Objection letter to the Secretary General
Mr.António Guterres the United Nations' Secretary General, like all the international human rights and humanitarian organizations, Roa'a (The Arab Feminist Network has watchfully followed your position towards the report presented by ESCWA headed by professor Rima Khalaf. The report that was prepared professionally and objectively and concluded through detailed research that the Israeli occupation is responsible for racial practices in the Palestinian occupied territories through a systematic Apartheid system, we have followed your response to it, which we see as irresponsible with putting pressure on professor Rima to withdraw it.
We in Roa'a denounce your reaction to the report, and your attempt to renounce the report and practice the authority you have been rewarded by the people and the states of the world in protecting Israel and responding to its demands along with its allies in denying the rights of the Palestinian people and their suffering due to the seven decades long occupation. We urge you to immediately give up on this public biased position that benefits a "state" practicing terrorism on a people and a cause that has the attention of the international community.
Mr. Guterres, your disapproved position you have made, is in fact a major hit for the role and message of the United Nations that was founded for the protection of human rights and defending them in and inalienable and professional manners, emptied from pre- judgments as the only way to assure the continuity and effectiveness of this organization.
This position you have taken, as we see it, is a death certificate for the international organization, especially after the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz revealed the cooperation between Amnesty International and the occupation during the past seventy years, where Amnesty International would cover up the Israeli crimes, while in return Israel funds the organization. This means an international loud scandal and a call indicating further cooperation, explaining clearly how blindly is this biased position towards the Israeli occupation and a clear renunciation from the international organization and its affiliated bodies from their historical role and their job. Your surprising position, which international media revealed that it was taken under American and Israeli pressure, opens the door widely to investigate the rampant corruption in the United Nations which you administer, the very organization that by its charter and protocols is assigned to fight corruption.
We in Roa'a; as we praise professor Rima's efforts and professionalism as well as the Economic and Social Committee for West Asia (ESCWA) report, we highly appreciate and value the brave action of Ms. Khalaf, the Executive Secretary for the ESCWA, who resigned from her position as a response to pressures you have posed on her to make her withdraw this truth revealing report on the Israeli Apartheid. We also take the opportunity to exhort you from the consequences of this turn over on the United Nations, from the policies imposed by the American Administration and the occupation. We urge you to abandon this position from withdrawing the report, we call you to adopt it and approve it as well as press on the Israeli occupation to abandon its apartheid policies towards the Palestinians. We call on the international community and the countries calling for peace and justice to adopt the report and press on fighting the corruption within the UN and the fear that powerful states impose on this organization.