June 18, 2021
Liberal MP for Scarborough Centre Salma Zahid presented parliamentary petition that she sponsored calling for Israel’s accountability in war crimes against Palestine’s children. Almost 5,000 Canadian signed this petition, and we await the Liberal response.
See Petition E-3312
MP Zahid is the chair of the Palestinian Parliamentary Friendship group.
Petition to the House of Commons
Whereas:
- The protection of the rights of children around the world is a priority of the Canadian government;
- As signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Israel has an obligation to ensure basic due process rights and the absolute prohibition against torture and ill-treatment of children in accordance with international juvenile justice standards;
- The Secretary General of the United Nations 2019 report on children and armed conflict on June 20, 2019, reiterated the Special Representative’s “call upon Israel to uphold international juvenile justice standards, as well as to cease the use of administrative detention for children and end all forms of ill-treatment in detention, and to cease any attempted recruitment of detained children as informants”;
- Israel automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military courts that lack fundamental fair trial rights and protections;
- For over 30 years, Defense for Children International Palestine, Al-Haq and other human rights groups have investigated, documented, and exposed human rights violations against children; and
- Under Article 1 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, all high signatories, of which Canada is one, are required to take actions to ensure that violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention do not occur under any circumstance.
We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to call for an urgent study by the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development to review Israel’s treatment of children in Israeli occupied Palestine and compliance with its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
