Video: Belgium ‘Sorry’ for Electing Saudis to UN Women’s Rights Panel
A new video by UN Watch, screened for the first time at its recent 2017 Gala Dinner in Geneva, tells the story of how Belgium was forced to apologize for electing Saudi Arabia to the U.N. women’s rights commission, along with other recent accomplishments by the organization in the fight to defend human rights. Click here to watch video.
Transcript: Syria & Other Dictatorships Attack Israel at WHO
Following are highlights from the May 25, 2017 meeting of the World Health Organization, where Israel was the only country singled out for special criticism in a stand-alone agenda item, resolution, and report. The UK changed its vote, breaking with EU countries who supported the Syrian-backed resolution. Full story here.
Turkey: This report registers the ongoing suffering of the Palestinians who are being deprived of their basic humanitarian needs. Physical and procedural barriers for access to healthcare are illegal, inhuman, and unacceptable.
Algeria: The state of health of prisoners in Palestine, children, and women, is a violation of international law.
South Africa: We align ourselves with the statement just read by Algeria, and express deep concern regarding the deplorable social, economic, health conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories including East Jerusalem…
Syria: The inhumane detention of Syrian prisoners in Israeli prisons, who undergo horrible torture to compel them to confess of crimes they did not commit. They are used as guinea pigs and experiments for new drugs…. Because of the Israeli nuclear reactor that is about to explode, nuclear waste has been buried in the Syrian Golan… Also, the Israeli occupying power continues to treat the injured among the terrorists from Al-Nusra front and other terrorist groups in Israeli hospitals, and transfers them from the occupied Syrian Golan to Israeli hospitals and then they are free to return to the Syrian territories to conduct terrorist attacks.
UNRWA: UNRWA appreciates the World Health Assembly (WHA) to discuss the health of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is because 50% of 4.8 million people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are Palestine refugees. As health of the people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are dire, the health of Palestinian refugees remains dire. The first WHA took place in 1948. In the same year, the history of Palestinian refugees’ plight, or Naqba, started…
United Kingdom: We do not have decisions in the WHO relating to every conflict or civil war or political stalemate around the world. This is the only one… The WHO is one of the world’s most important technical agencies. It should not be a place where we argue over politics. If we politicize the WHO, we do so at our peril. We do the course of our global health and the health of our citizens a grave disservice. We have serious concerns about the conditions in the OPT but the politicization of their health needs does not do them any favor, and it undermines the WHO’s credibility as the globally-focused and objective international health body we all support. Today, the UK voted against this politicization of the WHO and in the hope that in the next year, we can finally succeed in bringing it to an end.
Click here for statements by USA, Israel, Germany and more
