United Nations Human Rights Council

Background GuideInMUN 2016

 Director: Abhishek ChhabriaAssistant Director: Abhishek Jain

Contents

1.   Letter from the Director and Assistant Director

2.   Introduction to UNHRC

3.    Agenda 1: Arab Israeli Conflict

     Introduction

     History and Background

     Timeline

     Tentative Moderate Caucuses

4. Agenda 2: Racism and Xenophobia

     Definitions

     Case Studies

     Repercussions

     Tentative Moderate Caucuses

5.   Bibliography

 

       

 

Letter   from Director and Assistant Director

 Dear delegates,Greetings from the Executive Board! I, Abhishek Chhabria, along with my Assistant Director, Abhishek Jain welcome you to InMUN 2016. We will be chairing the committee of Human Rights and you shall be briefed all about it in the following background guide.In this background guide you shall be introduced to the two topics of the committee and briefed about the history of the UNHRC. This year, we have chosen the topics of the Arab Israeli Conflict and Racism and Xenophobia. We have chosen these topics as we believe these are relevant to the current situation in the world and would like to discuss the effects of these problems on the civilian population of the countries affected. We believe that the repercussions of these issues is vast as major civilian casualties have ensues. Racism and Xenophobia lead to hate crimes and I am sure you have heard about the tremendous torture the civilians at the Israeli-Palestinian region have gone through.We look forward to having a very high standard of debate in committee, participation from all delegates and a resolution at the end of the MUN that will take us a step closer to the absolute safety of these civilians. We will ensure that committee will be a fun filled experience while being equally diplomatic and fruitful in the process. We hope to see you soon!Regards,Abhishek ChhabriaDirector of UNHRC, InMUN 2016.   

Introduction to UNHRC

 The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them. It has the ability to discuss all thematic human rights issues and situations that require its attention throughout the year. It meets at the UN Office at Geneva.

The Council is made up of 47 United Nations Member States which are elected by the UN General Assembly. The Human Rights Council replaced the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

The Council was created by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 March 2006 by resolution 60/251. Its first session took place from 19 to 30 June 2006. One year later, the Council adopted its "Institution-building package" to guide its work and set up its procedures and mechanisms.

Among them were the Universal Periodic Review mechanism which serves to assess the human rights situations in all United Nations Member States, the Advisory Committee which serves as the Council’s “think tank” providing it with expertise and advice on thematic human rights issues and the Complaint Procedure which allows individuals and organizations to bring human rights violations to the attention of the Council.

The Human Rights Council also works with the UN Special Procedures established by the former Commission on Human Rights and now assumed by the Council.

 

Agenda 1: Arab Israeli Conflict

 IntroductionThe Arab–Israeli conflict is a term used to describe the political tensions and open hostilities between the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa and the State of Israel. The conflict has been around since 1948.

Arab-Israeli conflict began from earlier tensions between the Arab and Jewish communities in British Mandatory Palestine, with the rise of two nationalist movements - Zionist movement among Jews and Palestinian Arab nationalism among the Arabs. The ethnic conflict in Mandatory Palestine was also a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which created tension over the division and ownership of the land. While, the land that the Jewish people saw as their historical homeland of the Land of Israel, the Pan-Arab movement saw as Palestine belonging to the Arabs and in the Pan-Islamic context, in territory regarded as Muslim lands.

 History and Background The region along the eastern Mediterranean now called as Palestine had been under Ottoman rule for centuries. The people in Palestine (87% Muslim, 10% Christian, 3% Jewish) were soon developing a sense of being Palestinians rather than just ethnic Arabs (A distinct national identity), while at the same time not far away in Europe more Jews were joining a movement called Zionism (A belief that Judaism was not just a religion but a nationality, one that deserves its own nation).After World War 1, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, British and French empires carved up the Middle East, splitting territories. The British Empire took control over the region it called the British mandate for Palestine. At first the British allowed Jewish immigration but as more Jews more arrived, soon tensions rose between

Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish settlers. Both sides continuously committed acts of violence and by the 1930s, the British ultimately limited Jewish immigration. Jews began fighting both the British Rule as well as the Palestinian Arabs in the hope for their own Jewish state.Then came the holocaust which led to increased movement of Jews into Palestine and strengthened support for an independent Jewish State. In 1947, the British unable to resolve the problem of Palestine gave it up to the U.N. On November 29th, U.N passed the partition plan and Palestine was divided into two states, one for the Jews (Israel) and one for the Palestinian Arabs.Timeline1948

May 14The British officially withdraw from Palestine, and the Jewish

National Council proclaims the State of Israel. Neighboring Arab nations, which rejected the partition of Palestine, immediately invade intent on crushing the newly declared State of Israel. The conflict is known as Israel's War of Independence. Fighting continues with sporadic truces into 1949. During the cease-fires, both sides organize their militaries and stock up on weapons. On the Israeli side, several militias join to form the Israel Defense Force (IDF). Arab nations and the Palestinians were not as efficient in reorganizing their militaries as Israel.1949Several rounds of talks are held and armistice agreements are reached between Israel and Egypt (February 24), Lebanon (March 23), Jordan (April 3), and Syria (July 20). However, none of the countries sign formal peace treaties with Israel. Israel increases its original territory by 50%, taking western Galilee, a broad corridor through central Palestine to Jerusalem, and part of modern Jerusalem. The new border is called the Green Line. As many as 750,000 Palestinians either flee or are forced from what was previously Palestine. The Palestinian defeat and exodus is known as the Nakba, or disaster.         May 11         Israel's government, with Chaim Weizmann as president and David Ben-Gurion as prime minister, is admitted to the UN.1956

         July 26         Egypt takes control of Suez Canal         October 29         Israel Launches attack on Egypt’s peninsula and drives towards the Suez Canal         November 6         A cease-fire, forced by U.S pressure, stops British, French and Israeli advance1964         June 2         The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is formed.1967         June 5         The Arab-Israeli 6 day War of 1967 begins as Israel launches an air attack on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in response to the request by Egyptian president Nasser that the UN withdraw its forces from Egyptian territory and the buildup of Arab armies along Israel's borders. After 6 days, a cease-fire is declared and Israel occupies the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and West Bank.         November 22         The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 242, the "land for peace" formula which has been the starting point for further negotiations.1969         April         Violence continues along the Suez Canal as Egyptian president Gamal Nasser declared the 1967 cease-fire void along the canal. The War of Attrition begins. Neither side claims victory, and a cease-fire is signed in August 1970.1973         October 6         The fourth and largest Arab-Israeli war begins when Egyptian and Syrian forces attack Israel as Jews mark Yom Kippur, holiest day in their calendar. Initial Arab gains are reversed when a cease-fire takes effect on November 11.1977         November 20

         Egyptian President Anwar Sadat makes a historic visit to Jerusalem to discuss a peace agreement and address the Knesset. The visit raises worldwide hopes for peace.1978         March         In response to Palestinian guerrillas staging raids on Israel from Lebanese territory, Israeli troops cross into Lebanon. Troops withdraw in June, after the UN Security Council creates a 6,000-man peacekeeping force for the area called UNIFIL.1979         March 26         Egypt and Israel sign a formal peace treaty, which ends 30 years of war and establishes diplomatic and commercial relations.1982         April 25         Israel completes the return of the Sinai to Egyptian control.

June 9The fragile Mideast peace is shattered when the Israelis launch a

massive assault on southern Lebanon, where the Palestinian Liberation Organization is entrenched. The PLO withdraw its troops from Lebanon in August.1983         May 17         A U.S.-brokered accord is reached between Israel and Lebanon. As part of the agreement, Israel agrees to withdraw from Lebanon. Most troops are gone by June 1985; a residual force remains in southern Lebanon to defend against attacks on northern Israel.1987         December 9         Palestinians living on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip begin riots, known as the intifada (uprising), against Israeli rule. The violence intensifies as Israeli police crackdown and Palestinians retaliate. More than 20,000 people are killed in the fighting.1991         October 30

         The U.S. and Soviet Union organized the Madrid Conference, in which Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, and Palestinian leaders met to establish a framework for peace negotiations.1993         January         Highly secretive talks in Norway between the PLO and the Israeli government begin. The Oslo 1 Accord were signed beginning the Oslo process aimed at bringing peace in relation with UN resolution 242.         September 13         Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin sign the historic "Declaration of Principles." Arafat recognizes the right of the State of Israel to "exist in peace and security," and Israel recognizes the PLO and grants it limited autonomy.1994

October 26Jordan's King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

sign a historic peace treaty ending the state of belligerency between the two countries.1995The Oslo 2 Accord is signed.         November 5         Prime Minister Rabin is slain by a Jewish extremist, jeopardizing the tentative progress toward peace.1996         May 29         Benjamin Netanyahu is elected prime minister of Israel by a razor-thin margin.1997         January         Israel and the PLO sign the Hebron Accord, which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Hebron. The move ends 30 years of occupation and divides control over the contentious town between Arabs and Israelis.         March         The construction of new Jewish settlements on the West Bank profoundly upsets progress toward peace.

1998         October         At a summit at Wye Mills, Md., Netanyahu and Arafat sign the Wye River Memorandum that settles several important interim issues called for by the 1993 Oslo Accord. The Wye Accord, however, quickly begins to unravel.1999         May 17         Labor Party leader Ehud Barak is elected prime minister and announces plans to pursue peace with the Palestinians, establish relations with Syria, and end the war in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah guerrillas.  Tentative Moderate Caucuses Here are a few Moderate Caucuses for you all to understand what exactly we are expecting in the debate that takes place in committee and also to show you what we’re looking for in Moderated Caucus topics.Examples:-

      Long term solutions to achieve peace between both Israelis and Arab-Palestinians

      Root causes for the Arab Israeli Conflict

      Assessment of past policies and resolutions regarding the conflict

    

Agenda 2: Racism and Xenophobia 

DefinitionsThe UN does not define "racism", however it does define “racial discrimination”. According to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,“ the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word xenophobia consists of two parts: xeno (a combining form meaning "guest, stranger, person that looks different, foreigner") and phobia, ("fear, horror or aversion, especially if morbid"). A xenophobic person has to believe at some level that the target is in fact a foreigner. This arguably separates xenophobia from racism and ordinary prejudice in the sense that someone of a different race does not necessarily have to be of a different nationality. Both of these have tremendous repercussions such as hate crimes, fear among the masses and much more. The following case studies shall give you more insight. 

Case Studies Ku Klux Klan (Anti - Black movement in America) History Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the

organization saw its primary goal–the reestablishment of white supremacy–fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s. After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, blacks and organized labour. The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity, including bombings of black schools and churches and violence against black and white activists in the South. Violence in South From 1867 onward, African-American participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of Reconstruction, as blacks won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress. For its part, the Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters (both black and white) in an effort to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South. They were joined in this struggle by similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia (launched in Louisiana in 1867) and the White Brotherhood. At least 10 percent of the black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed. White Republicans (derided as “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags”) and black institutions such as schools and churches—symbols of black autonomy—were also targets for Klan attacks.By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. Even at its height, the Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership. Local Klan members–often wearing masks and dressed in the organization’s signature long white robes and hoods–usually carried out their attacks at night, acting on their own but in support of the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where blacks were a minority or a small majority of the population, and was relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan

activity was South Carolina; where in January 1871 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight black prisoners. Revival of the Ku Klux Klan In 1915, white Protestant nativists organized a revival of the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia, inspired by their romantic view of the Old South as well as Thomas Dixon’s 1905 book “The Clansman” and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.” This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in 1917. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klan’s membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South. Rwandan Genocide Ethnic tensions in Rwanda 

By the early 1990s, Rwanda, a small country with an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, had one of the highest population densities in Africa. About 85 percent of its population is Hutu; the rest is Tutsi, along with a small number of Twa, a Pygmy group who were the original inhabitants of Rwanda. Part of German East Africa from 1894 to 1918, Rwanda came under the League of Nations mandate of Belgium after World War I, along with neighboring Burundi. Rwanda’s colonial period, during which the ruling Belgians favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated the tendency of the few to oppress the many, creating a legacy of tension that exploded into violence even before Rwanda gained its independence. A Hutu revolution in 1959 forced as many as 300,000 Tutsis to flee the country, making them an even smaller minority. By early 1961, victorious Hutus had forced Rwanda’s Tutsi monarch into exile and declared the country a republic. After a U.N. referendum that same year, Belgium officially granted independence to Rwanda in July 1962.Ethnically motivated violence continued in the years following independence. In 1973, a military group installed Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, in power. The sole leader of Rwandan government for the next two decades, Habyarimana founded a new political party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD). He was elected president under a new constitution ratified in 1978 and re-elected in 1983 and 1988, when he was the sole candidate. In 1990, forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), consisting mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded Rwanda from Uganda. A ceasefire in these hostilities led to negotiations between the government and the RPF in 1992. In August 1993, Habyarimana signed an agreement at Arusha, Tanzania, calling for the creation of a transition government that would include the RPF. This power-sharing agreement angered Hutu extremists, who would soon take swift and horrible action to prevent it. Genocide On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali, leaving no

survivors. (It has never been conclusively determined who the culprits were. Some have blamed Hutu extremists, while others blamed leaders of the RPF.) Within an hour of the plane crash, the Presidential Guard together with members of the Rwandan armed forces (FAR) and Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe (“Those Who Attack Together”) and Impuzamugambi (“Those Who Have the Same Goal”) set up roadblocks and barricades and began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus with impunity. Among the first victims of the genocide were the moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her 10 Belgian bodyguards, killed on April 7. This violence created a political vacuum, into which an interim government of extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command stepped on April 9.The mass killings in Rwanda quickly spread from Kigali to the rest of the country, with some 800,000 people slaughtered over the next three months. During this period, local officials and government-sponsored radio stations called on ordinary Rwandan civilians to murder their neighbors. Meanwhile, the RPF resumed fighting, and civil war raged alongside the genocide. By early July, RPF forces had gained control over most of country, including Kigali. In response, more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, fled Rwanda, crowding into refugee camps in the Congo (then called Zaire) and other neighboring countries.After its victory, the RPF established a coalition government similar to that agreed upon at Arusha, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president and defense minister. Habyarimana’s NRMD party, which had played a key role in organizing the genocide, was outlawed, and a new constitution adopted in 2003 eliminated reference to ethnicity. The new constitution was followed by Kagame’s election to a 10-year term as Rwanda’s president and the country’s first-ever legislative elections. 

Repercussions If you read the internet, or pick up newspaper, you will come across atleast one article about how someone was assaulted, attacked or even killed due to racism and xenophobia. This is extremely common and

deeply disturbing. As a Human Rights Council, we must come up with a resolution that helps in the elimination of such atrocities.

 Tentative Moderate Caucuses

      Substantial solutions to eradicate racism and xenophobia

      Where does racism arise from?

      Human rights violations during the Rwandan genocide

      Human rights violation by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

Research links  You will find most of the information that you need in this one link itself.

      www.ohchr.org

  

Bibliography 

      www.history.com

      www.ohchr.org

      www.un.org

      www.dictionary.com

      www.google.com