Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network has joined Palestinian and regional organizations in presenting a joint submission to the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Mr. Michael Lynk.
HIC-HLRN contributed to the report with Palestinian human rights organizations and HIC Members Al-Haq and Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, as well as Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. Responding to the Special Rapporteur’s call for inputs, the 62-page submission details the continued failure to ensure justice and accountability, and an end to Israeli impunity, for widespread and systematic human rights violations and international crimes committed against the Palestinian people, including the crimes of population transfer and apartheid. This joint submission comes ahead of the Rapporteur’s presentation of his report on accountability to the United Nations General Assembly in October 2020.
The comprehensive report also focuses on third State responsibility and extraterritorial obligations to take effective measures to bring an end to the illegal situation. The CSOs point out the failure of States to cooperate, through the United Nations and other international and regional organisations to end Israeli impunity, the failures thus far of international justice and corporate accountability in Palestine, and the dangers of the continuation and further entrenchment of Israel’s pervasive impunity.
In light of these failures, the report lays out various means available to states by which to close the impunity gap, such as the activation of universal jurisdiction mechanisms by third States, support for a full, thorough, and comprehensive criminal investigation by the International Criminal Court into the Situation in the State of Palestine and such specific cases as the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara flotilla, regulating private-sector actors identified in the UN Database on enterprises cooperating with illegal Israeli settler colonies, and upholding the international law prohibition against recognition of, or cooperation with the illegal situation.
Photo: Prof. Michael Lynk addressing the UN Human Rights Council. Source: UN.
