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Press Release

Ref.,: 15/2002

Date: 11 February, 2002

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights welcomes the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, John Dugard, on his second mission to the region. PCHR received Mr Dugard yesterday and gave him an updated briefing regarding the further deterioration in the human rights and humanitarian situation in the OPTs.

PCHR welcomed the Special Rapporteurs first report (A/56/440) issued in October 2001 following his first mission to the region in August 2001. PCHR reaffirms the importance of redressing attention to the occupation as the main cause of the current violence. However, PCHR also raised several points, including the re-emphasis on the enforcement of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the recognition of the military nature of some settlements and settlers, including attacks on Palestinian civilians, carried out with the assistance or the complicity of the Israeli military. PCHR also asked the Special Rapporteur to clarify in his forthcoming report that the current situation is not an armed conflict, that it is not non-international.

PCHR invited a former Palestinian prisoner to provide detailed testimony to the Special Rapporteur about his ill treatment upon arrest and during detention in Israel. PCHR raised its concerns regarding the failure of the Israeli authorities to conduct full and fair investigations into human rights violations, the almost total failure to bring perpetrators of violations to justice in accordance with international standards and to provide adequate compensation to Palestinian victims of human rights violations. In this context, PCHR requested that the Special Rapporteur take action to ensure a full and fair investigation in the case of three children from Sheikh Radwan district in Gaza city who were killed in an indiscriminate and excessive use of force by the Israeli military near a settlement in the northern Gaza Strip on 30 December 2001. PCHR also brought the case of the five children killed in an explosion in Khan Younis on 22 November 2001 to the Special Rapporteurs attention.

PCHR called on the Special Rapporteur to address in his mission report the worsening humanitarian crisis in the OPTs as a direct consequence of the closures imposed by the Israeli military, and to recommend that the international community fulfill their donor commitments to the international aid organisations which provide humanitarian services in the OPTs, including UNRWA.

The Special Rapporteur will continue his mission to the OPTs with visits to the West Bank. His report is due to be published at the UN Commission on Human Rights next month.