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BADIL’s Advocacy Interventions at the 44th Session of the UNHRC
BADIL’s Advocacy Interventions at the 44th Session of the UNHRC

PR/EN/140720/33

BADIL’s interventions in the 44th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)  from 30 June – 20 July 2020 included two individual written statements, one joint written and two oral statements.
 

BADIL submitted one written and one oral statement on “Impeding the Palestinian People’s Rights through Racist and Discriminatory Policies and Practices of Segregation, Fragmentation and Isolation,” under item 9. The statements highlight how Israel has, since its creation, developed a comprehensive set of racist and discriminatory policies and practices to deny the Palestinian people from their lands and tighten its control and oppression of the Palestinian people. All aspects of Palestinian life is controlled by Israel, whether through education, health, housing, civil and criminal justice, employment, industry and agriculture or transportation infrastructure. These policies and practices notably translate into discriminatory and illegal mechanisms of segregation, fragmentation and isolation that aim at severing the cohesion of the Palestinian people, their special connection to their lands, denying them their right to self-determination and exposing them to an institutionalized system of apartheid.
 

The second written and oral statement was on “US President Trump’s Vision: Marginalizing Palestinian Refugee and IDP Rights and Deviating from International Law,” under item 7. The statements highlight how the US’ “Peace and Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People” (hereinafter, the Vision) sets out to deny Palestinian refugees and IDPs their right to just and durable solutions, namely voluntary repatriation, as well as their right to reparations (i.e. right of return, property restitution, and compensation). Similar to Israeli strategy, the Vision aims to terminate the Palestinian refugee question and to erode the rights of displaced Palestinians.
 

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), Al-Haq, and BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights submitted a joint written statement calling on third States, including Member States of the Council, to abide by their responsibility to cooperate to bring Israel’s serious breaches of international law to an end and to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. The statement highlighted the Israeli government’s plan to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank starting 1 July 2020, which is in violation of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force, following decades of unchallenged de facto and de jure annexation