– Ammarah Ishaq and Mohammed Salman Siddiqui
With almost 75 years of history, the Palestinian refugee crisis is one of the longest-running in the world, and there is currently no sign of a viable solution. The inability of the international community to establish a clear strategy under these fluid circumstances has hampered responses to refugee crises. The international community has struggled to address the difficulties posed by large migrations and the fluidity of boundaries. Particularly when it comes to refugee protection policy, the UN Security Council has been split.
The Palestinian refugee dilemma, while primarily a political issue, is also a matter of legal distortion since Palestinian refugees are not afforded the same minimum international safeguards as other refugee groups worldwide due to legal loopholes. Given the intimate connection between refugees and human rights, international human rights norms are potent tools for strengthening, supplementing, and providing the current framework for refugee protection with the correct focus and direction.
This article explains the historical backdrop of the statutory distinction that makes Palestinian refugees distinctive, investigates the practical, legal, and political ramifications of that status, and suggests a structure and procedures meant to advance a rights-based resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue.
Refugees Rights
Article 1(A)(2) of the 1951 Convention elucidates that any person who is outside their nation of origin or place of regular residence and is unable or unwilling to return because of a justified fear of persecution owing to their ethnic background, nationality, political views, or affiliation with a particular social group qualifies as a refugee.
A majority of individuals define human rights as the unalienable rights that each individual has just by virtue of being a human. They are based on the fundamental ideas of equality, universality, and non-discrimination, and they are codified in national laws, treaties, and other norms that serve to define and ensure their full enjoyment. Each individual has a legal entitlement to human rights, even those who fall under the remit of UNHCR’s mandate.
The first of the refugees’ rights that is being violated is Article 3’s right to liberty and security of the person, which is significant in the context of how asylum seekers are treated within the nation that they have selected for refuge.
Women have always been exceptionally prone to becoming easy targets in the so-called refugee cycle, even though violence against women has existed since inception and taken on many harsher forms over the years. It’s outrageous to read what a Palestinian prisoner stated after following her release: she said the guards had twice used tear gas on prisoners while they were inside their cells and that she had received threats of rape. They reported being struck with sticks, having muzzled dogs set on them, and having their clothes, food, and blankets taken away. It has been acknowledged on an international and community level that violence against women, notably sexual assault and rape, hinders and undermines the enjoyment of legal, political, social, and cultural freedoms.
In certain scenarios, failure to safeguard people against the aforementioned kinds of violence additionally undermines or destroys their ability to exercise their fundamental right to life and personal safety, as well as liberty, security, and integrity.
The norm of non-discrimination included in various global and regional human rights treaties is critical to the preservation of refugees’ human rights and basic freedoms since they are especially vulnerable to bias as outsiders in the asylum country. Discrimination against refugees based on their status as such is prohibited by the basic tenets of international human rights legislation, including the right to equality before the law, equal treatment under the law, and non-discrimination. Furthermore, acts of discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, or socioeconomic status – factors that are frequently linked to refugee circumstances – would be prohibited under such legislations. OCHA reported that the continuing bombardment and the Israeli ground operation in northern Gaza and the fringes of Gaza City have been intensifying, violating the right to be protected from assaults. Since the 7th of October, Israeli strikes have resulted in the tragic deaths of at least 25,700 Palestinians.
All people, regardless of origin, have the universal right to return, according to recognition by international law. Fortunately, the premise of universal rights is not completely novel, one of its earliest international manifestations may be found in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Since 1948, both the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council have repeatedly urged Israel to assist the return of Palestinian refugees and pay reparations. UNGA Resolution 194 clearly resolves that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible”. Despite these repeated requests, Palestinian refugees have been routinely denied the right to return and forced to live in exile in insecure and hazardous situations beyond the borders of Palestine.
The right to asylum wherein which “Asylum is the protection which a State grants on its territory or in some other place under the control of certain of its organs, to a person who comes to seek it”. According to Art. 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. “Asylum seekers and refugees who are under the jurisdiction of the UNHCR should not be the victims of measures taken by Governments against illegal immigration or threats to their national security, however justified these may be in themselves,” the UNHCR said in 1986. Even so, the State is under no equivalent duty to offer refuge or permit entry into its territory. However, this does not imply that States are free to repatriate citizens at will. Given that refugees represent a special class of victims of human rights, granting asylum to them is a crucial component of protecting those rights.
International law views the violation of the right against torture and other harsh treatment of protected people in an occupied area as a war crime. International humanitarian law is violated when protected people are detained outside of occupied territory, as is the case with Palestinian detainees from the OPT being held in Israel. This is because it amounts to forcible transfer. Administrative imprisonment is one of the primary tools Israel uses to uphold its apartheid policy against the Palestinian people. Testimonies and video evidence also document several incidents of torture and other inhumane treatment by Israeli soldiers, including beatings and deliberate humiliation of Palestinians imprisoned in dreadful conditions. Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits brutality and inhumane or cruel treatment, obliges state parties to take action to ensure that no one is subjected to any of these dangers.
Based on the most recent information provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Palestinian administration, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli assaults have damaged at least 258,000 residential units, with over 55,000 of them entirely demolished. Israel launched a catastrophic attack on Gaza that, according to Palestinian officials, has killed over 25,700 people and destroyed whole neighbourhoods. Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza’s crowded streets, where many Palestinians reside in multigenerational households, have destroyed whole families. Almost 689,000 internally displaced individuals in Gaza are being housed in 150 UNRWA sites, out of roughly 1.9 million internally displaced people in Gaza. For those seeking asylum, refugees, and recipients of supplementary types of international protection, locating and reconciling with family members may be among their top priorities. In the nation of asylum, family reunification is sometimes the only method to guarantee that their right to family life and family unity is respected. It has been more challenging for individuals to exercise this fundamental and important right in many nations due to an environment that is becoming more and more restricted.
Of the 2.3 million people living in Gaza, almost 1.9 million have been displaced; 25,700 Palestinians have died and tens of thousands more have been injured. Parts of northern Gaza have been annexed by Israel, and its people have been forced to move south. The UN referred to Israel’s treatment of northern Gaza as a “graveyard of children.” International humanitarian organizations have warned of a humanitarian disaster as a result of Israel’s significant restrictions on the more than 2.3 million people of the Gaza Strips who were denied the right to adequate food, housing and medical care.
Israel demolished a public water tank that serviced many neighbourhoods in the south of Gaza on November 4 in addition to a water reservoir in the northern part of the Strip. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), each individual needs between 50 and 100 litres of water per day; yet, the average daily allotment in Gaza is only three liters for drinking and personal hygiene. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), before the assaults on October 7, 80% of the people living in the Gaza Strip were food insecured. 2.3 million people were dependent on food aid from UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, for about half of their needs. Before October 7, an average of 500 trucks per day could enter Gaza.
According to the WHO, the shortage of supplies and the shelling of Gaza’s medical facilities are mostly affecting women and children. Women give birth wherever they can, doctors have no choice but to perform Caesarean sections without anaesthesia, and women are unable to access healthcare facilities for a clean delivery environment. Every day, at least 180 women give birth. Three of the 39 preterm new-borns in Gaza have died due to the hospital’s gasoline shortage, affecting its ability to power generators. The absence of essential care has resulted in an increase in maternal and newborn fatalities. WHO stated that, there have been at least 22,500 instances of acute respiratory infections and 12,000 episodes of diarrhea, both of which can be fatal for young patients who are malnourished and dehydrated. The scarcity of fuel resulted in the closure of Gaza’s sole cancer hospital, which has a devastating impact on patients requiring critical care equipment for newborns and dialysis patients.
Since the start of the onslaught, the Gaza Strip has been shuttered or halted, depriving over 608,000 pupils of their right to an education. Additionally, 145 UNRWA school facilities and 70 government structures served as shelters and havens for displaced individuals. Regarding attacks on school infrastructure, during airstrikes, bombs were dropped on 45 schools, badly destroying them, and attacking 50 UNRWA schools. 3,141 people lost their lives while attending schools in Palestine. 4,863 people were hurt in the meanwhile. Regarding the pupils who are enrolled in schools and are being imprisoned, there are 67 of them, and they are all from the West Bank. Due to frequent strikes and raids on several population centers, school hours were disrupted, preventing approximately 1,750 male and female teachers from disclosing to work each day at the 90 local schools. Since October 7th, 14 higher education institutions in Palestine have suffered partial or full damage. As a result, university education in the Gaza Strip has been entirely suspended, along with other educational activities.
Crucial protection is obtained by refugees, asylum seekers, and other people fearing for their lives or rights. This group of people have the right to remain in the country of their destination and not be sent away to their homeland of origin or another country where they risk the danger of suffering severe repercussions. A human rights treaty and the Refugee Convention both contain provisions of this right, referred to as the principle of non-refoulement. Thousands of refugees who have attempted to discover shelter in the camps have been cut off from their families at airports, where it is acceptable to remove them arbitrarily and summarily without cause. Since refugee protection is a vital component of upholding human rights, unilateral restrictive measures implemented by both developed and developing contends are incompatible with their responsibilities under international humanitarian law and refugee law. They also seriously infringe on human rights. Non-refoulement, which is the cornerstone of refugee law, states that states are not allowed to send refugees back to “the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Article 33(1) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. It is widely accepted that the right to non-refoulement exists.
Following the Israeli military’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip since October 7, an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians have been forced from their homes. This scenario, which the World Health Organization has called “catastrophic,” has led a large number of Palestinians to seek safety in emergency shelters run by the UN. Although Palestinians have frequently been forced to flee their homes, the present-day Gaza refugee crisis has raised awareness of Palestinian relocation on the worldwide level. Article 7 states that “no one shall be forced to leave their own country.” According to the U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, “the right to remain in peace in their own homes, on their own lands, and in their own countries” is upheld.
International Communities Engagement
Palestinian refugees face lifelong displacement, are denied the right to return to their original homes and lands in Israel, and not fully integrating into their fundamental human rights. Around 4.5 million refugees are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and hundreds of millions more are considered displaced people since the 1967 conflict. An agreement must be reached before the process of looking at past injustices suffered by refugees can begin in earnest, leading to healing after years of traumatic warfare. “Truth and reconciliation commissions” are required by peace agreements to examine historical allegations. The Palestinian refugee issue is fundamentally an Israeli-Palestinian one, requiring significant foreign contributions and a global role for organizing multilateral efforts. Legitimate conversations and awareness-raising are urgent, as the deplorable conditions in refugee camps and widespread feeling of injustice give stronger incentives for a peace settlement.
With UNRWA and UNHCR, the UN must take the lead in addressing the refugee crisis for Palestinians, building on existing efforts. The framework and ‘lighthouse’ for addressing the several facets of the Palestinian refugee question, including the issue of refugee status and the issue of individual, collective, ethical, and material justice, ought to involve international law. Ultimately, elevating the Palestinian refugee question to the focus of the debate rather than viewing it as a side issue would not only help the lives and prospects of the refugees, but it could additionally improve the probability of a lasting ceasefire and the administration of justice to the Palestinian people. Negotiating the refugee issue proved to be very difficult for the Palestinians; an imbalance of power between the parties made it difficult to convince Israel to accept even a symbolic return of some refugees and to acknowledge that historical injustices had been committed against the Palestinian people. Given that the Palestinian population is the longest-lasting group of internally displaced people since World War II, the situation should serve as a sobering reminder to the world community of the pain and vulnerability that these people face, and it should prompt action to both recognize and protect their rights.
Conclusion
Their unwavering determination has been heard for 75 years as their cry for justice, expressed in the demand for the right to return. They have since experienced forced relocation, eviction, and denial of their right to vote, as well as persistent denials of their rights to self-determination, reparations, and compensation. The issues that hinder the international community’s capacity to respond to refugee crises don’t end there. It is clear from the instability created by hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring over national borders that more needs to be done to uphold the UN Refugee Conventions and assist those fleeing because of unstable and shifting borders. Since the refugee issue of today is global in scope and affects not only individuals in their interactions with states but also states in their interactions with one another, we require legislation that addresses the issue of refugees holistically, offering solutions to individual problems as well as placing collective responsibility on all states.
Addressing refugee crisis is an international responsibility. The international world’s efforts to address major refugee crises as part of political solutions reflect the importance of refugees and their rights in ensuring lasting peace, even though no experience has yet proven ideal or painless. The objective of the international legal framework for refugees is to terminate the status of refugee, enabling the individual to reconstruct their life with safety and respect. This can be accomplished by either assimilation in new communities through local integration in the country of first refugee or relocation in a third country, or voluntary return once the circumstances that led to the flight cease to exist.
Beyond political boundaries, the debate about solutions has switched attention back to the unaddressed rights of Palestinian refugees. Just and durable remedies can be ensured by the international legal framework, in addition to the restoration of individual and collective rights. To resolve the Palestinian refugee problem, an efficacious political strategy and vision has to reinstate international law’s status as the standard, including checks and balances. The debate over a course of action based on international law and supported by revived multilateralism has to focus on eliminating the “politics of suffering” in the diplomatic resolution of Palestinian refugee concerns.
[Ammarah Ishaq and Mohammed Salman Siddiqui are 3rd semester law students from University College of Law, Osmania University, Hyderabad. Having represented in several moot-court competitions, they share keen interests in researching and writing about contemporary concerns.]
