Al-Haq issues a new legal briefing paper on the 2025 Conference of the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Following the July 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which concluded that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal, that Israel’s conduct is characterised by Grave Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and that all states have legal obligations to bring the unlawful occupation to an end, the UN General Assembly requested that Switzerland convene a Conference of High Contracting Parties on the observance of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

Scheduled for March 2025, the outcome of this Conference will indicate whether the Fourth Geneva Convention, whose purpose is to protect fundamental humanitarian rights and principles for civilians and detainees during armed conflict and occupation, remains a viable project.

Previous iterations of the Conference, in 1999, 2001, and 2014, manifestly failed to focus on the necessity for ensuring enforcement of the Convention, including by way of prioritising individual accountability for the perpetration of Grave Breaches, through the sanctioning of Israel for its inherently unlawful conduct across the occupied Palestinian territory, or by establishing a Follow-Up Mechanism which could ensure the outcome of the Conferences constitute more than mere platitudes.

Cognisant that Israel’s violations span the entire range of international humanitarian law’s provisions and principles, Al-Haq identifies certain key issues that High-Contracting Parties must consider if the Conference is to have any meaningful effect.

Al-Haq recommends that the Outcome of the Conference of the High Contracting Parties (HCP):

• Ensures that the HCPs fully align their public positioning with the ICJ’s findings in the Palestine Advisory Opinion, including on the illegality of Israel’s continued presence in the OPT and of its policies and practices implemented in occupied Palestine;
• Condemn the legislation adopted by Israel in October 2024 to dismantle UNRWA, and determine how HCPs are to force Israel to abide by its obligations as the Occupying Power to ensure adequate supplies for the population of the occupied territory, and specify the nature of the obligation upon HCPs to provide, or facilitate the provision of, the urgent and increasing requirements of the Palestinian population;
• Endorse the three sets of provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice in the case of Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), including the Order of 28 March 2024;
• The ICJ’s conclusions on segregation and apartheid, requires HCPs to call for the reconstitution of the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid, which played essential roles in the international mobilization against apartheid in South Africa and in challenging third state complicity in the apartheid regime;
• Take a clear step to ensure that the doctrine of official immunity can no longer be understood or validly interpreted as facilitating impunity for the perpetrators of Grave Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention;
• Ensure that HCPs apply their obligations to investigate and prosecute those subject to their jurisdiction, who are complicit in crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory;
• Ensure that Israel release all Palestinian political prisoners, and end its widespread and systematic use of arbitrary detention, including administrative detention, and the commission of torture and other ill-treatment against Palestinian detainees and prisoners;
• Ensure that the rules of IHL pertinent to the treatment of the dead, and the identification and return of bodies, are respected and enforced, and ensure the facilitation to Palestinian responsible authorities of all necessary resources, including the assistance of organisations including the International Commission on Missing Persons, and the ICRC;
• Ensure that HCPs legislate to prevent their nationals who hold dual citizenship with Israel from serving in the Israeli military or other services that contribute to the occupation and apartheid regime or, in the case of individuals or organisations that contribute to Article 49 breaches, from the purchase or rental of property anywhere in occupied Palestinian territory;
• Ensure that the Conference recognise the State of Palestine as a party to the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols and affirm that the rules of IHL of international armed conflict, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, apply in all relations between Israel as the unlawful Occupying Power and the State of Palestine and as between Israel as the unlawful Occupying Power and Palestinians as the protected population;
• Ensure that all HCPs in their dealings, regulatory, fiscal, logistical, financial and otherwise, with the State of Palestine and with Palestinians as the protected population, avoid complicity in Israel’s violations of Article 64 of the Convention.

These demands represent the minimum of what is required of the HCPs in light of their legal obligations under the Convention. Where previous iterations of the Conference have expressed ‘concern’ as to ongoing perpetration of Grave Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and called for ‘good faith’ interpretation and application of international humanitarian law, the systematic violence of the occupation, continuously escalating, has long passed the threshold where mere words of concern can be deemed an adequate response, or where ‘good faith’ can be expected from Israel.

If the Convention is to be viable in achieving the barest of its stated aims, the Conference must demand, and ensure, the enforcement of its Grave Breaches regime including by way of an effective and viable Follow-Up Mechanism.

Please find the report here.