Press Releases

BADIL’s Engagement in the 2017 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights
BADIL’s Engagement in the 2017 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights
PR/EN/281117/56

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights participated in the sixth annual UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, which took place 27-29 November 2017 in Geneva.
 
BADIL took part in a panel discussion during the Forum on “Private Corporations and Violations of Palestinian Human Rights” addressing the issue of the legality of trade with Israeli colonies with a specific focus on the EU. The intervention was titled Room for Improvement: Weaknesses and Potential of the EU Labeling Guidelines for Israeli Settlement Products. The panel was shared with Al-Haq, Diakonia and Who Profits, covering issues such as the impact of the colonial enterprise on Palestinian lives and livelihoods, corporate involvement in unlawful natural resource exploitation, and the complicity of digital tourism corporations in violations of international law, respectively.
 
BADIL concluded its intervention by calling on the EU to ban all imports from and exports to Israeli colonies, and more generally, to adopt a rights-based approach in all its regulations, directives and activities, including trade. It also reminded individual states that they have the legal obligation to respect the duty of non-recognition if the central authority for trade (the European Commission) does not comply. Finally, it called on EU member states and the EU itself to pressure Israel to clearly distinguish between goods produced in colonies and those produced in Israel, and ensure compliance with regulations.
 
BADIL will soon release a paper on the EU’s trade policy with Israeli colonies, scheduled to be published in late December 2017.
 
BADIL attended several sessions during the Forum covering a wide variety of issues, including The right to information - Access to remedy for workers and communities affected by toxic waste, How to integrate voices of the affected communities?, Addressing interference in access to justice: perspectives from the ground, The State-business nexus and access to remedy, Effectiveness of judicial remedy – from paper to practice, among others.
 

For more information on the work of BADIL on corporate complicity, please have a look at:
-Pursuing Accountability for Corporate Complicity in Population Transfer in Palestine (December 2015)
-Corporate Complicity in Violations of International Law in Palestine (December 2014)