Summary
The national human rights institution for the Palestinian territories, established by decree by Yasser Arafat in Tunis before his entry to the occupied Palestinian territory, initially called the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights (PICCR) and later changed to the Independent Commission on Human Rights, through an initiative led by Hanan Ashrawi (Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization, PDF p.212).
Details
- Its establishment joined the growing Palestinian human rights movement in the early Oslo period, as Al-Haq was calling on the incoming Palestinian authorities to incorporate the Geneva Conventions and the two International Covenants into domestic legislation (PDF p.212).
- In al-Haq’s account of its challenge to the Palestinian Authority’s Cybercrimes Decree Law of 2017, the Commission appears among the actors in the complex layers of communications around the law, alongside Palestinian governmental institutions, civil society organizations, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression and the UN OHCHR (PDF p.232).
- Eyad El Sarraj, head of Gaza’s Community Mental Health Programme, was one of the first commissioners general of the national human rights institution (ICHR) (PDF p.239-240).
Related pages
Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization, Al-Haq, Hanan Ashrawi