Tag: United Nations

The official Palestinian response to the Australian Government’s decision to redirect $10 million in foreign aid to the Palestinians has been undiplomatic, to say the least.

On June 26, the UN General Assembly, in a first, amended its Global Counter Terrorism Strategy to condemn the use of civilians as human shields...

As things currently stand, there are doubts over the integrity of three separate Australian-funded development programs in the Palestinian Territories. There are also long-term concerns over funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

US President Donald Trump has rightly decided to terminate US membership on what US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the “misnamed” UN “Human Rights” Council.

On 23 March this year, the Versaille Court of Appeal in France delivered a very significant judgment in a case brought by the Association France-Palestine Solidarité (France-Palestine Solidarity Association, or 'AFPS') and joined by the Palestine Liberation Organisation ('PLO'), against French companies Societé Alstom and Veolia Transport. The ruling sparked some debate within the Jewish media and -- more recently -- the international law blogosphere, but seemed to pass by the rest of the world largely unnoticed. Yet it was the first significant decision in a domestic court on many issues of international law that have been hotly debated for years, and the results may be important in the development of international law....

On Monday the UN General Assembly elected 18 countries to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Sadly, as is the usual pattern, at least six of those elected are major human rights abusers who do not meet the criteria the UN itself set for membership of the Council.

"Pakistan, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, and UAE systematically violate the human rights of their own citizens," said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer, "and they have consistently voted the wrong way on U.N. initiatives to protect the human rights of others."

The UN Human Rights Council has long had a well-deserved image problem - due in no small part to the fact numerous egregious human rights offenders are regularly elected to serve on it, where they block effective scrutiny of themselves and their non-democratic allies. The latest episode in this sorry history is the unopposed bid by Venezuela for a seat on the 47 nation Council, despite the fact that Venezuela has a very poor record on human rights.

We've seen this movie before.

Coming soon from the same producers of the discredited Goldstone Report on the 2009 Gaza War - the UN Human Rights Council - is a sequel: A "fact-finding" mission to investigate the impact of Israeli settlements in the West Bank on Palestinians. Co-sponsors of the resolution that authorised it include Syria and Iran.