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Using Palestinians as a human shield against BDS

Posted on | Rami Younis | +972 Magazine

In response to the Reykjavik City Council’s — since reversed — decision to boycott Israeli goods until the occupation is ended, Israeli politician Yair Lapid wrote an open letter to the Icelandic people titled ‘The Hypocrisy of Boycott.’ In his oped, Lapid argued that Israel should not be boycotted because doing so would harm its Arab citizens. One of those citizens responds.

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Call on the UN to drop its contracts with G4S

Posted on | BNC

[Update, September 10, 2015] : In April 2015, a group of Palestinian human rights organizations wrote a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urging the UN to terminate its contracts with international security company G4S due to its complicity in the Israeli occupation’s prison system and human rights violations as well as a record of grave human rights violations around the world.

Five months later, the UN has still not replied to the letter. Today, Palestinian human rights organizations joined by over 220 solidarity groups, trade unions, human rights organizations and migrant solidarity groups from around the world renew the call and urge the UN to cancel its contract with G4S because of the role the company plays in human rights abuses in Palestine and other parts of the world.

AURDIP signed the letter.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee is a member of an international coalition that is campaigning for the United Nations to drop G4S as a contractor due to its ongoing complicity in human rights violations in Palestine & around the world. A similar international campaign succeeded in pressuring the Bill Gates Foundation to divest from G4S last year.

You can read about the Stop G4S campaign on the BDS movement website here and with Addameer’s new factsheet here.

Palestinian civil society groups recently wrote to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to express their view that the UN is failing to implement its own ethical business rules by contracting with G4S because of its complicity in Israel’s abuses of Palestinian human rights and international law. The organisations have received no reply.

Now the international coalition working on the campaign is asking for organisations to join us in putting pressure on the UN by signing a letter. The text of the letter is available to read here (and below).

Human rights organisations have come together to draft a letter to Ban Ki-moon and other key UN officers, urging them to respect Palestinian human rights and their own guidelines by ending its relationship with G4S.

Please add your organisation’s endorsement of the letter using this form. It would be great if you could respond by July 7. Please don’t publicise the letter until the final letter has been published.

The letter also discusses the role that G4S plays in labour rights violations and violent abuses in prisons around the world that it helps to run. You may want to consider reaching out to groups concerned about these issues and using this letter as a starting point for discussions.