A/HRC/4/57 page 2 subsequent report submitted by the High Commissioner to the General Assembly at its sixtieth session, and the note submitted by the Secretariat to the Commission on Human Rights at its sixty-second session on the issue of Palestinian pregnant women giving birth at Israeli checkpoints. 3. On 6 February 2007, OHCHR received a report from the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine1, compiled by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, indicating that since the Al Aqsa intifada in September 2000, Israel had intensified its military occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) through obstacles and checkpoints at the entry of Palestinian cities and villages, impeding seriously the mobility of civilians. These restrictions imposed on the liberty of movement of Palestinian people were perceived as a form of collective punishment and constitute a violation of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War of 12 August 1949, which forbids collective penalties and intimidation measures, and of article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees to everyone the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his/her residence. The Israeli policy of segregation led to the splitting of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively into 3 and 43 isolated areas or units. 4. According to the Information Health Centre of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, from 2000 to 2006, 69 cases of Palestinian pregnant women giving birth at Israeli checkpoints had been recorded with peaks reached in 2001 (18 cases), in 2002 (24 cases), in 2003 (8 cases) and in 2004 (9 cases). Of these, 45 took place in the West Bank (out of which 11 cases occurred in Nablus and 9 cases in Ramallah), while 14 cases were registered in Gaza. In 2005, only three cases were reported in the West Bank and Gaza, while two cases occurred in the West Bank and none in Gaza in 2006. 5. As a result of the checkpoints, 10 per cent of pregnant women who wished to give birth in a hospital had been delayed on the road between two to four hours before reaching health facilities, while 6 per cent of them had spent more than four hours for the same journey. Before the intifada, the average time to reach health facilities was 15 to 30 minutes. These hazardous conditions were mainly attributed to impediments faced by ambulances and medical teams when trying to transport women in labour through checkpoints, and to inspections or attacks perpetrated by Israeli forces against ambulances and their patients. 6. According to the figures provided in the same report, 35 newborn babies had died at checkpoints as their mothers did not receive the urgent care required by their condition and five women lost their lives while giving birth. In addition, six pregnant women had been injured at checkpoints as a result of beating, shooting and use of toxic gas by Israeli soldiers. Mention was made of the case of a pregnant woman who had been targeted in her ninth month of pregnancy at a checkpoint by Israeli military, while she was accompanied by her husband and her father. The woman received a wound in her shoulder and the father was injured in the chest; her husband, however, died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds. Most pregnant women belonged to the 1 This report was received in Arabic and the following information is based on an unofficial translation.