Abbas signs requests to join conventions
Abbas signs requests to join conventionsFlash 90

The Palestinian Authority's “foreign ministry” announced Thursday that it had received a message from the UN Secretary General confirming the acceptance of the “State of Palestine” into the conventions and agreements signed early April by Mahmoud Abbas, “the President of the State of Palestine.”

The acceptance of the “State of Palestine” is immediately valid in the following treaties: the UN Convention against Torture; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racist Discrimination; the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that deals with the involvement of children in armed conflicts.

The acceptance into two other conventions will take place on July 2: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The Palestinian foreign ministry noted that the “State of Palestine” seeks to work with the rest of the signatories to the conventions to advance human rights and spread the culture of freedom, justice and legitimate rights of nations – and especially of the Palestinian nation, which “has suffered for a long time from injustice and violation of its rights as a nation and a state under occupation.”

The ministry added that the international conventions help establish the legal status of "Palestine" as a country like all others, and of the resistance to systematic violations of the rights of Palestinians by Israel, the “occupying entity.”

The statement stressed that the Palestinian Authority will continue down this path until the occupation is removed and until “the realization of the unrelinquishable rights of the Palestinian people, including its right to self-definition and independence, and the return of its refugees in accordance with legitimate international decisions.”