Working paper by the State of Palestine Upholding legal obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty: the case of the Palestinian people Gaza is a besieged occupied enclave of Palestinian land which is home to 2.3 million people, nearly 50% of them children and 70% of them refugees. [...] More than 65,000 tonnes of explosives have been dropped on Gaza, equivalent in weight to four nuclear bombs of the kind dropped by the United States on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. [...] These are some of the words that eyewitnesses, legal experts or United Nations officials have used to describe Gaza: the most sustained and intense bombing campaign of a populated area in history; the highest number of UN fatalities recorded in a single conflict; the highest number of journalists killed over a four-month period in a single conflict. [...] Moreover, the overall context of the 56-year occupation of Palestine is in itself a grave illegality that threatens international peace and security in contravention to the UN Charter. [...] In light of the facts coming out of occupied Palestine, coming out of the International Court of Justice, the United Nations and countless civil society organisations worldwide, and in light of the law, including Arms Trade Treaty Articles 6 and 7, Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on State Responsibility, the Convention on the Prevention.
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- Published in
- Switzerland
