Qatar Gets Important Ruling from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

First Inter-State Communications Ever to be Submitted to a United Nations Treaty Body

On August 29, 2019, The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued the following press release:

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination closes ninety-ninth session, adopts decisions on inter-State communications by Qatar against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates

Committee on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination

29 August 2019 

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The Committee had continued to deal with inter-State communications submitted by Qatar on 8 March 2018 against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the inter-State communication submitted on 23 April 2018 by the State of Palestine against Israel. Those were the first inter-State communications ever to be submitted to a United Nations treaty body, stressed Ms. Izsák-Ndiaye.

The Committee had decided that it had jurisdiction on the communications submitted by Qatar and had declared them admissible. The adopted decisions would soon be available on the Committee’s webpage . In compliance with article 12 of the Convention, the Committee’s Chairperson would appoint an ad hoc Conciliation Commission whose good offices should be made available to the States concerned with a view to an amicable solution of the matter on the basis of respect for the Convention. 

The Committee had to postpone the consideration of its jurisdiction in the inter-State communication submitted by the State of Palestine against Israel due to unforeseen circumstances. 

During the session, the Committee had initiated the examination of one individual communication and had postponed its consideration to the next session since further clarifications were needed on some of its aspects. 

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Noureddine Amir, Committee Chairperson, in his closing remarks, thanked the Committee’s Experts for their stoicism and generosity that had enabled them to step up to the plate and carry out the Committee’s mandate and jurisdiction. 

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The decisions on the inter-State communications were the first such decisions that any human rights treaty body had ever adopted, the Chair stressed. A group of the Committee’s jurists had been working around the clock, also in the intersessional period, to understand the procedures and the issues involved, and to create the conditions of peace, justice and freedom in the concerned countries. This endeavour would continue through the ad hoc Conciliation Commission that would soon be appointed, reaffirmed Mr. Amir. 

Summaries of the Committee’s public meetings held during the session can be read here. 

The one hundredth session of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination will be held from 25 November to 3 December 2019 in Geneva, when the Committee will review the reports of Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Israel and Uzbekistan.

The Committee began examining Qatar's report on human rights violations in November 2018.

Background:

Immediately after the onset of the blockade, Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC), chaired by its president Dr. Ali bin Smaikh Al-Marri, took action. Most of its activities involved educating the international community and building support among international human rights organizations. It also pursued several rights-based interventions discussed in this section.

The NHRC quickly set up a website that took complaints from people affected by the siege. This gave Dr. Al-Marri the data he needed to make a persuasive case to the world. The complaints fell into the following categories:

(1) Violation of the right to pursue religious practices, especially the inability of Qatari citizens to make Umrah and Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca.

(2) Violation of the right to family reunification because the blockading countries ordered Qataris to leave their countries, causing Qatari husbands and wives to leave behind spouses who were nationals of the blockading countries.

(3) Violation of the right to movement of Qataris between the blockading countries.

(4) Violation of the right to education.

(5) Violation of the right to work triggered by the decisions of the blockading countries to expel Qataris working in their countries.

(6) Violation of Qataris’ right to dispose of property in the blockading countries.

(7) Violation of Qataris’ right of residency in the blockading countries.

(8) Violation of the Qataris’ right to health care when they could no longer keep appointments for operations and medical treatments in the Gulf countries.

(9) Violation of freedom of the press triggered by the demand that Qatar close Al Jazeera and several other media outlets.

(10) Violation of the right to express opinions triggered by the criminalization in the blockading countries of speech sympathetic to Qatar.

By mid-September 2017, people had lodged 26,000 complaints with the NHRC.

On June 6, 2017, the NHRC filed a complaint with the Office of Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Watch. On June 14, 2017, NHRC officials submitted the file of violations to the U.N. Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (U.N. OHCHR). In July 2017, a delegation from the U.N. OHCHR visited the offices of the NHRC to learn more about the impact of the siege. Later, it sent a Technical Mission that produced a report in December 2017, discussed below. It aligned behind Qatar. Thus, in less than six months, Qatar had made a compelling case that the siege violated international standards governing human rights.

In December 2017, the Technical Mission for the U.N. OHCHR issued a report based on its trip a month earlier. While the findings of the report are damning, they have gotten little coverage in Western media outlets. One finding is particularly important:

As there is no evidence of any legal decisions motivating these various measures, and due to the lack of any legal recourse for most individuals concerned, these measures can be considered as arbitrary. These actions were exacerbated by various and widespread forms of media defamation and campaigns hated [sic] against Qatar, its leadership and people.

Report on the Impact,” ¶ 60. The Technical Mission report concluded that: “The majority of cases [involving mixed nationality families] remain unresolved and are likely to durably affect the victims, particularly those having experienced family separation, loss of employment or who have been barred from access to their assets.” Ibid., ¶ 64. It found that the blockading countries had severely restricted the movement of people, trade, investment, and social and cultural exchanges. The blockade has “a potentially durable effect on the enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of those affected.” Ibid., ¶ 60.

For a summary of the report, see here.