UN Seeks $138,700 for Database Blacklisting Businesses With Ties to Israel

The UN plans to spend $138,700 to create a database to be used to blacklist all companies that conduct business - directly or indirectly - relating to Israeli "settlements" in Arab-claimed territories. According to a UN report, the funds are required to implement a UN Human Rights Council resolution adopted in March 2016 calling for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to create and maintain the database.

The budgetary report, presented to the UN General Assembly's Fifth Committee (a committee of the whole composed of all 193 member states) on December 15, 2016, states that the funds will be used to pay for one staff member to create the database over a period of 8 months and present a report on its contents to the Human Rights Council. In fact, the UN jumped the gun and has already started creating the database, the list of companies intended to be blacklisted will be presented to the Council's session in March 2017, and the funding will be applied after the fact.

The Committee is expected to vote next week on whether to authorize funding for the creation of the database.

In the words of the report:

"85. Under the terms of paragraphs 17 and 18 of resolution 31/36, the Council: (a) Requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights ... in follow-up to the report of the independent international fact-finding mission to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,... to produce a database of all business enterprises involved in the activities detailed in paragraph 96 of the aforementioned report, to be updated annually, and to transmit the data therein in the form of a report to the Council at its thirty-fourth session;...

86. ...[T]he adoption of the resolution gives rise to additional one-time requirements for: (a) General temporary assistance ... for eight months for one staff who will... create a database of all business enterprises involved in the activities ... She or he will research, gather information on and analyse human rights and international law violations involved in the production of settlement goods in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, research and draw relationships between trade in these goods and the entrenchment, maintenance and economic growth of the settlement enterprise and the situation of occupation, as well as third-party obligations in this regard, and draft and present a report to be submitted to the Council at its thirty-fourth session...

87. The related provisions have not been included under the programme budget for the biennium 2016-2017. Therefore, additional resources of $138,700... would be required."