Statement delivered at HRC54 on Item 6 – UPR adoption of Israel
Defence for Children International (DCI) delivered a statement on behalf of Defence for Children International (DCI) – Palestine, on Item 6 – UPR adoption of Israel.
Generations of Palestinian children have grown up under the shadow of Israel’s brutal and seemingly endless military occupation. Israeli forces and settlers routinely target Palestinian children with violence, including injury from gunfire, torture, and individual attacks. More than 2,286 Palestinian children have been killed as a result of Israel military occupation since 2000, according to data collected by Defence for Children International – Palestine.
Already in 2023, at least 47 Palestinian children have been killed, according to documentation collected by DCI-P. Israeli forces and settlers have shot and killed at least 39 Palestinian children and killed one Palestinian child with a targeted drone strike in the occupied West Bank. Six Palestinian children in Gaza were killed in the May 2023 Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip, and a 10-year-old Palestinian child in Gaza succumbed to head wounds he sustained during the Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip in August 2022.
Israeli authorities’ systematic denial of fair trial rights to Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank and prosecuted in Israeli military courts is an inherently unjust system of control constituting arbitrary detention by default.
From the widespread ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children to the systematic denial of their due process rights emerges a system of control that masquerades as justice where arbitrary detention is the default policy. Systemic impunity is the norm and perpetuates grave violations against Palestinian children, apartheid policies and practices, and the denial of the right to self-determination for Palestinians. In an effort to challenge systemic impunity, we strongly urge all member states to:
- Demand Israeli authorities end the practice of arresting and prosecuting Palestinian children from the occupied West Bank;
- End all complicity and financial and diplomatic support to the Israeli apartheid system; and
- Take urgent action to ensure accountability for violations by supporting efforts by the International Criminal Court to hold perpetrators accountable and by carrying out obligations under the Geneva Conventions or Rome Statute to exercise criminal jurisdiction and arrest persons alleged to have committed, or who ordered to have committed, international crimes.
Read full statement here.
