HIC’s Housing and Land Right Network formally has submitted commentary on Israel’s current periodic report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) on that state party’s implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The current periodic review covers the period since Israel’s third periodic CESCR treaty review in 2014.

The HIC-HLRN report to the 64th CESCR Pre-Sessional Working Group (11–15 March 2019) covers “Israel’s Implementation of Covenant Rights and Obligations Related to Habitat.” It provides a frame for coherence in the CESCR review of Israel, recall the consistency of CESCR questions and observation, without a corresponding state party effort to resolve breaches and shortcomings. Although the 2019 review covers the last five years of implementation of the Covenant, it builds on a longer pattern of of continuous violation, particularly against the indigenous Palestinian people within the state`s jurisdiction and territory of effective control. Moreover, many of these involve grave breaches of international humanitarian and criminal law norms.

HIC-HLRN`s submission follows the order and method embodied in the Covenant, first to establish the relevant over-riding principles to the particular ESC human rights. It then focuses on the human rights related to habitat rights in Article 11 (housing, land, food, living conditions) but through the lens of the Covenant`s Over-riding Principles of self-determination and nondiscrimination.

This review then turns to interim developments inside the Green Line (1949 Armistice Lines) and in the oPt. It reviews recent legislation through the lens of the Covenant and, in light of both the continuous past and recent development, raises several issues and questions for the state party in its upcoming review.

Download the HIC-HLRN submission

Download HIC-HLRN’s cover letter to CESCR