INTERVIEW: Occupied peoples need extra protection, says UN rapporteur by Rachel Levy, dpa

Jul 9, 2009, 13:32 GMT

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. ...'