- Al-Haq, jointly with partners, submitted four written submissions ahead of the upcoming 55th regular session of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (the Council), which will be held between 26 February and 5 April 2024. Addressing the Council under different agenda items, the four submissions underlined Israel’s ongoing genocide and the escalation of Israeli military attacks in the West Bank, especially on refugee camps; the importance of annually updating the UN database of businesses operating within Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise; the worrying escalation in arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture of Palestinians; and Israel’s targeting of Palestinian memory, identity and cultural heritage.
- Overall, the written submissions urged the Council and its Member States to uphold their legal obligations to prevent, end, and refrain from aiding or assisting the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and urgently urge Israel to immediately and unconditionally allow the unimpeded access of fuel, water, food and humanitarian aid, including medical supplies, into the Gaza Strip, as mandated by the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures order. Furthermore, the submissions called for international justice and accountability for Israel’s international crimes, including by recognising and taking effective measures to dismantle Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime imposed over the Palestinian people as a whole; supporting and enabling the exercise of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people and the return of Palestinian refugees to their ancestral land and homes; and reconstituting the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid.
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