Palestinian Children and Israeli Military Detention Debate
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Richard Burden
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Palestinian Children and Israeli Military Detention
Richard Burden Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this important debate and on the comprehensive way in which she introduced it. I also commend the Minister and the Government for the leadership that they showed on this issue during Israel’s third universal periodic review at the UN Human Rights Council.
A range of bodies have made a number of core recommendations in the past six years that are relevant to the issue of military detention. The Foreign Office-commissioned “Children in Military Custody” report published in 2012 found that Israel was in breach of at least eight articles of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. In 2013, as my hon. Friend said, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern in a report that recommendations it made in 2002 and 2010 had been fully disregarded, and UNICEF published a report with 14 core recommendations, again reflecting concerns that had been raised time and again.
The Minister will know that the vast majority of those recommendations, the recommendations made in a debate in this place seven years ago and the recommendations made in the debate that my hon. Friend led just over two years ago remain unfulfilled. He will also know that in February 2016, a follow-up mission by UK lawyers to investigate the situation was cancelled because the Israeli authorities withdrew co-operation.
I know that the Minister cannot magically fix the world’s problems, even though I am sure he would like to try, but I ask him to do two specific things as a result of this debate. First, will he push for a thorough review of the implementation of the recommendations of the 2012 report commissioned by his Department, which should include seeking from Israel an assurance that it will facilitate a return mission so that those independent lawyers can assess whether, and if so how, things have changed since their first report and what will happen in the future? Secondly, will he follow through on the Government’s approach to Israel’s third universal periodic review last month? I would appreciate it if, as part of that, the Minister outlined how he intends to follow up on the recommendations I mentioned. The Government were absolutely right to call for Israel to put right these problems. The question is what is done about them.