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Category: United Nations

  • Transnational Corporations Provoke a Single Scream of Horror that Runs through the Vertebrae of the World

    Quentin Matsys (The Netherlands), The Tax Collectors, c. 1525–1530.

    Quentin Matsys (The Netherlands), The Tax Collectors, c. 1525–1530.

    Within the United Nations, there is a little-known debate about the status of global tax regulation. In August 2023, UN Secretary-General António Guterres released a draft document called ‘Promotion of Inclusive and Effective International Tax Cooperation at the United Nations’. This document comes out of a long debate led by the Global South about the unregulated behaviour of transnational corporations (especially the ways in which they avoid taxation) and about the fact that discussions regarding regulations have been dominated by Global North countries (notably those in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, an intergovernmental platform largely made up of the richest countries in the world). In October of last year, the government of Nigeria spearheaded a resolution in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) that advocated for an international tax cooperation treaty and proposed that the UN take over jurisdiction of the debate about tax regulation. In December 2022, the UNGA passed the resolution, which asked Guterres to move forward with a report on the topic and develop a new international tax agenda.

    Guterres’s August 2023 report affirmed the need for an ‘inclusive and effective’ tax treaty, arguing that the two-pillar solution laid out in the OECD and G20’s Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting is insufficient. The second pillar in this solution discusses the development of a global minimum effective tax on ‘excess profits’. However, this tax would be levied on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis, which would open the entire process to chaos. Furthermore, even though the OECD-G20 policy has been developed by a minority of countries, it is intended to become the global norm for all countries. Even when the OECD and G20 ask for inputs from other countries, Guterres writes, ‘many of those countries find that there are significant barriers to meaningful engagement in agenda-setting and decision making’. This, Guterres said, is unjust. The UN should be the site where a new international taxation treaty is created – not a site for arbitrary bodies such as the OECD and the G20 to impose their agendas.

    Arturo Rivera (Mexico), El Encuentro (‘The Meeting’), 2016.

    Arturo Rivera (Mexico), El Encuentro (‘The Meeting’), 2016.

    To be fair, the OECD has developed a number of important proposals, including a global tax deal in 2021 that was agreed upon by 136 countries. However, due to pressure from transnational corporations (and the United States government), the implementation of this agreement was delayed until 2026. Nonetheless, leaks from illicit tax havens (such as the Paradise Papers, beginning in 2017, and the Luxembourg Leaks, beginning in 2014) brought the issue of regulating of financial flows to the fore, pressuring the OECD and the G20 to act on its promises. An outcome statement from the OECD in July 2023 put the issue back on the table, with the two-pillar tax regime coming into effect in 2024. This regime institutes a global tax of at least 15% on transnational corporations’ profits that exceed €750 million in each jurisdiction. Even here, the regulations offer transnational corporations a safe harbour until June 2028 through practices such as a simplified effective tax rate, a routine profits test, and a de minimis test – all instruments that require some accounting training to properly understand. In other words, the system designed to regulate transnational corporations merely creates business opportunities for global accounting firms that help these companies continue to shield their profits. In 2022, the main four accounting firms earned between $34 and $60 billion each in revenues, and Deloitte alone earned $64.9 billion in 2023 (a 9.3% increase since last year).

    The Tax Justice Network’s annual report, published in July 2023, noted that the entire debate over taxes ‘boils down to one number: $4.8 trillion. That is how much tax we estimate wealthy corporations and individuals will avoid and evade over the next decade under the current direction of OECD tax leadership’. The data shows that ‘higher income countries lose the greatest amounts of revenue in absolute terms and also that they are responsible for the greatest share of the problem, globally’. The top ten contributors to global tax theft are, in descending order, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Cayman Islands, Saudi Arabia, Luxembourg, Bermuda, the United States, Singapore, Ireland, and Hong Kong (it is worth noting that both the Cayman Islands and Bermuda are British territories). Lower income countries, however, ‘incur the most intense losses, losing by far the greatest share of their current tax revenues or public spending needs’. For instance, as the OECD report Tax Transparency in Africa 2023 shows, the continent loses up to $88 billion each year due to illicit financial flows. In its report, the Tax Justice Network issued a clarion call:

    Countries have a choice to make: forfeit the money now, and with it our future, to the wealthiest handful of people in the world, or claim it, and with it a future where the power of the wealthiest corporations and billionaires, like the kings and barons before them, is reined in by the march of democracy. A future where tax is our most powerful tool for addressing the challenges our societies face and for building a fairer, greener, and more inclusive world.

    Wifredo Lam (Cuba), El Tercer Mundo, 1965–1966.

    Wifredo Lam (Cuba), El Tercer Mundo, 1965–1966.

    In 1975, the United Nations established the Information and Research Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC). Two interconnected events led to its inception: first, the UNGA’s passage of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974, and second, the coup against the Popular Unity government of Chilean President Salvador Allende in September 1973. By 1972, Allende had taken leadership of the process to create the NIEO to allow countries such as Chile sovereignty over their raw materials. Allende spoke forcefully on these issues at the UNCTAD III meeting in Santiago in April 1972 and at the UNGA in December 1972 (which we discuss in more depth in our dossier The Coup Against the Third World: Chile, 1973). The coup against Allende strengthened the will in the Third World to oversee and regulate transnational corporations such as the former telecommunications giant International Telegraph and Telephone Company (ITT) and copper firm Anaconda, both of which played a decisive role in the coup in Chile. The UNCTC was, therefore, the child of both the NIEO and the coup.

    The UNCTC’s mission was straightforward: build an information system about the activities of transnational corporations, create technical assistance programmes that help Third World governments negotiate with these firms, and establish a code of conduct that these firms would need to abide by with respect to their international activities. The UNCTC, with thirty-three employees, did not begin its work until 1977. From the start, it found itself under pressure levied by the International Chamber of Commerce as well as various US-based think tanks, which lobbied the US government to prevent it from functioning.

    Nonetheless, in its fifteen years of existence, UNCTC staff produced 265 documents that covered areas such as bilateral investment treaties and the social impact of transnational corporations. The UNCTC’s work was slowly inching toward creating a code of conduct for transnational firms, which would have hampered the ability of these firms to create a system of financial plunder through illicit financial flows (including transfer pricing and remittance of profits). In 1987, the UNGA urged the UNCTC to finalise the code of conduct and hold a special session to discuss the code.

    That same year, the Heritage Foundation, based in the US, argued that the UNCTC had a ‘deliberate anti-West and anti-free enterprise motive’. In March 1991, the US State Department sent a démarche to its embassies to lobby against the code of conduct, which it saw as a ‘relic of another era, when foreign direct investment was looked upon with considerable concern’. The session to finalise the code of conduct never took place. The US pushed the incoming UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to abolish the UNCTC, which he did as part of a broader UN reform agenda. This was the sunset of tax regulation. When the OECD picked up the mantle, it did so almost to ensure that a patina of liberalism would remain in place while transnational corporations operated in a largely lawless global environment.

    In 1976, the radical Peruvian poet Magda Portal (1900–1989) wrote ‘A Poem for Ernesto Cardenal’ (a Nicaraguan poet). The poem acknowledged that inequality and misery had been in our towns for centuries, but that what the ‘transnational corporations and their henchmen’ are doing is worse. As she wrote:

    On this side of America, you can feel the nauseating and toxic breath of those who only want our mines, our oil, our gold, and our food.
    …
    Never was more torment spread over the sleepless earth.
    It was not more execrable to continue living without shouting at the top of
    our lungs in a howl, the protest, the rejection, the demand for
    justice. To whom?

    How can we continue living like this on a daily basis,
    ruminating on food, loving and enjoying life when
    hundreds of thousands of condemned people on
    Earth are drowning in their own blood? And in Black Africa, with its apartheid
    and its Sowetos, and in Namibia and Rhodesia, and in Asia,
    in Lebanon and in Northern Ireland, on the rack
    of the executed? Can we continue living like this
    when a single scream of horror runs through
    the vertebrae of the world?

    The post Transnational Corporations Provoke a Single Scream of Horror that Runs through the Vertebrae of the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UN anti-torture watchdog urges Australia to reduce ‘extraordinary’ number of prisoners on remand

    Report also calls for spit hoods to be banned and strip searches to be limited after UN visit last year

    The United Nations’ anti-torture watchdog has urged Australia to curb the extraordinary number of people awaiting trial or sentencing in jails and ban the use of spit hoods.

    A report, released by the UN subcommittee on the prevention of torture (SPT) this week, also called for the limiting of routine strip-searches. It comes after the body visited Australia in October last year but terminated the visit after it was prevented from entering detention facilities in New South Wales and Queensland.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Palestinians’ Superior Right to Self-defence is Ignored, as Usual

    The UK’s leaders are tying themselves in knots in their desperate attempt to defend the indefensible.

    In a debate on Israel and Palestine in Parliament last week, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs Leo Docherty got up and said:

    There is no scenario in which Hamas can be allowed to control Gaza again. That is why we are not calling for a general ceasefire, which would allow Hamas to regroup and entrench their position. I am pleased to say that the government’s position is shared by the Opposition Front Bench. Instead, we are focused on urging respect for international law…

    What a fatuous statement. If the UK government had any concern for international law Israel would not have been allowed to breach it continuous and with impunity for the last 75 years and the horrendous slaughter we’ve all been watching would never have happened.

    As a foreign office minister, Docherty should be aware that Hamas is the legitimate government in Gaza, having won the last election fair and square. Israel, the US and UK might not like the result but that’s beside the point. What Docherty and his colleagues are contemplating is coercive regime change, which is hardly in line with international law or Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

    Meanwhile, David Cameron, hurriedly parachuted in from outside Parliament as our new Foreign Secretary and breaching all democratic niceties, was telling everyone that there can be no resolution to the conflict in the Middle East if Hamas is still “armed to the teeth” and capable of attacking Israel. And he defended the UK’s decision to abstain on the UN vote for a Gaza ceasefire on the grounds that the UN was calling for an immediate armistice plus a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and “those two things don’t go together… If you have an immediate ceasefire but Hamas [is] still armed to the teeth, launching rockets into Israel, wanting to repeat 7 October, you’ll never have a two-state solution.

    “Long-term security I think requires there to be a state for Palestine as well,” he said, sounding wonderfully generous, adding that he did not agree with “disappointing” comments made by Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, on Wednesday 13 December that Tel Aviv would not back a two-state solution.

    Had he been paying attention Cameron would know that the apartheid regime, from its very inception in 1948, has refused to contemplate the existence of a Palestinian state. That would thwart Israel’s ambition to establish sovereignty over the entire territory “from the river to the sea”, which is the express aim of Hotovely’s (and Netanyahu’s) vile party, Likud.

    Britain, on the other hand, promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continues to sidestep the issue while forever prattling on about a two-state solution.

    Cameron is also saying that Israel “must take stronger action to stop settler violence and hold the perpetrators accountable”. But his lordship should be telling Israel to do much more than that. To comply with international law Israel must remove its settlers and its thuggish military from the West Bank altogether, remembering that the West Bank includes East Jerusalem (and the Old City) and Gaza.

    What needs eliminating is the threat posed by Israel

    As I write, Cameron is changing tack slightly and now calling for a “sustainable” ceasefire because it has dawned on him that “too many civilians have been killed” by Israel. A joint article in the Sunday Times by him and German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock comes amid growing pressure on Israel over its methods in the war on Gaza. It states: “We do not believe that calling right now for a general and immediate ceasefire, hoping it somehow becomes permanent, is the way forward. It ignores why Israel is forced to defend itself: Hamas barbarically attacked Israel and still fires rockets to kill Israeli citizens every day.”

    The usual misinformation. They ignore why the Palestinians are compelled to defend themselves, i.e. the brutal and murderous decades-long illegal occupation by Israel using military force.

    “Hamas must lay down its arms,” say Cameron and Baerbock. And in a tepid warning to Israel, the two foreign ministers say: “Israel has the right to defend itself but, in doing so, it must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel will not win this war if its operations destroy the prospect of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. They have a right to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas.”

    But do they really? Where in international law does it say that an illegal occupier (such as Israel) can claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it illegally occupies?

    Under UN Resolution 37/43, however, the Palestinians, as victims of illegal military occupation, have an unquestionable right to eliminate the threat posed by Israel in their struggle for “liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.

    Resolution 37/43 also condemns “the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East, which constitute an obstacle to the achievement of self-determination and independence by the Palestinian people and a threat to peace and stability in the region”.

    The Palestinians’ right to armed struggle in self-defence is also confirmed in UN Resolution 3246, which calls for all States to recognise the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation and to offer them moral, material and other forms of assistance in their struggle to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

    Resolution 3246 reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle, and demands full respect for the basic human rights of all individuals detained or imprisoned as a result of their struggle for self-determination and independence, and strict respect for article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under which no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

    There’s no sign that Cameron and the rest of the UK government understand any of this.

    And what right does the UK have to prevent Palestinians choosing their own government? None. The correct way to “eliminate the threat posed by Hamas” is to require Israel to end its occupation.

    International law trampled to suit Israeli plans for domination

    It is ludicrous to keep repeating that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has made that abundantly clear. Western governments and Western Christendom seem paralysed. The presumption must be that Biden and Cameron (both self-proclaimed Zionists, as were most of their predecessors) are overly sympathetic towards Israel and happy to trample international law to ensure the success of the apartheid regime’s criminal enterprise.

    Many in the UK question why our parliamentarians are so concerned about the 1,200 Israeli dead following Hamas’s breakout attack and the 200-odd hostages when they couldn’t care less about the 10,651 Palestinians (including 656 women and 2,270 children) slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years before 7 October. Or the 7,200 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails, including 88 women and 250 children. Over 1,200 are held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial and denied due process.

    An authority on international law, Dr Ralph Wilde, has produced a legal opinion on the Israeli occupation which might be helpful in putting an end to Cameron’s & co’s claptrap.

    He points out that:

    • There’s no valid basis in international law for the occupation and it is an unlawful use of force, an aggression, and a violation on the part of Israel against the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. And aggression is a crime on an individual level for senior Israeli leaders. “As a result, the occupation is existentially illegal and must end immediately.”
    • What’s more, an end to the occupation cannot be delayed by Israel’s failure to agree to the adoption of a peace agreement or by the unreadiness of the Palestinian people, by ‘facts on the ground’, or by waiting for the approval of the UN, the Quartet, the White House, the British Foreign Office or anybody else. Every day the occupation continues is a breach of international law.
    • Palestinian people are treated in international law as a collective entity with rights, notably the right of self-determination and the right to freely choose whether or not to enter into international agreements. Palestine is what’s called a Self-determination Unit. The territory it covers is everything that is ‘not Israel’, legally, and includes Al-Quds/Jerusalem in its entirety, the rest of the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
    • Israel’s recognition and UN membership did not include sovereignty over any part of Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Palestinians also enjoy the right of external self-determination (i.e. freedom from external domination) which has been universally accepted and affirmed by states and UN institutions including the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the International Court of Justice.
    • And Palestine is a state in the international law sense because (a) there’s a presumption in favour of statehood for people with a right of external self-determination; and (b) a large majority (138) of the world’s states collectively recognized Palestinian statehood when the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’. This had the effect of establishing statehood.
    • External self-determination is a right to be free of any external domination, including occupation or other forms of non-sovereign territorial control which prevent the full exercise of that right. Such domination must end so that this right can be exercised.
    • The right operates and exists simply and exclusively by virtue of the Palestinian people being entitled to it. It is not something that depends on anyone else agreeing to it, such as Israel, the Quartet, the UN, other states, etc. It is a right; so there is no need for Palestinians to negotiate or compromise with Israelis as the price for ending their occupation.
    • Israel’s exercising control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, preventing the Palestinian people from full and effective self-governance, has for decades been a fundamental impediment to the realization of the right of self-determination which the Palestinian people are entitled to enjoy under international law. And there was no actual or imminent armed attack that justified the occupation as a means of self-defence prior to 7 October.
    • Furthermore, there is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.
    • Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force, over those areas of the West Bank.

    Advice to Messrs Sunak, Cameron and Docherty is surely to first get on the right side of international law – and human decency – and recognise Palestinian statehood without any more foot-dragging. Furthermore, to join with other states and tell Israel, firmly, that all cooperation, collaboration and favoured nation privileges are cancelled until the apartheid regime ends its illegal occupation, removes its squatters, lifts its siege, ceases interference with free movement and fulfils its obligations under the UN Charter and resolutions. And completes a probationary period demonstrating good behaviour before being welcomed back into the community of nations.

    Otherwise, what is international law worth? Our political leaders must realise that the British public don’t want a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wholesale destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and is as hateful, racist and disrespectful of human rights and norms as Israel has been for as long as most of us can remember.

    The post Palestinians’ Superior Right to Self-defence is Ignored, as Usual first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Threats and intimidation creating climate of fear at UN Cop events, say campaigners

    Indigenous campaigners, human rights defenders and climate activists say they are being silenced by fear of reprisals

    Incidents of harassment, surveillance, threats and intimidation are creating a climate of fear at UN events including the recent Cop28 climate conference in Dubai, experts have said.

    Indigenous campaigners, human rights defenders and environmental activists say they are increasingly afraid to speak out on urgent issues because of concerns about reprisals from governments or fossil fuel industries.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • New UN Security Council Ceasefire Resolution Delayed as US Aims to Weaken It

    The United Nations Security Council on Monday delayed an expected vote on a new Gaza cease-fire resolution as the U.S. worked to weaken the measure’s language, objecting to the proposed call for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Unnamed diplomats told The Associated Press that the wording will likely be changed to call for a “suspension” of hostilities or some other watered…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • If Jesus Was Born Today, Would He Be Under Rubble?

    As our hopes for an extended ceasefire are dashed and Israel’s war on Gaza is now in its third month, the dire conditions that Palestinians are living under — hunger, lack of drinking water, infectious diseases, displacement, and fear of dying from the nonstop bombardment — continue to worsen as the U.S. supports Israel’s relentless assault on the besieged, occupied and now largely houseless…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Getting Serious About Halting Israeli Genocide


    US representative to the UN Robert Wood raises his hand to veto a security council resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire. Photo credit: Charly Triballeau/AFP

    On Friday, December 8, the UN Security Council met under Article 99 for only the fourth time in the UN’s history. Article 99 is an emergency provision that allows the Secretary General to summon the Council to respond to a crisis that “threatens the maintenance of international peace and security.” The previous occasions were the Belgian invasion of the Congo in 1960, the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 and Lebanon’s Civil War in 1989.

    Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that he invoked Article 99 to demand an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza because “we are at a breaking point,” with a “high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza.” The United Arab Emirates drafted a ceasefire resolution that quickly garnered 97 cosponsors.

    The World Food Program has reported that Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation, with 9 out of 10 people spending entire days with no food. In the two days before Guterres invoked Article 99, Rafah was the only one of Gaza’s five districts to which the UN could deliver any aid at all.

    The Secretary General stressed that “The brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people… International humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity.”

    Mr. Guterres concluded, “The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss… The eyes of the world – and the eyes of history – are watching. It’s time to act.”

    UN members delivered eloquent, persuasive pleas for the immediate humanitarian ceasefire that the resolution called for, and the Council voted thirteen to one, with the U.K. abstaining, to approve the resolution. But the one vote against by the United States, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, killed the resolution, leaving the Council impotent to act as the Secretary General warned that it must.

    This was the sixteenth U.S. Security Council veto since 2000 – and fourteen of those vetoes have been to shield Israel and/or U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine from international action or accountability. While Russia and China have vetoed resolutions on a variety of issues around the world, from Myanmar to Venezuela, there is no parallel for the U.S.’s extraordinary use of its veto primarily to provide exceptional impunity under international law for one other country.

    The consequences of this veto could hardly be more serious. As Brazil’s UN Ambassador Sérgio França Danese told the Council, if the U.S. hadn’t vetoed a previous resolution that Brazil drafted on October 18, “thousands of lives would have been saved.” And as the Indonesian representative asked, “How many more must die before this relentless assault is halted? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000?”

    Following the previous U.S. veto of a ceasefire at the Security Council, the UN General Assembly took up the global call for a ceasefire, and the resolution, sponsored by Jordan, passed by 120 votes to 14, with 45 abstentions. The 12 small countries who voted with the United States and Israel represented less than 1% of the world’s population.

    The isolated diplomatic position in which the United States found itself should have been a wake-up call, especially coming a week after a Data For Progress poll found that 66% of Americans supported a ceasefire, while a Mariiv poll found that only 29% of Israelis supported an imminent ground invasion of Gaza.

    After the United States again slammed the Security Council door in Palestine’s face on December 8, the desperate need to end the massacre in Gaza returned to the UN General Assembly on December 12. An identical resolution to the one the U.S. vetoed in the Security Council was approved by a vote of 153 to 10, with 33 more yes votes than the one in October. While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, they do carry political weight, and this one sends a clear message that the international community is disgusted by the carnage in Gaza.

    Another powerful instrument the world can use to try to compel an end to this massacre is the Genocide Convention, which both Israel and the United States have ratified. It only takes one country to bring a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the Convention, and, while cases can drag on for years, the ICJ can take preliminary measures to protect the victims in the meantime.

    On January 23, 2020, the Court did exactly that in a case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, alleging genocide against its Rohingya minority. In a brutal military campaign in late 2017, Myanmar massacred tens of thousands of Rohingya and burnt down dozens of villages. 740,000 Rohingyas fled into Bangladesh, and a UN-backed fact-finding mission found that the 600,000 who remained in Myanmar “may face a greater threat of genocide than ever.”

    China vetoed a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Security Council, so The Gambia, itself recovering from 20 years of repression under a brutal dictatorship, submitted a case to the ICJ under the Genocide Convention.

    That opened the door for a unanimous ruling by 17 judges at the ICJ that Myanmar must prevent genocide against the Rohingya, as the Genocide Convention required. The ICJ issued that ruling as a preventive measure, the equivalent of a preliminary injunction in a domestic court, even though its final ruling on the merits of the case might be many years away. It also ordered Myanmar to file a report with the Court every six months to detail how it is protecting the Rohingya, signaling serious ongoing scrutiny of Myanmar’s conduct.

    So which country will step up to bring an ICJ case against Israel under the Genocide Convention? Activists are already discussing that with a number of countries. Roots Action and World Beyond War have created an action alert that you can use to send messages to 10 of the most likely candidates (South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Ireland, Belize, Turkïye, Bolivia, Honduras and Brazil).

    There has also been increasing pressure on the International Criminal Court to take up the case against Israel. The ICC has been quick to investigate Hamas for war crimes, but has been dragging its feet on investigating Israel. After a recent visit to the region, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was not allowed by Israel to enter Gaza, and he was criticized by Palestinians for visiting areas attacked by Hamas on October 7, but not visiting the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.

    However, as long as the world is faced with the United States’ tragic and debilitating abuse of institutions the rest of the world depends on to enforce international law, the economic and diplomatic actions of individual countries may have more impact than their speeches in New York.

    While historically there have been about two dozen countries that have not recognized Israel, in the past two months, Belize and Bolivia have severed ties with Israel, while others–Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan and Turkey–have withdrawn their ambassadors.

    Other countries are trying to have it both ways–condemning Israel publicly but maintaining their economic interests. At the UN Security Council, Egypt explicitly accused Israel of genocide and the U.S. of obstructing a ceasefire.

    And yet Egypt’s long-standing partnership with Israel in the blockade of Gaza and its continuing role, even today, in restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza through its own border crossings, make it complicit in the genocide it condemns. If it means what it says, it must open its border crossings to all the humanitarian aid that is needed, end its cooperation with the Israeli blockade and reevaluate its obsequious and compromised relationships with Israel and the United States.

    Qatar, which has worked hard to negotiate an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, was eloquent in its denunciation of Israeli genocide in the Security Council. But Qatar was speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Under the so-called Abraham accords, the sheikhs of Bahrain and the UAE have turned their backs on Palestine to sign on to a toxic brew of self-serving commercial relations and hundred million dollar arms deals with Israel.

    In New York, the UAE sponsored the latest failed Security Council resolution, and its representative declared, “The international system is teetering on the brink. For this war signals that might makes right, that compliance with international humanitarian law depends on the identity of the victim and the perpetrator.”

    And yet neither the UAE nor Bahrain has renounced their Abraham deals with Israel, nor their roles in U.S. “might makes right” policies that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East for decades. Over a thousand US Air Force personnel and dozens of U.S. warplanes are still based at the Al-Dhafra Airbase in Abu Dhabi, while Manama in Bahrain, which the U.S. Navy has used as a base since 1941, remains the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

    Many experts compare apartheid Israel to apartheid South Africa. Speeches at the UN may have helped to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime, but change didn’t come until countries around the world embraced a global campaign to economically and politically isolate it.

    The reason Israel’s die-hard supporters in the United States have tried to ban, or even criminalize, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is not that it is illegitimate or anti-semitic. It is precisely because boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel may be an effective strategy to help bring down its genocidal, expansionist and unaccountable regime.

    U.S. Alternate Representative to the U.N. Robert Wood told the Security Council that there is a “fundamental disconnect between the discussions that we have been having in this chamber and the realities on the ground” in Gaza, implying that only Israeli and U.S. views of the conflict deserve to be taken seriously.

    But the real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of U.S. and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians.

    While Israel, with U.S. bombs and howitzer shells, is killing and maiming thousands of innocent people, the rest of the world is appalled by these crimes against humanity. The grassroots clamor to end the massacre keeps building, but global leaders must move beyond non-binding votes and investigations to boycotting Israeli products, putting an embargo on weapons sales, breaking diplomatic relations and other measures that will make Israel a pariah state on the world stage.

    The post Getting Serious About Halting Israeli Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ret. Col. Ann Wright Unmasks the Truth in Arms Transfer Debate


    In a heated session at the United Nations Security Council, diplomats engaged in a vigorous debate over the provision of arms to Ukraine amid the protracted war with Russia. The eleventh meeting on this pressing issue since Russia invaded in February of 2022 drew sharp criticisms from multiple speakers, who accused Moscow of deflecting attention from its own aggression.

    While various briefers and delegates presented conflicting perspectives, CODEPINK member Ann Wright, a retired United States Army colonel and former diplomat, took a different stance. As a civil society representative, she introduced herself as a concerned citizen and taxpayer who resigned from the U.S. Government in 2003 in protest against the Iraq War.

    Wright emphasized her opposition to the continued supply of weapons, asserting that it only serves to prolong conflicts. The United States and its European allies have provided tens of billions of dollars in aid to support Ukraine over the past two years. With the war at an indefinite stalemate with the death toll rising, Wright argued that fueling conflicts with substantial amounts of weapons ultimately profits corporations and politicians, but not the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. A position that antiwar groups like CODEPINK has held since the beginning of this deadly war.

    Highlighting the lengthy process of conflict resolution, Wright drew parallels with historical conflicts, such as the Korean War, which required 575 meetings before reaching a ceasefire agreement. She underscored the devastating toll on human lives during U.S. funded wars, referencing the significant casualties in the Korean War.

    Drawing attention to not only the lack of diplomacy but also an attempt to stop any form of negotiations from happening, she expressed concern along with the historical fact that the supply of weapons prevents the possibility of peace. Wright referred to the reports that informed Washington, D.C., and London had pressured the Ukrainian Government to avoid peace negotiations with Russia, emphasizing the importance of preserving diplomatic efforts.

    In a powerful conclusion, Mary Ann Wright shared a poem depicting a plea in Gaza for children’s names to be written on their legs as a means of identification in the event of death due to Israeli bombings. While specifically referencing Gaza, she asserted that the sentiment applies universally to children in conflict zones, including Ukraine, Russia, Palestinel, or Yemen.

    As the Security Council debates the “complexities’ ‘ of arms transfers and their impact on international peace and security, Wright’s testimony emphasizes the importance of addressing the root causes of conflicts and fostering meaningful resolutions. She makes the case that this is not, in fact, a complex issue nor should it be a debate. It is quite simple, more weapons only create more war and prohibit lasting peace.

    You can watch her full testimony here.

    The post Ret. Col. Ann Wright Unmasks the Truth in Arms Transfer Debate first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • We must not let politics trample on refugees’ human rights | Letters

    Rev Dr Noel Anthony Davies says Rishi Sunak’s government seems all too willing to breach the principles of the UN’s human rights declaration. Plus letters from Clive Stafford Smith, Jim King and Michael McLoughlin

    As a retired Christian minister, I very much welcome the powerful and challenging article by Prof Philippe Sands (From Gaza to Ukraine, what would the pioneers of human rights think of our world today?, 13 December). In the service that I led in our uniting church in Swansea last Sunday – international Human Rights Day – I shared some of the key articles of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the congregation. A number commented afterwards on how powerful and challenging its affirmations are.

    We were therefore shocked to see that the UK government is prepared to turn its back on the declaration that has been the foundation of our common humanity and our shared sense of justice and freedom for all over the last 75 years merely to serve party political ends, and to implement an immigration policy that is clearly in contravention of the declaration. It is also a denial of what we, as Christians, would regard as a universal recognition, founded in the teaching of Jesus, of the dignity, freedom and equality of all people, irrespective of race, religion, sexuality, national identity or political conviction.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Some of the Most Important Connections at COP28 Aren’t Between Heads of States

    A cache of international documents published late November by the nonprofit Center for Climate Reporting revealed how Emirates officials plotted to use the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 28th Conference of Parties (COP28), hosted in Dubai, as an opportunity to expand their oil contracts with other countries. The revelations were published days before COP28 began…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UN and US efforts to stop mass atrocities have waned, activists warn

    Human rights campaigners say ‘responsibility to protect’ principle and ambition to prevent genocides have diminished

    Human rights activists say that the international community has given up on intervention efforts to stop mass atrocities, leading to fears that such occurrences may become the norm around the world.

    The warnings come on the 75th anniversaries this weekend of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both signed in the aftermath of the Holocaust in the hope that the world would act in concert to prevent a repeat of such mass slaughter.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UN Security Council to Vote on Ceasefire as US Downplays Israeli War Crimes

    This figure was given by the Gaza Ministry of Health on December 7. However, due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip (particularly in northern Gaza) and the high number of people trapped under rubble, the Gaza Ministry of Health has been unable to regularly and accurately update its tolls since mid-November. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to or above…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Carbon-Trading Plans Are Thinly Veiled Land Grabs That Displace People Globally

    While King Charles was being wined and dined during his recent state visit to the country, Kenyan authorities were brutally evicting up to 700 Ogiek Indigenous people from their ancestral homes in the Mau Forest. This is just one in a long string of violent evictions that the Ogiek have had to endure, usually leading to the theft of their land by the government and the subsequent logging of the…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Public Health Finally Gets a Platform at COP28, But Will Real Action Follow?

    For the better part of a decade, researchers working at the intersection of climate change and human health have been desperately sounding alarm bells about the significant public health threats lurking in every tenth of a degree of planetary warming. Billions of people are at risk from illnesses linked to extreme heat; malnutrition following crop failure; bacteria and viruses that lurk in…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Predicting Pestilence

    Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice over sounds of children screaming. In a video posted on Twitter/X he emphasized that Gaza’s health care system is overwhelmed. Pointing at children packed into the ward of a hospital he said was operating at 200 per cent capacity, Elder insisted the hospital “cannot take more children with the wounds of war…with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones.”

    Calling it a war on children, Elder warned that “inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing.”

    We, the citizens of the world, are those with influence as well as our elected officials. It is the citizens of the world who came out by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks that caused the woefully inadequate gesture of a seven day truce. Now we must urgently pay heed to another persecution of Gaza’s children and families, waged by one of war’s more silent partners, disease.

    Those with influence among authorities in Israel and the United States must reckon not only with the reckless carnage they are inflicting on children. They must also grasp the likelihood of an exponentially increased death toll from battlefield illnesses afflicting children. Surviving Gazans live amid ominous pre-conditions for outbreaks of water-borne diseases especially deadly to children: a mounting number of unburied corpses, unsafe drinking water, overcrowding in impromptu mass shelters where sick people are  denied any access to health care, as well as a breakdown of basic sewage and sanitation systems.

    The World Health Organization warns that Gaza is “on the precipice of major disease outbreaks.”

    On November 15, 2023, the World Health Organization reported more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea had been documented in Gaza since mid-October — already a dramatic increase compared to previous years and after only two months of the bombardment.

    “Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” said Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO.

    Yet. without electricity and fuel, it’s impossible to repair Gaza’s collapsed health care system. Israeli authorities cut off Gaza’s electricity supply after October 11, according to UNOCHA, and fuel reserves for Gaza’s sole power plant have been dangerously depleted.

    History repeatedly shows that children in war zones bear the brunt of punishment as bombing wars give way to even more lethal economic war, and what ought to be regarded as biological warfare against children. (It’s noteworthy that Israel is one of only eight world nations not to have signed the Biological Weapons Convention.)

    The suffering inflicted on Iraqi children following the 1991 war and ensuing years of merciless economic sanctions is well known to U.S. and Israeli authorities

    When the U.S. Desert Storm bombing war against Iraq ended, on Feb 28, 1991, a new kind of warfare proved far more devastating than even the worst of the bombing. By 1995, UN workers recognized that children were dying, first by the hundreds, then by the thousands, and eventually by the hundreds of thousands because economic sanctions prevented necessary access to medicines, clean water, and adequate food.

    Demolished vehicles lining Highway 80 in Iraqi during Operation Desert Storm, April 8, 1991.

    The U.S. military itself predicted epidemic levels of waterborne diseases would break out, in Iraq, because the U.S. bombing had so badly damaged the country’s underground water pipelines, causing cracks allowing sewage to seep into water used by civilians. Thirteen years of punitive economic sanctions cost the lives of countless Iraqis who couldn’t possibly have been held accountable for the actions of their government, – elderly people, sick people, toddlers and infants.

    A similar pattern emerges if we turn our gaze toward the Saudi aerial bombing of Yemen from 2015 to 2018. The Saudi attacks against vital sewage and sanitation facilities, and against the electrical plants which powered them, contributed to severe shortages of potable water. The Saudis were also known to bomb sites where Yemenis were digging their own wells.

    A report from Save the Children, issued in November 2018, estimated  at least 85,000 children died from extreme hunger since the war began in 2015. The worst cholera outbreak ever recorded infected 2.26 million and cost nearly 4,000 lives. Attacks on hospitals and clinics led to closure of more than half of Yemen’s prewar facilities. Besieged on all sides, 3.65 million Yemenis were internally displaced. An entire generation of Yemeni children will suffer the trauma and disease caused by Saudi bombings using weapons supplied by U.S. and other western manufacturers.

    Dr. Yara Asi, a professor of global health management, points out that “the Gaza Strip had fragile health and water, sanitation and hygiene sectors long before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and prompted the retaliatory airstrikes. The health system of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world, has long been plagued by  underfunding and the effects of the blockade imposed by Israel in 2007.”

    In early 2023, an estimated 97% of water in the enclave was unfit to drink, and more than 12% of child mortality cases were caused by waterborne ailments. Diseases including typhoid fever, cholera and hepatitis A are very rare in areas with functional and adequate water systems.

    Now, OCHA reports over 1.8 million people in Gaza, or nearly 80 per cent of the population, are internally displaced. Overcrowding at makeshift UNRWA shelters significantly increased cases of diarrhea, acute respiratory infection, skin infection, and lice. Without wells and water desalination, dehydration and waterborne diseases are mounting threats.

    We can’t help but ask whether Israeli officials, intent on continuing the war for possibly as long as a year, see the potential for widespread disease as motivation for families to leave Gaza, accepting massive ethnic cleansing that would displace them beyond Gaza’s borders.

    In a recently published investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call, an Israeli intelligence veteran notes Israel’s detailed information on where Gazan civilians are located: “Nothing happens by accident … When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed – that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home. ”

    Rather than wait for Gazan parents to dig graves for the children sickened by lethal water-borne diseases, we must clamor for a permanent cease fire, reparations, and an end to Israel’s apartheid regime. In the United States, we must truthfully diagnose our diseased foreign policy, sickened for many decades by greed, fear and an addiction to war.

    Worldwide, people are demonstrating their commitment to care about the Gazan children who survive this hideous war. The call for a permanent ceasefire includes the utter rejection of weaponizing disease to collectively punish children.

    The post Predicting Pestilence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Meat Lobbyists Attend COP28 to Contradict Climate Research

    Powerful meat corporations are planning to push false claims that meat is “sustainable nutrition” at COP28, an international environmental conference that meets yearly to establish a global response to the climate crisis. The meat lobbyists’ pro-meat communications strategy is contradicted by research showing that 57 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to food production are…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New Revelations “Call Into Question the Integrity of COP28,” Says Journalist

    As the largest-ever United Nations climate summit kicks off Thursday in Dubai, we look at how the COP28 president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also CEO of the United Arab Emirates state oil company, has used climate summit meetings to lobby countries for oil and gas deals. The Centre for Climate Reporting obtained documents from meeting briefings that include Abu Dhabi National Oil Company…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • I Faced Death by Incarceration. The UN Heard My Plea to Abolish Life Sentences.

    Decades ago, most people had never even heard the term “death by incarceration,” the racially discriminatory and cruel practice commonly known as life imprisonment. Now in 2023, the United Nations has condemned it and called on the United States to abolish it. In October, as I sat facing the members of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, my mind drifted to moments during my 27…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Profile in Persecution: Mohamed Hameed AlDaqqaq

    Mohamed Hameed AlDaqqaq is a Bahraini citizen who was arbitrarily arrested when he was 23 years old near his home. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, medical neglect, an unfair trial, and ill-treatment during his detention. He is currently serving a 19-year prison sentence on political charges. Mohamed suffers from many diseases, most notably sickle cell anemia and the associated pain. His continuous deprivation of health care for years in Jau Prison has exacerbated his suffering, and his health has reached a perilous stage due to the progression of the disease. On 4 March  2019, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion deeming Mohammed’s detention arbitrary, calling on the government of Bahrain to immediately release him, expunging all his criminal records, and granting him the necessary compensation. On 18 September 2019, four United Nations Special Procedures offices published an allegation letter to the Government of Bahrain regarding the denial of adequate medical care to Mohammed, expressing concern at the allegations of his torture and ill-treatment, deteriorating health condition, denial of appropriate health care, and retaliation against him for peacefully protesting inside the prison.

     

    On 5 January 2015, riot police forces apprehended Mohamed near his home without presenting an arrest warrant. Officers took Mohamed to the AlHoora Police Station after his arrest, where they held him in solitary confinement for two days. On the second day, they allowed him to call his family. He wasn’t brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest. After his third day at the station, officers transferred Mohamed to the Dry Dock Detention Center, and after 45 days, the authorities transferred him to Jau Prison.

     

    While in Jau Prison, guards subjected Mohamed to various forms of torture. They dubbed him the “new guy,” making him responsible for cleaning the toilets as a means of punishment. Prison guards brutally beat and insulted him, including shaving half of his head and facial hair. They stripped him naked and poured cold water on him, leaving him in the cold air. The guards also forced Mohamed to crawl into a pool of water contaminated with human waste, alternating between making Mohamed crawl to one end of the room and then dragging him from his legs to the other end before making him crawl again.

     

    On 5 March 2014, that is, before his arrest, Mohamed was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison on charges of arson and intentionally endangering a private means of transportation. On 19 March 2015, he was sentenced to six months in jail on charges of gathering, inciting a riot, and possessing flammable and explosive materials. On 7 May 2015, he was convicted for escaping from prison, and on 22 November 2015, he was sentenced for arson and criminal assembly. His total sentence initially amounted to 21 years before it was reduced to 19 years after the appeal. His trial relied on evidence extracted from him under torture, and he was denied access to a lawyer during the interrogation period.

     

    Prison authorities have consistently disregarded Mohamed’s right to health as well. Mohamed suffers from sickle-cell anemia and a skin condition. He was born with one kidney, and due to the pain stemming from his sickle-cell anemia, he had to undergo a splenectomy surgery. This condition also requires him to take medication for the rest of his life, but the authorities have deprived him of that medication despite the seriousness of his situation.

     

    On multiple occasions, Mohamed has suffered from pain attacks in detention. In response, guards have delayed taking him to the clinic, if they even take him at all. The authorities have also routinely refused to take Mohamed to the periodic examinations required for his condition, and they still prevent him from obtaining his proper medication. This neglect has resulted in him being hospitalized for 45 days on two different occasions in 2016 and 2018.

     

    In April 2018, medical negligence led to two health setbacks for Mohamed, during which he experienced severe pain. On both occasions, he was subjected to ill-treatment by the medical staff, including the denial of medication (accompanied by accusations of addiction) and being slapped on the face. In both instances, the doctors only administered low-grade painkillers to Mohamed and refused to provide medication to treat his sickle-cell anemia.

     

    In 2018, Mohamed also experienced a skin disease on his wrists due to guards severely handcuffing him, and his condition worsened as a result of the unsanitary conditions in Jau Prison. He also suffered from a tooth infection resulting from the extraction of a wisdom tooth under local anesthesia, as he was not given any painkillers or antibiotics after the operation. After more than a week of tooth pain, he suffered complete swelling of the face and severe inflammation, which led to him suffering from a severe pain attack resulting from sickle-cell anemia. After prolonged delays, he was transferred to Salmaniya Hospital 12 hours after the pain attack, where the doctor administered oral medication as punishment after he complained about the severity of the pain he was experiencing, and another doctor beat him.

     

    The medical personnel and prison authorities have denied Mohamed proper treatment for his health problems, exacerbating his health condition. Additionally, Mohamed has reported poor living conditions in Jau Prison, including inadequate amounts of clean water or healthy food.

     

    Mohamed’s family submitted complaints to the National Institution for Human Rights and to the Ministry of Interior’s Ombudsman regarding his 45-day stay in the hospital. This was due to the prison administration’s refusal to transfer him to a hospital specializing in hereditary blood diseases, depriving him of medications appropriate to his health condition. Additionally, he was denied medication for his skin disease, which worsened as a result of his hands being tied with iron handcuffs. Unfortunately, these complaints did not yield any results.

     

    In August 2018, there was no news of Mohamed for more than two weeks after he was taken to the hospital for surgery. In October 2018, he complained in a call with his family about being deprived of the pain-relieving medication for the attacks of sickle cell disease that the doctor supervising his treatment at the military hospital had prescribed to him. This deprivation led to frequent episodes of sickle cell disease and an increase in the severity of the pain affecting his bones. Additionally, he was deprived of medication for skin allergies. Mohamed also complained about being subjected to nutritional neglect after the prison administration ignored the doctor’s recommendations to provide a meal appropriate for his medical condition.

     

    In January 2019, Mohamed was transported by his fellow prisoners to the prison clinic after suffering for two weeks from a bout of pain resulting from sickle cell disease. This pain hindered his ability to stand, causing a lack of oxygen and a further deterioration in his health condition. The prison administration’s delay in transferring him regularly to the clinic contributed to the escalation of his health issues. The doctor at the clinic prescribed only a regular pain reliever and intravenous nutrients. Due to the lack of appropriate treatment, these seizures persisted, leading to multiple visits to the clinic. During one of these visits, Mohamed was physically assaulted and insulted by a nurse.

     

    On 4 March 2019, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion on the arbitrary deprivation of liberty in the cases of five Bahrainis, including Mohamed. The Working Group considered the detention of these individuals arbitrary, calling on the Government of Bahrain to immediately release them, expunge all their criminal records, and grant them the necessary compensation. The Working Group found that Al-Daqqaq’s detention was arbitrary under Categories I and II, in violation of Articles 3, 9, and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as Articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This violation was attributed to the lack of an arrest warrant, lack of access to legal counsel, and his conviction in absentia.

     

    In April 2019, Mohamed was denied visits and exposure to sunlight outside his cell after being transferred to solitary confinement for reasons unknown. His family, intending to visit him on 8 April 2019, arrived at the prison only to be informed by officers that their son was unable to leave his cell due to his transfer to solitary confinement ‘for unknown reasons.’ Additionally, Mohamed’s news was cut during his participation with fellow prisoners in Jau Prison in their hunger strike protesting mistreatment in August 2019. 

     

    On 18 September 2019, four UN Special Procedures offices issued an allegation letter to the Government of Bahrain concerning the denial of adequate medical care to prisoners in Jau Prison, including Mohamed. Experts expressed concern about allegations of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, particularly the deterioration of their health and the restrictions on their access to appropriate healthcare while in detention. The experts also voiced their apprehension regarding the measures taken by the Jau Prison administration in retaliation against prisoners peacefully protesting inside the prison, deeming it a violation of the right to freedom of opinion and peaceful assembly.

     

    In March 2020, Mohamed complained of abdominal pain, which he believed was caused by the quantity and quality of meals served. As his condition worsened, he was transferred to Salmaniya Hospital Internal Medicine Department, where various tests and X-rays were conducted. The prison administration, citing the COVID-19 outbreak, prevented Mohamed from visiting the doctor. Instead, the doctor contacted Mohamed’s family and informed them that their son was suffering from a stomach infection, prescribing an urgent antibiotic to prevent a prolonged sickness. Three days later, Mohamed’s mother discovered that the doctor had not spoken directly to her son. Concerned, she contacted the prison administration, and after several attempts, Mohamed was able to talk with the doctor via video call. Mohamed also complained to another doctor in the prison clinic about pain in his joints and bones. The doctor prescribed nutritional supplements and calcium, and Mohamed’s family purchased the necessary medications, delivering them to the prison administration. However, two weeks later, Mohamed’s mother learned from one of his prison colleagues that Mohamed had not yet received the medications.

     

    On 1 July 2020, Mohamed was beaten and pepper sprayed in the face by a police officer in prison until he fainted, causing his health to deteriorate. His colleagues had to bang on the cell door to save him, and he was subsequently transported by ambulance to the hospital. Following this incident, Mohamed forcibly disappeared for about a month. Despite his family’s repeated attempts to contact the Prisoner Affairs Department, they received no response.

    On 1 October 2020, the Jau Prison administration imposed restrictions on detainees’ right to contact their families. They were only allowed to call five designated family phone numbers, with the requirement to specify the kinship of the owner of each number. Moreover, the calls were limited to a maximum of ten minutes and charged at a much higher rate than usual. These measures led detainees, including Mohamed, to reject the restrictions, prompting them to go on strike for more than three weeks in protest against these limitations.

     

    From the time of his arrest until today, Mohamed’s family has continued their efforts to highlight the seriousness of the violations to which their son is exposed. They do so through appeals published on social media, urging intervention to save their son’s life from the policy of medical negligence and forced disappearance.

    Mohamed’s arbitrary detention, denial of access to a lawyer, torture, subjection to solitary confinement, forced disappearance, and medical neglect affecting his deteriorating health, along with an unfair trial in absentia and another trial where confessions extracted under torture were used, as well as exposure to reprisal, constitute violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party.  Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on Bahrain to uphold its human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Mohamed and by investigating all allegations of his arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, subjection to an unfair trial, solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, and medical neglect, while holding the perpetrators – including Jau Prison doctors who contribute to the mistreatment of prisoners and evade the responsibilities of their profession – accountable, or at the very least holding a fair retrial leading to his release. ADHRB also raises concern about the serious deterioration in Mohamed’s health condition due to medical negligence and denial of medical care, especially the failure to provide appropriate treatment for the sickle cell disease he suffers from. ADHRB urges Bahrain to provide suitable treatment for Mohamed while holding it responsible for any additional deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Mohamed Hameed AlDaqqaq appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • As the Israel-Palestine crisis continues, Australians must not allow anguish or fury to overwhelm us | Rosalind Croucher

    We cannot pick and choose how and to whom human rights are applied. Disrespect and racism has no place in our society

    We are all “born free and equal in dignity and rights”.

    This first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out this simple aspiration for how we should interact and engage with each other as human beings.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Nearly 80 Percent of Palestinians in Gaza Have Been Displaced, UN Reports

    The number of Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced from their homes has risen to roughly 1.7 million as of November 19, according to an update from the United Nations this week. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has decried the humanitarian crisis in the region as “unparalleled.” The number represents over three-quarters of the population of Gaza that has now been forcibly displaced by…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Just Stop Oil protesters’ jail terms potentially breach international law, UN expert says

    Sentences risk silencing public concerns about the environment, climate change rapporteur Ian Fry says

    Long sentences handed to two Just Stop Oil protesters for scaling the M25 bridge over the Thames are a potential breach of international law and risk silencing public concerns about the environment, a UN expert has said.

    In a strongly worded intervention, Ian Fry, the UN’s rapporteur for climate change and human rights, said he was “particularly concerned” about the sentences, which were “significantly more severe than previous sentences imposed for this type of offending in the past”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UN commissioner says killing of Gaza civilians cannot be dismissed as ‘collateral damage’ – video

    Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza based on humanitarian and human rights grounds. Speaking after the UN security council backed a resolution on 15 November calling for ‘urgent extended humanitarian pauses’, Turk said: ‘The only winner of such a war is likely to be extremism and further extremism.’ The Israel-Hamas war has left more than 11,100 Palestinians dead and displaced more than 1.5 million Gazan citizens from their homes, after Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Profile in Persecution: Husain Abdulla Mohamed (Juma’a)

    The Bahraini citizen Husain Abdulla Mohamed (Juma’a) was arbitrarily arrested from his home when he was 20 years old. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, medical neglect, and an unfair trial during his detention. He is currently serving a life sentence in what was known as the “Zulfiqar Brigades” case, in which he was among those for whom an opinion was issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, demanding his release. Currently, he is detained at Jau Prison.

    On 10 November 2015 at 2:30 am, about 20 riot police officers, along with other officers from the Ministry of Interior (MoI), raided Husain’s home. They searched the house and arrested him without presenting arrest or search warrants. The officers then transferred Husain to the MoI’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) for interrogation, where he was able to contact his family to tell them about his whereabouts, but the call was cut off a few seconds after it began. After this call, Husain forcibly disappeared from his family for a month, and his news was cut. He was detained at the CID for two months, during which the authorities subjected him to physical and psychological torture.

    During the interrogation, which took place without the presence of a lawyer, the police officers insulted him, beat him, and subjected him to electric shocks. As a result, his teeth were broken, and he suffered from back and foot pain. Husain asked that a doctor be allowed to examine him, but the authorities rejected his request. The authorities also prohibited anyone from visiting him during his interrogation, including his lawyer.

    On 15 May 2018, during the mass trial of what was known as the “Zulfiqar Brigades” case, which lacked the minimum standards for a fair trial, Husain was sentenced to life imprisonment and stripped of his citizenship on charges of: 1) Attempting to detonate a fake bomb and participating in terrorist activities, including joining a terrorist cell, 2) Possessing and manufacturing explosives, 3) Financing terrorism, 4) Receiving weapons training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, and 5) Destroying privately owned goods.

    He had also previously been sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to detonate a fake bomb. On 28 January 2019, the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling against Husain. On 20 April 2019, King Hamad Bin Isa AlKhalifa issued a royal order restoring the citizenship of 551 Bahrainis who had previously been stripped of their citizenship, including Husain. On 1 July 2019, the Court of Cassation upheld his life imprisonment sentence, thus Husain had exhausted all remedies under Bahraini law.

    When Husain was detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center, he was also subjected to torture after his sentence was issued. He was forced to strip naked, and officers threw objects at him. He was also subjected to solitary confinement.

    Husain’s family submitted several complaints to the MOI Ombudsman regarding his arrest, solitary confinement, torture, and denial of medical care, but it didn’t respond to any of these complaints. It merely responded to one of them by transferring it to the Military Courts Administration, as it raised suspicion of a criminal crime. However, there has been no response since then.

    On 14 October 2019, five UN Special Procedures offices sent an allegation letter to Bahrain concerning the trial of the so-called “Zulfiqar Brigades case. In this letter, the Special Procedures Offices expressed concern about the enforced disappearance and torture of those convicted in this case, compelling them to sign false confessions, depriving them of medical care, and engaging in unfair trial practices. This includes absentia hearings and denying defendants the right to attorney access, as well as using confessions obtained under torture to convict individuals of terrorist crimes. The letter also considered that the Ombudsman is not fully independent, which hinders the possibility of properly investigating concerns related to human rights violations due to its reliance on the MOI for funding and authority and on the Special Investigation Unit for allegations, as the Ombudsman has a low record of referrals to prosecution in only 5% of cases of violations committed by state agents. The letter also expressed concern about the Ombudsman’s negligence of cases of police abuse, contributing to fostering an environment of impunity.

    On 15 May 2020, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published an opinion concerning the cases of twenty Bahraini citizens convicted by the Bahraini Fourth High Criminal Court in the “Zulfiqar Brigades” case, including Husain, where the group considered their detention arbitrary due to their warrantless arrest and their exposure to torture to force them into signing false confessions, in addition to their exposure to enforced disappearance, denial of medical care, as well as unfair trials that included hearings in absentia, denying defendants the right to access a lawyer, and the use of forced confessions to convict defendants of terrorist crimes. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention requested the Bahraini government to take immediate action, by immediately and unconditionally releasing these convicts, ensuring that they receive medical care, granting them the right to obtain compensation and reparation, and expunging their criminal records in accordance with international law. The Working Group also urged the Bahraini government to conduct a full and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arbitrary detention of these defendants. Although more than three years have passed since this opinion was issued, Bahrain has not yet implemented any of these recommendations.

    On 28 September 2022, an audio recording of Husain was circulated on social media in which he spoke about being deprived of regular diabetes treatment, leading to irregular sugar levels. He also talked about the difficulties he faced with the provided meals, which did not align with his health condition. He conveyed his struggles to the prison clinic physician and the officers, urging them to provide suitable meals for his health condition and administer insulin doses regularly to prevent health setbacks. However, his repeated requests were ignored by the doctor and officers.

    Husain’s arbitrary detention, denial of access to a lawyer, torture, and subjection to solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, medical neglect, and an unfair mass trial – which included hearings in absentia during which confessions extracted under torture were used in which he was sentenced in terrorist cases – constitute a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Accordingly, ADHRB calls upon Bahrain to uphold its human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Husain and by investigating all allegations of his arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, subjection to an unfair trial, solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, and medical neglect, while holding the perpetrators accountable, or at the very least holding a fair retrial leading to his release. ADHRB also raises the alarm about the deterioration of Husain’s health condition due to medical negligence, especially with regard to his irregular blood sugar level due to not providing him with regular treatment and depriving him of appropriate food for his health condition. ADHRB calls on Bahrain to urgently provide appropriate treatment for Husain, holding it responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Husain Abdulla Mohamed (Juma’a) appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • UN Relief Chief Sounds Alarm as Israel Raids Gaza’s Largest Hospital

    The head of the United Nations’ emergency relief operations said Wednesday that he was “appalled” by news of the Israeli military’s raid of Gaza’s largest hospital, where hundreds of patients and healthcare workers and thousands of displaced people are sheltering. “The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff, and all civilians must override all other concerns,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Gaza is Becoming A Graveyard for Children”

    In stark contrast to the appalling response of western leaders, throughout the world tens of thousands have taken to the streets protesting Israels barbaric actions in Gaza. In the US, Canada, Europe, and UK, in Asia and the Middle East with one voice people have cried out, condemning Israel and the US, calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the siege of Gaza and full scale humanitarian support for Palestinians.

    Israel ignores all such demands, and continues its relentless attack on Palestinian civilians. Violating International Humanitarian Law (including carrying out a process of Collective Punishment) as it does so. Amnesty International has “documented unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes”.

    The UN Secretary General says he is “deeply concerned by the clear violations of humanitarian law that we are witnessing.” A coalition of Palestinian human rights groups have now filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC), “Urging the body to investigate Israel for “apartheid” as well as “genocide” and issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.” And yet western ‘leaders’ say little of consequence and do nothing to stop the slaughter.

    According to the UN more than 40% of Palestinians killed in Gaza are children, and 70% killed are women and children. As Guterres has said, “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.” Just under 4,000 children are reported dead (over 420 children are being killed or injured each day), and a further 1,250 are missing — presumed buried under destroyed or damaged buildings. This is systematic genocide, long in the planning, carried out by a fanatic right wing Israeli government that is deliberately targeting children and women.

    The ferocious IDF assault is destroying homes, hospitals, refugee camps,  mosques, churches, schools, UN facilities — the attacks are indiscriminate. Pregnant women and babies are particularly at risk; as hospitals close and/or are bombed. “Some women are having to give birth in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid rubble,” the UN said. The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, said “the true cost of this latest escalation will be measured in children’s lives — those lost to the violence and those forever changed by it”.

    Journalists are also being killed; according to the UN more journalist have been killed in a month than in any conflict in the last thirty years.

    The carnage in Gaza and the siege of the territory is horrific and the response from western governments — these ‘champions of democracy and peace’, utterly appalling. With the US leading the pack, they are facilitating the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel, and then publicly justifying it.

    The UK and EU appear incapable to expressing a view that contradicts US policy. Even the leader of the UK Labour party Kier Starmer, potentially the UK’s next Prime-Minister, is towing the US line, virtually word for word. It’s pathetic. His callous response is a depressing sign of the kind of PM he would be; weak, unprincipled, cowardly. As the Labour leader of Burnley council said when he resigned in protest,  “Instead of talking of peace — all of our world leaders, including the leader of the Labour Party, are talking about humanitarian pauses. It’s just nonsensical.”

    Obviously there should be an immediate unconditional ceasefire. A growing number of nations, particularly those within the region, together with outraged citizens throughout the world, including Israeli’s and Jews, are calling for this common-sense step. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, has warned that, unless a path to peace is found quickly, the war risked pushing the region into an “abyss of hatred and dehumanisation”.

    But as the causalities increase and the suffering intensifies the message of the US and Co., to Israel is carry on killing, but maybe consider allowing a ‘humanitarian pause’ to let aid into Gaza, and by the way, please ‘do more to protect civilians’. Even this half hearted proposal has been rejected by Israel, with Prime-Minister Netanyahu saying the IDF would continue bombing Gaza with “all of its power.” Hate knows no limits.

    It is a shameful display of inaction and facilitation, one that makes the US and anyone who supports its shameful approach complicit in the genocide that is taking place.

    The US has the greatest responsibility here, because if Israel will listen to anyone it is potentially the US. Washington’s unconditional support has, for decades, allowed Israel to ignore international law (which Israel appears to believe does not apply to them), suppress the Palestinians, and is now allowing the massacre to take place in Gaza.

    Listen to the UN

    This devastating crisis has revealed once again that the world is bereft of true leaders; men and women of courage and principles, who can act with wisdom and compassion, free from short-term national interest. In the midst of this sea of mediocrity stands the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. A clear and consistent voice of reason on all topics.

    He has repeatedly called for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and for unimpeded humanitarian access to be granted…safely and to scale, in order to meet the urgent needs created by the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.” His words, rational and right, have, however, been constantly ignored.  More than that, he, himself, has come under attack from the Israeli authorities.

    It is the UN, which was founded to establish peace and security in the world, led by Guterres that should be tasked with bringing the relevant parties together to discuss, not just a ceasefire, but the long term issues; the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians and the resulting insecurity felt by Israeli’s. That means the Israeli government sitting down with Hamas, as well as the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. There is no other solution.

    The crisis in Gaza, as Guterres correctly points out, “Is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a Crisis of Humanity.” The mass slaughter that is taking place is a symptom, a loud and bloody symptom of this broader crisis. The “Crisis of Humanity” is ultimately a crisis of values, and as such could correctly be called a spiritual crisis. If humanity wants to live in peace, and the vast majority desperately want this, then certain fundamental changes in approach are needed.

    Firstly, the recognition that humanity is one, and the cultivation of unity. Identifying and cutting out all systems and ways of thinking that strengthen division — this is essential; in particular tribal nationalism. And creating socio-economic systems that promote social justice. Sharing is key to building trust — sharing land and natural resources, sharing knowledge, wealth and skills.

    Without sharing and social justice (both of which are totally absent in Palestine) peace will remain a fantasy, and tragedies like the one taking place before our eyes in Gaza will continue.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “Baby Steps” Aren’t Enough: UN Warns COP28 Must Be a Clear Climate Turning Point

    “The world is failing to get a grip on the climate crisis.” That’s how United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres began his Tuesday remarks about a new U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or countries’ plans to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, including its 1.5°C temperature target. The UNFCCC analysis “provides…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Two-State Solution for Palestine Has Long Been a “Joke” Even In United Nations Circles

    For decades, the most widely touted solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has been based on the idea of two independent states — one Israeli and one Palestinian — encompassing separate parts of the historic land of Palestine. Known as the “two-state solution,” it has long been the agreed-upon framework by the United Nations (UN), most of the world’s countries, and regional organizations such as the European Union (EU). The UN General Assembly frequently votes on resolutions calling for a settlement to the conflict based on two states. These resolutions usually receive the support of all the world’s nations except for Israel, the United States, and a handful of others (often tiny US-dependent Pacific island nations).

    Support for the two-state solution has also enjoyed support from across the establishment political spectrum in the West. In 2002, then-US President George W. Bush (a Republican) became the first president to publicly endorse it. On the other end of the truncated spectrum that represents establishment political thought, independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (a self-described democratic socialist) has also pledged his support for the two-state framework. Even some “radical professors” in the academic world have said they think it’s the most realistic option. This includes the linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky and political scientist Norman Finkelstein.

    Now, however, a high-ranking UN human rights official has issued a damning condemnation of both the viability and morality of the two-state solution. In a letter resigning from his post as director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber slammed the two-state solution as no longer possible nor desirable. And he’s far from being the first high-profile person to do this volte face. Numerous high-profile supporters of the two-state solution have in recent years openly repudiated it and come out in favor of the rival “one-state solution.”

    Previously considered a fringe proposal within Western countries, a settlement based on a single democratic, non-sectarian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is now looking more and more mainstream. Receiving support from a former senior UN official surely represents a seminal chapter in the long struggle one-state supporters have been waging to bring this solution to greater public attention.

    “An Open Joke in the Corridors of the UN”

    Mokhiber’s letter states: “The mantra of the “two-state solution” has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people.” During an interview with Al-Jazeera English, Mokhiber elaborated: “When people are not talking from official talking points, you hear increasingly about a one-state solution. And what that means is beginning to advocate for the principle of equality, of human rights instead of these old political taglines. That would mean a state in which you have equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews based upon human rights and based upon the rule of law.”

    The idea of a single democratic state with equal rights for all people who live in historic Palestine is far from a new idea. In fact, it was the official goal of all the major Palestinian nationalist parties until comparatively recently. It was only in 1993 that Fatah, the largest party within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), agreed to settle for a Palestinian state in a partitioned part of historic Palestine, which it did in exchange for Israel recognizing the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

    More left-leaning factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) retained support for the one-state solution and have suffered marginalization from Fatah as a consequence. Hamas, meanwhile, has historically been committed in principle to an Islamic republic encompassing all of historic Palestine, but in 2017 revised its charter by indicating pragmatic support for two states.

    Two-state Solution “Destroyed By Israel”

    Fatah officials have largely held to the two-state line since 1993. But recently even some of its senior figures have come out against it and instead pledged their support for a one-state solution. Hanan Ashrawi, for example, was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council and appointed as Minister of Higher Education for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1996. In 2009 she became the first woman to be elected to the Executive Committee of the PLO. In 2017 during a television segment on Al-Jazeera English, Ashrawi said that the two-state solution is “a solution that the Palestinians had agreed to as a result of a long, painful discussion, internal debate, and a painstaking debate to agree to the principle of partition and to accepting two states on the historical land of Palestine.” She added: “We made this compromise in order to prepare the ground for a new relationship, for peace and stability within the region.”

    However, in May 2021 — during Israel’s most recent periodic massacre in Gaza before the current one — Ashrawi said during an interview with RT: “I think the two-state solution is dead. That agenda has been destroyed by Israel — by Israeli actions — because Israel did not comply with any of its obligations.” She added: “I don’t think a one-state solution has become an agenda, but it is the outcome.” Ashrawi also pointed to the effect that the two-state discourse has had on Israel’s actions and the international community’s inaction in holding it to account. She said: “Israel felt that it can just say, ‘we are in the middle of talks’, or ‘we are negotiating’, or whatever, and at the same time continue to steal more land, more resources, build more settlements… and [it] continues to kill and demolish and carry out a comprehensive ethnic cleansing plan.”

    “A Transparent Sleight of Hand”

    This idea that the two-state solution has provided a smokescreen to embolden Israel’s actions and allowed it to endlessly delay any kind of resolution has become a common criticism amongst one-state supporters. As Palestinian-American activist Yousef Munayyer puts it: “You have this constant conversation around the two-state solution being a goal and that keeps open this idea of negotiations. And these negotiations, as we have seen, have only resulted in an opportunity for Israel to say to the world, ‘look, this is a temporary condition.’” He added: “And at the same time, [Israel is] creating realities on the ground that make that impossible.”

    Mokhiber alludes to exactly this phenomenon in his resignation letter, stating: “The (US-scripted) deference to ‘agreements between the parties themselves’ (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.” He pointed in particular to the role of the so-called “Quartet” (the group of self-appointed mediators to the conflict made up of the UN, the United States, the EU and Russia), which he argues “has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo.”

    “Embrace the Goal of Jewish–Palestinian Equality”

    In addition to Ashrawi, other prominent former supporters of the two-state solution have changed tack in favor of one state. This includes the former editor of the arch-Zionist magazine The New Republic, Peter Beinart. In an essay published at Jewish Currents in July 2020, he stated:

    The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades — a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews — has failed. The traditional two-state solution no longer offers a compelling alternative to Israel’s current path. It risks becoming, instead, a way of camouflaging and enabling that path. It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish–Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish–Palestinian equality.

    In a similar vein, former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher, said during a forum hosted by the Carnegie Council for International Peace: “We are already in a one-state reality. The question is becoming increasingly: Is this reality going to turn into an apartheid state or a democratic state?” Others who are casting doubt on the viability of the two-state solution include none other than the aforementioned George W. Bush. He stated in May 2021 that the two-state solution would be “very difficult at this stage.”

    Shifting the Focus From 1967 to 1948

    Clearly, the two-state solution is increasingly looking like a dinosaur that not only fails to offer a viable framework for resolving the conflict but also provides a smokescreen for Israel’s endless stalling and undermining of peace. But there is a more fundamental problem with the two-state solution. Because it calls for the dividing line between Israel and a Palestinian state to be based on Israel’s border before the June 1967 war. During this war, Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip and has occupied them ever since. (It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 though still maintains a siege via control of its border, coast, and airspace.) The two-state solution entails returning these areas to the Palestinians in order for them to establish a state on these lands.

    The problem with this, however, is that these lands constitute only 22% of historic Palestine. A fairer division of the land in a two-state scenario would be something like 50–50. But this aside, the major crime that was committed against the Palestinian people was not the 1967 invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Rather, the major crime was the ethnic cleansing that occurred in 1947 and 1948, which has come to be known as “al-Nakba.” During this time, at least half of Palestine’s non-Jewish population was forced out of its home and pushed as refugees into the West Bank and Gaza or into neighboring Arab countries.

    Given this history, Palestinians have a right to return to their country, which encompasses all of historic Palestine. And therefore, Palestinians have never been under any obligation whatsoever to accept partition. Indeed, though a central tenet of Zionist propaganda is the notion that Palestinians deserve their fate for having rejected the November 1947 partition plan set out in UN Resolution 181, the reality is that the UN had no right to partition the country in the first place. Indeed, doing so was in violation of the UN’s own charter. In any case, the Palestinians were not even under any legal obligation, let alone moral obligation, to accept it given that Resolution 181 was a non-binding resolution and the UN Security Council didn’t ever officially adopt it.

    Finally to consider is comparison with the political solutions that have been proposed, and in some cases implemented, in other countries around the world. And this seems to point overwhelmingly to the single democratic, nonsectarian state vision based on equal rights proffered by supporters of the one-state solution. The UN never proposed, for example, the formation of separate states in South Africa for each of its ethnic groups as a way of resolving the conflict in that country. As Mokhiber puts it: “It is what we call for in every other circumstance around the world. And the question is, ‘why is the United Nations not calling for that in Israel-Palestine as well?’”

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Jamil Dakwar on US & Human Rights, Matt Gertz on Mike Johnson

     

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    Truthout: UN Report Details Rampant US Human Rights Violations at Home and Abroad

    Truthout (11/9/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media use at least a couple of largely unexplored lenses through which to present US human rights violations. One is: The US does not commit human rights violations, except by accident, or as unavoidable collateral for an ultimately net-gain mission, be that international or domestic.

    The other is: They aren’t violations if the US does them, because we’re in a civilization war, a fight of good over evil, so all battles are holy, and you can’t commit human rights violations against non-humans, after all, so where’s the problem? Again, the narrative covers global and at-home violations.

    Elite media have trouble navigating the place of the US in a global context, and the media-consuming public suffers as a result. There’s a new report from the UN about this country and human rights. We’ll hear about it from Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program at the ACLU.

          CounterSpin231110Dakwar.mp3

     

    Rep. Mike Johnson

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (CC photo: Gage Skidmore)

    Also on the show: Headlines tell us that the US public don’t know a lot about Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House of Representatives. That’s true as far as it goes, but isn’t it also a kind of admission of failure for a press corps that really should be actively involved in informing us about the person third in line for the presidency—like maybe his idea that some of the people he’s nominally representing should just burn in Hell?

    Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, will give us some things to consider as we see coverage of Mike Johnson unfold.

          CounterSpin231110Gertz.mp3

     

    The post Jamil Dakwar on US & Human Rights, Matt Gertz on Mike Johnson appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • 22 House Democrats Voted With Republicans to Censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib

    Twenty-two Democrats in the U.S. House voted with Republicans on Tuesday to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib — the only Palestinian-American member of Congress — over her response to the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the Israeli military’s response, which has killed more than 10,000 people in just a month. The censure resolution, led by Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), falsely accuses Tlaib (D-Mich.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.