Zainab Al-Ghunaimi, Director of The Center for Women’s Legal Researches, Counselling and Protection (CWLRCP) and a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, stated that “the Israeli government disregards all international resolutions and charters and violates human rights in Palestine on a daily basis. Our Palestinian people are subjected to continuous attacks by the Israeli occupation forces.”

She added that “the Palestinian people suffer from settlement construction that has seized most of the Palestinian lands, arrest, assassination, and destruction of property, so that Palestinians have become refugees in their own homeland because of the Israeli government’s continued policy of land confiscation, settlement construction, the separation wall, and displacement of residents from their homes, especially Jerusalemites, in addition to the continued aggression and military incursions into the Gaza Strip.”

In her address to the Sixth Dublin Platform, held by Front Line Defenders from September 14-16, Al-Ghunaimi stated that the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip suffer from the confiscation of their right to movement and work due to the severe economic and security blockade. This has led to the dispersal of hundreds of Palestinian families because Israel prevents Palestinian citizens from moving between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Al-Ghunaimi appealed to human rights defenders, representing more than one hundred countries worldwide, to pressure their governments to stand by the Palestinian people in their just right to have a democratic state in their homeland, Palestine, to live in security and peace.

The Sixth Dublin Platform was opened by Mary Lawlor, Executive Director of Front Line Defenders, with a speech highlighting the contribution of human rights defenders in the Arab Spring, where Arab uprisings overthrew tyrants. She said that they would continue their role in monitoring human rights violations committed by all parties and demanding justice for victims.

Also speaking were Maina Kiai, former head of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, as well as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, who spoke via video link and praised human rights defenders. Dozens of human rights defenders also gave live testimonies about their role in protecting human rights in their countries and about the extent of violations of their rights they face from tyrannical rulers.