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Committee on the Rights of the Child: Initial report submitted by the State of Palestine under article 44 of the Convention, due in 2016 (CRC/C/PSE/1) [EN/AR]

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UNCRC
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Introduction

  1. The State of Palestine acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 1 April 2014, as an expression of its respect for the principles and the spirit of the Convention.
    The present report was drafted in response to the commitments and in fulfilment of the duties incumbent upon the State of Palestine under the Convention, particularly its article 44. In addition to national measures, frameworks and benchmarks, the report covers in particular the legislative, administrative and judicial aspects relating to the provisions of the Convention.

  2. The State of Palestine is under a colonialist, military occupation on the part of Israel and this report will throw some light on the colonialist policies of that occupation and the serious, systematic and widespread violations that infringe the provisions of the Convention.
    In fact, the Israeli occupation authorities deliberately and systematically target Palestinian children on a wide scale including through extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, displacement and forced migration with the aim of terrorizing an entire generation.

  3. Following the accession of the State of Palestine to a number of international conventions and treaties, on 7 May 2014 the President of the State of Palestine issued a decree for the formation of a standing national committee at ministerial level to follow up on that accession. The committee is chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migrants with members drawn from other ministries and competent institutions, and with the Independent Commission for Human Rights acting as observer, and its purpose is to monitor the fulfilment of obligations arising from accession to the treaties in question. The present report was drafted by a joint national committee, which was brought into existence by decree of the standing committee and is part of that committee. The joint committee is chaired by the Ministry of Social Development, which is the competent authority, and its members are drawn from the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Culture, the Office of the Public Prosecutor, the Supreme Judicial Council, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior, the Bureau of the Chief Qadi and the Sharia Courts, the Commission for Detainees and Former Detainees, the Ministry of Local Government, the Broadcasting and Television Authority and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

  4. The joint committee drafted the report in cooperation with a number of civil society institutions that work with children, which provided various kinds of data and information.
    The report was then submitted to relevant government and civil society institutions via a series of workshops organized in collaboration with the competent ministries and other official bodies, and with support from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children.

  5. The joint committee also includes Defense for Children International – Palestine Section, the SAWA Foundation, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) – Jerusalem, the Tamer Institute, the Women’s Studies Centre, the Prisoners’ Club and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

  6. A draft of the present report was transmitted for consideration to representatives of civil society institutions, specifically Palestinian human rights and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Those representatives studied the text then participated in the national consultations conducted by the State of Palestine concerning the report. Given that Israel, the occupying power, bars civil society institutions in the Gaza Strip from accessing the West Bank, two national consultation meetings have been held: one at the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migrants, on 13 December 2017, with civil society institutions in the West Bank and Jerusalem; and the second by videoconference at the headquarters of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, on 6 February 2018, with civil society institutions in Gaza. The consultations were attended by representatives of ministries of the State of Palestine and of civil society institutions in the form of human rights organizations and NGOs working in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The substance of the report was discussed and civil society offered comments that facilitated the preparation of the final draft of the report.

  7. During the drafting of this initial report of the State of Palestine under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, eight workshops were organized for children in Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem with the intention of informing them about the drafting process and of canvassing their views about the extent to which the rights arising from the obligations of the State of Palestine under the Convention are being effectively applied. The workshops targeted children in marginalized areas, child victims of violence, children deprived of family care, and adolescents and children who have dropped out of school A total of 118 children participated in the workshops. In addition, 14 children participated in the national consultations held to present the report.

  8. The Government of the State of Palestine has sought to provide a favourable constitutional, legislative and procedural environment for the drafting of the present report and of reports under other treaties. This is in line with general comment No.2 of 2002 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child regarding the creation of national institutions to facilitate the implementation of the Convention, according to which the creation of such bodies falls within the framework of the obligations to which States parties subscribe when acceding to the Convention. It was in this context that the standing national committee was established in 2014 under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Migrants to follow up on the accession of the State of Palestine to international treaties and conventions. In addition, a committee was established in 2017 under the Ministry of Justice to harmonize the domestic legislation of the State of Palestine with international treaties.

  9. In drafting the present report, the State of Palestine relied on the provisions contained in the Convention itself, in particular articles 1 to 45, and on the general guidelines produced by the Committee on the Rights of the Child regarding the form and content of initial reports to be submitted by States parties under article 44 (1) of the Convention (CRC/C/5), which the Committee adopted at its fifty-fifth session in October 1991. Account was also taken of the Committee’s general comments. The report covers the period from April 2014 to the end of 2017.

  10. The submission of the present report does not exempt Israel, the occupying power, from reporting on its own compliance with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem, on the basis of its obligations and responsibilities as an occupying power, in accordance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law, as well as on the basis of the advisory opinion given by the International Court of Justice in 2004 on the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The fact is that Palestinian children are victims of flagrant violations of their legally enshrined rights due to the manifest absence of international mechanisms to hold the occupying power to account for its daily actions against Palestinian people of all categories. Palestinian children are the principal target of daily operational practices in the occupation such as killings, detentions, torture and incursions into homes and places of education, despite the fact that children are a protected category under international law and custom.