On 18 September 2025, Al-Haq delivered an oral intervention under Item 3, ‘General debate on promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development’, in which it highlighted the unprecedented use of United States (US) sanctions to oppress and silence leading Palestinian human rights organisations pursuing accountability. Al-Haq explained how eliminating Palestinian voices, “which historically have been sidelined in any analysis of Palestine’s history, undermines the promotion and protection of fundamental human rights across all sectors and directly facilitates the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people”. It stressed:
By silencing those advocating for justice, freedom, and dignity, it not only violates civil and political rights but also erodes economic, social, and cultural rights. These defenders play a critical role in challenging oppression and ensuring accountability, and their persecution sends a dangerous message that the rights of marginalised communities can be disregarded with impunity.
With respect to marginalised communities, the right to self-determination is paramount, and constituted the focus of Al-Haq’s second oral intervention under Item 7, ‘General debate on human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories’.
Delivered on 29 September 2025, Al-Haq’s oral intervention highlighted the integral role of self-determination to the full enjoyment of all human rights. It also drew attention to how, in the Palestinian context, Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime not only directly obstructs the Palestinian people’s enjoyment of this inalienable right but further cements Israel’s unlawful occupation and racial domination and subjugation of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line, while unlawfully denying Palestinian refugees the right of return.
Al-Haq’s intervention under Item 7 reads as follows:
Mr. Vice President,
No meaningful discussion on the human rights situation in Palestine can take place without recognition of the fact that the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination is a prerequisite for the full realisation of all other human rights guaranteed to all peoples under international law.
As a direct result of Israel’s genocidal settler-colonial apartheid regime, protracted unlawful occupation, and annexation of large swaths of Palestine’s territory, the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination – a foundational principle of international law with jus cogens status – has been systematically obstructed. The Palestinian people have been systematically fragmented and denied their right of return as Israel entrenches its illegal presence and control over the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line in a continuing Nakba.
The denial of this absolute right has had far-reaching consequences, stripping the Palestinian people of autonomy and the ability to govern their own affairs, control their resources, and establish institutions that reflect and protect their collective identity and aspirations. This not only violates their social, civil and political rights but also undermines access to essential services such as education, healthcare, and housing – all cornerstones of human dignity.
Without the ability to freely determine their political status and pursue economic, social, and cultural development, the enjoyment of all other human rights is effectively unattainable and instead structural inequality, racial domination, apartheid, and oppression persists. The realisation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is critical to enabling the Palestinian people to freely pursue a future of their own making, emancipated from an Israeli system designed to ensure their erasure.
In its third and final oral intervention at the Human Rights Council’s 60th Session, under Item 9 on ‘racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance’, Al-Haq framed Israel’s escalating annexation of Palestine in the broader context of its apartheid framework and subjugation and elimination of the Palestinian people. Having a clear understanding of the goals underpinning Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime is crucial to effectively tackling its Zionist agenda and attempts to destroy Palestine’s indigenous population and replace it with Israeli-Jews. Remaining mindful of this fact, and consequently the racial undertones to Israel’s acts and policies across the unlawfully occupied Palestinian territory, is paramount when engaging in any discussion or analysis on appropriate responses.
Al-Haq’s final intervention, under Item 9, reads as follows:
Mr Vice President,
Last week, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel found that the Israeli government has demonstrated a clear and consistent intent to establish permanent control over the besieged Gaza Strip while ensuring a Jewish majority in the occupied West Bank and inside Israel.
While a welcome finding, Al-Haq has long demanded accountability for Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime and ongoing Nakba, rooted in racial discrimination and the systematic subjugation and elimination of the Palestinian people.
Since its founding, Israel has implemented policies that prioritise Jewish-Israeli identity while systematically denying Palestinians equal rights, as it engages in demographic manipulation and territorial fragmentation of unlawfully occupied Palestine. Israeli policies entrench the fragmentation of the Palestinian people to prevent the realisation of their rights to self-determination and return.
Through rapid expansion of illegal settlements and mass forced displacement, Israel is entrenching a Zionist reality that maintains Israeli Jewish dominance at the expense of Palestinian self-determination.
Israel’s widespread and systematic use of violence and matrix of discriminatory laws, military checkpoints, home demolitions, arbitrary detentions and restrictions on daily life alongside genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and preparatory steps to annex the Palestinian territory – institutionalise inequality and reinforce a racial hierarchy in which Palestinians are dehumanised to such a degree that they are unworthy of life itself.
Israel’s annexation process is a violation of international law and a racialised colonial project of domination to deny Palestinians their rights to self-determination and return, in permanent acts of erasure.