Human rights situation in the OPT/Women – Third Cttee debate – Summary record (excerpts)

General Assembly

Fifty-sixth session 

Official Records

Third Committee 

Summary record of the 17th meeting

Held at Headquarters, New York, on Monday, 22 October 2001, at 10 a.m.

Chairman:   Mr. Al-Hinai …………………………………………………. (Oman)

Contents

Agenda item 112: Advancement of women ( continued)^* 

Agenda item 113: Implementation of the outcome of the Fourth World Conference on Women and of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century” (continued) ^*

The meeting was called to order at 10.05 a.m.

Agenda item 112: Advancement of women (continued ) (A/56/3, 38, 174, A/56/222-S/2001/736, A/56/268, 279, 306, 316, 328, 329 and 472)

Agenda item 113: Implementation of the outcome of the Fourth World Conference on Women and of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century” (continued ) (A/56/222-S/2001/736, A/56/306, 319 and Add.1)

/…

22.  Ms. Al Khalifa (Bahrain) …

[…]

25.   No mention of the advancement of women was complete, she said, without reference to the dire effects of Israeli occupation on Palestinian women, who lived under the stranglehold of an economic blockade and were subjected to beating and killing even in front of international television cameras. It was difficult to imagine how women could achieve any development under such harsh conditions. Her delegation hoped that humanitarian organizations for women and the international community would take a greater interest in their intolerable situation.

/…

77.  Ms. Al Haj Ali (Syrian Arab Republic) …

[…]

80.   Under the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan and Palestinian and Lebanese territory, Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese Arab women remained deprived of all those rights. They lacked health care, protection, education, work and other human rights owing to the ugliest kind of discrimination, based fundamentally on the occupation of the land and the application of a policy of repression, colonization and economic blockade by the Israeli occupation forces. Women’s organizations in the Syrian Arab Republic, in cooperation with the relevant international organizations and human rights networks, were monitoring the situation of Syrian women in the occupied Syrian Golan to ensure the full exercise of their rights, involving in particular the end of the occupation and the achievement of peace. Inasmuch as those two requirements had not yet been met, any talk of the need for advancement and empowerment of women was far-fetched.

/…

The meeting rose at 1 p.m.

This record is subject to correction. Corrections should be sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned within one week of the date of publication to the Chief of the Official Records Editing Section, room DC2-750, 2 United Nations Plaza, and incorporated in a copy of the record.  Corrections will be issued after the end of the session, in a separate corrigendum for each Committee.