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Clinic Urges UN and International Red Cross to Protect Palestinian Prisoners from COVID-19

UPDATE: On April 24, 2020, five U.N. human rights experts urged Israel to release vulnerable Palestinian prisoners in light of concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), coordinated submissions to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and to several relevant United Nations (U.N.) human rights special procedures, urging them to take immediate action to ensure that Israel protects Palestinian prisoners from COVID-19. These special procedures are the U.N. rapporteurs and working groups on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territory, on the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, on arbitrary detention, on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and on the independence of judges and lawyers.

The Lowenstein Clinic and CCR prepared the submissions, sent on April 14, 2020, in support of the joint urgent appeal filed by Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association earlier this month. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, Israel continues to routinely arrest Palestinians and place them in detention, according to the groups involved in the filing. Prisoners and detainees suffer from deteriorating conditions in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including poor nutrition and sanitation and extreme overcrowding, the submissions detail. Detainees and prisoners also endure torture, acts of violence, and widespread medical negligence, according to Addameer. Furthermore, the submissions say, under the pretext of mitigating the spread of COVID-19, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) has suspended family and legal visits for prisoners. IPS also refuses to install landline phones in prisons despite stipulations to do so as negotiated after the prisoners’ most recent hunger strike.

In the submissions, the Lowenstein Clinic and CCR urge the relevant U.N. special procedures and the ICRC to intervene immediately to protect Palestinian prisoners’ right to health during the COVID-19 pandemic and, in particular, to:

  1. Call on Israel, the occupying power, to immediately release Palestinian prisoners and administrative detainees, particularly those who are more vulnerable, to the maximum extent possible, in order to ensure their safety from an uncontrolled spread of the pandemic;
  2. Call on the IPS to ensure the protection of all prisoners and to fulfil their right to the highest attainable standard of health, without discrimination, by adopting, for example, World Health Organization guidance on preventing COVID-19 outbreak in prisons and taking the necessary measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic in Israeli prisons;
  3. Urge the IPS to install landlines in all Israeli prisons and ensure the maintenance of contact with family and legal representatives for Palestinian prisoners through unmonitored phone or video calls, especially while family and legal visits continue to be suspended;
  4. Call on the IPS to publicly guarantee that it will eliminate the use of solitary confinement, an internationally recognized form of torture, as a means of managing the spread of COVID-19 in its prisons and administrative detention facilities; and
  5. Call on the IPS to publicize all plans and policies to ensure the protection of all prisoners during the COVID-19 pandemic.

April 17 is Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, a day on which Palestinians and allies around the world express solidarity with Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel. The occasion takes on new significance this year as prisoners face the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic. The threat that the coronavirus will spread rapidly through unsanitary, overcrowded prisons requires sustained attention to protect Palestinian prisoners’ health and safety in the weeks and months ahead.

READ: Letter to the U.N. Special Procedures here and letter to the ICRC here.