all the violations in the OPT.

Palestinian people are under grave human rights violations including violations to the right of life, physical integrity, discrimination, gender-based violence against women and girls, freedom of movement, arbitrary detentions, tortures and ill treatments. EAFORD and the Geneva International Centre for Justice urge the Council to do all in its mandate to stop all these violations and protect the rights of the Palestinian people.

Further, the invalid decision of Israel to impose law, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan amounts to a war crime that can possibly involve individual criminal responsibility of those involved. Additionally, international bodies have confirmed the illegality of Israeli settlements in the OPT and the occupied Syrian Golan assuring it lacks international legal effect and demanded Israel to rescind forthwith its decision.

We are looking forward to the investigation by the International Criminal Court over war crimes committed. We urge all States cooperation as justice and accountability must be ensured and the Palestinian people’s rights must be restored.

Thank you, President

Justice, Human rights, Geneva, geneva4justice, GICJ, Geneva International Centre For Justice