Al Mezan Center for Human Rights concluded its participation in the 49^th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council, which took place from 28 February to 1 April 2022. The session was marked by the release of the latest report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Professor Michael Lynk, which concluded that Israel’s rule over the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) amounts to apartheid.

Prior to the session, Al Mezan and partners submitted six joint written statements, including one exposing the continuation of apparent grave and repeated human rights violations committed by Israeli authorities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In particular, the submission urged members of the Council and the UN to “[c]all on Israel to stop targeting civilian individuals, properties, and objects in Gaza and implement all Human Rights Council resolutions and recommendations to that effect, including resolution 40/13, and the 2018 Commission of Inquiry recommendations to align its rules of engagement with international standards and to end its unlawful resort of lethal force against Palestinians.”

During the session, Al Mezan and partners delivered ten oral statements under various Agenda Items.  The joint statement under Item 2 addressing the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights strongly condemned the designation of six Palestinian organizations as 'terrorist' based on undisclosed ‘secret evidence’ and without due process, emphasizing how “[c]ivil society efforts to pursue accountability have been met with a relentless campaign by the Israeli government and associated actors to undermine efforts to end its oppression of Palestinians and apparent crimes, including apartheid.” Ireland and Luxembourg, among other states, called on Israel to revoke the designations.

Al Mezan also addressed the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, whose latest report acknowledged Israel's policy of spatial segregation in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In a statement under Item 3, Al Mezan highlighted that the purpose beyond Israel’s spatial segregation policy is “one directly serving Israel’s apartheid system against the Palestinian people as a whole” and how “[t]he Israeli authorities’ interconnected policies and practices of racial segregation, forced displacement, population transfer, spatial planning, and demographic engineering are tools that intentionally serve Israel’s institutionalized system of oppression and domination.”

At the General Debate under Item 7, Al Mezan took the floor together with Physician for Human Rights — Israel and reminded the Council that “[a]s the occupying power, Israel is responsible for the health and welfare of the Palestinian population. Israel’s laws, policies, and practices have instilled a state of inequality in healthcare provision between Israelis and Palestinians in the OPT. As a result, there has been an ongoing violation of the right to life and health of Palestinians by the Israeli authorities, and systemic disparities which can only be described as apartheid in health.”

At the Interactive Dialogue under Item 7, Al Mezan welcomed Special Rapporteur Lynk’s report concluding that Israel’s 55-year occupation amounts to apartheid and recognizing that occupation and apartheid are at the core of the State’s settler-colonial project in historic Palestine. Al Mezan brought the Council’s attention to the key feature of Israel’s system of oppression and domination—namely, the strategic fragmentation of Palestinians into different geographic and legal domains, which has resulted in them experiencing apartheid in varied ways—adding that “[in] the Gaza Strip, Israeli apartheid is openly manifested through its illegal closure, aimed at segregating two million Palestinians in an isolated enclave in which they are denied fundamental freedoms and trapping them in a state of protracted humanitarian catastrophe.”

In parallel to the session, Al Mezan co-organized a high-level event that took place both in Geneva and online, titled ‘Examining the applicability and implications of the apartheid framework to Israel’s repressive rule over the Palestinian people.’ The event—organized with Al-Haq, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—saw the participation of Special Rapporteur Lynk, State representatives from Namibia, South Africa, and Palestine, and an attendance of over 200 participants in person and online.

At the end of the 49^th Council session, Member States adopted three resolutions on Palestinians’ right to self-determination, Israeli settlements in the oPt (both under Item 7), and on the human rights situation in the oPt and the obligation to ensure accountability and justice (under Item 2). Lastly, the Council also appointed a new Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Ms. Francesca Albanese, who will begin her mandate next month. Al Mezan takes this opportunity to once again thank Special Rapporteur Lynk for his six years of work defending the human rights of Palestinians and to welcome Special Rapporteur Albanese to her new mandate.