Adalah conferences: Torture and The Absence of Justice
In January 2009, the European Commission began funding a three-year, €800,000 project, entitled “Combating and Preventing Torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian Prisoners held in Israel Prisons and Palestinian Civilians in the OPT” (p. 18). The project is a joint effort by Adalah, Al Mezan, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I), and will be managed by Adalah. As part of this initiative, Adalah has organized a five week “training course for lawyers on representing detainees and detention procedures,” which started on November 6, 2009. Topics in the series range from technical-procedural issues to “[t]he effect of torture and isolation on the physical and psychological state of the detainee and the need for Israel’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the CAT.”
Additionally, on October 6-8 2009, Adalah hosted its 4th Annual Arab Law Students’ Conference on “The Absence of Justice and State Accountability.” Sessions at the conference included “State Accountability, War Crimes and Remedies for the Victims” and “Inaccessibility to Land and Methods of Expropriating Palestinian Refugees’ Properties.” Representatives from Shatil, Gisha, Yesh Din, Addameer, Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), and Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) spoke at the conference.
This theme of “Israeli legal and judicial systems fail[ure] in providing any legal remedies to the Palestinian people” was central to Adalah’s statement to the UNHRC’s Special Session on the Goldstone report, in which Adalah lobbied the UN to “put an end to the culture of impunity and the lack of justice in the region.”