The move sparks heated debate among diplomats at UN Human Rights Council on how to respond.<\/i><\/p>\n
Israel has become the first country to boycott a UN Human Rights Council review of its rights situation, sparking heated debate among diplomats on how to respond.<\/p>\n
“I see that the delegation of Israel is not in the room,” council president Remigiusz Henczel told the delegates at the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Israel is not a member of the council but like all 193 UN countries it is required to undergo Universal Periodic Reviews (UPRs) of its human rights situation.<\/p>\n
Its absence on Tuesday [29 Jan 2013], however, came as no surprise.<\/p>\n
Israel cut all ties with the 47-member state council last March after the body announced that it would probe how Israeli illegal settlements may be infringing on the rights of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Israel has come under widespread criticism for ramping up its construction of illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories, notably in the outskirts of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Tuesday, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman told AFP the country intended to boycott the meeting.<\/p>\n
“We cut all our contacts with the council last March, including the current activity,” Yigal Palmor said, stressing: “Our policy has not changed.”<\/p>\n
Israel’s failure to show up for its UPR marks the first time since the reviews began in 2007 that a country under evaluation has been absent without explanation, and it was unclear how the rights council would react.<\/p>\n
When Haiti delayed its UPR in early 2010 its justification was the devastating earthquake that hit the country that year, claiming more than 300,000 lives.<\/p>\n
‘A\u00a0moment of truth’<\/strong><\/p>\n On Tuesday, after Israel failed to show, Henczel called on the council to adopt a draft decision on how to react, including urging Israel to resume its cooperation with the UPR process.<\/p>\n It also called for Israel’s review to be rescheduled for no later than during the UPR session starting in October this year.<\/p>\n Delegates then took the floor, with Egypt’s representative declaring that the council faced “a moment of truth”.<\/p>\n He cautioned that taking a “soft” approach towards Israel would create a dangerous precedent and leave “a wide-open door for more cases of non-cooperation.”<\/p>\n Israel’s main ally in the council, the United States, however, gave its full backing to Henczel’s proposal, with ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe insisting in a statement, without mentioning Israel by name, that the text reflected the “best effort to find common ground and to protect the UPR mechanism going forward”.<\/p>\n And Britain called for a “proportionate and balanced conclusion”, while the Irish representative for the European Union urged a “consensual” way forward.<\/p>\n The Pakistani representative, meanwhile, implicitly criticised those urging a soft reaction.<\/p>\n “We wonder … whether this kind of cooperative spirit would be extended to some other countries that are not as close to some of the major powers in the world,” he said.<\/p>\n Despite the range of opinions, the council in the end adopted Henczel’s proposal by consensus.<\/p>\n