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Summary: Letter to Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, on
the occasion of his visit to the Occupied
Territories.14 March 2005
Mr. Kofi Annan
Secretary General
United Nations
New York, New York
United States
Dear Mr Secretary General,
We would like to welcome you to the Occupied Palestinian Territories and
to thank you for your continued efforts towards securing a just, lasting and
comprehensive peace in the region.
During your visit here, we urgently ask for your intervention in bringing
about the release of all Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons and
detention centres.
Since the start of the intifada in September 2000, Israel has arrested as
many as 3,000 Palestinians under the age of 18. At present, some 323
children are held in Israeli detention, including 10 girls and a number of
other children suffering illness and disability. Twenty boys are being held in
administrative detention, without ever having been informed of the
charges levelled against them.
Statements taken from former prisoners and from lawyers confirm that
when arrested, Palestinian children are invariably subjected to
maltreatment and abuse often amounting to torture. This issue has been
highlighted by among others the UN Special Rapporteur for the Commission
on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian
territories, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting
the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the
Occupied Territories and by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in
their concluding observations to Israel's report.
Children arrested by Israeli forces are denied due judicial process and tried
instead before Israeli military courts. Their confessions are often extracted
under brutal interrogation. Many are held in prisons inside Israel, in direct
contravention of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Conditions in the prisons and detention centres in which Palestinian
children are held are a cause of great concern. Detainees are crammed into
overcrowded cells and tents; the food they receive is insufficient in terms
of both quality and quantity; there is an absence of proper medical care;
and the right to education is systematically denied. The vast majority of the
time, children are deprived from contact with their families and suffer
severe restrictions in meeting their lawyers.
In light of the political changes that are currently occurring in the region,
and in light of your personal commitment towards securing peace for the
Palestinians and Israelis, we urge you to take a stand on this vital
humanitarian issue.
Mr Secretary General, we ask you to intervene personally and use your
good offices to urge the Israeli occupation authorities to release at once all
Palestinian children held illegally in Israeli prisons and detention centres.
We ask you to ensure that these children are released without
discrimination and without conditions. Furthermore, we urge to ensure that
Israel ceases forthwith its policy of targeting, arresting, abusing and
imprisoning Palestinian children.
We hope you will agree with us that it is unacceptable that the question of
child prisoners become a subject for bargaining. The release of juvenile
detainees must be a matter of utmost priority for all parties in this conflict.
And it is imperative that the UN, in its role as founder and protector of
universal human rights, use all available mechanisms to ensure these
violations of Palestinian children's rights cease at once.
In May 2002, at the UN Special Session on Children, you told the children of
the world “You have a right to live a life safe from the threat of war, abuse
and exploitation. These rights are obvious. Yet we, the grown-ups have
failed you deplorably in upholding many of them.”
It is now in your hands to stop the suffering of hundreds of Palestinian
children. We urge you to help them return to their families and friends, to
go back to school and regain their childhood.
Thank you.