Human rights situation in Palestine and other OATs – HRC 13th session – NGO statement (Federation of Cuban Women)

Written statement* submitted by the Federation of Cuban Women (FCW), a non-governmental organization in special consultative status

The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.

[9 February 2010]

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* This written statement is issued, unedited, in the language(s) received from the submitting non-governmental organization(s)

The Federation of Cuban Women (FCW), in representation of more than 4 million members of our organization, has historically joint its voice to the progressive forces worldwide to condemn the lack of all type of rights of which the Palestinian people continues being victim, especially its women and children. As it happens in other Arab occupied territories, the continued violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people is an act of injustice that must be condemned and before which the international community, included the United Nations, should not keep in silence.

The Federation of Cuban Women supports, together with great part of the international community, the Goldstone report. We consider a moral duty to unite ourselves to the call to put an end to this crisis. We support and promote the peace process and the respect to the international law and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. This people have been a victim for decades of the violation of its international right to sovereignty and self-determination and of the norms of the humanitarian law.

The policy of selective extermination and the numerous murders perpetrated by the Zionists with the unconditional support of the United States government pursues as objective to finish seizing, whatever the cost, all the Palestinian territories.

We very strongly condemn, as we have always done it, the Israel’s military aggressions against the Palestinian people, by which Israel has killed and injured thousands of Palestinian civilians, has used the force and made extrajudicial executions. Israel has also caused a vast destruction of homes, properties, infrastructure and agricultural lands, and it has continued with the illegal detentions, including women and children.

We denounce the physical, economic and social devastation caused by Israel to the Palestinian people, the displacing and isolation of families from their homes and the total demolition of some communities. These facts cause serious damages to the entire structure of the Palestinian society and tipify the most flagrant violations of human rights, they constitute acts of genocide.

We denounce the particularly cruel impact of these facts on the Palestinian women, mainly on those who live in the occupied territories and are systematically victims of the lack of access to elementary services as health, included the right to the services to be able to give birth to their children; right that is frustrated by not allowing women to cross the checkpoints and by the shameful wall that Israel have built to marginalize and humiliate the Palestinian population.

We reaffirm the permanent responsibility of the United Nations regarding the question of Palestine until it is integrally solved according to the international law and with total attachment to the Charter of the United Nations. We ratify our commitment of fighting, together with all the progressive women of the world, against war, in favor of peace, justice and freedom and to continue supporting the just cause of the Palestinian people in their struggle to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty in their State of independent Palestine.

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