Any peace plan for Israel and
Palestine will fail without framework of international law: UN expert
GENEVA (28 June 2019) ‑ The international community must
insist that any proposal for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and
the just and durable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to be
firmly anchored in human rights and international law, a UN expert said.
“Without the framework of
international law, any peace plan, including the forthcoming proposal from the
United States, will crash upon the shoals of political realism,” said Michael
Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the
Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.
“Prior plans for Middle East peace
over the past five decades have all failed, in large part because they did not
seriously insist upon a rights-based approach to peace between Israelis and
Palestinians,” Lynk said after a two-day workshop in Bahrain focusing on the
economic aspects of a possible peace plan.
The Special Rapporteur said that
international law – built upon the principles of humanitarian protection, human
rights, equality and justice – has been expressed in hundreds of United Nations
resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Animating these resolutions is the
vision that the law, when purposively applied, can offset a lopsided power
relationship between two parties and ensure that all are equal before the law,”
he said. “What matters is not the might of one’s army or economy, but the
grounding of one’s vision in recognised rights and freedoms.”
The Special Rapporteur said that
six principles were particularly central to the peace process:
Human rights. Palestinians and Israelis are entitled to the
full range of individual and collective human rights enshrined in international
law, including the rights to equality, movement, expression and association, as
well as freedom from discrimination.
Self-determination. This can mean
that each is entitled to their own state within the boundaries of Mandate
Palestine, or it can mean a voluntary agreement to live together within a
common form of government. The present international consensus supports a
two-state solution, which requires a viable, contiguous and fully sovereign
Palestinian state, based on the June 1967 boundaries, with East Jerusalem as
its capital, and a meaningful transportation link between the West Bank and
Gaza.
Annexation. Israel annexed East
Jerusalem in two stages, in 1967 and 1980, condemned by the United Nations as
unlawful on numerous occasions. Negotiations on the Jerusalem conundrum must
start with the premise that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory.
Settlements. The 240 Israeli
settlements across East Jerusalem and the West Bank are a ‘flagrant violation’
of international law, according to the United Nations Security Council. They
are also a primary source of systemic human rights violations. The settlements
would have to be removed, both to comply with international law and to enable a
viable and sovereign Palestinian state to emerge.
Palestinian Refugees. International
law guarantees refugees the right to select among three choices: (i) the right
to return home; (ii) the right to integrate in their land of asylum; or (iii)
the right to resettle in a third country. Palestinian refugees from the 1947-9
and 1967 wars, and their descendants, who wish to return to their homeland are
entitled to do so, a right that the UN General Assembly has endorsed over seven
decades.
Security. Both Israelis and
Palestinians have the right to live in security and peace, free from alien
rule, terrorism and threats to their well-being, such as blockades, rockets and
missiles.
Lynk reiterated that these
principles are the litmus test to judge the possibilities of success of the
forthcoming American peace plan. “If the peace plan fails to integrate these
principles, it will inevitably suffer the same fate as its predecessors and
leave the conflict more entrenched and more bereft of hope than ever,” he
said.
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
Follow news related to the UN’s
independent human rights experts on Twitter @UN_SPExperts.
Concerned about the world we live
in? Then STAND UP for someone’s rights today.
#Standup4humanrights
Nema komentara:
Objavi komentar