Third Committee
Summary record of the 36th meeting
Held at Headquarters, New York, on Friday, 28 October 2011, at 10 a.m.
Chair: Mr. Haniff ………………………………………………………… (Malaysia)
Contents
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*Items which the Committee has decided to consider together.
The meeting was called to order at 10.05 a.m.
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Agenda item 68: Right of peoples to self-determination (A/66/172 and A/66/317)
1. Mr. Bennett (Special Adviser to the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights) introduced …
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2. He also introduced the Report of the Secretary-General on the right of peoples to self-determination (A/66/172), which outlined the latest developments in the relevant jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the treaty-based human rights norms relating to realization of the right of peoples to self-determination. It also provided information on the Human Rights Council’s consideration of the human rights situation in Palestine and other Occupied Arab Territories, and a summary of developments in South Sudan and Western Sahara.
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21. Ms. Shen Siwei (China) …
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22. Reaffirming the solemn political right of all peoples to national self-determination and freedom from foreign aggression and interference, she reiterated China’s unwavering support for the aspiration of the Palestinian people to national self-determination, statehood and full membership of the United Nations, and called upon the international community to strive for comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East and for the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Israelis.
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23. Ms. Solórzano-Arrigada (Nicaragua) …
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25. Her country affirmed the importance and inalienability of the right of self-determination of peoples suffering under foreign occupation and the right to fight for sovereignty, independence, and dignity. It therefore supported the Palestinian people in their struggle to establish the State of Palestine.
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48. Ms. Arias (Cuba) …
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52. Cuba supported the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to establish their own independent, sovereign State, freely choose their own political and economic system and live in peace and freedom in their own State.
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54. Ms. Alsaleh (Syrian Arab Republic) said that racism had become an epidemic: violence and incitement to ethnic or religious hatred were rife, and modern communication technologies were being used to vilify specific religions or cultures and propagate false ideas of the superiority of some over others. A centuries-old fund of dialogue and cooperation between peoples was being depleted, the hands of the clock of civilization were being turned back.
55. That was particularly the case in the Middle East, where the Israeli apartheid entity engaged in hateful racist practices. The people of the Occupied Territories were denied citizenship on the pretext that Israel was a Jewish State. The construction of an apartheid wall was under way in the occupied Syrian Golan in a futile effort to isolate and Judaize that part of the country. The theft of water, land and property continued. Israeli occupation forces in the Syrian Golan engaged in racist and discriminatory practices in the fields of education, health, culture and language. Palestinians and persons from the occupied Golan were detained under inhuman conditions that had resulted in their becoming seriously ill and even dying, all on the grounds that they had resisted occupation by burning their Israeli identity cards. That was a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
56. Israel, in fact, engaged in State-sponsored terrorism. It was characterized by a deep-rooted, aggressive racism. Israeli settlers treated non-Jews as though they were beings that did not deserve to live. The continued feigned ignorance of Israel’s crimes on the part of its apologists within the United Nations encouraged it to continue on its unlawful course. The Organization should summon up the political will to abide by its commitments and enforce the principles of international law. So long as it could not or would not do so, Israel, with the assistance of certain influential States, would continue to deprive millions of Palestinians of their right of self-determination. Yet that right remained valid; six generations of suffering had not effaced it.
57. Mr. Tarar (Pakistan) said that despite the enshrinement of the right to self-determination in the Charter of the United Nations, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, resolutions of the General Assembly, the Vienna Declaration, the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, the Millennium Summit, the United Nations 2005 World Summit and the fifteenth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, inter alia, the exercise of that right was still denied in various parts of the world, including Jammu and Kashmir and Palestine.
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63. Mr. Abdel Khalek (Egypt) …
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69. Turning to the issue of self-determination, he said that the issue of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people had been continuously politicized within the United Nations. The Palestinians had been under foreign occupation for more than 65 years, and despite actions by the United Nations and other international organizations, their rights were flagrantly violated on a daily basis.
70. Israel had been at war with Gaza for more than two years. The recommendations contained in the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known as the Goldstone Report, must be fully implemented. The international community had a moral and legal responsibility to prevent the recurrence of such violations. The perpetrators must be held responsible for their acts, without impunity. The end of foreign occupation in Palestine and full membership for Palestine in the United Nations would contribute to ending such violations.
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73. Mr. Yahiaoui (Algeria) …
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79. The United Nations should continue its work to implement the right to decolonization to ensure full enjoyment of that right to all peoples under foreign occupation. At a time when new types of human rights were being developed and affirmed, it was alarming that the right to self-determination remained inaccessible to some peoples, including the Palestinians and the peoples of the 16 non-self-governing territories on the United Nations decolonization list, including the people of the Western Sahara.
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The meeting rose at 12.20 p.m.
Document Type: Summary record
Document Sources: General Assembly, General Assembly Third Committee (Social Humanitarian and Cultural)
Subject: Human rights and international humanitarian law, Inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, Occupation, Self-determination
Publication Date: 28/10/2011