On 31 October 2024, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People organized the briefing “International legal responsibilities for preventing genocide, holding perpetrators of war crimes accountable, and for ending the unlawful occupation of Palestine”.
The event featured presentations by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied Since 1967, Francesca Albanese; and UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Tlaleng Mofokeng; as well as a Commissioner of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, Chris Sidoti. These briefings addressed their recent reports to the UN General Assembly and recent developments, including the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2024. The Committee also heard from representatives of the Independent Commission for Human Rights of Palestine, Diana Buttu; and the NGO “Law for Palestine”, Anisha Patel.
The arrangement of this event follows on the Bureau’s prior meetings with these UN counterparts in 2022 and 2023, and the shared objective of increased cooperation with the COI OPTEJI and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) towards highlighting violations of Palestinian rights and Israel’s disregard for international law and UN resolutions as part of the Committee’s efforts to raise awareness and mobilize accountability.
Further, in 2022 the Bureau had adopted a decision to request a briefing from COI OPTEJI and UN SR Albanese to the full Committee to help disseminate knowledge about their reports and findings. The latter have become even more relevant as the COI OPTEJI mandate allowed it to launch an investigation and proactively gather information as soon as the crisis in Gaza started on 7 October 2023, as well as evidence supporting allegations of genocide. The event also provided an opportunity for enhanced cooperation with civil society, one of the priorities of the Committee in carrying out its General Assembly mandate.
Since these consultations and developments, several significant reports and decisions have been issued, impacting the ongoing UN deliberations on the question of Palestine, including the events of 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, and the onset of what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has described as a plausible genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
