Amsterdam - The international community should formulate
minimum human rights standards for people living under prolonged
occupation, with long-term stateless refugees offered alternative
political arrangements including citizenship, a UN human rights
expert has said.
Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for
human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, spoke to the
German Press Agency dpa on Thursday.
Falk was in the Netherlands to open an international
symposium on the Israeli security barrier, organized by Dutch NGO
United Civilians for Peace.
'People living under prolonged occupation such as the Palestinians
should receive extra protection,' Falk says.
'They should have more secured rights to receive education and
access to health care. Occupying forces should be obligated to
provide people normal lives while occupation continues.'
Aside from international minimum standards for the treatment of
occupied people, Falk also recommends exploring options to ease the
lives of long-term refugees. In his definition, that includes anyone
who has been a stateless refugee for more than 10 years.
Falk says the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN
Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner and human rights NGO's
should explore offering alternatives to such refugees. Perhaps, he
says cautiously, this could even include offering them citizenship.
'Of course, one could only do this if it would not backlash and
stop host countries from accepting refugees altogether,' he warns.
The hundreds of thousands stateless Palestinians living in various
Arab countries would fall into this category, says Falk. Today,
their host countries decide according to national law whether or not
to offer them citizenship.
'Many stateless Palestinians want to remain refugees. They fear
losing the right of repatriation if they would get citizenship,' he
conceded, declining to hypothesize over whether this would indeed be
the case.
He concurred that in any case Arab host countries were generally
unwilling to integrate Palestinians into their societies.
Yet, he says, as refugees' living conditions are often deplorable,
'moral and humanitarian law' would demand offering them citizenship
so they can pick up their lives.
In this respect, Falk says, the European Union is 'far ahead' of
the rest of the world. The EU has increasingly defined migration and
refugee-issues as regional problems that should be coordinated
internationally. He feels the broader international community should
follow this example.
'Ideally, the international community should define minimum
applicable standards of human rights that go beyond national
sovereign rights to determine how to absorb refugees.'
Falk was appointed special rapporteur on March 26, 2008, but
quickly made world headlines when in May 2008 he was refused entry
into Israel, which deported him immediately.
Israel's action followed earlier remarks by Falk - himself a
secular Jew - comparing Israeli policies concerning the Palestinians
with 'Nazi methods of collective punishment' and warning of a
'Holocaust.'
'In a certain way Israel's refusal to allow me entry helped my
work,' Falk now says. 'It gave me more access to world media.'
Today, his staff has been able to work in the Palestinian
territories, but he remains barred from Israel - except when he
travels there privately.
'I lectured in Israel last summer and had no trouble getting in,'
he says.
While in The Hague, Falk did not meet with chief prosecutor Luis
Moreno Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) who is
currently investigating whether Israel could be prosecuted for
alleged war crimes committed during the 2008 siege of Gaza.
'Although I would be happy to provide Ocampo with information,' he
emphasizes.
Yet, Falk doubts whether attempts to prosecute Israel for alleged
war crimes will be successful. Israel, the United States, Russia and
China are among the 86 countries that have not signed the ICC's
founding document, the Statute of Rome.
'My fact-finding group is to file a report late September,
proposing mechanisms to hold Israel responsible for war crimes. It is
conceivable that it might lead to legal action, but ... it will be
very difficult. ...'
USA
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