SPECIAL SESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL ADOPTS RESOLUTION ON GRAVE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN GAZA STRIP

Human Rights Council
ROUNDUP

12 January 2009




The Human Rights Council concluded its ninth Special Session today by adopting a resolution on the grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent aggression of the occupied Gaza Strip in which it strongly condemned the ongoing Israeli military operation which had resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure.

In the resolution, which was adopted by a vote of 33 to 1 with 13 abstentions, the Council called for the immediate cessation of Israeli military attacks throughout the Palestinian Occupied Territory; demanded the occupying power, Israel, to immediately withdraw its military forces from the occupied Gaza Strip; called upon the occupying power to end its occupation to all Palestinian lands occupied since 1967, and to respect its commitment within the peace process towards the establishment of the independent sovereign Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital; demanded that the occupying power stop the targeting of civilians and medical facilities and staff as well as the systematic destruction of cultural heritage; demanded further that the occupying power lift the siege, open all borders; and decided to dispatch an urgent independent international fact-finding mission to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Council also requested the United Nations Secretary-General to investigate the latest targeting of UNRWA facilities in Gaza, including schools, that resulted in the killing of tens of Palestinian civilians, including women and children.

General Assembly Resolution 60/251 which created the Human Rights Council states in its operative paragraph 10 that the Council “shall be able to hold Special Sessions when needed at the request of a member of the Council with the support of one-third of the membership of the Council”.

This was the ninth Special Session of the Human Rights Council. The Council’s previous Special Sessions related to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Darfur, Myanmar, the Global Food Crisis and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The tenth regular session of the Human Rights Council is scheduled to take place from 2 to 27 March 2009.
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