Annexation is a flagrant violation
of international law, says UN human rights expert
GENEVA (20 June 2019) - Recent
statements by senior Israeli political leaders and US diplomats in support of
the annexation of parts or all of the occupied West Bank by Israel fly in the
face of the absolute prohibition against the annexation of occupied territories,
a UN human rights expert said today.
“International law is very clear:
annexation and territorial conquest are forbidden by the Charter of the United
Nations,” said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of
human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. “The Security
Council, beginning with Resolution 242 in November 1967, has expressly affirmed
the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war or force on eight
occasions, most recently in 2016.”
This reflects the seminal
observation of Lassa Oppenheim, a renowned scholar of international law, who
wrote in 1917, amidst the bloodbath of the First World War, that: “There is not
an atom of sovereignty in the authority of the occupying power.”
Since the Second World War, the
nations of the world have accepted that allowing war and conquest to remain a
legitimate policy of modern statecraft is folly, Lynk said. “Without this
absolute prohibition, acquisitive states would have a strong incentive to
obfuscate the origins of the territorial acquisition, leading us backwards to
the days when borders were impediments to overcome, rather than frontiers to
respect.”
The Special Rapporteur observed
that the absolute prohibition against annexation applies whether the occupied
territory was acquired through a war of aggression or a defensive war.
“While annexation has not
disappeared from the modern world, this strict prohibition in international law
has had a considerable dampening effect,” said Lynk. He noted that the
instances of annexation since 1948 have significantly declined, compared to the
120 years before the Second World War. “The power of the prohibition is that
annexations in the modern world, when they do happen, are rarely recognized by
other nations. International law, when married to international resolve,
works.”
The Special Rapporteur called upon
the international community to state now, clearly and comprehensively, that any
further de jure annexations of occupied Palestinian territory by Israel will be
condemned and will not be recognized. He also requested the international
community to access its menu of international remedies and countermeasures, and
to demand accountability from Israel with respect to its settlement enterprise
and its current and planned annexation measures.
“International criticism, absent
any consequences, can no longer be justified in the current circumstances,”
said Lynk “If annexation proceeds, the chances for a genuine and just peace in
the foreseeable future will have gone from implausible to unimaginable.”
ENDS
Mr. Michael Lynk was designated by
the UN Human Rights Council in 2016 as the Special Rapporteur on the situation
of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. The mandate
was originally established in 1993 by the then UN Commission on Human Rights.
Professor Lynk is Associate Professor of Law at Western University in London,
Ontario, where he teaches labour law, constitutional law and human rights law.
Before becoming an academic, he practiced labour law and refugee law for a
decade in Ottawa and Toronto. He also worked for the United Nations on human
rights and refugee issues in Jerusalem.
The Special Rapporteurs are part of
what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special
Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights
system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and
monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or
thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a
voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their
work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in
their individual capacity.
UN Human Rights, Country Page:
Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel
For more information and media
requests, please contact Nathalie Migeotte (+41 (0) 22 917 9877 /
nmigeotte@ohchr.org) and Katharine Marshall (+41 (0) 22 917 9695 /
kmarshall@ohchr.org)
For media inquiries related to
other UN independent experts please contact
Jeremy Laurence, UN Human Rights –
Media Unit (+41 22 917 9383
jlaurence@ohchr.org
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