Human Rights

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Controversy Erupts over UN Plans to Give Award to Group Tied to PFLP

On Sunday, Paul Alster reported via The Times of Israel that the United Nations will present the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) with the Equator Prize this week, despite UAWC’s ties to the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Alster briefly outlined the PFLP’s history of terror, which includes the Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion Airport) massacre in 1972 and the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rechavam Ze’evi in 2001, as well as the attempts by Shurat Hadin – The Israel Law Center to appeal the decision to award UAWC. Alster presented Shurat Hadin’s case connecting the UAWC with the terrorist group and its legal implications:

“The PLFP’s funding is shared and distributed among its family of institutions, including the UAWC. The PLFP is the controlling hand of the UAWC and PLFP members form the executive of the organization,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, President of Shurat HaDin, wrote in a letter this week to the UN Secretary General.

“Accordingly, not only is the awarding of the Equator Prize to the UAWC by the United Nations unconscionable, but additionally the funding of UAWC by a U.N. agency is a violation of Chapter Seven of the United Nation’s Charter and Security Council Resolution 1373, as well as national and international law. We respectfully request that the United Nations and the Development Programme immediately desist from awarding the Equator Prize to this terrorist instrumentality.”

Alster lists five men who belong to both organizations. A more complete list from 2012 is available here (scribd document).

Earlier this year, Shurat Hadin also documented problematic ties between the charity Oxfam and UAWC.

[Photo: passh ki / YouTube ]