The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) passed a resolution on Sept. 14 that said Israel’s “violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people” especially impacts Palestinian women and girls.
The resolution, which was co-sponsored by Cuba, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela, expressed “grave concern about the continuing systematic violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people by Israel, the occupying Power, and its impact on women and girls.” It also stated that “the limitations on Palestinian jurisdiction in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem … undermine the ability of the Palestinian Government to protect Palestinian women and girls in certain areas.”
The resolution called on Israel “to immediately cease all measures contrary to international law, as well as discriminatory legislation, policies and actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, and stresses that Palestinian civilians, particularly women and children, account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by the conflict.” It also called on the international community to “continue to give special attention to the promotion and protection of the human rights of Palestinian women and girls and to intensify its measures to improve the difficult conditions being faced by Palestinian women and their families, including those living under Israeli occupation, and recognizes the importance of integrating gender considerations across humanitarian programming by seeking to ensure the provision of access to protection and the full range of medical, legal and livelihood and psychosocial services, including services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, without discrimination, and through ensuring that women and women’s groups can participate equally and meaningfully and are supported in being leaders in humanitarian action.”
The resolution passed 43-3, with eight abstentions.
U.N. Watch executive director Hillel Neuer denounced ECOSOC for passing the resolution, arguing that the U.N. singled out Israel and failed to call out countries with poor women’s rights records.
“At a time when Iran is imprisoning women’s rights activists like Nasrin Sotoudeh and Narges Mohammadi, Saudi Arabia is imprisoning and torturing numerous women’s rights activists, Pakistan has the highest number of documented and estimated honor killings per capita of any country in the world, and Belarus is beating women protesters in the streets, it is the theater of the absurd for these misogynistic regimes to be singling out Israel — alone in the world — as an alleged violator of women’s rights,” Neuer said in a statement. “We are also disappointed in other countries which joined the jackals in scapegoating the Jewish state, including France, Spain, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Norway and Uruguay.”
Other pro-Israel Twitter accounts also criticized the ECOSOC resolution.
“This is exactly why the UN is not a legitimate or relevant voice on Israel,” tweeted Shiri Moshe, a foreign policy analyst with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “When the only country that the UN condemns for violating women’s rights is Israel — while no word is uttered against the misogynists in Iran or Pakistan — any moral credibility is shredded.”
https://twitter.com/shirimoshe/status/1306988399199309825?s=20
Claire Voltaire noted that ECOSOC had passed a similar resolution in 2019.
“Once again, GENEVA, September 14, 2020, Iran, Saudi (Arabia), Pakistan & Belarus were among UN’s 54-nation Economic & Social Council who voted to single out Israel as the only country in the world to be rebuked by the council this year for violating women’s rights,” she tweeted.
