After Years of Requests, Israeli Justice Ministry Translates UN Concluding Observations to Hebrew

(Haifa, Israel) Adalah was informed on 19 June 2012 that the Israeli Ministry of Justice has translated several “Concluding Observations” issued by United Nations human rights treaty bodies into Hebrew, and has made these documents available on the Ministry’s website. The United Nations also translates some concluding observations into Arabic, one of the UN’s official languages, which are also now hosted on the Justice Ministry’s website.

Adalah and other human rights organizations in Israel have been advocating for this step for more than ten years in their various reports submitted to these human rights treaty bodies. This year, in advance of International Women’s Day in March 2012, Adalah sent a letter to the Attorney General requesting that he issue directives to the Israeli government to translate the concluding observations of the UN human rights treaty bodies regarding the rights of women into Hebrew and Arabic, and that he ensure that the relevant ministries adopt and implement them. Adalah Attorney Sawsan Zaher prepared the letter.

International human rights treaties are legally binding agreements, which State Parties, including Israel, join on a voluntary basis. For each treaty, a specific treaty body, under the authority of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has been established to monitor states’ compliance with the agreement. There are ten core international human rights treaties; of these, Israel has signed and ratified six major treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), among others.

As a state party to these treaties, Israel is obligated to submit regular reports on its implementation. The treaty body then considers these reports, as well as information supplied by NGOs. Adalah has been submitting reports to UN human rights treaty bodies since 1997. Following the review process, the treaty bodies issue ‘Concluding Observations,’ a concrete list of recommendations for the state.

Despite the fact that Israel prepares comprehensive reports on its performance regarding these treaties, and sends high-level delegations to appear before these Committees, Israel regularly fails to implement their Concluding Observations. The availability of these Concluding Observations in Hebrew will increase their visibility, and allow the Israeli public to better hold the state accountable to its human rights commitments.

This treaty bodies themselves had also consistently called for this change. In 2012, CERD recommended that State party’s reports and the Committee’s observations “be made readily available and accessible to the public” and that they be “publicized in the official and other commonly used languages.” The Human Rights Committee, which monitors the ICCPR in 2010 stated that, “in addition to Hebrew, the Committee recommends that the report, the replies to the list of issues and the concluding observations be translated into Arabic and other minority languages” as well.

The newly available Hebrew documents are accessible at the Justice Ministry’s website.

A list of all UN Concluding Observations regarding Israel in English is available on Adalah’s website.