COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS HOLDS DISCUSSION WITH NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights this afternoon held a discussion with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Israel, Cameroon and Argentina, whose reports will be considered during the session.
On Israel, NGO representatives spoke about Israeli violations of the rights to water and sanitation of persons living in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, forced displacement for Palestinians and destruction of their property, and legislation that discriminated against Arab citizens of Israel, particularly the Bedouin communities.
Turning to the situation of economic, social and cultural rights in Cameroon, NGO representatives raised issues such as land tenure and forced evictions of thousands of people, mostly from city slums, and consequences including children being forced to drop out of school. They also spoke about food shortages, the dramatic increase in food prices and food riots, and measures the Government needed to take to ensure the right to food.
Regarding economic, social and cultural rights in Argentina, NGO representatives raised the situation of the 46,000 persons with disabilities in Argentina in terms of employment and access to State benefits, the rights of undocumented workers, and also discrimination against the indigenous communities, particularly through lithium mining. They also highlighted the far-reaching and fatal consequences of genetically modified soybean production.
Representatives of two non-governmental organizations spoke generally about the Optional Protocol of the Covenant, and also about a piece of new international legislation called the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations, and its implications for the Committee.
Estonia and Turkmenistan will also be presenting reports during the Committee’s session but there were no representatives from non-governmental organizations in those two countries present.
The next meeting of the Committee will be at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 15 November when it will begin consideration of the second periodic report of Estonia (E/C.12/EST/2).
Presentations by Non-Governmental Organizations
Israel
A member of the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group said Israeli violations of the rights to water and sanitation of persons living in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip entailed outright attacks on Palestinian water resources and infrastructure in the context of forced expulsion from traditional lands. In 2011 alone over 40 Palestinian cisterns had been intentionally destroyed by Israeli authorities; there had been over 100 demolitions of water and sanitation infrastructure generally, including municipal and private wells and electrical utilities necessary for water and sewage infrastructure. One consequence was that 95 per cent of the Coastal Aquifer, the sole source of water for the 1.6 million residents of the Gaza Strip, was unfit for human consumption but Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip had no alternative but to consume that water, as Israel denied access to any other sources or the means to construct waste water treatment plans. The Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group urged the Committee to not only address the specific violations of the rights to water and sanitation but to condemn the occupation and blockade that were the underlying root cause of the violations.
The Israeli Committee against House Demolitions representative said that since 1967 Israel had demolished over 26,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied Palestinian territories and had an ongoing policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. House demolitions and evictions had increased fivefold in 2011, compared to 2010 figures. Bedouin communities were being destroyed. Israel operated a Kafka-esque housing policy in Jerusalem, in which Palestinians were denied the right to build housing and to date over 2,000 homes had been demolished in East Jerusalem alone. Israel’s motivating agenda was openly attributed to the demographic aim of Judaizing Jerusalem. The Israeli Committee against House Demolitions called for an end to the occupation and a prompt realization of Palestinians’ right to self determination, an immediate cessation of the destruction of Palestinian homes, schools and infrastructure, repatriation for all refugees and internally displaced persons and compensation for affected Palestinians.
A speaker for Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre spoke about forced displacement in the occupied Palestinian territories resulting from the Israeli demolition of civilian property, forced evictions, land expropriation, settlement establishment and expansion, construction of the Wall, restricted access to services and military operations in all locations. Israel’s policies and practices were a major cause of forced displacement for Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories, and impacted on a range of fundamental human rights and basic humanitarian needs. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre called for Israel to immediately cancel and cease issuance of all stop work and demolition orders on Palestinian structures; to cancel all pending orders for forced evictions in East Jerusalem; to grant building permits for Palestinians living in Area C and East Jerusalem; to hand planning in Area C to a purely civilian body that had representation from local Palestinian communities; and to immediately end restrictions on raw construction materials entering the Gaza Strip, specifically steel and cement.
A Palestinian lawyer who worked with Adalah said that 2011 marked a further escalation in the legislation and enactment of discriminatory and anti-democratic laws by the Israeli Knesset. Those laws threatened the rights and harmed the legitimate interests of Arab citizens of Israel. New laws included one which enabled Israeli authorities to reject Arab applicants for housing units and plots of land for being “unsuitable to the social and cultural fabric of the town”. Another law stipulated that children who did not receive Ministry of Health-recommended vaccinations would no longer receive child allowance: that law especially affected Bedouin children who had little access to health care. The recent ‘Boycott law’ enabled suits against every person who called for a boycott of Israel, while a new law targeting human rights organizations, such as Adalah, limited their funding from foreign governments and bodies, such as the European Union and the United Nations. The speaker said it was particularly disturbing that the discriminatory and racist legislation seemed specifically designed to overturn Supreme Court decisions providing protection for human rights.
A representative of Al Haq said land appropriation policies discriminated against Palestinians, including Israel’s continued construction of the annexation wall, closures of the Gaza Strip and the Buffer Zone along the Gaza Strip. Despite an international ruling that the annexation wall was illegal, Israel had continued building it, cutting through villages and homes and completely cutting off East Jerusalem. The ‘Buffer Zone’, was estimated to take up 35 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s agricultural land, had severely affected Palestinians’ rights and led to agricultural workers being shot on sight, despite the fact it was not marked on any map. Al Haq urged the Committee to condemn Israel for those activities.
A speaker from Badil said that on 11 September 2011 the Israeli Government approved the Prawer Plan, which recommended the destruction of 14 villages in the Beer Sheba district in the Negev, effectively displacing 40,000 Palestinians from their homes. The forced population transfer of indigenous Bedouin Palestinians from their homes would amount to ethnic cleansing. The Prawer Plan, referred to as the ‘final solution’ for Israel’s Bedouin population, would be a continuation of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies pursued since its establishment, and would confiscate five sixths of Bedouin land. Israel sought to forcibly remove 75 – 90,000 Bedouins living in 45 unrecognized villages from their ancestral homes and their agricultural livelihoods into overcrowded townships characterized by urbanization. Badil urged the Committee to impress upon Israel the rights of the indigenous Bedouin population in the Negev, to disavow the Prawer Plan, to recognize the 45 unrecognized Bedouin villages and to recognize the legitimacy of the land deeds of the indigenous Bedouin population.
The Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality representative also spoke about the destruction of Bedouin villages and homes in the Negev region, and the forced removal of thousands of Bedouin persons into Israeli-constructed townships, and said it was a clear violation of Bedouins’ property rights and ties to the land. The Government had embarked on a new policy of suing the residents of those whose homes they had destroyed for the cost of the destruction.
A member of Bet Selem, an Israeli organization for human rights in the occupied territories, said that the Civil Administration of the Israeli Defense Ministry was planning to transfer Bedouin communities from Area C of the West Bank, affecting around 27,000 people. The first stage was scheduled for January 2012 and involved relocating 20 communities living near Jerusalem to a location near a waste disposal site. The communities were poor, suffered from food insecurity, and lived in temporary structures without electricity. Only half had running water. Israel had closed off 77.5 per cent of the land area to Palestinians and taken control of most of the water sources, which were allocated almost exclusively to the Israeli settlements, undermining the right to water of Palestinians. The right to housing had been violated by the destruction of residential homes, while the right to work had been undermined by the closing-off of land and water resources, forcing Palestinians to neglect farmland or to grow less profitable crops. Others were forced to work as labourers in Israeli settlements for a third of the Israeli minimum wage.
The International Commission of Jurists representative expressed extreme concern about Israel’s continued rejection of the premise that human rights treaties and the Covenant were applicable in the occupied Palestinian territory. The International Commission of Jurists suggested that the Committee make the following recommendations to the Israeli authorities: to recognize and give effect to the provisions of the Covenant in relation to the occupied Palestinian territories; to take immediate steps to prevent and protect the population from the continuation of settlers’ attacks and their destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and property in the occupied Palestinian territories; to condemn settlers’ violence against Palestinians and take immediate steps to hold individuals carrying out such attacks criminally responsible; and to afford to victims and members of their families effective remedies, including full reparations.
A member of Habitat International Coalition spoke about institutionalized discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel consisting of occupation and blockade, systematic demolition of homes, confiscation of lands, ethnic displacement and demolition of villages. He said that over 570 Palestinian villages, not counting those in the Golan Heights, had been demolished and de-populated. That number included 108 villages in southern Israel that were populated between 1951 and 1953, a figure that only became publically available recently.
Questions from Committee Experts
Experts asked what action Israeli passport-holders were taking on the ground to fight the alleged violations, and noted there been little information about issues relating to persons residing inside Israel and not of Palestinian-origin, such as early marriages, labour, economic stress or the right to health. The Committee had much more credibility if it discussed internal Israeli issues as well as those related to the occupied Palestinian territory and the Middle East crisis. Non-governmental organization representatives said that replies would be provided in writing or later in the week during lunch briefings with Committee members.
Cameroon
A representative of Collective Inter-Africain Des Habitants spoke about housing and forced evictions in Cameroon. The procedure for obtaining land in Cameroon was extremely complicated, and very expensive: land tenure remained an obstacle to the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights. Since 2004 millions of low-income Cameroonians had been evicted from their homes, usually in urban slums, which had affected high numbers of children who consequently had been forced to drop out of school. Being evicted was an expensive process for families, as they would lose their rental deposit, have to pay to move their belongings and also pay to find a new home.
A representative of FIAN, speaking also on behalf of the African Network on the Right to Food, said that Cameroon had not taken sufficient measures to ensure appropriate use of existing resources to guarantee the right to adequate food for its population, and had a policy which supported heavy importation of food items and food aid, rather than locally produced food. There had been a dramatic increase in food prices and food riots in 2008, with over 25 per cent of the population hungry. The Government had to protect its people against land grabbing, monitor and avert negative impacts of large scale projects on communal land, make a national strategy to guarantee food sovereignty for Cameroon, and improve the current ineffective early warning system. The Government also needed to develop a viable giant agricultural economy with small holder farmers at the centre of production, and invest the maximum available resources for emergency disaster management at the local level, especially ensuring access to food.
Argentina
CELS’ representative in Geneva said that discrimination against the indigenous communities in Argentina, along with more expulsions and the expansion of agriculture and other extractive industries on their territories, was violating their rights. When persons claimed their rights there was often a violent or threatening response from the administration, which had led to nine murders, dozens wounded and many activists charged with criminal activity. Work, promotion, salaries and social security were other areas where persons were discriminated against. A large number of non-registered, undocumented workers could not benefit from pensions and social security and were often subject to labour accidents. Immigrants were similarly discriminated against. The institutionalization of children was an issue, both in children’s homes and for adolescents. Children were often victims of child labour and sexual abuse through trafficking. Teenage pregnancies were a problem, as there was little sex education in schools.
A speaker for the International Commission of Jurists said that since 2010, 33 communities in the Jujuy and Salta provinces had suffered from the exploring for and mining of lithium, or ‘white gold’, and major scale mining led to irreparable damage to the eco systems in those regions. Human activity was affected as well, as those communities were prevented from mining salt, which was their traditional livelihood and commodity. The communities were currently waiting for a court decision on injunctions against the lithium mining companies, although the Government had recently adopted new laws to encourage mining on a totally arbitrary level. The International Commission of Jurists made the following recommendations: that the State guaranteed the rights of its people against major mining projects, and that it especially protected indigenous peoples from mining taking place on the territories they occupied. The State must protect existing water sources and ensure its quality, particularly in the Salinas Grandes region, and also ensure the long-term viability of those communities’ salt production.
A representative of International Disability Alliance, a network for persons with disabilities, focused on the situation of the 46,000 persons with disabilities in Argentina in terms of employment, as high numbers were unemployed. In the 1980s the Government had taken steps to overcome the situation by establishing quotas, but the law remained unimplemented. The requirement of residency of at least 20 years for persons with disabilities to be eligible for social benefits was an active discrimination which violated the law on immigration. Finally the speaker acknowledged the important breakthrough of a new National Mental Health Law, but said the law did not go far enough for persons with psycho-social disabilities, and allowed for forced treatment of persons with disabilities.
A member of GRR & Aktion GEN-Klage Germany, an ecologist organization, said that Argentina was one of the most affected countries worldwide by the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture, with fatal consequences for consumers, farmers and bee-keepers. In 2004 soybean cultivation, which was 100 per cent genetically modified, took up 48 per cent of total arable land. Hundreds of thousands of people had been expelled from their land, and poverty, malnutrition and under-nourishment had increased. In 1970 the proportion of persons living below the poverty line was five per cent, but in 2004 it was 51 per cent. The spraying of agrochemicals on soybean plantations from the air had led to birth defects, dead animals, severe sickness, malformed vegetables and lakes full of dead fish. GRR & Aktion GEN-Klage Germany urged the Government of Argentina to denounce the soybean scheme and stop biotech experiments which used over 40 million Argentine people as ‘guinea pigs’, to restore the national production of basic crops, to establish State control and to re-establish a low-price sector for basic food stuffs, including lentils, rice and dairy, which were now no longer produced.
Questions from Committee Experts
An Expert said the Committee was very concerned about vulnerabilities of indigenous peoples the world over, but asked about land tenure. Experts also asked about the quotas for employing persons with disabilities – was it a case of lack of political will?
An NGO member replied that there was a right to community land ownership, but to date many territories had not yet been given in collective ownership. One obstacle was financial institutions which wanted to encourage people to ask for individual land titles. The law on disability quotas had not been implemented nationally, although in Buenos Aires there had been two law suits
General
A representative for the Coalition for the Ratification of the Optional Protocol of the CESCR Convention, said that five countries had now ratified the Optional Protocol to the Covenant, most recently Argentina – importantly the first member of the G20 to ratify the Optional Protocol. Civil society was already mobilized to ensure the Optional Protocol fulfilled its potential, and there were unprecedented expectations. The Coalition urged the Committee to focus on the inadmissibility clause, in Article 4 of the Optional Protocol and to remain true to what was intended by inclusion of that article, and also on Article 8 and the submission of third-party information – could it be provided directly to the Committee and not via the petitioner?
A member of the International Commission of Jurists, said she wanted to draw the Committee’s attention to a new international legal text relevant to their work, The Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations, adopted in September 2011. The new Maastricht Principles affirmed that States were obliged to cooperate and assist other States in realizing economic, social and cultural rights of all people, and that States may be held responsible for the adverse effects that their conduct brought to the enjoyment of rights beyond their own borders. The International Commission of Jurists hoped that the adoption of the Maastricht principles would support their work and could be applied in the constructive dialogue with States and concluding observations, as well as General Comments.
For use of the information media; not an official record
ESC11/012E