The UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission into UN Human Rights Council settlements is seeking written submissions with documentation on the topic from all relevant parties.
It has made this request of member states, international organizations, national institutions and nongovernmental organizations, according to a letter sent last week by Christine Chanet, the head of the three-person mission, to council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre.
In it, Chanet said that the mission had begun its work but was hampered by Israel’s refusal to cooperate. Israel had not responded to correspondence from the mission, Chanet said.
“In the absence of a response from the permanent mission of Israel to my request, the fact-finding mission is planning to make alternative arrangements to obtain direct and first-hand information relevant to the discharge of its mandate and to travel to the region,” she wrote.
The mission has begun its work with an eye toward submitting a report for the 22nd Human Rights Council session in March, she said. The mission held its first meetings in Geneva at the end of August, she said.
The Human Rights Council ordered the probe, the first of its kind, last March and appointed the mission members in June.
In response, Israel cut its ties with the council.
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said that since the council’s inception in 2006, “it has ordered five one-sided commissions of inquiry against Israel, yet created none for victims of mass killings in Iran, North Korea, China, Congo, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and many other repressive regimes.
“Double standards only harm the world body’s credibility and pose an obstacle to the realization of its founding mission,” he said.
“Everybody knows there isn’t a single fact of significance that the mission could possibly find that’s not already known by the UN and documented in scores of resolutions and reports that annually condemn Israeli settlements,” Neuer said.
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