Press Releases

BADIL Resource Center
04 December 2003
For Immediate Release

Refugee rights have been absent from the current Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process since it began in Madrid more than 10 years ago. All that peace proposals, including the recent Nusseibeh-Ayalon plan and the Geneva understandings, offer refugees are ambiguous options and quotas and misleading interpretations of international law.

Refugee rights are a key element in forging a lasting peace says BADIL in Part II of a three-part analysis of 13 recent peace agreements in various parts of the world.  See www.badil.org.  Omission of legal rights for refugees, warns BADIL, runs the risk of sanctioning future mass population displacements.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unique because of the complete absence of refugee rights and Israeli state obligations in new initiatives to solve the conflict.  As pointed out in Part I, there is also a virtual absence of human rights regulations or provision for the setting up of human rights institutions.

Other peace agreements examined for this report all include articles on both human rights and refugee rights.  In most, the right of refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes and repossess their properties is seen as an important element in conflict resolution.  Others provide for the establishment of international, national and/or local bodies to facilitate return, property repossession, compensation for losses and post-return monitoring to ensure effective reintegration of refugees into their original communities.

Part III of BADIL's analysis of peace agreements will look at public participation in formulating agreements.  See BADIL's web site www.badil.org for Part I (human rights) and II (refugee rights).  Part III will be available on the web site by mid-December.

The analysis of recent agreements is part of BADIL's effort to focus attention on best practice, past experience, rule of law and community participation in the reaching and implementing peace plans.

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For further information contact: BADIL, P.O. Box 728, Bethlehem

Tel/Fax: 970-2-274-7346 or [email protected]   Web site: www.badil.org