Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, November 14, 2019
In November 2019, eight Palestinian, regional, and international organisations, including Al-Haq, BADIL, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Addameer, the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (CCPRJ), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), and Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network (HIC-HLRN), submitted a comprehensive 60-page report to the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) ahead of Israel’s upcoming review in December 2019.
The joint parallel report details Israel’s creation of an institutionalised regime of systematic domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and Palestinian refugees and exiles abroad, which amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law. In the report, the organisations argue that Israel has created and maintained an apartheid regime over the indigenous Palestinian people, in violation of its obligations under Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which enshrines: “States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction…