Interactive dialogue with the Working Group on arbitrary detention 54th Session Human Rights Council, 18 September 2023 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development

Prepared and Submitted 13 September 2023 by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (UK)

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Speaker: Jawad Husain

In Palestine, arbitrary detentions are part and parcel of the framework of Israeli occupation, employed against activists, journalists and even children, to deter them from challenging or exposing its daily horrors.

In July this year, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Francesca Albanese submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council which found that since 1967, more than 800,000 Palestinians, including children as young as 12, had been arrested and detained by Israeli authorities, effectively turning the occupied territories into an open air prison.

Arbitrary detention is institutionalised in the Israeli occupation via the policy of administrative detention. Under administrative detention a Palestinian can detained by a mere order of the regional military commander, based on classified evidence that is not revealed to them. The detention can be renewed every six months meaning that in theory it can be applied indefinitely against someone without any semblance of due legal process.

It is high time that the United Nations took a more robust stance against this heinous practice that is used as a protective shield by the apartheid Tel Aviv regime.