Bi-weekly News and Opinion Roundup - July 21, 2022 |
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Ahead of President Biden’s travel to Israel and the West Bank, C&SN Director Paul Carroll issued a statement calling on Biden to urge Israel to rescind its designations of the Palestinian Six, highlighting that “These groups were targeted for no other reason than their work in support of Palestinian needs and human rights.” Read the statement here. (July 12).
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On Thursday July 28, from 10am - 11:30am EDT, the Alliance for Peacebuilding is hosting “a conversation exploring how the international community can shape a cooperative response to the central challenges and threats from non-state armed groups around the world.” Learn more and register here. (July 28).
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Fund for Peace recently released its 2022 Fragile States Index, which aims to make “political risk assessment and early warning of conflict accessible to policy-makers and the public at large.” Access the report here. (July 13).
In its July 2022 Humanitarian Access Overview, ACAPS, a nonprofit project overseen by the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, and Mercy Corps, rated humanitarian access across a long list of countries, assessing countries based on three criteria: access of people in need to aid; access of humanitarian agencies to people in need; and physical, environmental, and security constraints. Read the overview here. (July 2022).
Following the May 2022 Wilton Park Conference, which C&SN participated in, Wilton Park, in partnership with the Fourth Freedom Forum and the Sanctions & Security Research Project, released a report summarizing key takeaways from the event. Read the report here. (July 2022).
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Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and 21 other Members of Congress sent a letter to the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence calling on the Biden administration to publicly reject Israel’s terror designations of six leading Palestinian NGOs, to urge Israel to rescind the designations, and to hold a congressional briefing to discuss the designations and the secret evidence presented by Israel. Read Rep. Pressley’s press release here, and the full letter here. (July 18).
A letter from Israel’s Defense Ministry to some of the lawyers representing the six designated Palestinian NGOs implicitly threatened them with criminal prosecution under Israeli counter-terrorism laws for working with these groups without receiving express permission from the Finance Ministry. The targeted lawyers have currently halted their representation of the groups, while also refuting that their work with these groups is subject to approval. +972 Magazine reports. (July 18).
Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden issued a joint statement asserting that “No substantial information was received from Israel that would justify reviewing our policy towards the six Palestinian NGOs on the basis of the Israeli decision to designate these NGOs as ‘terrorist organizations’.” Read the full statement here. (July 12).
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Following Russia’s objection to a full-year extension of the UN’s cross-border aid mechanism for northwestern Syria, the UN Security Council passed a 6-month extension, forestalling an immediate humanitarian disaster while raising serious concerns over the ability of humanitarian agencies to plan for the future, and over the risk of the aid mechanism collapsing in the middle of winter when this extension expires. Al-Monitor reports. (July 12).
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Following a court of appeals decision to uphold an Arkansas law that restricts state contractors from participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Supreme Court may decide to take up the case, raising concerns that it could effectively strip away protections guaranteed under the First Amendment. Azadeh Shahshahani, the Director of Legal & Advocacy with Project South, and Assal Rad, the Research Director at the National Iranian American Council, offer a brief review of the history of boycotts serving as an effective form of resistance to oppression, highlight the importance of these efforts with respect to Israel and Palestine, and review other attempts to criminalize support for BDS. Read their analysis in the Middle East Eye. (July 17).
With the possible exception of a moment of truth from President Biden in which he compared the struggle of Palestinians Israeli occupation with the struggle of the Irish against British colonial rule, Biden’s trip to Israel and Palestine was a disappointment to many who hoped he would use the opportunity to pressure Israel over a range of human rights issues including Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh and its targeting of Palestinian NGOs. C&SN’s Director Paul Carroll is quoted, rebuking the Biden administration for its attitude of “callous ambivalence” towards Palestinian civil society. Electronic Intifada reports. (July 15).
Under the Supreme Court’s recent ruling dissolving Roe v. Wade, “the U.S. is violating the right to equality and nondiscrimination, the right to privacy, the right to life, the right to health and the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” among other international human rights norms and laws. Ms. Magazine reports. (July 13).
While civic space in Russia has been under threat for some time, the situation has deteriorated significantly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to UN human rights experts. Over 16,000 people have been detained for participating in or reporting on peaceful protests against the war, and over 20 media outlets have suspended their work or permanently closed. Speaking to the impact of companies voluntarily withdrawing from Russia in the wake of its invasion, the UN experts argued that “businesses should be mindful of human rights throughout their operations and try to help Russian human rights defenders and civil society organizations avoid complete isolation.” UN News reports. (July 13).
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Ingrid Wuerth, the Director of the Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program at Vanderbilt Law School, argues that the U.S. should not designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism because such a move would be redundant and largely symbolic, could complicate future negotiations to end the war, and could deprive Ukraine of potential compensation from Russia by allowing U.S. citizens to lay claim to Russia’s frozen assets. Read her analysis in Just Security. (July 11).
Andrés Arauz, Ecuador’s former minister of knowledge and a former general director of the Ecuador Central Bank, and a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), argues “that there is only one path that can halt this crisis and help to end the suffering of the Afghan people: allowing DAB (Afghanistan’s Central Bank) immediate access to its foreign reserves in full.” Read his analysis in Open Democracy. (July 19).
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