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UN human rights investigators arrive in Gaza

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] A team of investigators from the UN Human Rights Council arrived in Gaza Monday to begin examining alleged violations of international human rights law during December and January's fighting between Israel and Hamas. The team is headed by former South African Constitutional Court judge Richard Goldstone, who was also the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The team entered Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing after Israel announced that it would not cooperate with the investigation because it doubted the mission's objectivity. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak repeated the position Tuesday in a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Goldstone was appointed to head the investigation in April, amongst strong criticism of the investigation from Israel. The impetus for the probe was a February report, authored by UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, which criticized Israel for failing to take adequate precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants in their offensives in the region. Both Israel and the US criticized the report, calling the rapporteur's views "anything but fair." In April, an internal Israeli military investigation found that war crimes had not been committed in the offensive despite individual reports by Israeli soldiers. Israel has already disputed a previous report to the UNHRC that accused it of human rights violations.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on June 02, 2009 (boomark / email).