Today, Friday 13 November 2026, Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) held Al-Haq’s General Director, Shawan Jabarin, at the Allenby (Al-Karameh) Bridge and prevented him from travelling outside Palestine and into Jordan. He was asked about the reasons for his travel and told that he is banned from travelling. The travel ban imposed on Mr. Shawan Jabarin is the latest alarming step taken by Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime to silence Palestinian human rights defenders and quash civil society work in Palestine.
The arbitrary and politically motivated travel restrictions against Mr. Shawan Jabarin are malevolently aimed at sanctioning his human rights advocacy work on behalf of the prominent human rights organisation, Al-Haq, and the work of the Palestinian human rights movement as a whole during an ongoing genocide against our people.
Back in August 2022, Mr. Jabarin received a threatening call from the Israeli Shabak (Shin Bet) threatening arrest and imprisonment and other measures with personal consequences, if he continued with his advocacy work and the work of Al-Haq. These threatening calls are reminiscent of the death threats received by Mr. Jabarin in 2016, for his accountability work at the International Criminal Court- calls which the then Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, alerted to the Dutch authorities.
Notably, these are not the first travel restrictions and bans imposed on Mr. Jabarin due to his work as General Director of Al-Haq. In 2006, Israel imposed a draconian travel ban based on secret evidence to prevent his award-winning advocacy work. Mr. Jabarin was even denied travel to the Netherlands by Israel’s Supreme Court, where he was going to accept the prestigious “Geuzenpenning Prize” for human rights, on behalf of Al-Haq. The travel ban remained in force for six years, until it was temporarily lifted in 2012, subject to conditions.
Today’s newly imposed travel ban is a continuation of the grave and arbitrary persecution of Mr. Shawan Jabarin. It amounts to an unwarranted interference and silencing of the work of Palestinian human rights defenders, an attack on Palestinian civil society, and an erosion of the rule of law and democracy, which, in the words of former UN Special Rapporteur Ms. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “is an attempt at civic death”.
Israel, the Occupying Power, has significant obligations towards protected persons in territory it holds under its effective control, including obligations to apply human rights treaties to which it is a party, extraterritorially, as reiterated ad nauseam by UN treaty bodies. Clearly, Israel’s overreach into the work of Palestinian human rights organisations and its current authoritarian travel ban violate the rights to freedom of movement and association under Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the right to freedom of expression under Article 19 of the ICCPR, as ratified by Israel in 1991. Further, the travel ban unduly and directly interferes with Mr. Jabarin’s right to work under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Notably, the rights to freedom of expression and assembly are similarly protected under Article 6 of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, and freedom of movement is implicitly expressed in the right of “unhindered access to and communication with international bodies” in Article 9(6).
These developments have taken place against the backdrop of further restrictions imposed by the U.S. administration on Al-Haq in September 2025, when the organisation was sanctioned due to its engagement with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Notably, Article II(f) of the Apartheid Convention of 1973 recognises as an element of the crime of apartheid the “[p]ersecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.” The systematic targeting of Palestinian human rights defenders working to document evidence of Israel's genocidal acts against the Palestinian people is further indicative of a pattern of genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinian people, with impunity.
Al-Haq urgently demands that the international community, our allies and partners from around the world, take immediate, targeted and effective action to protect Al-Haq and its General Director, Shawan Jabarin, and apply pressure on Israel to revoke the travel ban. The international community must take concrete actions, including countermeasures and economic sanctions in response to Israel’s systematic dismantling of Palestinian civil society and attacks on human rights defenders who are now facing existential threats.
Al-Haq calls on all States to pressure Israel to rescind its designations outlawing the work of Palestinian civil society organisations. The Israeli designations, travel bans and attacks against Al-Haq and civil society organisations must be recognised as acts of persecution, apartheid, and genocide and prosecuted as international crimes. Al-Haq additionally calls on the international community to work collectively to end the U.S. sanctions imposed on Al-Haq and other civil society organisations, the UN Special Rapporteur on the OTP, Prosecutors, Judges and the International Criminal Court.