Adalah to UN: Human rights expert should investigate Israel’s racist and discriminatory policies and practices in housing and land for all Palestinians under Israel’s jurisdiction
Today, 17 March 2022, Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany provided an oral statement via video during the 49th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), in an interactive dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur (SR) on the right to adequate housing, Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal. Adalah requested that the SR undertake a country visit to investigate and report on Israel’s international obligations on the right to adequate housing for all Palestinians under Israel’s jurisdiction.
In its statement to the HRC, Adalah emphasized Israel’s discriminatory policies and practices pursued to confiscate Palestinian lands and create new Jewish localities, in order to entrench control over the land and its use. Adalah further referred to the Jewish Nation-State Law, which constitutionally entrenches racial discrimination and exclusion, and to Section 7 specifically, which promotes the establishment of Jewish settlement on both sides of the Green Line.
CLICK HERE to read Adalah’s statement
This session followed the publication of two interrelated thematic reports by the SR, concerning spatial segregation and the right to adequate housing and discrimination in the context of housing. In his first report, issued in October 2021, the SR addressed housing discrimination by the State of Israel faced by Palestinian communities in Israel and in the OPT. The SR expressed his grave concern about “the persistent systemic discrimination and segregation in accessing the right to housing experienced and reported by particular vulnerable groups, particularly … Palestinian citizens/residents in Israel and the West Bank”.
CLICK HERE to read more about Adalah’s response to the SR’s thematic report
In June 2021, Adalah submitted its report on "Spatial Segregation in Israel," in response to the SR’s call for inputs to inform his upcoming thematic reports to the HRC and the UN General Assembly.
