A/HRC/42/46 F. State of Palestine 39. In 2018, the State of Palestine submitted an inter-State communication under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination against Israel. In it, the State of Palestine claimed discrimination and other practices and policies that violate State obligations under the Convention. 53 The detailed contents of the communication have not been made public yet, but it may be assumed that the State of Palestine could seek to challenge, inter alia, the continuing blockade implemented by the occupying Power, as constituting a breach of obligations under the Convention. It should be recalled that the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 has found that the blockade constitutes collective punishment of the people of Gaza, contrary to article 33 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention) (A/70/392, para. 22, and A/73/175, para. 30). The Special Rapporteur also cannot but draw attention to an alarming recent report in which the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East states that more than one million people in Gaza – half of the population of the territory – may not have enough food by June 2019 as a result of the blockade coupled with other factors such as successive conflicts that have razed entire neighbourhoods and public infrastructure to the ground.54 G. Syrian Arab Republic 40. Measures which, when superimposed, become comprehensive economic sanctions continue to be imposed on the Syrian Arab Republic by a number of States and regional organizations, such as the European Union, which again in 2018 extended its restrictive measures, until 1 June 2019.55 The measures are being maintained as the political-military process towards peace evolves and as the situation on the ground becomes more stable. The reason for extending sanctions is that the human rights of Syrians continue to be violated by the Government. This effectively means fighting the blaze of human rights violations not with a hose but with a flamethrower. 41. In recent months, the United States has strongly tightened the measures that prohibit oil exports to the Syrian Arab Republic through targeted sanctions on foreign entities accused of facilitating transactions on oil deliveries to that country,56 as well as through the issuance of an advisory to the maritime petroleum shipping community issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control to “alert persons globally to the significant US sanctions risks for parties involved in petroleum shipments to the Government of Syria”.57 The stated objective of these measures is to “disrupt support for the Assad regime by preventing the normalization of economic and diplomatic relations and the provision of reconstruction funding, as well as permanently denying the regime the use of chemical weapons. The United States is committed to isolating the Assad regime and its supporters from the global financial and trade system in response to the continued atrocities committed by the regime against the Syrian people”.58 Such an overt claim that sanctions are being used to prevent the normalization of economic and diplomatic relations and reconstruction funding is a crude admission of disregard for the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, human rights and humanitarian law. 53 54 55 56 57 58 12 See www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CERD/Pages/InterstateCommunications.aspx. See www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/more-one-million-people-gaza-%E2%80%93-halfpopulation-territory-%E2%80%93-may-not-have (13 May 2019). Council of the European Union, “Syria: EU extends sanctions against the regime by one year”, press release, 28 May 2018. United States Department of the Treasury, “Treasury designates illicit Russia-Iran oil network supporting the Assad regime, Hizballah, and Hamas”, 20 November 2018; Alex Wayne, “US sanctions Russian companies to choke off oil for Syria”, Bloomberg, 20 November 2018. United States Department of the Treasury, “OFAC advisory to the maritime petroleum shipping community”, 25 March 2019. Ibid.