UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has not been able for over a year to make public a report listing companies that engage in business in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in a press briefing on the launch of their 2020 World Report
UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2020) UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has not been able for over a year to make public a report listing companies that engage in business in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in a press briefing on the launch of their 2020 World Report.
"One of our disappointments has been Michelle Bachelet's stalling in the publication of the database of companies that are doing business with Israel's settlements," Roth said on Tuesday. "It has been sitting on her desk for 15 months."
Roth attributed the stalemate in the publication to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' lack of support for the report.
"The Secretary-General, could still make a difference," he said.
He added that HRW hopes that Bachelet will proceed with issuing the report before the forthcoming session of the Human Rights Council which starts in February.
Israel has been building homes for Jewish settlers in lands it annexed in the 1967 war. Some 600,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem. The United Nations does not recognize these settlements as legal.
