Presentation and Objectives of the Working Group on Palestine/Israel and Palestinians

Working Group Meeting - Prague 2008

The members of the Working Group on Palestine/Israel and Palestinians are human rights defenders and activists in the Euro-Med region, committed to universal human rights values and standards.

The Working Group is dedicated to reach its goals based on standards of international law, including international human rights and humanitarian law. The Working Group advocates that all actors in the conflict abide by these principles.

The aim of the Working Group on Palestine/Israel and Palestinians is to promote and protect human rights. The Working Group is strongly devoted to the human rights situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and has reported on the human rights situation since 2003. The group furthermore is very focused on and active in advocating the respect for human rights as well as the rights for Palestinian refugees in hosting countries, which is done through advocacy tours and open letters to relevant decision makers including the EU and EU Member States.

Working Group Concept

The purpose and strategy of the Working Group is outlined in its Mandate.
Working Group Mandate

PIP Working Group Project

The Working Group on Palestine/Israel and Palestinians has an on-going project which is the Human Rights Review on the EU and Israel. The aim of the project is to raise awareness on the EU foreign policy practice regarding human rights promotion and protection in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories by producing a human rights review as a monitoring, reporting and evaluation tool. The EU and EU countries uphold a ‘critical dialogue’ with Israel, which, in some respects, may force them to overlook their principles of good governance, democracy and human rights. This project reviews this situation. So far, three annual A Human Rights Review on the EU and Israel reports have been published. The role of the Working Group is to set the focus of the report, give in-put to the report researcher, comment on drafts, and participate in international tours to advocate for the recommendations made in the reviews.
The Human Rights Review on the EU and Israel

Recent activities of the WG

Minutes of the WG meeting in Madrid - 16-18 October 2009

Minutes of the WG Meeting in Brussels -  8/9 Nov 2008

Presentation of the PIP Working Group

The current Working Group on Palestine/Israel and Palestinians is made up of the following members:

Al-Haq	Maysa Zorob Political Referent
B´Tselem	Miri Weingarten
ACSUR - Las Segovias	Maria Encinas
RCT	Sos Nissen
Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights	Mahmoud Abu Rahma
Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Human Rights	Stefan Luetgenau
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel	Louis Frankenthaler
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights	Hamdi Shaqqura
Adalah	Rina Rosenberg
Arab Association for Human Rights	Muhamed Zeidan
Federation of Associations for the Defense and the Promotion of Human Rights	David Bondia Garcia
Greek Committee for International Democratic Solidarity	Eugenia Papamakariou
Palestinian Human Rights Organisation	Ghassan Abdellah

Working Group Coordinator: Nathalie Stanus

• History of the Working Group
• Working Group Meetings