At the 60th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC60), between 8 September and 8 October 2025, Al-Haq pursued an advocacy programme anchored in one principle: the inalienable and absolute right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The catalogue of violations and atrocities of Israel’s genocidal, settler-colonial apartheid regime, the machinery that sustains them, and the global responses they demand all flow from this premise.

Over the course of the session, Al-Haq delivered three oral interventions on the HRC record and convened a side event with members of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (COI), under the title “Israel’s Genocide Against the Palestinian People: International Law, Accountability, and Third-State Obligations.” Together, these engagements traced the architecture of Israel’s genocidal settler-colonial and apartheid regime and set out the duties that arise for all States – non-recognition, non-assistance, and cooperation to bring serious breaches to an end – in light of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem (Palestine Advisory Opinion).

From the outset, Al-Haq stressed that the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people is not a future aspiration to be negotiated away, but a binding erga omnes obligation stemming from a peremptory norm of international law, the denial of which compounds all other violations. Israel’s brutal system of racial oppression, domination and apartheid fragments the Palestinian people, enables demographic engineering, promotes the annexation of Palestinian land, illegal settlement expansion and the achievement of a Jewish-Israeli majority, and purposefully renders daily life unbearable for the indigenous Palestinian population. It is a regime designed to erase Palestinians as a people, along with all traces of their history, culture, and ancestral connection to Palestine.

The COI’s deliberations, and the actions of UN Member States, must therefore be measured against a simple test: do they dismantle this architecture, or do they enable it?

On-Record Engagement at HRC60: Three Oral Interventions

Al-Haq’s first on-record intervention, delivered in person on 18 September 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’. Al-Haq used this opportunity to highlight the escalating repression of Palestinian human rights defenders, drawing attention to the unprecedented use of United States (US) sanctions to suppress leading Palestinian human rights organisations pursuing accountability. Silencing those documenting international crimes – since as far back as 1979, in the case of Al-Haq – and advocating for justice does not merely have a devastating chilling effect, it erodes the international human rights system from within. As our intervention noted, Palestinian voices – “historically… sidelined in any analysis of Palestine’s history” – are being targeted precisely because their work exposes Israel’s ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people and the inherent illegality of Israel’s Zionist regime. The persecution of Palestinian civil society and defenders of human rights sends a dangerous message that the rights of marginalised communities may be disregarded with impunity, which will not be soon forgotten.

The second intervention, delivered on 29 September under Item 7 ‘General debate on human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories’, placed the right to self-determination at the centre of the debate. Al-Haq recalled that no meaningful discussion of the human rights situation in Palestine can proceed without recognising that this right is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of all others. In the Palestinian context, Israel’s genocidal settler-colonial apartheid regime, protracted unlawful occupation, and annexation of large areas of Palestinian territory systematically obstruct this jus cogens right. As confirmed by the ICJ in the Palestine Advisory Opinion, these unlawful policies and practices divide Palestinian society, deny their right of return, and facilitate the ongoing Nakba. The denial of self-determination strips Palestinians of autonomy over their political status, resources, and institutions, with far-reaching impacts on education, health, housing and all cornerstones of human dignity. These indisputable facts led Al-Haq to reaffirm:

The third intervention, delivered on 1 October under Item 9 ‘General debate on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance’, addressed annexation within the broader architecture of apartheid and racial subjugation. Al-Haq emphasised the racialised nature of Israeli laws, policies and practices and urged it to keep sight of the purpose of its settler-colonial project: Israeli-Jewish supremacy that strips Palestinians of their most fundamental rights, including their right to exist. This is consistent with the genocidal dimension of policies that intend to destroy Palestinian life, society, and governance capacity, while embedding an apartheid structure across the unlawfully occupied territory. From the rapid expansion of illegal settlements to mass forced displacement, from discriminatory laws to checkpoints and arbitrary detention, the practices that structure daily life institutionalise a racial hierarchy in which Palestinians are dehumanised to the point of being treated as unworthy of life itself.

Side Event: “Israel’s Genocide Against the Palestinian People: International Law, Accountability, and Third-State Obligations”

In parallel with these interventions, Al-Haq convened a high-level side event with members of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry to facilitate a focused discussion on the legal characterisation and consequences of Israel’s manifestly illegal acts. The panel examined the interlinkages between genocide, apartheid, and settler-colonialism; outlined the urgency of taking concrete measures consistent with States’ binding legal obligations, including, inter alia, full arms embargoes, targeted sanctions, cessation of trade and financial flows that service the settlement economy and profit from genocide and unlawful occupation; and mapped the available pathways to accountability before the ICJ, the ICC, and in domestic legal systems and on the basis of universal jurisdiction. The takeaway of the side event reflected that of our three oral interventions: without dismantling Israel’s genocidal, settler-colonial apartheid regime and ensuring the Palestinian people’s full and collective realisation of their inalienable right to self-determination, there can be no meaningful protection of human rights in Palestine.

Outcomes and Impact

HRC60 occurred at a pivotal moment. The legal landscape – further clarified by the Palestine Advisory Opinion – leaves no ambiguity. Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians and its settler-colonial apartheid regime must be brought to an immediate end.

In the face of the ongoing denial and violation of peremptory norms of international law, inaction becomes complicity. UN mechanisms and Member States now face a choice between upholding the international legal framework and supposed rules-based order, or forsaking it in support of a rogue, genocidal State.

Al-Haq’s contributions at HRC60 were designed to close the gap between law and action. By placing self-determination at the centre of each intervention and highlighting the multitude of ways in which Israel’s longstanding practices and historical impunity for mass atrocities and breaches of jus cogens norms violate this most fundamental right, the international community cannot claim ignorance nor justify a failure to respond with concrete, tangible action. By defending civic space, we insisted that accountability depends on the protection of those who pursue it. By situating annexation within a racialised colonial project, we emphasised the importance of addressing the root causes of the conflict and the alleged universal values at stake if we abandon Palestine in its darkest hour. Finally, by drawing attention to the foundational legal principles under attack, we showcased that international legal order already contains the tools required to act—if states are willing to use them.

Recommendations

To the Human Rights Council

• Reaffirm that the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is a jus cogens norm and operationalise this recognition across all relevant resolutions and mandates.

• Strengthen and renew mandates addressing apartheid, settler-colonialism, annexation, and genocide, ensuring resources for investigation and reporting, including the COI and relevant Special Procedures.

• Mandate the UN system to support remedies that enable return, restitution, and reparation, consistent with the realisation of self-determination.

To UN Member States

• Implement the Palestine Advisory Opinion by upholding their duty of non-recognition and non-assistance, and cooperate to bring Israel’s unlawful occupation of and illegal presence in Palestine to an end through arms embargoes, targeted sanctions, and lawful countermeasures.

• Protect Palestinian human rights defenders and civil society from sanctions and other punitive measures, including by providing safe channels for funding and engagement with UN mechanisms.

• Pursue accountability for Israel’s international crimes by supporting proceedings before international and domestic courts, including through universal jurisdiction cases.

To Special Procedures and UN Mechanisms

• Integrate self-determination as a cross-cutting analytical lens in all reporting on the situation in Palestine and systematically track States’ compliance with their binding erga omnes obligations.

• Establish a IIIM accountability mechanism for Palestine and closely monitor Israel’s escalating acts of annexation and ongoing policies and practices carried out with the goal of Palestinian erasure.