Country: Palestinian Territory, Occupied

No profit without accountability: recognising the right to a healthy environment

Posted on by Tom

Communities around the world are affected by unchecked and unregulated transnational corporate power, leading to poisoned water supplies, lost farmland, destroyed food systems and lost livelihoods. Yet, too often, corporations escape accountability while communities are left without remedy or justice, as outlined in a new study focusing on environmental issues, No Profit Without Accountability – For People and the Planet, aimed at shaping UN discussions.

The upcoming session of the Human Rights Council’s open-ended intergovernmental working group in October 2025 – the eleventh annual round of discussions – has enormous potential for curbing excessive corporate power and protecting communities and the environment. States will be negotiating the final articles of the updated draft of the legally binding instrument(LBI) to regulate transnational corporations in international human rights law. FIAN and other international civil society groups insist that the LBI must include an explicit recognition of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment and integrate this right – along with broader environmental and climate change considerations – throughout its substantive provisions.

“It’s very simple. If the LBI does not include strong environmental protections, it will fail the very communities it is meant to protect,” says Ayushi Kalyan, corporate accountability coordinator at FIAN International.

Enforceable international standards

Communities and human rights and environmental defenders have long campaigned for this addition to international human rights law.

In Latin America, families are still fighting for justice decades after Sweden’s Boliden Mineral dumped toxic waste in Arica, Chile, causing widespread health problems for people living near the dump site. In Palestine, corporations like Heidelberg Materials are alleged to have contributed to the pillaging of natural resources from occupied land. Across Africa and Asia, extractive projects are dispossessing Indigenous Peoples and rural communities of their territories and food systems. Each case highlights the urgent need for clear, enforceable international standards that prioritize human rights and environmental protection over corporate profit.

The International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have both affirmed states’ obligations to regulate private actors and prevent transboundary environmental harm. More than 80 percent of UN member states already legally recognize the right to a healthy environment.

“The LBI must explicitly recognize the right to a healthy environment, protect defenders from reprisals, and ensure that victims have real access to justice,” says Stephan Backes, extraterritorial obligations coordinator at FIAN International. 

Close the gap

Negotiators now have the responsibility to close the gap at the global level by embedding this right in the heart of the LBI.

The study released today proposes concrete legal texts to states to strengthen the provisions in the LBI, ensuring, among other things, that it includes environmental due diligence, precautionary measures, and the primacy of human rights and environmental obligations over trade and investment agreements. States should carefully consider and integrate these recommendations in their submissions during the next round of negotiations in October and continue leveraging these proposals in their ongoing advocacy in relevant national, regional and international spaces and processes.

As the world edges closer to climate collapse, this LBI process is a critical opportunity to hold corporations accountable. States must not squander it.

For more information, please contact Ayushi Kalyan Kalyan@fian.org or Stephan Backes Backes@fian.org,

Global South countries take the lead on ending Israel’s genocide and illegal occupation of [alestine: securing the right to food must be prioritized 

Posted on by Tom

An emergency conference held in Bogotá, Colombia, on July 15 and 16, 2025, marks an important step in multilateral efforts to make Israel and its supporters comply with international law, including human rights law and humanitarian law. A total of 30 states participated in the conference convened by “The Hague Group,” an initiative launched by eight countries from the Global South in January 2025 and supported by Progressive International. The aim of the conference was to agree on concrete measures to end the ongoing genocide, impunity, and the illegal occupation of Palestine. 

State commitments 

The Conference resulted in a Joint Statement signed by twelve countries (Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Malaysia, Namibia, South Africa, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Oman, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines), which committed to immediately adopt concrete measures to end impunity for Israel’s actions in Palestine and break any ties of complicity with the genocide and occupation. Crucially, these commitments are based on the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. 

Specifically, these states have committed to preventing the transfer of arms to Israel; preventing the use of their ports and ships bearing their flags for such transfers; reviewing all public contracts to ensure that none of their public institutions support Israel’s occupation of Palestine; ensuring accountability for crimes under international law; and supporting universal jurisdiction mandates to ensure justice for victims. In addition, the declaration calls on the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to “commission an immediate investigation into the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, and to devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis.” Furthermore, it sets the date of September 20, 2025, coinciding with the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, for ECOSOC to report on the investigation and for other states to join the commitments. 

Although not explicitly mentioned in the Joint Statement, the systematic violation of Palestinians’ human right to food and nutrition is a fundamental part of the Israeli genocide and occupation. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification IPC, 100% of the population of Gaza is highly food insecure and, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), one in ten children screened in its medical facilities is malnourished. These shocking figures are the result of Israel’s deliberate and systematic blockade of food and humanitarian aid, as well as the systematic destruction of agricultural land and the prohibition of access to the sea for fishers. In fact, as of April 2025, more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land had been damaged and less than 5 per cent was available for cultivation. No cropland is accessible in Rafah and the northern governorates. Furthermore, Israel’s relentless campaign of bombing and destruction has devastated the entire territory and its ecosystems, wreaking havoc for present and future generations. 

Food sovereignty is key for self-determination 

“The famine in Gaza cannot be addressed as long as States continue to pretend that it is yet another humanitarian crisis,” said Ana María Suárez Franco, secretary general of FIAN International. “All states and international institutions must recognize that Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation, used as a weapon of genocide.” International humanitarian law (IHL) prohibits the use of food and water as weapons of war, specifically in Article 14 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which protects goods essential to the survival of the civilian population. This has also been reaffirmed by the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). 

The militarization of food and humanitarian aid through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHL), backed by Israel and the United States, which has led to the killings of nearly 900 Palestinians seeking aid to feed their families, is only the most blatant expression of the use of food as a weapon of genocide and occupation. Suárez Franco added: “Ensuring the immediate and unconditional provision of food and humanitarian aid in adequate quantity and quality to the population of Gaza, provided by multilateral aid agencies acting in accordance with the principles established by international humanitarian law (including UNRWA), is urgent but not sufficient to realize the right to food. As previously emphasized by FIAN and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UWAC), the struggle for food sovereignty in Palestine cannot be separated from the broader struggle for Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty over land and natural resources.” 

Therefore, FIAN International calls on the signatories of the Joint Statement and all other states to give due consideration to the right to food when implementing their commitments and human rights obligations. Concretely, FIAN recommends the following: 

  • Include agribusiness and food corporations in the review of public contracts (commitment no. 4). 
  • Ensure accountability of all actors, including non-state actors, involved in violations of the human right to food of present and future generations, particularly through the use of food as a weapon of warfare and genocide, the blocking of food and humanitarian aid, the denial of access to fisheries, the destruction of agricultural lands, and the destruction of ecosystems through irreversible damage to the environment (commitment no. 5). 
  • Include breaches of states’ extraterritorial human rights obligations when supporting universal jurisdiction mandates to ensure access to justice by the Palestinian people (commitment no. 6). 

FIAN International also urges states and ECOSOC to take into account that nutrition is a constituent part of the human right to food and is intrinsically linked to people’s ability to feed themselves, in particular through access to and control over land, fisheries, forests, seeds, and other natural resources. These aspects must therefore be included in research on the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, as well as in the development of a plan to meet those needs in a continuous and sustained manner. Involving the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in the ECOSOC investigation would be a way to ensure that the right to food is duly considered. In particular, the rehabilitation of ecosystems, land, and other natural resources, as well as peasant seed systems, must be central to measures aimed at realizing food sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. 

Finally, FIAN International calls on all states to join the Hague Group and fully comply with their obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law, with a view to urgently ending the genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine. 

For more information please contact Ana María Suárez Franco: Suarez-Franco@fian.org

International community must stop weaponization of food and starvation in Gaza

Posted on by fredsaxo

By blocking 116,000 metric tonnes of food at its border with Gaza – enough to provide basic rations for one million people for four months – Israel and its supporters violate their obligation to respect the right to food for the Palestinian population, impeding access to adequate food needed for survival and a life of dignity.

No one in Gaza has access to sufficient food and water. Some, including young children, have already starved to death with thousands facing acute malnutrition. Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure and crops have been decimated, and agricultural systems have almost collapsed. Severe fuel restrictions have crippled water infrastructure and electricity supply, leaving only limited power from solar panels and generators.

Food prices in the Gaza Strip have surged by 1,400 percent since the culmination of the last ceasefire, making it nearly impossible for affected communities to secure affordable food. This crisis impacts not only the current population but also severely threatens future generations’ health and other related rights.

Currently, residents in Gaza rely primarily on canned vegetables, rice, pasta, and lentils, as staples like meat, milk, cheese, and fruit have all but disappeared. The result is a significant deficiency in both the quantity and quality of food needed to fulfill their right to adequate food and nutrition. Children are going to bed starving, according to the UN.

This dire escalation stems not only from recent hostilities but also from Israeli occupation, systemic oppression and longstanding human rights violations of the Palestinian people. These include the destruction of food and health infrastructure, restricting water supplies, environmental destruction and other violations of economic, social, and cultural rights – as well as the right to self-determination. These ongoing violations have precipitated a food and health catastrophe that the international community has allowed to persist, breaching its obligations to ensure the right to food within and beyond their borders and for present and future generations.

The international community must act to redress this violation, adopting all necessary measures to prevent the weaponization of food and uphold the rights of the people in Gaza. States should immediately cease any support — be it military, economic, or political — to Israel and the transnational corporations complicit in this ongoing genocide.

In the short term, nations are urged to deploy diplomatic efforts to facilitate the delivery of food supplies currently blocked at the border. However, these measures alone are far from sufficient. The international community must restore local food systems and infrastructure in Gaza, respect the Palestinian’s right to self-determination and ensure access to food, remedy and justice. It is impossible to realize human rights and exercise food sovereignty in the context of settler colonialism and occupation.

The establishment of the Hague Group is a positive step towards addressing this crisis, but additional states must join this initiative and immediately take effective actions to ensure justice and peace for the Palestinian people.

For more information or media queries contact Ana María Suárez Franco: suarez-franco@fian.org

 

 

Israel must stop using starvation as a weapon of genocide

Posted on by fredsaxo

No one in Gaza has access to sufficient food and water. Some, including young children, have already starved to death, agricultural systems have almost collapsed, and famine is imminent.

In a new briefing note Israeli occupation is using starvation as a weapon of genocide against Palestinians, FIAN and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) – a Palestinian member of La Via Campesina – highlight the connections between use of starvation as a weapon, human rights, food sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.

Starvation as a tool of genocide

Additionally, it focuses on how deliberate actions such as starvation and destruction of food and health infrastructure violate the human rights of Palestinians and endanger the rights of future generations.

“Israel’s intentional destruction of food systems, blockades on humanitarian aid and the deliberate starvation of a population are not only violations of the right to food,” says FIAN International Secretary General Sofia Monsalve.

“They also constitute a war crime, as starvation is implemented as a tool of genocide.”

Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure and crops have been decimated. Severe fuel restrictions have crippled water infrastructure and electricity supply, leaving only limited power from solar panels and generators. Food stocks are almost nonexistent. Livestock farmers are facing substantial losses, with high mortality rates among animals due to bombings and lack of fodder.

Fisheries are an essential food source for Palestinians in Gaza and fishing was already heavily restricted before Israel’s genocidal war began in October. Most of Gaza’s fishing fleet has since been destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces, which have imposed a complete blockade of the sea for Palestinians, firing on boats and even individual fishers.

Denial of food a violation of international law

Peasants and small-scale farmers face land theft, water scarcity, and restrictions on market access, hindering food production and exacerbating food insecurity. Israeli settler colonial expansion in the West Bank of Palestine further disrupts Palestinian livelihoods, with Israeli forces frequently targeting agricultural lands and infrastructure.

It is impossible to realize human rights and exercise food sovereignty in a context of settler colonialism and occupation.

“Our struggle for food sovereignty is interconnected with the struggle for our national sovereignty and self-determination,” says Yasmeen El-Hasan, UAWC International Advocacy Coordinator.

“If we had control over our land and natural resources, Palestine wouldn’t be facing issues of food insecurity and starvation.”

The intentional denial of food to the Palestinians in Gaza violates international human rights law and criminal law and can constitute a genocidal act under international law. Israel's attacks have destroyed infrastructure, leading to famine-like conditions and a public health catastrophe. The recent massacre of people queuing for flour in the Gaza Strip is a stark example of a disturbing pattern of lethal attacks on Palestinians seeking assistance.

Permanent ceasefire

Palestinian children in Gaza face malnutrition and lack of access to healthcare, with long-term consequences for their physical and mental health. Children have already died of starvation. The destruction of the environment and natural resources – including through the use of white phosphorus bombs – will have lasting effects on future generations, perpetuating intergenerational poverty.

The international community must act now to ensure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Sanctions and arms embargoes should be used to pressure Israel to comply with international law and ensure the unconditional provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Justice requires a dismantling of systems of oppression: an end to the siege on Gaza and an end to the Israeli settler colonial occupation of Palestine.

Affirming food sovereignty as a guiding framework, for ensuring the realization of the human rights of current and future generations, this briefing asserts that Palestinians must have sovereignty over their land. Palestine must be free from occupation in order for justice to prevail. It is incumbent upon the international community to support this process of Palestinian liberation. 

Download here: Israeli occupation is using starvation as a weapon of genocide against Palestinians

Countries wage war and corporations profit: time for robust international treaty

Posted on by fredsaxo

Last week, in response to a shocking armed attack by Hamas, Israel doubled down on its 16-year military closure and blockade of the Gaza Strip, halting humanitarian essentials including all food, water and fuel from reaching the population of 2.3 million. This decision, in violation of international humanitarian law, was taken by the Israeli state, but is being enforced with high-tech weapons supplied by corporations in the United States, Europe and Israel.

Despite a formal recognition in 2014 that companies have a responsibility to respect human rights, there is still no international legal framework binding them to do so. Next week, an  intergovernmental working group, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, will reconvene in Geneva. It will be the ninth year of grinding talks toward a legally binding instrument to regulate activities of business enterprises, including transnational corporations, within international human rights law.

The problem of business impacts on human rights and the environment is nothing new. But recent trends – such as growing corporate influence over governments, corporate capture of international institutions and the expansion of extractivist economies – have amplified those impacts and urgently need to be addressed. Harmful effects are particularly intensified during conflicts, occupations, wars and other crises where the rule of law is already disrupted and business activities may end up fuelling or sustaining the turmoil.

Complicity in confict

Corporate and other private actors engage in business in conflict-affected areas for financial gain. But their involvement can also help maintain, worsen or prolong a conflict, prop up repressive regimes, or delegitimise sovereignty movements. Arms manufacturers, businesses operating in illegal settlements or purchasing raw materials from conflict zones and often those who merely continue business-as-usual are complicit in human rights and humanitarian law violations committed amid the conflict.

The activities of those businesses may impact food systems and food sovereignty by destroying agricultural and fisheries infrastructure, disrupting access to farmland and water, financing conflicts through crop trade or altering laws governing local food systems.

Beyond its military closure of Gaza, Israel has used its vast weapons arsenal, supplied by manufacturers including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Elbit Systems – (which is in turn supported by UK-based Barclays bank –to launch five major military assaults on the narrow strip of land since 2008. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), those attacks repeatedly targeted agricultural and fishery areas. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, agricultural enterprises established in illegal Israeli settlements profit by using Palestinian land and resources to sell produce abroad.

Unfortunately, these companies are far from alone in supporting states that use food as a weapon of war or illegal occupation.

Since 2015, the Saudi- and UAE-led coalition fighting against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen has intentionally and systematically attacked farmland, agricultural and irrigation infrastructure, mills, farm animals, markets and fishing ports. The weapons used to perpetrate these attacks were largely acquired from arms manufacturers based in several European countries, as well as Canada, Turkey and China.

In Western Sahara, Moroccan businesses illegally operate in agriculture and fisheries in the occupied territory. In 2019, €434 million worth of fish, tomatoes and melons were exported from the region to Europe. Although a European court repealed EU-Morocco trade and fisheries deals in 2021 – arguing that the agreement was made without the consent of the people of Western Sahara – Moroccan businesses continued to export mislabelled produce from the territory.

During its occupation of Iraq, US authorities implemented 100 orders that provided extensive economic advantages to US firms. Order 81, in spite of not being enforced, created new restrictions on plant varieties, banning Iraqi farmers from reusing seeds of new plant varieties and facilitating the establishment of a corporate-controlled seed market.

When coffee fuels conflict

In the Central African Republic, which has experienced an ongoing civil war since 2012, armed groups turn profits from trading in coffee, a lucrative commodity that plays a vital role in shaping conflict dynamics and the country’s  conflict economy. Similarly, the cocoa trade was used to fund armed conflict in Côte d'Ivoire during its five-year civil war between 2002 and 2007. Businesses trading in these goods help sustain the conflict resource economy by providing a no-questions-asked market.

During Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict, so-called death squads stole eight million hectares of land from small farmers, much of which was then illegally acquired by private firms. In 2016, a Colombian court ordered 19 companies, including several palm oil, banana and other agricultural companies, to return the stolen land. The multinational corporation Chiquita was also accused of financing the groups responsible for mass displacements and land grabs.

International humanitarian law (IHL) protects foodstuffs, agricultural areas (…) crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works from attacks, destruction or removal during conflict. Customary international law recognises “the right of peoples and nations to permanent sovereignty over their natural resources” as a basic component of the principle of territorial sovereignty and the right to self-determination. Yet, IHL is insufficient in regulating businesses in conflict, thus requiring a more robust legal framework that incorporates human rights concerns.

Human rights due diligence not enough

In its preamble, the most recent draft for a legally binding treaty on businesses and human rights released in July, stresses that “states must protect against human rights abuses by business enterprises and respect and ensure respect for IHL in all circumstances”. This key obligation, if enforced across the value chain, would require that so-called home states, where businesses are based, respect IHL and ensure that firms operating abroad also abide by IHL.

While this obligation in itself is positive, the language in the latest draft of the text remains vague about the measures states must undertake to ensure that business activities do not cause human rights abuse and violations in occupation and conflict situations.

The previous version of the treaty included a requirement to ensure enhanced human rights due diligence measures are adopted and implemented to prevent abuses in contexts of conflicts, occupations or wars. This could possibly include tying in a conflict analysis in their risk-assessment measures and developing an exit strategy to suspend or terminate operations if needed. This minimum requirement, however, has since been removed.

It is also crucial that the draft specifies that merely conducting enhanced human rights due diligence should not absolve corporations and natural persons from other forms of liability in the event that they participate in or contribute to worsening a conflict.

Given the heightened risk of business-related human rights abuses faced by people living in conflict-affected areas and occupied territories, it is imperative that international instruments that regulate business conduct ensure the highest standards of human rights protection.

As member states meet in Geneva next week for another round of negotiations, they must take seriously their responsibility to lay a solid foundation for the protection of human rights and the environment in these high-risk contexts.

Ayushi Kalyan is corporate accountability coordinator at FIAN International and works on the intersection of business and human rights issues, gender and conflict.

Heather Elaydi is a Palestinian-Canadian researcher and human rights advocate working on policy and politics around food, land and water, primarily in contexts of conflict and crisis in West Asia and North Africa.

This article was originally published in Geneva Solutions with the title “As countries wage war, corporations profit – time for robust international treaty” on October 19, 2023.

For more information or media interviews please contact Clara Roig Medina roig@fian.org or Tom Sullivan sullivan@fian.org

Denounce the criminalization of Palestinian civil society organizations

Posted on by fredsaxo

We, the undersigned, stand in firm internationalist solidarity with Palestinian Civil Society and demand the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reverse their recent decrees against six of the most important rights-based organisations in occupied Palestine.

On October 19th, 2021, the Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, issued a military order declaring six Palestinian civil society organisations “terrorist organisations.”

The six organisations are Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

On November 7th, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) classified these same organisations as “unauthorised,” paving the way for further prosecution.

This represents the latest in an ongoing string of unsubstantiated allegations against Palestinian human rights organisations by the Israeli government.

The Israeli government’s recent steps to criminalise and attempt to silence these six organisations is a dangerous escalation of a trend that we see taking place worldwide, targeting human rights organisations and particularly those organisations defending land, water, territories, and the earth.

For decades, the Israeli occupation has denied Palestinians access and control over their own lands, waters, territories and commons. The occupation is a source of profound human and environmental rights violations against the Palestinian people, including pollution, destruction of livelihoods, land and water grabbing, discriminatory planning laws, forced evictions and displacements, military violence, torture, and destruction of human lives.

The six organisations that the Israeli government has criminalised form part of the bedrock of Palestinian civil society that has been protecting and advancing Palestinian human rights for decades.

They work across a full spectrum of issues of global concern, including children’s rights, prisoners’ rights, women’s rights, socio-economic rights, the rights of farmworkers, justice and accountability for international crimes.

This issuing is an appalling next step in the criminalisation and efforts to silence Palestinian civil society that opposes the inhumane occupation by the Israeli government.

The published designation decisions give the Israeli government the possibility to close offices, arrest staff and members of the organisations that are being criminalised and seize organisational assets. Penalties can extend to those who assist or are in contact with the criminalised organisations.

Frontline Defenders exposed findings that indicated that six Palestinian human rights defenders, including those from the NGOs designated as terrorist organisations, were hacked with Pegasus, spyware developed by the cyber-surveillance company NSO Group.

The spyware was active in 2020 and 2021, prior to the designation status, and indicates another failure of NSO’s company policies on human rights and the ability or will of the Israeli government to impose human rights regulations on companies, which deeply impact the violation of rights of Palestinians organising and advocating for human rights.

Altogether, these Israeli government actions create a threat to the safety and security of the people who make up these organisations, to the organisations themselves and to the very important work that these organisations do in promoting and protecting human rights.

This unfair and unfounded measure has been widely criticised by Civil Society Organisations the world over [SEE BELOW]. Advocates of peace, justice and human rights across the globe are demanding Israel reverse its illegal and draconian decision.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet said in a recent statement:

“The banning of organisations must not be used to suppress or deny the right to freedom of association, or to quash political dissent, silence unpopular views or limit the peaceful activities of civil society. The national authorities responsible for proscribing organisations must comply fully with the State's international human rights obligations, including by respecting the principles of legal certainty, proportionality, equality and non-discrimination.”

The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) is the largest agricultural institution in Palestine and was established in 1986 to improve the situation of Palestinian farmers and fisherfolk.

UAWC received the prestigious Equator Prize in 2014 by the United Nations Development Agency for its outstanding work on sustainable agriculture and preservation of local seeds through its seed bank.

In the West Bank, UAWC’s work focuses mainly in ‘Area C,’ rural areas which Israel has explicit goals to annex and where Israel has been accelerating its process of expanding illegal settlements. It is worth noting that a week after Gantz’s declaration, Israel announced plans to build 3,144 new illegal settlement homes in the West Bank.

The work of UAWC, as well as the other five organisations being accused is key in the construction of a just, fair, sustainable world, free of all systems of oppression, including patriarchy, colonialism, racism and classism.

We, as social movements and civil society organisations, join in with hundreds of other organisations across the globe who have stood up to denounce this injustice. We call on the international community, especially the UN Human Rights Council, US government, Members of the European Parliament, and European Governments to:

  • Denounce all smear campaigns against Palestinian civil society organisations, press the Israeli government to immediately and fully rescind its designation of so-called “terrorist organisation” against these six Palestinian human rights groups; and
  • Use their diplomatic means to hold the Israeli government accountable to adhere to international law and human rights standards and put a permanent end to the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel, a state which violates international law daily in the absence of any form of accountability.

We would like to invite you all to mobilise together on November 29th, International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, to denounce this alarming criminalisation of Palestinian CSOs that resist an inhumane occupation policy and to support the Palestinian population to survive in these dramatic circumstances.

You can act by:

  • Asking your government to speak out against this violence and demand an end to Israel’s appalling injustices.
  • Sharing pictures and videos with messages of solidarity and demands for governments widely on social media. Toolkit here. 

We stand firmly in internationalist solidarity with the six Palestinian NGOs and the Palestinian peoples and call for a permanent end to the occupation of Palestinian lands and an end to this outrageous violence and criminalisation.

Sign on the statement here.

Sincerely,

Friends of the Earth International

Via Campesina

Word March of Women

FIAN International

GrassRoots International

Bizilur

CETIM