Subcommittee on Human Rights Ordinary meeting
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DROI European Parliament
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 2
When economic marginalization is also present within this context, the overall impact becomes further intensified. Caste, gender, and economic marginalization reinforce one another in ways that traditional single-access approaches to rights protection struggle to address. We see this reflected in lived experiences as well as in the data. Patterns of land ownership, maternal health care outcomes, and barriers to legal remedies all demonstrate how these inequalities intersect. Intersectionality, therefore, is not merely a theoretical construct, but a more precise analytical lens of understanding how inequality operates in lived experiences.
Speaker 3
Absent recognition of these intersecting realities, policies designed to address economic marginalization or gender inequality risk in inwardly reproducing the very hierarchies that exist, reproducing new manifestations of caste-based discrimination. Allow me to conclude by briefly outlining a few recommendations. My report recommends that states integrate intersectional approaches across policy and legal frameworks. This includes anti-discrimination legislation, social protection programs, special measures, particularly affirmative action in education, employment, and political representation, including mechanisms that enable people to seek justice. It is the need of the hour to explicitly and legally recognize caste as a protected ground under all forms of anti-discrimination law in regional and national frameworks, including the international human rights framework.
And we must strengthen data, particularly in the context of disaggregated data and monitoring through disaggregated data collection and SDG indicators that make caste-affected communities visible in development planning and human rights reporting. And we must prioritize survivor centered advocacy by establishing standing complaint mechanisms, independent investigations, and proactive outreach to diaspora communities centering the voices and leadership of those directly affected. Access to justice must also be strengthened, particularly for those who face multiple layers of discrimination and who may already encounter barriers when engaging with legal institutions. The European Union has an important role to play in this process. Through development cooperation, diplomatic dialogue, and human rights clauses within trade and partnership agreements, the EU has long supported the global advancement of human rights.
These existing mechanisms offer meaningful opportunities to encourage more explicit attention to caste-based discrimination and its intersectional dimension. It is also worth noting that the European Union's own anti-discrimination framework recognizes that inequalities often operate across multiple grounds, and the principle that guide EU human rights policy, acknowledging systemic discrimination and addressing overlapping forms of inequality, resonates strongly within the approach outlined in my report. In many ways, the conceptual tool.
Mounir Satouri
Well, as you see, we've got a connectivity problem. So I suggest that we now move to the remaining speakers. And if the Special Rapporteur managed to get the connection back, I can give her another two minutes to continue. So I'll give the floor to Ms. Claassen.
Sandra Klassen
Within this topic of caste-based discrimination, I would like to talk about caste-based discrimination, specifically in supply chains in South Asia. And this is not a local or cultural site issue. It's a serious business and human rights risk for European companies sourcing from countries in South Asia, such as India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. The work of different organizations shows that if we want truly responsible supply chains, we have to address caste discrimination directly. My name is Sandra Klasse.
Speaker 5
I'm the director of ARISA, a not-for-profit organization from The Netherlands. ARISA stands for Advocating Rights in South Asia. It works to improve respect for human rights and labor rights in international supply chains, especially in sectors such as garment, leather, natural stone, and vegetable seeds. Arisa collaborates with civil society partners, both NGOs and trade unions, in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. We investigate labor conditions, raise concerns with companies, and also call on governments to take responsibility.
Speaker 6
Our approach is both practical and structural. It does not stop at identifying abuse. It pushes for dialogue, due diligence, transparency, grievance mechanisms, and policy change. It also works internationally, including with the International Dalit Solidarity Network and its member organizations, to put caste-based discrimination on the agenda. Caste based discrimination affects around 260 million people in South Asia.
Sandra Klassen
The caste system is a rigid social hierarchy that assigns people status and work at birth. This system is built on ideas of purity and pollution, with Dalits treated as impure and often avoided through the practices of untouchability. The result is exclusion from everyday life, as also already explained by the UN report, including segregated housing and schools, limited access to water, food, education and decent work, and frequent social humiliation. Caste-based discrimination is not just a historical issue, but a continuing human rights problem affecting dignity, safety, and equal opportunity. In supply chains, it often shapes who gets hired, what work they do, and how they are treated at work.
People from caste-affected communities are often pushed into the dirtiest, most dangerous, lowest paid, and least secure jobs. They may face segregation in transport, eating, sleeping, and workspaces, which makes discrimination both visible and deeply entrenched. The key point is that caste discrimination is not separate from labour exploitation. It often helps to drive it. Our research says that caste-based exclusion and related discrimination are frequently fundamental drivers of broader labor rights violations such as forced labor, which means that audits focused only on wages, hours, or contracts can miss the root cause.
South Asia is a high-risk region when it comes to cost-based discrimination for companies sourcing from or operating in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. This is especially relevant in garments and textile, leather, natural stone, and other trend export sectors where low cost production, weak enforcement, and social inequality intersect. A strong example is the leather sector. Our report on leather supply chains argues that caste and related religious discrimination are high-risk factors for businesses sourcing leather or leather products from South Asia. The report stresses that caste discrimination is not an internal issue that foreign buyers can ignore.
It is a universal human rights issue embedded in business models that rely on low-wage, marginalized labor. Cost-based discrimination in supply chains is often not dramatic in one single moment. It's cumulative. It can mean that workers from marginalized communities are only offered the most hazardous jobs. They are excluded from training or promotion, or treated as disposable labour.
Our research in several sectors in different South Asian countries describes practices such as separate transport, separate eating arrangements, segregated sleeping and working areas, and extra cleaning duties imposed on Dalit workers. It can also reinforce forced labour risks. Workers may be pressured by withheld wages, threats, document confiscation, or dependence on employer-provided housing, which makes it hard to leave abusive work. When caste discrimination is present, those pressures become even harder to challenge because some workers are already socially isolated and excluded, as is often the case for women workers and migrant workers, and then intersectionality comes up. European companies are not distant bystanders.
Our research directly concerns supply chains of European companies, and it repeatedly finds serious abuses in working conditions, such as forced labour and child labour. If buyers do not look for cost-based discrimination, they may unintentionally sustain the very systems that create reputational, legal, and operational risk. Improving workers' rights abroad is also good for European workers, as it reduces unfair competition and raises the conditions of all workers. This also matters for policy. Governments should require due diligence, improve transparency, and use procurement and diplomacy to support responsible business conduct.
So the main message is simple. Caste-based discrimination is a human rights issue, a labor rights issue, and a supply chain issue. Our work shows that it is also a test of whether Europe is serious about responsible business. A fair supply chain is not only one without child labor or forced labor. It's one without hidden hierarchy and exclusion.
Speaker 6
That's the standard we should apply to global trade in South Asia. Thank you very much.
Mounir Satouri
Well, I'm told there has been a general problem in the parliament with online connections. The special rapporteur is gonna be given the floor immediately once again. I give you the floor now, so that you can conclude. And we do apologize. Obviously, when we have this type of interruption, it does upset the flow, but you have the floor now.
Speaker 2
Good morning, everyone, excellencies, distinguished delegates, honorable members of the European Parliament. Thank you for the opportunity to address this parliament today on an issue that lies at the intersection of human rights, structural inequality, and.
Mounir Satouri
Madam Rapporte. No. No. You don't need to repeat your entire presentation because you gave most of it beforehand. I'll give you two, three minutes maximum, so that you can conclude.
But you're almost at the very end of your presentation when the connection went down. That the problem was at our end, and we do apologize. Thank you.
Speaker 2
Much. So allow me to conclude by briefly outlining some pathways forward. My report recommends that states integrate intersectional approaches across policy and legal frameworks, and this includes anti discrimination legislation, social protection programs, special measures, particularly affirmative action in education, employment, and political representation, including mechanisms that enable people to seek justice. It is a need of the hour to explicitly legally recognize caste as a protected category or protected ground under all forms of anti-discrimination law in regional and national frameworks, and access to justice must be strengthened, particularly for those who face multiple layers of discrimination and who may already encounter barriers when engaging with legal institutions. The European Union has an important role to play in this process through development cooperation, diplomatic dialogue, and human rights clauses within trade and partnership agreements.
The EU has long supported the global advancement of human rights, and these existing mechanisms offer meaningful opportunities to encourage more explicit attention to caste-based discrimination and its intersectional dimension. It is also worth noting that the European anti-discrimination framework recognizes the inequalities often operate across multiple grounds. And this, in many ways, it is important that the principles that guide EU human rights policies, acknowledging systemic discrimination, and addressing overlapping forms of discrimination has been resonated and outlined in my report. And today, what is needed is continued commitment to apply these approaches consistently in the legal framework, national and both international framework, and honorable members. There is a conscious erasure of caste-based discrimination in the lived experiences of Dalit communities within the legal framework.
And it is essential to have a sustained and principled engagement from national governments, international partners, and institutions such as this parliament. I thank you for your attention.
Thank.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much indeed, madam Rapoporta. We did manage to hear all of the first part. It was only at the very last minute that we had the problem, and you've now been able to finish. And now I give the floor to you, mister Satyani, for seven minutes.
Pribu Satyani
Honorable members, distinguished participants, and colleagues, very good morning. I thank you, European Union, for organizing this hearing on a very important topic, cost based discrimination, and giving me this opportunity to speak on this issue. And that remains, you know, largely invisible, but it affects millions of people across South Asia and beyond. My name is Pribu Satyani. I am from Pakistan.
I'm a human rights defender, and my work, you know, focusing on the issues of Dalits, minorities, and children in Pakistan. So if we talk about cost-based discrimination, I think, you know, it's a global human rights issue. It's not only after Pakistan or India or any country because I see, because it is, though it is prevalent in South Asia, but it is affecting 270,000,000 people as mentioned by my colleagues earlier. That is a systematic discrimination, social exclusion, economic marginalization, and barriers to education, employment, and justice. And this problem is, of course, in South Asia, but also it exists in diaspora communities across Europe, North America, and other regions, making it an international concern that requires global attention and action.
So turning to Pakistan, since I'm here, to represent Pakistan, let me share that Pakistan, you know, is the fifth most populous country in the world, and we have 240,000,000 people. And if we talk about the religious minority, that is a very tiny religious minority, four percent. And within the religious minority, if I talk about the caste people, you know, they are in the majority 70% among the, you know, the four million population. Basically, these people, they are you know, they face different challenges. The you know, they mostly the people, they are landless.
They are illiterate. So they face a systematic discrimination, social exclusion, and marginalization in education, health, employment, and lander ownership and political participation. There are so many challenges and issues, but I will talk on the few, you know, which are very serious concerns that we need to work on. The first issue is, you know, the labor and body labor, the forced conversion of the minority and Dalit girls, and discrimination in education and the, you know, the people who work in hazardous condition like in sanitation work. If we look at the sanitation work, you know, I mentioned that there are 4% men of religious minority.
You know, the majority is Hindu and Christian and the rest of the minority in the country. But the 4% religious minority and this population, they carry out the 80% sanitation work in Pakistan. So most of them, Dalit and, you know, the Hindus and Christian community, they carry this work, and they work in very hazardous conditions, sanitation work, and that's that the work is very unsafe, you know, and they clean the sewer and drain without any proper protective equipment, which expose them to serious health risk and, you know, severe death. The other issue is, you know, the child labor and bonded labor. Recently, we have a survey in Pakistan where we have found that 8,600,000 children, they are in labor, five to seventy years children. And 25 million, you know, the children, they are out of school.
And largely, these, you know, the child labor occurs in rural areas, and it is also affecting the minority in Dalit community. So that I mentioned that Dalit communities, they are landless, poor, and illiterate. So, you know, they face multiple challenges. They work in agriculture where they are in the bondage, and they face so many challenges like, you know, their girls are being abducted and converted and they are weak, so they have no such vice. If you see in Pakistan, the 70% bonded labor work is carried out by Hindu community and the rest 30% is carried out by the Christian community in Bricklin.
I, you know, I was conducting research in Pakistan in 2006. I went to the villages to see the condition, situation, how they are living. If I go again, their situation is still the same. There is no such change. The reason is, you know, because there are so many development in the country, but at the grassroot level, the issues and the situation is similar.
And similar, those people, they work in government industry to third party by, you know, colleague she mentioned, they also face systematic discrimination in recruitment, low wages, transport, something like that. Similarly, you know, in the education, they also face discrimination in the schools, although the constitution, you know, our constitution which guarantees the free and compulsory education and inclusion of minority in education. But the education policies, they do not address the issues and needs of the minority in the Dalit community in Pakistan. So there are, you know, there are some gaps in the policies and legislation. Though the constitution apart, Pakistan is very much clear.
They guarantee the freedom of religion, but their implementation is very poor. Recently, you know, after the GSP plus, there are some positive developments in the country. If you see that, you know, there is a uniformity of age, 18 years in marriage in some of the provinces. Only one province which they have to work on, but the rest of the provinces have a minimum age of 80. There is also National Commission on the Rights of the Child Bill has been passed recently.
And also, there is a child labor survey conducted. There are action plans. The commissions, they are doing good work in Pakistan. But I think Pakistan is usually regarded as a legislative country, but there is still need to work on a few issues such as, like, in Pakistan, need to criminalize caste-based discrimination and enforce laws to prevent forced religious conversion, forced marriages. Second, we need inclusive education and a curriculum to remove the hate material and discriminatory content from the books.
There is also a need, you know, the effective implementation of the National Plan of Action on Business and Human Rights to protect the vulnerable community. There is also a need to work at the district level. There should be a coordination made with police, labor department, child protection units so we can, you know, protect these marginalized community. And there should also be a development package for these marginalized communities who are poor and landless. Maybe the government can introduce a land reform program for them.
And they at the EU level, I have a few suggestions. You know, EU should strengthen its monitoring under the GSP plus framework with clear focus on effective implementation of human rights commitment and also support the independent commissions institution, which they are doing the best because I used to work with that commission, and then you can support them. There is also a need to integrate caste discrimination into EU human rights dialogue and GSP plus monitoring framework, which should also support the research, knowledge production, and caste-based discrimination across South Asia, and also engage the civil society organization affected Dalit community to build a partnership and engage these minority in Dalit community in the development schemes. Also, there should be an invest in education leadership building program for Dalit and minority. I hope that you will continue to play a stronger role in ensuring the caste-based discrimination is recognized and addressed as a serious human rights concern.
No doubt, it is, you know, the oldest form of inequality, but it is not enviable without political will, effective policies, international cooperation, meaningful progress. It is possible. I believe justice, dignity, and equality are not privileges, but rights for all, Dalits and minorities in Pakistan and everywhere. I thank you very much for your attention.
Pester
You also have 7 minutes. Person, distinguished members of the committee, honored guests, dear panelists, thank you very much for inviting me to join you today. It's a huge privilege, for the European external action service to take part in this exchange of views on an issue of such a fundamental importance. The European Parliament has long been at the forefront of efforts to address caste-based discrimination, most notably through its landmark resolution of October 2013 and through the sustained attention it has given to this issue in its annual reports on human rights and democracy. As today's presentation, of my co panelists have made very much clear, this is a very complex, deep-rooted, and sensitive challenge.
It cuts across the full spectrum of human rights, from access to public services and education to labor rights and social inclusion. Yet legal progress alone is not enough. Laws must be matched by genuine and lasting social change. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has made clear that discrimination based on work and descent is not confined to South Asia. Here in Europe, the discrimination faced by Roma communities is a powerful reminder that this challenge is both shared and global.
Recognition of the problem as both international and national level is an essential first step towards the change. Symbolism matters too. The recent formation of Nepal's new cabinet, which for the first time includes a minister from the Dalit Badi community, is a meaningful and encouraging step. So the decision by the authorities in Kathmandu to issue a formal apology to the Dalit community. These are not minor gestures.
They signal political will, but symbolism must be followed by substance. While the countries under consideration today have constitutional or legislative provisions prohibiting caste-based discrimination, the real test, as always, lies in the implementation. Rights on paper mean little without enforcement in practice. When it comes to our EU's engagement, dialogue with civil society is indispensable for us. In Brussels, in the countries concerned, and in the multilateral fora, including the UN.
Last June, for example, the International Deli Solidarity Network brought six representatives of marginalized communities to Brussels for direct exchanges. That kind of engagement is particularly valuable in the run-up to formal human rights dialogues that we hold with the partner countries. Discrimination based on work and descent is, at its core, a denial of the most basic human dignity, the right to be judged not by birth, but by one's character, abilities, and contribution to society. The principle is not a Western or European value. It's a universal one.
The European Union will continue to stand with all those working to make that principle a reality through dialogue, through partnership, and through the firm conviction that no person's worth should ever be determined by the circumstances of their birth. I look forward to our discussion. And on behalf of DIS, I thank you once again for the opportunity to contribute to this important conversation.
Thank you.
Very much.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much. I'll open the floor now to the members. Mister Assi, you have the floor. Thank you, chair. I'm going to speak Portuguese, my own language.
Francisco Assis
First of all, I'd like to thank our guests for the information they have provided. And they've clarified this issue, which is one of the most serious issues that affect humanity, humankind today. Caste-based discrimination can be found in five countries in the South of Asia, but it also affects the diaspora in other parts of the world, especially here in Europe. And therefore, it's something that we need to discuss, because it's something that directly affects human rights. And I wanted to reflect on a few points.
First of all, well, the main human rights declarations are often focused on Western cultural perspectives, and that can be quite controversial. It's a very complicated and complex process, but they have been enshrined as universal in the United Nations Charter of Human Rights when it was ratified. And then this is ratified by other governments throughout the world, which means that it basically focuses on the Western world and is not truly universal. And so first of all, we have to pay attention to what's going on in other parts of the world, and show solidarity with those who are fighting and struggling in difficult circumstances that affect their human rights. And so we're facing a sort of apartheid, and it's a situation that calls into question very basic principles, equality among others, the principle of dignity shown towards human beings, and humanity that needs to be shown towards other human beings.
And so it's outrageous that it's not being dealt with in more detail. So what can we do from the EU perspective? That's something we really need to focus on now. This is a topic that needs to be at the heart of many debates that we have here. I understand that there are many countries who are trying to fight against this, but it also happens in the diaspora as well, and that does affect us.
It's unacceptable that situations like this fall under the radar of different political systems in the EU countries. There cannot be any multicultural country which ignores that this is going on. And so we have to focus on how this issue can affect multiculturalism as a whole. We also need to focus on supply chains, international supply chains, as our guests have mentioned. This will affect the products that we use.
It will affect European companies as well. So we must focus on how to deal with that as well. Here in the European Parliament, we discuss human rights issues, and we have a major responsibility when it comes to protecting people who are victims of caste based discrimination.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you, Mr. Assis. We have the vice president of the Southeast Asian American delegation with us, mister McNamara. I wonder if you'd like to take the floor. If so, I will happily give you the floor.
Michael McNamara
Not really, but I would like to thank you very much for this very informative presentation. Suppose, as a member of the South Asia delegation, along with Miss Furmanic who is also here, we're obviously focused on certain countries of South Asia, but not India, which is a separate delegation. I suppose India is a country that at least some of the countries that we focus on in the South Asia delegation are perhaps less associated with the caste system, or at least I might have associated them less with the caste system. But for no particular reason, I suppose I would be particularly interested to perhaps hear about the impact of the caste system in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, countries that are in the delegation to South Asia because we often hear about it in the context of India, but less so in the context of those states. And I'm sure given the obvious historical and cultural parallels that it must play a part in those societies as well, and there's again, and their political system.
So I would like to maybe get some information on that. Thank you very much for the opportunity to attend.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you, Mr. McNamara. Well, we're very happy to see you here. I'll give the floor to Miss Ferminig now for two minutes, and then we'll wrap up with something from Missus Gomez Lopez. You have the floor.
Ruth Firmenich
Maja, I would like to speak in German as we have translation, and I always like to use translation services.
When we talk about caste-based discrimination, we're also talking about the colonial system. The colonial system didn't invent the caste system, but it exploited it and established it in bureaucratic terms. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been possible for 2,000 British colonial administrative staff to manage hundreds of millions, oppress hundreds of millions of Indians, and plunder their country. So I'd be interested to hear to what extent the structures that were set up during the colonial period or fine-tuned during that period are still in place and having an impact today. And how the EU or what the EU is doing to deal with its own colonial past.
How do you deal with the accusation that human rights are being instrumentalized rather than actually dealing with the ramifications of our own colonial history and to process that? Thank you. Madam Gomez Lopez. Miss Gomez Lopez, please.
Sandra Gómez López
Thank you, chair. I'm going to speak Spanish. First of all, thank you very much to the guests of the hearing, which I consider really important for this particular committee. It's been very interesting, and I wanted to ask a few questions about your comments, which I think were very interesting. First of all, all of us here believe that this is an invisible type of discrimination in the international community.
It's camouflaged often as something cultural or traditional, but it's not condemned as strongly as other types of discrimination like racism or sexism at the international level. I'd also like to know which countries are actually aware of this problem and actually fight against the system itself, and which are the ones that impede any kind of progress and sustain these social structures? With regard to the convention of the rights of the child, all countries that are affected by caste-based discrimination have signed this convention. So what can we do at the UN and the international community when it comes to those countries, discriminate against children from birth? These are children who don't have access to education or health care, or who end up in forced labor.
This is unacceptable, given that many countries have already signed this convention. With regard to the EU, we've talked about conditionality clauses in trade agreements, but what happens in cooperation and development? How can we also apply mechanisms to help us fight against caste-based discrimination? And I also wanted to ask you about other neighbors in Asia who've made investments, who have a great deal of weight, like Korea, Japan, that have significant trade relations with these countries. Are they doing anything about the situation, or could they do more to help?
So not just looking to the EU, but how could we perhaps develop a shared responsibility among developed countries, especially among those countries that are closer to the countries affected by caste-based discrimination? And I'd also like to know what you think about new generations, the new generations of people who are born and who are living in a society with few opportunities? What do you think about those structures? How can we change their perception? Is there hope among that new generation in those countries that are affected by caste based discrimination?
Mounir Satouri
Before I give the floor back to our guest speakers, let me tell you that the special UN rapporteur was unable to stay with us and answer questions, and she has already sent her apologies. She has other commitments. Now I see that mister Zidoski, vice president of the commission, vice president of the committee, is here. I wonder if you'd like to say something. I'm sure you have other business as well today.
If you'd like to take the floor now, I'm happy to give you the floor for 2 minutes.
Tomáš Zdechovský
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, my colleagues. I'm very happy to be here with you. And every time, we are very happy to have this discussion with Droja about the aspect of human rights in many South Asia countries, especially Pakistan issue is for us very important, and we would like to have it here open debate how to really make the progress in this country because it's not easy. We know what this country has been facing for a long time.
There is huge influence from Afghanistan, also Iran as an unstable partner. And from other side, there is huge tension from India and also from China. So we have to know where Pakistan is, but it doesn't mean that we are not really very open to talk with Pakistani authorities about what's going on, and we have to speak much more intensively and have this dialogue much more intensively because we would like to have a democratic Pakistan. For us, it's democratic Pakistan with rule of law, key issue for the stability of the region. Pakistan was now one of the most important partners for negotiation peace between Iran, Israel, and USA.
And Pakistan is also for us the key partner for observing the situation in Afghanistan. Also, if we are talking about the future of this South Asia and about democracy, it's very important to have Pakistan on board and have it here transparent, so she had included NGOs and included all activists who are now facing any pressure from the Pakistani side to openly talk about what we can change together. Also, I will stop here. Thank you, mister chair, for this opportunity, and I am very happy to see here my colleagues who are really interested in South Asia issue for a long time.
And.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much for joining our meeting. I'll give the floor back to our invited guests now, Missus Clausen and Mister Satchani. And let me ask you a question I often ask. Given where you are active, where do you see room for improvement in what Europe is doing? Is it in statements and efficiency, and the instruments that we implement?
I'd always like to hear from people on the ground as to how our policy is working. And then, mister Pester, you didn't go beyond the time limit, and I'm tempted to say I'd like to hear more about what the EU is doing or could do from you. Is there a will to set out an action plan on this matter? For example, you've heard that the political groups and the members in the parliament are very much interested in this and would like to see that this subject is part of our relations with Southeast Asia and that our businesses be socially responsible. So how can the EU be more responsible in its actions?
But let's begin with Missus Schlossen. We've got a little bit more time for you now, so I'll give you a few minutes.
Sandra Klassen
Si, thank you. And thank you for all the interventions and questions, recognizing the importance of this topic to be discussed here at the European Union, because, well, I hear that there's understanding of the topic and that it's really seen as something that should be addressed from different angles as well. I think that it's important that at the European Union level, we should make sure that human rights due diligence legislation explicitly covers caste-based discrimination as a relevant and also foreseeable risk in South Asia supply chains. It is not something from far away. It affects directly the business of European companies, and the European Union should be including this topic in the legislation that is there, and not only in the legislation, as was also mentioned, but also in the implementation of this legislation.
The generic language on discrimination is not enough if implementation does not identify how CAST operates in practice. We think that the European Union should also support stronger supply chain transparency rules, because transparency is essential for assessing and preventing labor rights violations. And in addition, trade policy, development cooperation, and public procurement should all promote the decent work and anti-discrimination standards. Specifically for members of parliament, I think that it's important that they ensure that the legislation, such as forced labor legislation or the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, and their oversight processes do not treat caste as invisible. They should ask, as members of parliament, whether due diligence rules require companies to assess caste-related risks, whether remedies are accessible for affected workers, and whether enforcement is strong enough to change business behavior.
So as members of parliament, you can help by pressing for mandatory supply chain transparency, for stronger protections for workers' voice and grievance mechanisms, for clear expectations that companies address discrimination as part of their due diligence, and for support for civil society and trade unions in South Asia. As, mister Satyani already said, there are many organizations in South Asia, working and addressing this topic of caste based discrimination.
and they.
Sandra Klassen
Really need to be heard and need to be supported. And then in addition, as there is time, I've also some recommendations for the European companies, because they should treat the cost-based discrimination as a specific risk and not as a vague social issue. So they should map whether suppliers operate in caste-affected sectors or regions, speak directly with workers and community organizations, and look for signs of segregation, exclusion, and labor concentration by caste. They should also improve their purchasing practices. If lead times are unrealistic and prices are pushed down, suppliers have little room to pay living wages or improve working conditions, which strengthens exploitative systems.
So companies must go beyond audits and engage in long-term dialogue, remediation, and transparency. And in practice, they should include caste in human rights risk assessments. They should consult Dalit and other marginalized worker groups directly. They should require suppliers to have grievance mechanisms that are safe and accessible, and they should publicly disclose their supply chains and sourcing regions, because then they can track whether corrective action actually improves workers' lives. So thank you for all the attention and the questions, and happy to address it further.
Thank you.
Pribu Satyani
I think, first, I appreciate the support of the European Union, took the Pakistan, you know, in the shape of the GSP plus scheme. And I believe that, you know, that is very much helpful to support the country and provide the job opportunities in the labor market industries and, you know, in the compliance of the UN human rights, the core conventions like that. But, you know, Pakistan, as I mentioned, is a huge country. It's 240,000,000 people over there, and there are so many issues and challenges. And over the period, if we see, you know, because I work in this field from the last two decades, but if I see after the GSP plus which came in 2014, and since that, there are some positive developments that must be appreciated by the EU and within, you know, as a civil society, while we also appreciate the government.
And, you know, there is good legislation, though even still we say that Pakistan is an over legislated country. But we feel where there are gaps, you need legislation. So there are good laws, you know, on the child marriages. And recently, I mentioned that, you know, the government of Pakistan has conducted the child labour surveys. And the surveys, you know, the earlier surveys were conducted in '25, '96.
And since then, there was no data, but now we have data and government has also, you know, they made action plans on how to tackle this issue. So these are some of the positive developments, and there is also, you know, recently, the government of Pakistan at the federal level, they have legislated and passed the minority rights commission within the country, and there are some other commissions which they are actively working on various issues, whether it's child protection, gender issues, and human rights, you know, the other issues, so many issues. But as far as concerned, the issue which we are talking today, the people, you know, who are from the downtrend in communities, the Dalit peoples, mostly they are ignored. I said, you know, that Pakistan is over legislated, but if I talk about the caste issue, there is no legislation that can protect from the discrimination. Like in India and Nepal, there is legislation to criminalize caste discrimination.
Similarly, we expect there should be from the government. And also, you know, they were not the key concern from the minority in Dalit community is the conversion of their young girls, you know, the underage girls. So they are not protected. So far that we because before that, I used to work with the commission. We have drafted one of the laws to regulate the forced conversion within the country, but we need the support of you and the government of Pakistan to protect these young girls within the country.
And, also, you know, we have good legislation, but we need to push for the enforcement and implementation of these laws because I want to see the change at the community level, at the grassroot level. There should be a kind of mechanism maybe at the grassroot level, at the district level, where the, you know, the law enforcement agency, police, labor department, child protection unit, and also, there are vigilance committee, and their role is to be vigilant of the labor situation and to work for the rehabilitation at the grassroot level. But these committees and these departments, we need to work to strengthen and to support so they can effectively work, and there should be kind of interagency collaboration so we can perform that, we can, you know, track their performance within the country. Also, as I mentioned, these people, the Dalit communities, they are very marginalized. So there should be a kind of special development program for them because most of the people, they are landless people.
And maybe, you know, the government can introduce the land reform. They should have their own houses, colonies, and land. So they should not be dependent on others on the lands which they are exploiting, you know, into the bondage like that. And there could be some of the other, you know, the things that we can do, maybe provide the scholarship opportunities to the youth. We can invest in the research and the knowledge development kind of things and how we can engage the civil society and the people who work on the ground, that could be helpful.
I think these are the things that we need to the attention, and we also need to prioritize these communities into, you know, to bring into the mainstream debate in agenda. So I think by doing this maybe after 3, 4, 5 years, we can see the change at the community level. So this is what we are expecting from you to support and how we can, in collaboration, work together to address this maintenance. Thank you. Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
We've heard you loud and clear. Now I'd like to give the floor to Mister Pester, and you will be concluding our discussion today.
Pester
Explain a bit more about what is that you're doing with our engagement. So let me start by saying that non-discrimination and respect of the rights of persons belonging to minorities are among the founding values of the EU. So we are really very much deeply committed to our combating all forms of discrimination, of course, including the case based and descent based discrimination. Combating discrimination is in fact a core priority of the EU action plan on human rights and democracy, and it's reflected in the EU human rights framework. The EU action aims to protect individuals, promote equality.
And we also engage in the actions that aim at protecting and empowering individuals, building resilient and inclusive societies, strengthening the global human rights system, and delivering together through these issues by the EU delegations and member states. But, more in practice, our engagement is by our delegations who are present in the South Asian countries, and they regularly engage with the representatives of the Dalit community and also the organizations working on Dalit rights. So they have both bilateral meetings with the EU delegations, also in the wider forum of the EU member states' embassies based on the spot. Then still at the government level, we raised these issues, of course, concerning the Kazakhstan nation, our dialogues and interaction with the relevant governmental institutions. In some countries, we have the human rights dialogues, and, of course, we raise these issues during these dialogues.
Finally, important issue, like, it was raised by one of in one of the questions is the funding that we, of course, try to earmark for these activities. And here, discrimination is a central issue, which is considered in our programming for the partner countries where we try to apply the human rights based approach. And within the global Europe instrument, we have the human rights and democracy program as well as the civil society organization program, which was a budget of €1,500,000,000 for the 2021-2027 period. And these two flagship initiatives extensively work with civil society organizations to decrease discrimination and build inclusive societies. To so over half of these programs, they're actually implemented at the country level by the EU delegation.
So here, the very important role of EU delegations, it had needs to be underlined. And let me underline the fact that, in South Asia, over 3,000,003 euros are currently funding projects in countries such as Pakistan, India, Myanmar, and Nepal to address minorities, discrimination, working on the protection of their rights and contributing to build more inclusive societies. Before finalizing my intern intervention, I would like to also give some more practical information about how we work with our partner countries. And here, for example, in Nepal, we are very much engaged in promoting the rights of Dalits. So we have the EU working group on human rights defenders, and delegation convened this group every four months.
Discrimination is, there's a subgroup of discrimination, which is led by Dalit representatives who are voicing and addressing these issues in the discussions. Dalits are also one of the focus groups of the protection efforts under the EU human rights and democracy country strategy in Nepal. The delegation has engaged with the National Dalit Commission in dialogue. Dalit representatives are invited regularly to the delegation events, and they are some of them, they are also traveling to Brussels for research assignments. So there is a lot of initiative that is carried out by our colleagues in the delegations in different countries who are engaging very actively on these issues with the partner countries.
Thank you very much.
Thank.
Mounir Satouri
you. I would like to thank all the speakers for this very fruitful exchange. I'd like to thank the participants as well, because it shows that there is a political interest in this topic. I think it's important that the European Parliament continues to stress the need to integrate the caste system into the work of its various bodies and to continue to engage with civil society and affected communities during missions, especially missions abroad, and to raise the issue systematically with local authorities. We will share the conclusions of this public hearing with the other relevant parliamentary bodies, and we will follow up with other European institutions.
Thank you very much. We can conclude this session, and we will come back with the next point at 10:30. So you have 15 minutes for a short break. Thank you. See you soon.
Welcome back, colleagues, and welcome to those who have joined us now for this specific point. Please take your seats. We are going to kick off with this, the fifth item on our agenda. We're going to have an exchange of views on the EU's response to human rights violations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Now we'll be working with the delegation for relations with Palestine, and Lynn Boylan is running a little bit late to her apologies, but she will be joining us very shortly upon the podium.
This exchange is taking place in the context of particularly worrying recent developments in terms of human rights on the ground. In November, a Human Rights Watch report highlighted Israeli government operations, which led to the mass and forced displacement of 32,000 Palestinians from three refugee camps in the Northern West Bank. The organization denounced violations of occupation law, of international humanitarian law, and also of international human rights law, as part of a widespread systematic attack directed at a civilian population. Also, on March 30, the Knesset passed a death penalty law targeting Palestinians accused of deadly anti-Israeli attacks. This law has been condemned by many states and organizations, including the high representative of the European Union, Callas Katya.
And I also, myself, spoke out against this text on behalf of Trois. And, finally, we learned last week that the Israeli government has decided to establish more than 30 new settlements in the West Bank. And it's our mandate, therefore, to objectively and rigorously assess the EU's action in response to these developments, to follow up on our resolutions and our commitment to respect international law and our opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances. I'd like to remind you in particular that in its resolution dated 09/11/2025, the parliament expressed its full support for EU sanctions against violent Israeli settlers and activists in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and called for further sanctions, including under the EU global human rights sanctions regime against extremist individuals and entities who are directly involved in the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and in serious violations of international law, and that includes extremist ministers. I'd like to say a few words now about the challenges in organizing this type of item on the agenda, as we have this morning.
The last difficulty, at least in chronological terms, is the impossibility for one of our stakeholders to obtain a visa. And I condemn France's decision to object to the issuance of a visa for the director of Al Haqq, mister Shahwan Jaberin. I spoke with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday who expressed that they had no problem in granting the visa, but it wasn't them that were blocking this as if, well, the visa issuance was in someone else's hands apart from them. This is a really serious decision because it hampers our parliamentarians and brings into question the separation of powers. A European executive is hampering us from doing our work as members of parliament, and that is really serious in terms of what's happening in the EU.
It also brings into question EU cooperation because The Netherlands and Belgium were ready to welcome Charwan and to issue a visa, particularly for The Netherlands. So, in this act, France is complicating the cooperation between member states. Then the director of Alhac was supposed to be meeting us in person here this morning, but beyond that, he was also going to be welcomed by the EU special representative for human rights, Miss Hollande Gren, and even more so, had planned to meet members of the Quere d'Orsay, the French foreign ministry, during the week. So this is totally irrational. France was one of six member states that officially denounced classifying the NGO Al Haqq as other Palestinian ones and putting them on the terrorist list when there wasn't adequate proof for that.
And right now, France is stopping us from having a calm debate about this issue by objecting to the issuance of this visa. France cannot act at the highest possible level in supporting the judges against American sanctions, but then at the same time, stopping the entry onto European territory of someone who is working to support this. I'm not a member of the French parliament or a senator. I'm not able to meet the minister on a day on a weekly basis, but I want this message to be heard. We have to move away from this amateur, irrational approach.
Visas that we work with and their services work with should have as many visas as they need to come and do their work. I will stop my side now, but I really want this message to be heard at the very highest level in France. And therefore, I would like to greet and especially thank mister Tarcin Alayan, who is deputy director of Al Haq, who is with us in the room today, replacing his director, and we'll be speaking on behalf of the NGO. As I said, Al Haq does a very precise job of documenting evidence of violations despite US and Israeli sanctions, and this in a framework of unprecedented international pressure. I'm really delighted that you're able to participate in this public session in the place of the director of your organization, in order to share with us your testimony and analysis.
I'd also like to welcome our two speakers who are joining us online. Firstly, Mister Solomon Sacco, representative of the office of the United Nations, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which covers the occupied Palestinian territories, and Ambassador Alexander Stutzman, EU representative to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and UNRWA in Jerusalem. And, we also requested the presence of a representative of the SA East, particularly to respond, to use response to the Israeli authorities. But it's the day of remembrance of Shoah for Israel today, and so I will express our support for all the victims of the Holocaust in this day of remembrance. We are organizing this meeting together with the delegation of relations to Palestine.
I see that Lynn has now joined us, and so I'll give you the floor for three minutes for your initial intervention before then our guests take the floor.
Lynn Boylan
Arrival. I think we're having this meeting at such an important time, even though sometimes for all of us, it becomes frustrating when we feel like all we can do is talk and raise the issues. But I think it is a really important discussion to have with our delegation. We all know that the human rights situation in the West Bank is now at a complete breaking point, and we have violent illegal settlers who are growing ever bolder because of the lack of consequences for their illegal theft of Palestinian land. We have the Israeli government approving 30 new settlements.
We have the Knesset legalizing racialized capital punishment to be used exclusively against Palestinians. So I think the question for all of us today is, where is the action from the EU? Article two of the EU Israel Association Agreement clearly states that the trade is predicated on respect for human rights, and it is clear that the Israeli government does not care about the human rights of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, when are we going to see the comprehensive sanctions proposal against the settlers and the Israeli government? The commission claims that it sanctions violent settlers, but I think it's important that we now recognize that all illegal settlers are violent, and that the act of settlement is an act of violence itself.
Land theft and such violence is supported and enacted by the Israeli government. The EU's track record on the abolition of the death penalty is one that we should all be very proud of, but we now have a situation where we cannot move beyond condemnation to consequence. So what does it say about the European institutions when our leaders continue to trade, continue to have normal diplomatic relations with a country that applies the death penalty based on ethnicity? On International Day for the elimination of racial discrimination this year, the high representative, Kaya Callis, said racial equality is not an aspiration reserved for some, but a right guaranteed for all. However, unless the Israeli apartheid regime faces consequences from these institutions, that right is certainly not guaranteed for the Palestinian people.
So I welcome our discussion today, and I hope at some stage we move from discussion to actual consequences. Thank you.
Thank.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much indeed, madam chair. I'm now going to give the floor for seven minutes to Tarcin Alain. You have the floor, and thank you very much for joining us.
Tarcin Alayan
Thank you, mister, thank you, madam, for raising the issue of these settlers and the penalties that might be imposed or sanctions that might be imposed on individual settlers. But this approach tells us and tells the rest of the people that there are good settlers and bad settlers at a time that settlers or settlement expansion, settlement project in its entirety, is illegal under international law. And I have to remind you here that there is an adviser opinion by the ICGA, the International Court of Justice, that deemed Israel's presence in Palestine as illegal. And the states, third state parties must act in order to implement this advisory opinion because it was followed by a decision by the UN, GA, general assembly, which gave states one year to act in order to end occupation. And this year's year has elapsed, has expired, and we have not noticed anything or any change in the situation on the ground.
On the contrary, we have noticed that crimes have increased in number and have become even worse in quality. Thank you again for giving me the floor to speak to you today about the situation of human rights in the occupied West Bank. And, actually, whenever I am asked to give a brief about the situation of human rights and the occupied Palestinian territory, I ask myself a simple question. Why do people need me to tell them this information? Is it to take steps, practical steps, or just to prepare another report that would be added to the thousands of reports that have been prepared so far and just put on the shelf?
If it is for the first, then I would be very happy. But if it is for the second, I would be very frustrated exactly like my people who are very frustrated and ask us very embarrassing questions about the feasibility of the entire legal international legal and justice system. Is it working or not? And we have to tell them it is working, but we need people. We need people like you to support us in order for the people on the ground to see some results at least.
Whatever I tell you about the situation on the ground, it is only a small detail in the bigger picture of Israel's settler colonial project in Palestine, which strives to eliminate the existence of the Palestinian on their land and to exterminate them. And this has happened, actually. And you have all seen what has been happening over the past 3 years in Gaza and in the West Bank. And it's not that states stopped it against it. Some European states are engaged and complicit directly in these crimes by providing political support and material assistance to these violations.
And they have defended Israel strongly. And not only that, some states are now punishing human rights defenders and judges and courts and providing safe haven to criminals. And you know this better than me. It pains me, actually, to just keep repeating the same thing and the same stories every time I meet people. But, I will, again, tell you something small about what's happening on the ground in the hope that people might act and do something to end the case of lack of accountability and to hold perpetrators accountable and end all of this suffering of the Palestinian people.
When it comes to the Israeli violence, so-called violence or crimes, I can say that hardly can we witness a day or hardly can a day pass without us witnessing crimes being committed by settlers, whether it's killing or burning of houses or burning even of people alive, burning of their crops, kicking them out of their homes and land. And this happens not only with the acquiescence of the Israeli government. It is with the complicity of the Israeli government because some Palestinians are killed when soldiers are present. And at the same time, these soldiers provide protection to settlers rather than to Palestinians. And this has happened many times, at least since October 7.
Up till now, we have documented at least 20 cases where Palestinians have been killed by settlers or by soldiers in the presence of both. The Bedouin communities in the West Bank. Bedouin communities in area C, or the area that is classified as area C under the Oslo agreement, they have been one of the main targets for forcible displacement. We can speak about hundreds of communities that have been displaced in the West Bank, and thousands of Palestinian refugees have been displaced as a result of settler attacks. And these settlers not only target the people, they also target their property.
They steal their sheep. In one of the cases, I met a guy who has a farm in a village called Cobar, just near Ramallah. He told me that one of the settlers used to come to his farm on a daily basis, and he used to ask him to drink coffee. Every day he comes in and asks for coffee. He gives him coffee.
And then later on, it turned out that he was maybe preparing for something else. He came with a number of settlers at night, masked. They tied the guard and took all of the sheep from the farm, about half a million shekels. He went to an Israeli police station, and he filed a complaint. And he told them that this settler came to my farm and took the sheep from my farm.
They did nothing. They did nothing despite the fact that he recognized the settler. He knows him. He knows him by name. And he told them that I saw my sheep in his place.
They did nothing, which makes us say that settlers are one of the arms of the Israeli state or occupation in order to implement their colonial plans. It is not an individual incident. They are not acting just on their own. Somebody is just supporting them and telling them. That is why none of them have been held accountable.
To move to killings. Since October 7 up till now, about 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. Out of these, 230 were children below the age of 18 years. 276 of them had their bodies held by Israeli occupying forces. Only eight of the bodies were returned.
And this is a phenomenon, by the way. It's not new. This practice has been there since 1967. 100 hundred Palestinian dead bodies are held by Israel. Look how human is this.
Destruction of a property that is not justified by military necessity, including houses, of course, homes. Yeah. I'll finish in two minutes. Since October 7 up till now, about 5,000 Palestinian structures have been demolished. 66% of these were homes, and this has led to the forcible displacement of more than 5,000 Palestinians.
43 of them were children, and 28 were women. This number does not, of course, include the people or the Palestinian refugees who have been displaced from their camps, refugee camps in the North of the West Bank, Jenin, and all of those refugee camps. So we are speaking about more than 30,000 Palestinians who have been displaced in these camps. So the total number is more than 40,000 Palestinians displaced since the October 7 up till now. And as for the reasons that pretext that Israel provides with respect to the demolition of these houses, 45% of the demolitions take place under the pretext of unlicensed construction.
And as you know, even if you apply for you, you will not get it. You will not get a license. And 42% took place during military offensives on the camps of the North of the West Bank. And thank you very much. Time is up.
Thank you.
There.
Mounir Satouri
There will be a second opportunity to speak when you answer questions later. Now we have Mr. Sacco online. You have the floor for 7 minutes, sir.
Solomon Sacco
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for this invitation. At the heart of the human rights crisis in the occupied West Bank is Israel's policy of annexation and the establishment of Israeli settlements amounting to the transfer of Israel's population into occupied territory. In considering how member states respond, the starting point must be the International Court of Justice opinion in 2020, which confirmed that Israel's presence in Palestine is unlawful and called on Israel to immediately evacuate all settlements. The decision followed decades of eight CHR monitoring of Israeli violations across Palestine, including settlement-related violations in the occupied West Bank. We have documented decades of alienation of Palestinian land and resources for the benefit of settlers, discriminatory movement restrictions, and patterns of state and settler violence leading to death and destruction of Palestinian lives, with absolute impunity.
Civil society has been targeted to silence reputable and professional human rights organizations, as we have already heard this morning. In January, we issued a report on Israel's discriminatory administration of the West Bank, which documents decades of discrimination, and which has escalated since 2023. Israeli laws, policies, and practices, which have been in place for prolonged periods, amount to a deliberate policy of separation to oppress and dominate Palestinians. Acts committed with the intention to maintain such a policy amount to a violation of article three of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid. Despite the ICJ decision, Israel continues to consolidate its annexation of large parts of the occupied Palestinian territory, including through the authorization and expansion of settlements, outposts, and associated infrastructure, permitting encroachment of settlement activity into areas A and B.
The actions of Israel are leading to the forcible displacement of Palestinian communities from several parts of the occupied West Bank, in particular East Jerusalem and area C, including by rendering them unviable for Palestinian life, amounting to unlawful transfer. The situation was already catastrophic, but in February, Israeli authorities announced policies that further facilitate the transfer of land to Israeli settlers. Application of land registration, for example, in the occupied West Bank, opens new channels for settlers to claim land ownership, which will further enable settlement expansion and forcible transfer. Israeli media announced in September that the government had approved an unprecedented 34 new settlements in one cabinet meeting. Each settlement is built on unlawfully seized Palestinian land and benefits from the unlawful and discriminatory allocation of Palestinian resources, including water.
Settlements lead to unlawful and discriminatory movement restrictions on Palestinians, increased settler violence, and an overwhelmingly coercive environment, leading to further displacement amounting to unlawful transfer, which is a war crime. The subordination of Palestinians is enforced through violence. Israeli security forces routinely kill Palestinians across the West Bank, in many cases amounting to unlawful killings, including extrajudicial executions. Israeli security forces and settlers have killed at least 1,081 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 07/2023, nearly one in five of whom were children. In just one example, on 15 March in Tamund Town, Tubas, undercover Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian family in their car, a father, a mother, and their five and six-year-old sons, and assaulted the two surviving sons aged 10 and 11.
Meanwhile, settlers attack Palestinians every day to force them off their land and out of their homes. The violence is escalating. At least 150 serious settler attacks were recorded during the month of March, averaging more than six attacks a day. Settlers killed at least 10 Palestinians this year compared to at least seven in all of 2025. The line between settlers and Israeli forces is fading, if it ever existed, with several recent killings of Palestinians linked to settlers identified as reservist soldiers.
In just one recent example, in August, settlers attacked a village in Ramallah and shot and killed a 57-year-old man. Israeli security forces joined the attack and shot and killed a 24-year-old man. Settlers then erected an outpost in the village. No settlers have been arrested. While there are isolated examples of Palestinians attacking and killing Israelis, most cases we have recorded of lethal violence have been state and settler violence.
Since 07/2023, sixty-two Israelis have been killed in incidents involving violence perpetrated by Palestinians. Incidents involving violence against Israelis are responded to rapidly, with alleged perpetrators either killed or arrested. Those arrested are subjected to military trials marked by a lack of due process and a 97 percent conviction rate. In contrast, violence by Israeli forces or settlers remains unchecked and unremedied. For all killings perpetrated by Israeli security forces of Palestinians since 2017, there was one conviction in 2020, with a sentence of three months of military service and three months of suspended prison time.
We continue to see displacement of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, with mass displacement because of Israel's destruction of refugee camps in the north Northern West Bank, exacerbating displacement caused by settlement expansion and settler violence, raising concerns of ethnic cleansing, particularly in the Jordan Valley. In the first three months of 2026, settler violence and access restrictions displaced 1,697 Palestinians, already surpassing the 1,658 displaced under the same circumstances in all of 2025. Concerted efforts to force Palestinians from their homes continue in East Jerusalem, and more than 200 Palestinian households in East Jerusalem, comprising approximately 900 people, face forced displacement. On 30 March, Israel's parliament passed the death penalty law, which in the West Bank applies exclusively to Palestinians. The reintroduction of the death penalty violates the right to life under international law, and the discriminatory application of the death penalty further entrenches Israel's violation of the prohibition of racial segregation and apartheid.
The ICGA held that all states are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation. This obligation should guide any response to the human rights crisis in the West Bank. Annexation is not a future threat, but a present reality, and the international community, including the European Union, must move beyond strong statements to lawful and human rights compliance actions. Thank you very much. Thank.
Mounir Satouri
thank you very much. We now give the floor to Alexander Stutzman, who is the EU representative to Gaza, the West Bank, and ANRA. President, chairman.
Alexandre Stutzmann
And I very much welcome the initiative of holding this discussion on the situation in the West Bank at the time when the main challenges seem to keep the attention elsewhere in the wider Gulf area, and seem also to forget that at the very core of what we are facing in this wider Gulf area is the Palestinian issue. And currently, as was pointed out by the two co-panelists this morning, the numerous challenges in the West Bank. Let me maybe start with the bigger picture of the situation in the West Bank, which I think explains much more what the human rights situation and the human rights challenges are. As was described by my two colleagues here this morning, we are facing a rapidly deteriorating environment, both politically and economically in the West Bank since 10/07/2023, and even more over the last year or year and a half. This situation is, of course, a mix of a deep financial crisis, caused by a number of externally imposed aspects in violations of the Paris protocol, which is at the core of what is meant to be the responsibility also of the occupying power.
Israel is withholding the clearance revenues of the Palestinian authorities, which amounts up to $4,000,000,000, which would be 60 to 70% of the Palestinian authorities revenue. You add to this the 2,000, the 200,000 people who lost their jobs after October 7 because of the lost working permits. That has, of course, drastically increased the unemployment and the financial needs in the West Bank. Adding to this, the closures that have multiplied over the last two years and a half, economic barriers of all kinds, which impede any kind of actors to actually have a normal decent life. Adding to this are the political elements that have been described in more detail this morning.
Of course, settlers' violence, which has been sparking. Movements restrictions, escalating military operations, whether on refugee camps or in other targeted operations. The legalizations increased legalizations of outposts, we've talked about the 34 new settlements that had just been approved, but also, I mean, other nature, other type of administrative measures advancing land registration. So all this together creates a far more deteriorated climate and situation, where human rights are under severe pressure. I don't want to repeat what has been said by both UN organization like when OHTHR or Al Haq, Palestinian civil society organization, civil NGO on the ground, but I can confirm that from the point of view of diplomats on behalf of all my colleagues here of the European Union member states, 22 of us are present on the ground.
And we do go around a lot on the West Bank, notwithstanding the circumstances and the security issues and limitations, and we all are on the same page. What we observe, what we see on the ground, is what you heard this morning. It is, of course, the whole issue of settlements, evictions, and the right to the land. Those movement restrictions that increasingly fragment the West Bank into isolated enclaves, especially in area C, as was pointed out, but also in East Jerusalem. Many face intimidations of violent settlers, but also arrests by Israeli forces or denial of access to Palestinian communities designated as closed military zones, which, of course, do not apply to settlers.
So you also see this kind of discriminatory regime that happens in that context. We mentioned the new settlements. What I would like to point out is that the current Israeli government has in its time approved more settlements than any government before. We are at a number of 102 new settlements in total under this government. The EU has reacted to those various announcements, recalling the EU position on settlements as being illegal and an impediment to a peace solution on the basis of a two-state proposal.
The right to land in the West Bank is not only challenged through the expansion of settlements, but also as is the case in the governorate of Tubas in the North of the West Bank, where the IDF is building a new military road, effectively cutting off landowners and farmers from their agricultural land. This is something that happens in various areas of the West Bank. We hear it periodically every year when it's the olive harvest season, of farmers not being able to reach their crops or going to their land out of any sort of security reasons and beyond. But here, it seems to be a pattern that is systematized and where a new separation barrier along the Jordan Valley is currently being built. In Jerusalem, those rights to home and property are also challenged.
It was raised again this morning in the panel. It's particularly significant in the neighborhood of Al Bustan in Silwan, as well as in Bataan Al Hawa, where since October 7, 15 families were forcibly evicted from their houses. That's about 80 individuals, and we have 15 other families that are facing a similar threat of treatment. These houses are then taken over by settlers who move into those houses under, as was raised before, the pretext of unlicensed building or abusive building, which, of course, is more complex than that. The developments and since the war between Iran and The US and Israel has, of course, seen those trends getting, taking, I mean, scaling up.
The violence of settlers has redoubled. Since February 28, seventeen Palestinians have been killed across the West Bank by settlers or by Israeli forces. This is what is characteristic of that, of course, is, as was pointed out, the impunity and the more systematic impunity of perpetrators who are very rarely arrested. There seems to be a broader pattern of increasing violence with limited accountability, and therefore, also a growing perception of impunity. The Israeli human rights organization, YESH Din, has shown that approximately 94% of investigations into settler related offenses are closed without indictment, and only around 3% result in conviction.
You add to this also the treatment in prisons, which was raised. I mean, there seems to be that there are currently 10,000 Palestinians remaining in prison, one third of them under pure administrative detention, so without charges. 89 have died in Israeli custody since 10/07/2023, and Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights estimate that this might even be higher as a number. The Red Cross doesn't have access to prisons, so it is, of course, extremely difficult also to check the reports on allegations of torture, ill-treatment, and sexual violence that are claimed to happen against the detainees. Civil society, we said it, is operating under an increasingly restrictive environment and pressure.
That is both because of the occupying forces, but as we say, it also is compounded by restrictive measures by the Palestinian authorities, which affect the freedom of expression, of assembly, and of press. In addition, the US sanctions targeting organizations cooperating with the International Criminal Court have further reduced the space for human rights work significantly. The PA on its side is also responsible for human rights violations and not on least the shrinking space of civil society because of the weakening of democratic features in its institutions over the years. With the current focus on elections and the new constitution, there is an opportunity indeed for the PA to open up the shrinking space of civil society and to, I mean, to give a broader political debate and climate for this to happen. The EU, I mean, in our daily relation with the PA and interactions, we are supporting this direction in order to push for a facilitated democratic development based on human rights and freedoms.
What we do on the ground and, I mean, I said we are quite present on the ground as EU diplomats, whether member states or the EU. We consistently raise this concern of human rights violations about the accountability for settler violence, the effective enforcement of the rule of law, and we repeatedly call on all parties to respect international humanitarian law and international human rights. We engage both with Israeli and Palestinian authorities on human rights obligations, and my colleague in Tel Aviv does this on a daily systematic basis as well as do the member states in Tel Aviv. We also coordinate closely with international partners, the United Nations, and not least the OHCHR. We do that also in our structural engagement with the Palestinian authorities.
Human rights are in our core part of the reform agenda that we have with the PA, and that includes, I would say, heavy human rights issues as well as others, for instance, LGBT issues or many others, which seem to be secondary but which are not, and which are included in that dialogue. We address this in the EUPA reform agenda, and we also do this through the presence on the ground, by visits to vulnerable communities. Lately, we've been there on the weekly basis, whether this is in Sebastia, in Massa Ferriata, where the no other land documentary is stemming from, or in East Jerusalem in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. We do provide financial support as EU to human rights in civil society through several thematic budget lines, as you well know as parliamentarians, whether this is through the human rights programs, civil society programs, the European peace initiative, the foreign policy instrument, where there is, for instance, now a project on monitoring and helping access to justice for victims of settlers violence, for instance. But we do it also through the East Jerusalem program.
All in all, it's roughly 40,000,000 per year, all programs combined that are devoted to the protection of fundamental freedoms, legal assistance to victims, monitoring and documentation of human rights violation, as well as the protection of vulnerable groups, which also includes women, children, and persons with disabilities. We're also active in strengthening the justice sector.
Mounir Satouri
me. I'm going to ask you to wrap up, if you could. We will have a Q and A session later if you haven't had the opportunity to say everything you needed to say.
Alexandre Stutzmann
Monitoring the documentation of human rights violations. And for that, we have the EU Pol COPS mission, which is training Palestinian police and, as well, setting up together with the PA the entirety of the criminal justice chain. This will also be instrumental in the future for Gaza. The challenges, though, remain high. It's increasingly difficult to operate in the political environment that we are facing.
And, therefore, it is even more important to continue being present, to be persistent, but also to keep the flag high on long-term stability, governance, as well as adjust and lasting peace grounded on international law, which tends to disappear these days. Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
Merci. Thank you very much. I'll now give the floor to the members of the parliament. Isabelle, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Let me just start by saying that it's my conviction that we have to support the two-state solution.
Isabel Wiseler-Lima
And I'd also like to say that we have to see Israel as an ally country whose people are democratic. But the process is getting more complex because of settlements. And as we've just heard, the infrastructure, and we have to state clearly that it's not acceptable. Everything that runs against a two-state solution is something that we should condemn, and that we should call on Israel to act differently. Let me thank the diplomats on the ground for their work.
We've heard that this is not an easy situation to work in, and I think they're doing excellent work. Before handing over the floor to other colleagues, let me just highlight something you said at the beginning, Chair, when you talked about the death penalty law. I can really understand the despair of Israelis when they are faced with terrorists who deliberately kill civilians. But the death penalty runs against our values, and it's not something that we can see as a solution. It's a brave thing that the people on the ground are doing, trying to do their best to work towards a two-state solution where two countries can live side by side in peace.
Chloé Ridel
Thank you, Isabel. You have the floor for the socialist group. Thank you very much, and thank you to our speakers. This situation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is dramatic. Violence is on the rise.
It's part of settlement, apartheid, segregation, and the Palestinian population is being undermined. Grounds are being seized, homes destroyed, families under the threat of displacement. 37,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank in 2025 and thousands in the beginning of 2026 alone. This is systematic violence. It's systemic violence.
It's the settlers with the support of the Israeli army. What the settlers are doing in the West Bank is terrorism. Terrorism against this Palestinian settlement in a number of villages that we've heard about. Violence aimed at Palestinians, and the most recent part of that escalation, this installation of apartheid. This is state violence being made legal and which is discriminatory aimed at the people who are under occupation and under oppression.
So I understand you, sir, when you say that you're tired of repeating over and over again the same thing and describing to politicians what's going on in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. But that is why you can count on the European Parliament's members to make the same appeals to the EU to suspend the association agreement between the EU and Israel, to demand that this expansionist and annexation policy be stopped, that settlement be stopped, that EU sanctions against Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers are applied, that human rights defenders be protected in Palestine. Chair, in your introduction, you mentioned the fact that one of our speakers had been refused a visa this morning, and I think that's an illustration of the non-protection of human rights defenders from Palestine. And, again, we have to protect international law, international justice. Without justice, without the truth being exposed on the crimes in Palestine, there cannot be peace.
Mounir Satouri
So the EU has to make sure that the International Criminal Court is free to do its work. Thank you. Now I thought that Martin Meadow was going to take the floor of the socialist. I apologize, madam vice-chair. You can have time to speak in the next round.
My apologies for having missed your presence. I'll own that mistake. It's on me. And now Andre Sela for the PFE. You have the floor.
Andre Sela
Thank you. Sorry. Apologies for being late. I was in a different committee meeting. The focus here, so I missed a bit of the presentation, but I understood that the focus here today is on the settlements.
And while they may or may not be an obstacle to peace, wouldn't you agree that Palestinian terrorism and incitement to hate and violence is one of it, one off, if not a major obstacle to peace? And there may never be an excuse for the use of terrorism. Out of around 20 terror groups on the EU terrorists list, five are Palestinian. That's 25%. That shows that there clearly is a problem with terrorism in Palestinian society and politics.
Furthermore, year on year, Palestinian opinion polls have noted that around 50% of Palestinian society supports armed resistance against Israel. Again, would you not agree that Palestinian terrorism is what kills peace, rather than the settlements alone? Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
Hello. Now is not with us, but Mr. McNamara is here. You have the floor. Before you get the floor, Mister McMurray, it's Miss Kraszewska who'll be speaking for the ECR.
Małgorzata Gosiewska
Thank you very much.
chair. I think that we are all very much moved by what we've heard today, and we very much understand what you said, sir, about this fatigue of coming to speak about the same thing again because this is not something that's been going on for a few months or years. It's been going on for many years, and it's been going on with impunity for many years. We cannot be silent when people are pushed force out of their hands, when their farms are burned, when their assets and their livelihood are taken from them. We have to say very clearly that, yes, Israel has the right to defend its people against terrorism and Hamas' barbaric attacks.
Terrorism is evil and has to be condemned. However, the right to defense doesn't mean the right to attack a civilian population or children, even in Palestine. It doesn't give Israel the right to seize land and homes, which creates a spiral of violence. As MEPs, regardless of our political leaning, we should act politically and legally to put an end to this cruelty so that humanitarian aid can get to Gaza. That's another topic.
So that medical, food, and the water can get through. I've helped organize psychological help for children in Gaza, and we had children brought to Poland. But I went to Gaza, and I saw settlements and how the fight against terrorism as a slogan was used by Israelis to press the civilian population and stop them living a normal life. We can't agree to that, and we should act across political differences. Yes.
Israel can defend itself against terrorism, but we have to make it clear that there are civilian victims of this conflict that's been lasting so many years, and that people have a right to a livelihood, a right to their homes, a right to their lands. Thank you.
Thank.
Michael McNamara
Thank you very much, President. So I have to confess to a degree of impotence with regard to this issue, and I think this parliament is clearly impotent to a certain extent because the decision will be made on the association agreement by the council and the council alone. But I do think it's bringing the entirety of the union into dispute at this stage because we have citizens who are constantly writing to me at least, and I think it may be the same for other members of the parliament saying, but what are you doing about this association agreement? I mean, we pretend that our trades in the European Union is predicated upon respect for human rights, and we see these very obvious human rights abuses taking place before our eyes, and nothing happening. So I mean, we can pass resolution after resolution and do this and the other, but is it procedurally possible to request the current council presidency, Cyprus, to come in and explain what it is doing?
Or if not, the countries that are blocking action in this. And we know who they are, we know why, to an extent. I mean, complicity in a genocide eighty years ago is not a reason to divert your eyes from a genocide today. But can we bring in the count, the Cyprus presidency, and ask them to explain what exactly is happening? And if we can't, can we invite the German ambassador to outline why they feel it is necessary to block this or how they feel it's furthering their human rights, the human rights, respect for human rights in the world, or how they feel this solves their conscience because of what took place in the past or how it somehow contributes to the momentum, which is completely understandable and which most right minded people would have sympathy.
But if neither doesn't, if it actually results in eyes being diverted from atrocities, then it's all for nothing. Thank you.
Catarina Vieira
The steps for action are, in my view, very clear. We need to stop all trade of goods and services from the illegally occupied settlements, because that is fueling economically something that is illegal. We need to suspend the association agreements because it is not compliant with article two on human rights. It's long been breached, and we need sanctions for settlers and for those extremists who are enabling those settlers. So we have the pathway clear.
We lack, everyone says, the political will. We need to want it. But I actually believe we want it. I actually believe we can get majorities for these things. I don't think these are as controversial as we like to paint them, honestly.
I think we can find ways to make this happen. I think there can be political will. And you can have this political will and be an ally of Israel if that's what you want to do, because what settlers are doing is not what Israel is doing. You can separate the two things. And I've had long discussions with colleagues from across the political spectrum, and I've heard them say yes.
I want to be an ally of Israel, but I can't stand by what happened in Gaza, or I can't stand by the death penalty being applied only to Palestinians, or I can't stand for this or that. You can separate things. You should be able to separate things. And you can be grateful and praise the democracy of Israel, but you can't look away from the fact that some people have political rights and others don't, that there are people in this Jerusalem that cannot vote, not for the Palestinian authority, not for the Israeli elections, that there's a rule of law, but it's only enforced or applied correctly to some people where others are in Kafka-like processes for years and decades. So what democracy and rule of law is that?
If you lack political will, please do as our colleague said, go see it for yourself. I went to see it for myself. I walked through Sylvain houses that face demolition in December that are no longer standing there anymore. If you lack political will, speak one on one with people who have been through these Kafka-like processes to protect their farms, to protect their houses, to protect their families, to protect the rights they've had for years and years. Because we cannot lack political will to do the very basic, to defend things that we would defend if anyone else was suffering from them. We need to at least admit that the situation keeps escalating, that this is not normal, that this is not standing as it is.
And then there's unchecked accountability. There are lives being lost. There are approvals for new settlements, and there are Palestinians who are being killed. So, again, back to the beginning, let's ban imports of goods and services from settlements. Let's suspend the association agreement.
Let's sanction the settlers. And if you don't have the political will to do that, please come and explain why not. It's possible to take action. Let's just stop finding the excuses. If you have excuses, come and let us know what they are.
The left.
Isabel Serra Sánchez
For the left, Missus Sarah, thank you very much, Chair. First of all, I'd like to thank the representative Al Hag for being here despite the persecution and the criminalization of his organization, not only on the part of the state of Israel, but also those who are complicit here in the West, in the European Parliament. And I'm sorry that your director couldn't be here today to speak to us. You talked of your frustration today, and I understand that. We've all seen that.
We see it on a daily basis. This is a televised genocide. It's been documented thoroughly, and the European institutions and the US are supporting this. So we have to condemn genocide and those who collaborate with genocide, but also those false words as well, following facing the situation that we are experiencing here. And we're also aware of the crimes that Israel has committed against the Palestinian people over the recent decades, and this narrative about defending itself is completely false.
We only have to look at what's happening in the West Bank, not only in Gaza, but in the West Bank as well for a long time now, but particularly over the last three years to see that this is a Zionist expansion, colonization project that wants to end by exterminating the Palestinian people. In recent years, Israel has made more progress than ever in occupying Palestinian territories through violence, murder, the forcible displacement of Palestinian people, and now with the death penalty against Palestinian people. But its objective is to occupy and settle in the Palestinian territories. There have been 34 new settlements approved today only. This is done by settlers, by the military through prisons, which are systematically violating the rights of Palestinian prisoners, and those settlers are sick with hatred.
They are the terrorists here. So how can this be happening? I think it's important to condemn the companies that are stealing, so that's why we call for a boycott. The EU is also complicit because it's not imposing sanctions. We need to do away with this association agreement with the state of Israel, but also condemn what Israel is doing, and support the voices of the Palestinian people like Rima Hassan who is being persecuted by the French state and government for being a Palestinian voice and for supporting the Palestinian people.
Therefore, I just wanted to say thank you for being with us today and for insisting that we continue to support the resistance of the Palestinian people, and thank you for supporting, for showing solidarity with the international movement. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's important to respect the time that we each have so that everyone has the opportunity to speak. I will give the floor to Marta Temidi in order to conclude the round for coordinators, and then everyone will have the opportunity to speak for 1 minute during the second round.
Marta Temido
Marta, you can conclude this first round of questions. Thank you very much. I will speak in Portuguese. First of all, I would like to thank the ambassador, Alexandra Zutzman, for very clearly stating what's happening in the region and talking about how public opinion is being manipulated. I also wanted to talk about genocide.
This is the intention to destroy a people, and that is happening in Gaza and in the West Bank as well. Today, The Guardian has talked about the forces in Israel that have shot tear gas aimed at children who were learning out in the open. And so we need to take action against these settlers. Every day, we see new cases, new crimes, new headlines, and we understand the facts and figures behind this. Thousands of Palestinians have died in the West Bank since 2023.
32,000 people have been displaced and forced out of their homes. 850 homes have been destroyed in the three camps, which were inhabited by Palestinian people. The Palestinian authorities are unable to help the Palestinian people and satisfy basic needs. And so we have to condemn the presence of Israeli occupiers and settlers in Palestine. We need to go further.
This is enough now. We cannot continue along this path. We cannot continue to hear in the European Parliament that, Palestinian people are terrorists. There are two different people involved here. And when 80% of the Israeli people are supporting the war on Iran, it's clear that this is a sick society.
And when we take all of this into account, we're able to understand things better. We need to suspend the association agreement with Israel. There is no other alternative. If we don't speak out, then nothing will change. And I think we really need to do that.
Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you, Marta. I'll go, I'll give the floor to Cecilia Strada and then Mister Massen.
Cecilia Strada
Thank you very much, and thank you very much to the representative of Al Hague especially. I am part of this group of MEPs who have been asking since the beginning of our mandate the suspension of the agreement to stop trade to Israel, stop to export weapons to Israel because member states are still providing Israel with weapons. And last October, I was in the West Bank with an official mission of the parliament, and I was able to see firsthand the violence of the settlers in Mihmaq, near Ramallah, and it's really unbelievable. But what we have been trying to tell the European institutions from the very beginning is that this is not only about the survival and the dignity of the Palestinian population. This is about all of us, because this is about impunity.
It's not about the victims of the past 2 years. It's about the victims of the next 20 years. So and it's really shortsighted and stupid politics, not only, I think, unethical and immoral complicity in genocide and apartheid. So, basically, my question is what more can we do? How can we support your precious work apart from giving you visibility?
We know it's very important to give you visibility inside this house, but how can we help? And thank you so much for everything you're doing.
Anna Norman?
Hannah Neumann
Thank you, chair. And first of all, I would like to thank Al Haqq and other organizations for their work on the ground, but also Aleksandro Stutzmann and his colleagues from the member states in Ramallah for all their work or in Jerusalem for all the work that they are doing. We clearly see so many terrible things happening, especially in the West Bank, but also in the region, while the world focuses on the war between the US and Iran. And one of these terrible things, clearly, is the Israeli government's actions in the West Bank. So I would like to build on the questions of my colleague, Katerina, but maybe be a bit more direct and actually address EAS before all, because they are in the room as well.
Hungary has been the only country that blocked the sanctions against the settler ministers and the violent settler movements in the Council. We now have a new Hungarian government coming in, most likely. So I'm wondering, will this be put back on the table? And do you expect this to finally pass without Hungary blocking it anymore? The second question is, I mean, we have had apartheid legislation in the West Bank for a long time.
Now we also have apartheid legislation inside Israel with this new law that clearly says that terrorists basically have to be executed, which only targets Palestinians. So I'm wondering what are the consequences with regards to the association agreement because we had a legal opinion of the council saying that the Israel policies are in violation of the human rights clause. Now we have even more things in violation of the human rights clause. And I'm wondering, aren't we forced by now to suspend the association agreement? And last question, I'm just very surprised how many countries we have advocating for a two-state solution and how silent they are when it comes to really pointing out policies that actively undermine the existence or the potential existence of a second state by not being outspoken enough on the policies in the West Bank.
Thank you, chair.
Rima Hassan
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to all of those who have spoken so far and provided information. I am hearing something very tragic here in this session. It's been two years since we started to talk about what was happening in the Palestinian Territories, and everyone who was in the room was fully aware of what was happening and how it was affecting the Palestinian people. But now we're dealing with complicity and political responsibility. We've spent months discussing the issue of genocide, trying to convince some of our colleagues about how this is a violation of human rights, how crimes are being committed, and we're also seeing a lack of political responsibility here.
That's the reason why what is happening in Palestine is happening both in Gaza and in the West Bank. And as many others have said, I talked about the genocide from the very beginning. If we don't identify those perpetrators, then the West Bank will be the next victim, and that is exactly what's happened. It's not about condemning the violent acts of the settlers. It's about condemning under no uncertain terms a global systemic system of settling and ethnic cleansing that's affecting the Palestinian people.
This is happening in different ways, in different areas where Palestinian people live and try to survive. And so now the issue is not about a two-state solution or a single-state solution. It's about asking European citizens how we can respect human rights. All of us have the responsibility to suspend the association agreement between the EU and Israel. We have to defend international human rights, and there has to be a total embargo on Israel.
That is the only condition that will make us politically credible.
Thank.
Mounir Satouri
you. I think we have gone into quite a bit of detail, and I'd like to actually respond because I think we agreed to a certain extent. When it comes to the means, it's fine to condemn the responsibility of the different colleagues, but I think we have to do everything in our power to establish a majority. You've expressed yourself, so I'd like to respond. So here in this institution, we have to establish a majority in order to take action.
And once the parliament reaches a majority, then the council and the commission have a role to play as well. But I think we will share the fact that we have to support the Palestinian people and do everything in our power to help them in this situation. I'd like to give the floor to our speakers, and we will start with Mister Alayan. You have five minutes. And I will ask you to respond to those questions, and you also have the opportunity to convey any messages you have.
Tarcin Alayan
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scher. I just wanted to thank all of those in the whole that support the rights of the Palestinian people, mainly the right to self determination. We are not speaking about one or two-state solution. The right of self-determination, which is 100% legal.
And through the support of the rights of the Palestinians, you are supporting international law. You are not supporting us as such. It's not about that. It's not about us only. And I would like to point out that the term terrorism is used and abused in a very manipulative way.
I just wanted to tell you my story for those who believe that we are terrorists and that we spread hatred. I am a refugee. My family was kicked out of their home in 1948, and now I cannot go back to my land. In 2000, I used some of my end-of-service. I was working for someone of the organizations, and I stopped working.
I used the end of service money to buy a piece of land in Birzeit near Ramallah. This is in 2000. And now I cannot go to this piece of land because there is a settler there who is threatening anybody to be killed if he dares to go there. And I would like to invite all of those who believe that Palestinians are exercising terror to come and live with us. Please, you're welcome.
We love all people. Come and live in my house. Okay? I will host you. Come for years, and I want you to see with your eyes what is happening there.
And I would like to see how you will react to you being tortured, to your house being demolished, to your sons being killed, to your land being confiscated, to be you humiliated at checkpoints, to you getting raped, and to be exposed to all of these brutal practices. The term terrorism is not a legal term. It is a political term. I want anybody of you who uses it just to come and tell me what they mean by it. And if there is a legal terrorist, if there is a legal definition of it, that is why it is being manipulatively used.
This is one. True. The terrorists of yesterday, people you classify, you yourself classified as terrorists, and then became, out of the blue, they just became heroes in your eyes. Isn't that hypocrisy or more than hypocrisy? Can you tell me why a human rights organization is classified as a terrorist organization?
We are classified as a terrorist organization. If you are afraid of me, those who believe I am a terrorist, then they should not talk to me. If you just want to take these ready, manipulated terms and just apply it to whoever you want and say Israel is defending itself. Come with me. My friends from Ireland came to visit me, and we went to the beach in Jericho at the Dead Sea.
Both of them were allowed to go in, and I was not allowed to go in. And they started asking questions. What's wrong? They did not know exactly what the situation was. That was only one instance.
I told them, I am not allowed, because you can go. I will wait for you outside. Okay? Go have fun on the beach, and I will wait because I am Palestinian. And the reaction was very violent.
And he said to them, you are Nazis. From the first minute, he did not live there for years. And now you're telling me terrorism. It is not terrorism. Palestinians are defending their rights.
It is not vice versa. We are calling for the application of international law. Is it as is or do you want something simpler than this? Apply international law. We are asking you to uphold your legal obligations under international law.
And part of that is the use of the association agreement, and part of that is to impose sanctions on Israel. You don't want. As simple as this, because there is no political will. Don't tell me any other explanation. The reason why you are not acting is that you do not want to.
What more do you need to see? You have seen Palestinians being slaughtered livestreamed. I mean, the genocide was live streamed. You saw it with your eyes. Nobody should have told.
It's not me. I'm lying to you all. You saw it with your eyes. And if you do not believe, come and see. Come there.
Come and see. And what is happening in the West Bank is not less dangerous than what has been happening in Gaza. We call it slow-motion genocide. It is a slow-motion genocide and has been going on for a hundred years. It's not new for those who do not know.
And I would like to stress the fact that we will never give up our rights, and we will not disappear as Palestinians, and we will continue with our struggle for, and as for Hatid, maybe you do not follow up even the Israeli media, which tells you that Israeli children start to be taught hatred since the age of three. And you are asking now the Palestinian authority to amend its school books, which tells the Palestinians about their rights. It does not teach them hatred. Hatred is there. And you are spreading hatred when you say that this is terrorism and the Palestinians are exercising terror.
Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
So there's no more opportunity for the MEPs to contribute with questions. So I think we'll continue with the responses from our guests. And if there's time, then I'll give you the floor for more questions. Mister Sacco, you're online. You have five minutes to respond to the questions.
Solomon Sacco
Thank you. Very hard to follow that very strong presentation, but I have a few points to make. Listening to you, I agree. Everyone knows the issues. Everyone has seen the killings.
Everyone has seen the mass displacement. Everyone has seen the ethnic cleansing. We know what is going on. I was given 7 minutes. I could have talked for an hour setting out the violations that are being committed in the West Bank.
The situation is horrendous. It is very difficult, perhaps, to express that in calm, loyal tones. But I want you to think of the terror and the fear that Palestinians displaced from their homes, subjected to torture, ill-treatment, sexual violence in prisons, of mothers who have seen their children, young children, shot simply for protesting against the occupation. The terror inside the West Bank must not be underestimated. And to that, I want to point out that under international law, allegations of terrorism do not mitigate or reduce human rights obligations or obligations under international humanitarian law.
These obligations must be strictly complied with in all situations. They are not being complied with in the occupied Palestinian Territory, including the West Bank. We are seeing mass displacement, settlements, and we are seeing efforts being made to make it impossible and expressly impossible for Palestinian states to exist. These are realities. These are not assumptions.
These are not conclusions. This is what we are seeing. So I think this is really important to recognize the absolute horror of what we are seeing. Secondly, I want to point out that the International Court of Justice noted that Israel does have the right to self-defense. It does have the right to defend its citizens.
But particularly in the West Bank, the way to do that is to evacuate all settlements and remove all Israeli settlers from the West Bank, and that Israel cannot claim the rights to self defense in the context where it is the main violator of the rights in the West Bank. So I want to make it clear that according to the top UN legal body, the occupation is effectively unlawful, as Israel's presence in the West Bank is unlawful. I also wanted to flag something. Because of the seven-minute limit, we did not go into all issues, but we have been following. We have been documenting.
We have been monitoring. We have interviews with former prisoners from Israeli prisoners who have recounted horrendous torture, ill treatments, including sexual violence, including rape. This is something that is not incidental, which appears systematic, and we are seeing a continuation of extra-judicial executions. And I want to make that point clear. We are horrified by the death penalty law, but the Israeli security forces and settlers have been killing Palestinians with absolute impunity for decades.
This has escalated since 2022, and now is something that should bring us all a certain level of shock. So I just wanted to flag these few issues, and reiterate that the statements are not enough. We need action. We need pressure placed on the duty bearer, which is primarily Israel, to end these practices and ensure that Palestinians, both individuals and the polity of Palestine, enjoy their rights as guaranteed by international law. Thank you.
Thank.
Mounir Satouri
you to you. And to conclude this cycle, I give the floor once again to you, ambassador, for between five minutes, I'm told. Five minutes.
Alexandre Stutzmann
Just start by thanking very warmly, I mean, the very strong support that members are showing to the work that we're doing on the ground. It is indeed very much appreciated and very much needed. I'd like to come back to the idea of the two state solution, which is indeed of the European Union and many other international partners. Whatever's formed that two state solution will take, and I think as being ourselves in a political model, which is the European Union, which has its own dose of creativity, there might be some creativity needed in the in The Middle East as well for a future sustainable solution. However, if we look at it pragmatically and as was stated, I think we have to, we are talking to countries with which the EU is particularly engaged, has been engaging, not just over the last 30 years of the Oslo process, but also before for the many reasons we know.
And indeed, we are talking to countries that are friends. I mean, the European Union is a friend of Palestine. The European Union is a friend of Israel. What we want in a two-state solution is to aim at mutual acceptance, mutual coexistence. Both sides are there to stay.
This is not going to change. So it's a mix of pragmatism and, as well, I mean, of European interest in order to find a solution which allows that to happen. And for that, as was said, sometimes, I mean, red lines are crossed. And currently, a lot of red lines are being crossed. And it is important to state those red lines for Europe, for the sake of European credibility, but also, I mean, in front of our partners for the sake of credibility in each other's eyes.
It's important to say it firmly, but it's also important to explain. What we have seen over the last 3 years is excessive polarization. It's increased separation between the people. It's when we say we all know in this room what we're talking about, yes, this is true. We all know those issues.
But what I see on the ground is less and less that people on either side know exactly what the issues are, what the other side is facing. And this, I mean, it might be completely asymmetric these days. But nevertheless, I think what is important if we want to build a sustainable solution is to make sure that each side understands and can put themselves in the shoes of the others as well. And for that, we need to explain. For that, we need to keep the dialogue on, especially with those who are friends.
And for that, we also have a number of ways to go. We were talking about the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is the government structure, this governance structure that we decided to support. The PA has made a very strong commitment to peaceful resistance. It completely put aside whatever kind of violence, resistance, armed resistance, terrorism, which often comes back again and again.
This has been clearly put aside. President Abbas has been extremely clear on the way he has condemned what Hamas did on October 7, and he kept doing that on a regular basis. So there is, I think, an importance of going and putting and investing in those that we want support. I mentioned the clearance revenue at the beginning. If the PA had the clearance revenue, it could actually face the challenges, which are the challenges of a governing body.
It cannot currently. So this is where we have to push. This is something that can be changed, that can be done. We were mentioning sanctions. The high representative had been putting the issue of sanctions against extreme settlers, and even including ministers, regularly on the table.
We'll see if the new political situation will allow this to go through, because, as you know, we need unanimity for that in the council. When it comes to the death penalty, indeed, all that was said is true, and what Anna Norman mentioned is indeed a new fact. What is important to note as well is that Israel is a democracy. It has democratic structures, and it has a supreme court that actually is currently looking into the challenges that have been raised to the law that had been adopted, not least for compatibility with the domestic constitutional order of Israel itself. So these are processes that are going on, which, of course, do not prevent us from stating where we stand and reminding the obligations of the, I mean, of the occupying power to comply with international law, to comply with the responsibilities of an occupying power.
But, I mean, on the positive note, I think what is important as well beyond the current structures, it's also to see that once, although on the one hand, more and more people don't look on the other side and don't look at what the other is facing. We do have movements of younger people who actually want to engage, want to build together a common future. There's they exist both in Palestine and in Israel. They are not the majority yet, and maybe this is where, as international partners, as Europeans, we should actually encourage this to happen, foster them, help them whether financially, but more importantly, also giving the political support and giving them the visibility that they deserve, because that might be the way to build a people to people relationship that is a lasting and a sustainable one, which is the precondition for a two state solution to succeed. Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much indeed. Well, that concludes the presentations. We are running 15 minutes late. Do you really want to take the floor? Okay.
Thank you very much indeed. I think everyone has heard and understood the very strong statements in response to the questions. It's not the last time our committee will deal with this issue. Not all groups have the same position regarding it, but we have to ensure that the Palestinian issue, the conditions you live in, remain on the agenda of this institution and that the parliament continues to do what it's done for a very long time, to speak out loudly on the respect of law and to support oppressed peoples, supporting human rights and fundamental rights across the board, particularly in Palestine. And our role is also to push the other institutions.
We'll do that as often as necessary, even if we know that it's not easy for you. Sometimes, we get the impression of speaking and preaching in a void, but, we'll we do what we have to do within our own competencies. We can't often we can't speak for the other institutions, but we can remind them of their responsibilities, and we'll do so. So thank you very much indeed. So we will now move immediately to the next item on our agenda, with apologies to those who will be speaking for keeping them waiting.
Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
You could take your seats again, please. We're running late. This is going to be the last item on this morning's agenda. Since the COVID crisis, cases of human trafficking have increased at an alarming rate. At the same time, new forms of slavery have developed.
And one of them is the emergence of human trafficking for the purpose of forced crime in the context of online scams. We want to draw attention to this form of slavery today. It's something which is particularly widespread in Southeast Asia, but it's spreading and developing throughout the world, especially in Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Victims of online scams are not just people who have lost their money in this type of scam. They're also the people who are forced to set them up, to develop links with targets, to encourage them to invest in cryptocurrencies, or to send money online.
Very often, these people are themselves victims of scams. They think that they're signing a contract for well-paid work abroad, but they end up in these huge complexes from which they cannot leave, and the victims are forced labor of torture, pressure, harassment, and, unfortunately, many other forms of human rights violations. The European Union has several tools to deal with this issue, but it also faces limitations in how it responds. So, where do we stand now? How can we ensure that by protecting our citizens from online scams, we're also protecting the very many victims who are forced to work in this illegal industry, often at the risk of their safety, health, and lives.
To discuss it, we have the pleasure of welcoming online Mister Matthew Friedman, is the founder and CEO of the organization called the Mekon Club, long committed to the fight against modern slavery and its prevention in supply chains. Also online, we have Miss Rebecca Miller, the regional coordinator of the program against trafficking of human beings and smuggling of migrants. And she's at the UNODC regional office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. And finally, we welcome Miss Diane Schmidt, the EU anti-trafficking coordinator in the European Commission's Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs who's joining us in person. So thank you to all of you for your presence and for your valuable expertise.
I will immediately give the floor to Mr. Matthew Friedman for seven minutes.
Matthew Friedman
Very good. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. If I could have the slides, please. So, are there my slides?
Yes. It's on its way.
Speaker 57
I'll just go ahead and start then. So, the issue of human trafficking into scam centers is something that, oh, here we go. Okay. I'm gonna talk about the topic that was just mentioned. Next slide, please.
Speaker 60
The human trafficking into scam centers is a topic that pretty much started during COVID. So in Southeast Asia, in places like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, you have off-site gambling sites that have been there for a while, and they were very much thriving up to the COVID period. And then all of a sudden, COVID hit. And as a result of that, you had all this infrastructure. Nobody was using it.
Speaker 59
And so when people stopped coming, they said, okay. Well, let's pivot to something else. And so they started to do scamming activities. As a result of this process, they realized that every tenth person they talked to, they could get money from, and they said, okay. Well, this is something that we should really be focusing on.
Speaker 58
Let's draw more people in so that we can have more scamming take place. We will make a lot of money. When they went to Asian people, many of the Asians said, well, we're really not interested in scamming. So they said, okay. Well, let's find another way to get them here.
Speaker 57
So they started using human trafficking. So they would have false promises of good jobs. And as a result of this, people would have come to these centers thinking that they had a great opportunity, only to be put into a facility that looks very much like a prison and feels like a prison. Next slide. So what we have here is an example of one of the scam centers.
It's called KK Park. There's about 40,000 people in this particular scam center alone. What you see there is Myanmar where the facility is, and on the other side of the river is Thailand. So here it is, right out in the open. There's nobody trying to hide this.
Speaker 58
Pretty much all the scam centers that we're dealing with are identified on satellites, and so it's not as if they're hidden somewhere the way you see small scammers. In this particular case, you see it right out in the open. It's estimated that over 300,000 young professional people from initially Southeast Asia, and then later from South Asia and other parts of the world, are in these scam centers. Next slide. One of the things that we see is that the proliferation of these scam centers continues to grow.
Speaker 59
When I first started doing work related to this, there were 39 of these scam centers, and you can see in this particular map where they're situated. Now, five years later, there's over 300 of them. And in fact, what we're seeing is that it's not just in Southeast Asia. We're beginning to see this in South Asia, and as indicated in Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world, because you have this great convergence of two crimes, human trafficking for which you don't have to pay these people, and scamming that which results in a tremendous amount of money being generated for criminal activities. Next slide.
Speaker 58
One of the reasons why my organization got involved in this was the extreme violence and the fact that we just were when we heard from various families and we saw some of the videos, we felt like we just needed to get involved. I am based here in Hong Kong. I run an organization that focuses on addressing the issue of human trafficking, working with the private sector. But what happens to these individuals once they get to the scam center and they have that shocking moment where they are told that they're not gonna have this great job, where they're gonna have a lot of fun, you know, hanging around Cambodia or Myanmar, and that they have to work. And if they don't meet certain targets, terrible things will happen to them. At the end of the day, they get tasered, beaten, tortured.
Speaker 60
I've never seen violence like this in my thirty-five years addressing human trafficking, and I focus a lot of my time focusing on sex trafficking as well. In fact, a certain percentage of these people are tortured to death. They videotape the torture, and then they sell the videotapes. It's called hardcore. We're in the process of moving forward with a white paper to describe this new form of, you know, violence that, you know, the world hasn't really seen before.
Speaker 58
Next slide. Another element of this is the scams themselves. And so how this works is many of us get on WhatsApp or something, something like, hi, Michael. How are you doing? Your name's not Michael.
So you respond back by saying, well, I'm not Michael. I think you have the wrong person. Then that person on the other side presents as often a young woman, and she says, oh, you're so nice. I'm in Thailand. I'm by myself.
Can you be my friend? And so a relationship develops over four or five weeks, text messaging back and forth. Then all of a sudden, she will say, well, I just made a bunch of money on crypto. And so she demonstrates to this person how this works. And then, basically, he's asked to put 5,000 US dollars in.
He does. And then the next thing is 10,000. He's then told to put that, and then he's told to actually physically take it out. It's important that that happens. Then he takes the 10,000, puts it in double to 20,000.
So if we stop there, we would have made $10,000. But now he has a relationship. He's in love with this person, and at the same time, he has this sense that he can make money. The woman says, okay. Well, put in a million dollars.
That'll double, then we can be together. He puts the money in, and basically, the money is frozen, and that's it, the end of it. They call it pig butchering because in this particular case, the victim is the pig. You're fattening the pig until you have the slaughter, and this is what the outcome of this particular activity is. Next slide.
One of the things that was really disturbing to learn about this particular sector, I had an opportunity to talk to a manager of one of these organizations. He was a narcissist, and he was very much kind of bragging about the things he did. He said that what's happening now is organized crime is becoming much more organized. They're using AI, using all kinds of technology, but at the same time, organizations, syndicates that used to compete with each other are actually collaborating and coming together because they recognize that they have enough resources to be able to kind of collectively come together, and they're asking themselves the questions, how can we use this intense amount of money? If I had more time, I'd go into it, but I'll just keep going from here.
Next slide. So in order to address this in Asia, we do a lot of presentations. My particular organization and myself, I've done 31 presentations. This includes corporations, financial institutions, social media, government, whoever will listen to us. Because if you don't understand an issue, you're not gonna care about it, or know about it, or protect yourself from it.
And then you, so it's really important to just raise awareness. And I find that in Asia, there's much more of a general understanding of this, whereas in Europe and in North America, because of all the distractions of wars and, you know, tariffs and various other things, there isn't as much emphasis on this. Next slide. Another thing that we do, we develop some TV commercials, but everything that we develop is in multiple languages. We have it in 10 different languages.
We develop elearning videos that allow young people to understand the vulnerability that they might be getting involved in. These are three-minute videos in multiple languages, how to prevent yourself from being scammed. And the interesting thing is AI video production now is so easy and sophisticated that you can develop many of these videos very easily. Next slide. Another thing we're doing is working very closely with financial transaction companies, crypto companies, and the banks in order to develop typologies.
Typologies basically allow for individuals to understand the criminal activities and how they work, and then the transactions associated with that. Next slide. And so as a result of this, we're able to come up with manuals that can be given to the banking community, the financial transaction community, encrypting to help them to understand the intricacies of how this process works and what they need to do in order to protect themselves. Next slide. As a result of this, we've also developed some e-learning tools, the training for financial transaction companies, banks.
And what we're really trying to do is to integrate this into their regular systems so that this isn't something outside, it's something within the organization, to ensure it's sustainable. Next slide. We developed a job survey in 14 different languages. You ask questions if you are about to take a job overseas, and it determines the risk level of whether or not that's a scam approach. This helps people to at least stop and think about whether or not there might be some vulnerability.
Next slide. And lastly, working with Interpol and multiple companies coming together, we are using AI technology in order to develop mechanisms to sensitize legitimate companies that might be inadvertently supporting scam companies, to identify that they are part of this process in order to help them to stop doing this. With that, thank you very much.
Thank.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much indeed. Miss Miller, you now have the floor. Again, seven minutes.
Rebecca Miller
Honorable chair, distinguished members of the EU Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and it really is a great privilege to be part of this discussion. Human trafficking for forced criminality into scam operations is an issue facing the Southeast Asia region for well over 4 years now and has continued to evolve over time. I think we can safely say that there are very few countries across the globe that are untouched by this. And before I start to give a bit of background and build on what Matt has said, to depict what we are grappling with, I would like to make the point that scam operations in this region must be understood not only as trafficking in persons for forced criminality, but as a manifestation of sophisticated transnational organized crime. And addressing the scam industry requires a multifaceted approach, one that fully upholds human rights and victim protection, while also strengthening coordinated criminal justice responses to dismantle the networks behind these abuses.
Speaker 63
But let's just start with a little bit of background in relation to understanding why Southeast Asia has become the epicenter for the scam industry. So I think most of you are gonna be very well aware that Southeast Asia is a diverse and dynamic region that has shown remarkable rates of economic development and growth in recent years, but is also facing unprecedented challenges posed by organized crime and illicit economies. A perfect example of this can be seen in relation to special economic zones, which are promoted and proliferating across the region to facilitate economic development, but which also are attracting casino developments, and in some cases are also enabling organized crime groups to evolve and grow alongside listed economies of the region. So what we're seeing now is that transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia is evolving faster than at any previous time in history. And this transformation has been marked by the proliferation of industrial scale cyber-enabled fraud and scam centers driven by sophisticated transnational syndicates and interconnected networks of money launderers, human traffickers, data brokers, and a growing number of other specialist service providers and facilitators.
Speaker 62
And these groups have grown rapidly in recent years, demonstrating their ability to adapt to and capitalize on changes in political and business environments, exploit gaps in governance and regulations, and rapidly develop advanced physical and digital infrastructure while integrating new business models and technologies, including malware and artificial intelligence into their operations. And it's now increasingly clear that a potentially irreversible spillover has taken place in South Southeast Asia, leaving criminal groups free to pick, choose, and move jurisdictions, operation, and value as needed, with the resulting situation rapidly outpacing the capacity of governments to contain it. And when we're talking about the scam operations, as it's been highlighted by the distinguished chair, it's important to note that there are two distinct sets of victims that are affected by online scams and fraud. The trafficked people who are deceptively recruited and forced to commit the online scams and fraud, but also the scam victims who are losing significant amounts of money. And in terms of financial losses, recent calculations carried out by UNODC estimated losses between 18,000,000,000 and 37,000,000,000 from scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia alone.
Absolutely.
Speaker 62
No. I was sorry. I was a bit mistaken. I thought you'd finished.
While precise figures do remain fragmented, available evidence indicates that scam operations based in Southeast Asia are responsible for multibillion euro losses annually to EU citizens, forming part of a global illicit economy that generates tens of billions each year. And the scale, sophistication, and cross-border nature of these operations underscore that this is a major transnational organized crime threat with direct economic and human rights impacts on the European Union. As mentioned, there are various forms of transnational organized crime that are linked to the scam operations, with one major form drawing the attention of the international community, which is human trafficking for forced criminality. It's estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world, South and Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa, with many being held against their will in scam centers across the region and forced to perpetrate quite sophisticated online scams. Many, as it's been highlighted, have just been seeking employment and recruited through social media platforms, online job postings, and messaging applications, as well as by people that they trusted, family members, friends, coworkers, or local recruiters, only to find themselves trafficked into a scam center.
Once in these compounds, as Matt highlighted, victims are repeatedly beaten, drugged, electrocuted, tortured, abused psychologically, and even threatened with organ removal by members of organized crime groups if they do not meet their daily scamming quota. Very few manage to escape as the compounds are secured through bars on windows and balconies, high fences, and security staff and CCTV to ensure that the presence are constantly monitored. Yet scam centers continue to expand with larger compounds in new locations. People worldwide are being defrauded, and the number of trafficking victims is not decreasing. The reality underscores the urgency of prevention, protection, and accountability.
This is not only a criminal justice challenge, it is fundamentally a human rights crisis, and a contemporary form of modern slavery. Addressing it requires that the rights, dignity, and protection of victims remain at the center of our responses. Individuals deceived or coerced into scam operations must be recognized as victims of trafficking, and not punished as perpetrators. The non-punishment principle enshrined in international frameworks is essential to ensure survivors can safely seek help, access support, and rebuild their lives. In response to this urgent situation, UNODC is working to enhance the capacities of law enforcement agencies to effectively identify, investigate, and prosecute human trafficking cases, improve standards for victim identification and support, strengthen legislative frameworks, and promote cooperation.
In conclusion, this is a situation that the region and countries globally have never faced before, and it urgently requires new approaches, strategies, and solutions that holistically address these threats. And we all have a role to play, including the EU Parliament and the subcommittee on human rights. Thank you so much.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much. Miss Schmidt, you have seven minutes, and I'll try not to interrupt you in the middle of your presentation. Thank you very much, chair. I'll try and take a look at this in a more European context.
Diane Schmidt
On the crime, which is a violation of fundamental rights, of human rights, but which is often very invisible still, which is not always prosecuted and investigated as it should, and victims are not always detected, including in the European Union. I would like to underline also here that slavery is in the definition of human trafficking, of trafficking human beings as foreseen in the directive, which was amended in 2014 and reinforced, thanks also to the European Parliament. And member states have now until July 15 this year, so three months left to transpose the new directive into national legislation. However, trafficking in human beings is not limited to the European Union. It's a global challenge, as we also just heard.
And this is why the EU strategy on combating trafficking in human beings has also one big pillar on the external dimension. The European Commission will present a renewed strategy probably in October around the EU anti-trafficking day in order to address new trends and new challenges, and I'm sure that the debate today will feed into the reflection of the commission in view of the new strategy. So one of the new trends is indeed the scam centers. They started in Southeastern Asia, and as we heard, are now spreading across other continents, Africa, Latin America. It's a serious problem, which brought to light not only trafficking in human beings, but also three major developments in relation to trafficking in general.
The first development and perhaps first to remind that trafficking in human beings is mainly for the purpose of sexual exploitation and labor exploitation. But here we see a new form of trafficking coming up, and this is the increase of trafficking for forced criminality. So people looking for better opportunity, new jobs are forced to commit crimes, which as Fos already mentioned, because we have two weak victims: the victims of human trafficking and the victims of the crime committed by the victims of human trafficking, which means also that the profits are much higher. They are not only coming from the exploitation of the victims, but they are also coming from the crimes committed by the victims. False criminality is also covered by the directive, which foresees the exploitation of criminal activities and which also clearly states the non prosecution and non application of penalties to victims who are involved in crimes or unlawful activities.
Unlawful activities were added by the European Parliament in the new directive during the negotiations. So while false criminality is increasing worldwide, it's also increasing in the European Union. It represents now around 2 percent, which perhaps does not look a lot. It's around 180 victims who have been detected, but we should not forget that not all the victims are detected also in the European Union. We have no evidence that EU citizens are exploited in scam centers outside Europe, and we have also, for the moment, no evidence that there are scam centers or call centers which exploit people in the European Union.
That being said, we are monitoring the situation, obviously very closely, including with Europol. We have forced criminality, especially of the young people. This is probably not the subject today, but who are forced in the context of drug trafficking and others to commit crimes, including killings. So you know this probably also from the press. So the second big development is linked to the digital dimension.
Traffickers use the digital domain to amplify their reach, the recruitment, and the exploitation, increasing even more the profits due to this. And, of course, artificial intelligence also has an impact and represents also a challenge. I mean, before, the victims of these scam centers were located in Australia, US, and UK. But now with artificial intelligence, you can reach the whole world because of the translation which can be done automatically. At the same time, modern technology opens new doors to support the victims, also to detect the victims, but also for law enforcement and judicial authorities to investigate and prosecute the crime.
So the third big novelty, I would say, novelty, I mean, is the development in relation to trafficking, is that human trafficking is more and more interlinked with other crimes and cannot be seen anymore in isolation. Scam centers combine human trafficking, cyber-enabled or digital fraud, money laundering, corruption, and probably other crimes. In the EU, we see a link also with truck trafficking, with migrant smuggling. So we have also to be careful that the prosecution not only focus on migrant smuggling, for example, or only on the digital fraud, but should also be prosecuted as trafficking human beings, which the sanctions are often very high. We also see infiltration in the legitimate economy.
This is more and more happening. And also, as you know, in the context of the scam centers, states themselves might also be directly involved in trafficking human beings, as we see here the impact also on national GDPs. This means that our response has to be comprehensive, global, and well coordinated. So the first point of entry and defense line, I would say, is awareness-raising. It's very important in terms of prevention.
We need, therefore, targeted awareness-raising campaigns. I know this year has also launched a campaign together with the U. S, which is still ongoing. We have to outreach to at-risk groups. We have to get information on the signs of the respective recruitment practices, but also on the risk of trafficking, and inform people about it.
And we also have to inform on where they can get support. Here in the European Union, for example, we have helplines in all the member states, which are also published on the website for human trafficking. By the way, we have also launched an awareness-raising campaign here in the European Union in relation to trafficking human beings, which is still ongoing and which was launched by the European Commission. This is really to inform people that trafficking is happening in the European Union, and where you can get help. Awareness raising is also about training, which has to be extended to the authorities who have to recognize the signs, law enforcement, judiciary, and consular services.
They must know how victims have to be treated, not as perpetrators, and they have also to know where to refer people to in order that they get protection. Cooperation, and this is the second point. Cooperation in the private sector is important, especially also with the online platforms. Under the EU framework, including the Digital Service Act, platform space play a key role in detecting and removing illegal content, in identifying trafficking cases, incorporating with the victims. The third point is the operational response.
I mean, we have, of course, to stop the scam business, bring traffickers to justice. Here in the European Union, we have the advantage of having Europol and Eurojust very active, but also impact operational actions, which allow member states to cooperate together and including also with such countries in joint investigations. Another instrument we have is the EU sanctions. I think this is also of interest for you in the context of the EU global human rights sanctions regime. And as announced by the president, instead of the union speech, there will be a new sanction regime specifically for smuggling and for trafficking.
So international cooperation is key, but I will stop here only to say that, as I said, trafficking cannot be seen in isolation, especially as we also have here victims from cybercrime and fraud. And this is also why the commission will present in the next weeks an action plan against digital fraud, which will also complement the actions which are foreseen in the strategy on Internet security, and which all help also to address human trafficking. Sorry to be so long. Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
Merci. Thank you very much. I'll give the floor now to Martha for the social script.
Marta Temido
Thank you, chair. I'll be speaking in Portuguese. I'd like to thank the guests this morning for presenting updates on this point, what we know, and what we still don't know about this particular topic. And I'd like to congratulate the person who decided to include it on the agenda today. This topic that we're discussing today brings together different circumstances that are quite shocking.
It includes cybercrime, online fraud, and scams, and it's also a phenomenon that's growing at an alarming rate. It's a highly organized criminal activity, which is also very sophisticated at the same time, as one of the panelists already mentioned. I'd like to know the following, and these are questions for all the panelists. When it comes to information, prevention, and protecting EU citizens, given that we're still unable to identify those who undertake this kind of activity. I'd like to know about how to protect European citizens.
That's probably the thing that we're most concerned about right now. And so I wanted to ask you the following. Do we have a profile for those kinds of people who are most often victims of this kind of recruitment? I'm not talking about the secondary victims, victims of online fraud, for example. People who are victims of trafficking, more specifically.
These are qualified victims. They speak different languages. They're young people. They're young professionals who are able to use technology easily. So what do we know about them and their profile?
And secondly, what is the profile of those organized crime groups that are linked to these scams? Are they in illegal betting? Are they involved in drug trafficking? I assume that they are also involved in other illegal activities. And finally, when it comes to the transposition of the directive that was just mentioned, will it take into account the different aspects of this particular problem?
Thank you.
Thank.
Bert-Jan Ruissen
Very much, chair. For this agenda point, item, we got two reports, one about the situation in Southeast Asia and one report about the situation in Africa. I will focus on the last report, and I have to say I find this UN report about Africa very shocking. Africa is a young continent with 990,000,000 people under 30 years, and the prospects of many of them are very bad. The report contains information on child labor, slavery, forced prostitution, and warfare using children.
But the main focus point is human trafficking. As a report speaks also about smuggling of people, human trafficking, smuggling of people to Europe, which is a form of forced migration. These people are torn from their surroundings and families and smuggled across Africa, across the Mediterranean and boats to Europe. These refugees are then forced to apply for asylum or to work illegally. And the traffickers pressure them into paying off their so-called debt for the rest of their lives or even force their families back in Africa to pay.
A very lucrative business. Human traffickers kidnapped the migrants themselves so they can continue to make money. These migrants are therefore victims, real victims, and not refugees. So I would like to ask the commission, do we know how many migrants have been abducted or forced to come to Europe as a refugee? And what is being done to combat this form of human trafficking?
How can we prevent this? And instead of starting asylum procedures, shouldn't we offer these people the option to return home? Thank you very much.
Catarina Vieira
Thank you very much, chair. I think this is one of the rare examples where we can speak of an issue that has victims both internationally, but also here in Europe. And in fact, the situation that we see with the scam centers is problematic on both ends, because what we see is, here in the European Parliament and as the union, we speak lately a lot about the digital sphere, of course, and about the rights and the protection of young people on the Internet. But I think we are often forgetting those who are the elderly, who are spending more and more time online, who don't have all the technical skills, all the background information, and that often can be easy targets of these scam centers. And so I'd like to thank the speakers who highlighted that also here inside the European Union, many have been victims, as being on the receiving end, and billions have been lost.
And from what I can gather, it's also very hard for law enforcement to do proper follow-up of these crimes because they are so hard to track, and this is really a transnational issue. So while we look at these victims, we can, of course, also have, and the reason why we're here in this committee is to look at the exploitation of people, and particularly in Southeast Asia, where we see a form of modern slavery. We see people being trafficked for criminality and to be put there to work against their will to commit crimes against their will, really, and to be subject to torture, to beatings, and really under the threat that if you don't deliver on the targets, which is really a dystopian reality if we think about it, that you will suffer for it. So if we look at this huge transnational issue, it requires a huge transnational response, and I think the European Union should be at the forefront and well placed to lead it. But I'd be curious to hear from all three speakers, what can we do as the European Parliament and further as institutions to protect victims both at home and abroad?
Are there already, I think you mentioned a few, but can you highlight ongoing initiatives that aim to do both, to increase awareness, but also perhaps is there anything to increase collaboration with tech companies, with the actors that really the digital platforms that enable these actions? What role and challenges do you see for law enforcement agencies in Europe? And what specifically concrete actions would you like to see the parliament and the institutions of the European Union take onwards to avoid this problem from continuing to escalate? Thank you.
Mounir Satouri
Merci, Katharina. Thank you, Katharina. Now the interpreters have been generous enough to give an extra 10 minutes, so thank you very much to the interpreters. So I'll now give the floor back to our speakers. Three minutes each, and I will be very strict because we cannot go beyond the time limit.
So we will begin with Mr. Friedman. Three minutes, please.
Speaker 60
Thank you very much. Just to respond to some of the questions that were asked. In terms of the profile, there are all kinds of people across Southeast and South Asia that are desperately looking for work. They can't find it locally. They're educated.
And as a result of that, even if they feel like there is the possibility that there could be some risk associated with it, they so want this to be real that they put the risk aside, and they end up getting into a situation where they end up in these scam centers. I hear this time and time again where we interview the victims, and the victims basically say, well, you know, we kinda thought there was the possibility of a problem, but we heard that there were some people went, they had good situations. And so we took that opportunity. We moved forward, and we ended up in this situation. So I guess the profile is just young, inexperienced people not understanding the world.
Speaker 58
Second thing I wanna do is, in terms of organized crime, a lot of the criminals are associated with Chinese syndicates, but that's the way it started. But what we're seeing is that the syndicates are lining up, as I indicated, with other parts of the world. And as a result of this, a convergence of organized crime is happening. And with tremendous amounts of money, with AI, and with this new collaboration, we really do have the potential that this could be an issue that will kind of haunt us many years in the future because there isn't a lot of attention on this particular issue globally. And as a result of that, these organizations have allowed themselves to move forward.
So, understanding the fact that criminals are organized and they're using AI is something that just has to also be taken into consideration here. There are, for example, they will use Zoom calls for which there's a 22-year-old Bangladesh victim presenting himself as a woman to a potential scam victim because the technology allows for that type of thing to take place. These are just some issues and factors that we should be considering as we look at this in, situation.
Mounir Satouri
Thank you very much. Miss Miller, again, three minutes maximum, please.
Speaker 63
Thank you so much, Chair. I think these are issues that we could spend well over three minutes talking about, but just to highlight a couple of key points. I won't go into the details that Matt has covered, but I think in terms of addressing this and also how do we protect EU citizens is, number one, we need to start with prevention. We need to raise awareness that this is occurring, and we need to understand the demographics that are being targeted. There are certain profiles in terms of citizens who are being defrauded, in relation to their life savings, and we need to make sure that a lot of awareness is raised in relation to this.
This can include the elderly, but also people who are in a bit more vulnerable situations. For example, people who are recently divorced or have split up with partners or, you know, are unsatisfied with their jobs. There's a lot of different targets and the individuals actually have scripts to target different demographics and victims of their life savings. In terms of what we can do, we really need to have a multifaceted approach. It's been highlighted many times.
We're talking about polycriminality. We're talking about multiple forms of transnational crime that require a multi-country and multifaceted approach. We need prevention. We need prosecution. We need protection for victims.
And, of course, we need partnerships. And the EU has a strong leadership role to play in relation to advocating for human rights, advocating for the rule of law, and also taking this seriously as an international voice. No country can do this alone, and it's going to take the collective effort of all of our governments, all of the UN agencies, all of the partners, civil society organizations to keep the pressure on to ensure that we are addressing this. Because, as I mentioned in my remarks, this has quickly gotten out of the control of many governments. Money flows are going all around the world, and EU citizens have been targeted.
There have been examples of EU citizens who have been released from scam centers. So, again, in terms of victimhood, we see both sides, and, very much looking forward to continuing our work as you and ODC with the EU in our various interventions that go from policy all the way down to prosecution, law enforcement and prosecution and partnership. Thank you so much.
Madam Schmidt.
Well,
Diane Schmidt
Let me begin by the migration question.
I'll start with migration. I mean, a few years ago, most of the majority of the victims were EU citizens, those who were detected. And this changed. We only recently, now the majority of the victims who are officially detected are South Continentians. So 63 percent, which shows that there's a closer link also with migration.
And this implies also that we have to start our policy in relation to protecting victims and to addressing trafficking already on the other side of the border. I mean, the countries of origin, the countries of transit, which, again, with the whole approach, prevention, information, opening, of course, also legal ways, because the problem is also if migrants are having big debts to arrive in Europe, I mean, they are targets for trafficking and exploitation immediately. But there are possibilities to address this. And so this is also why the link with migration has to be better taken into account in the future. This is probably also something for the strategy to look at.
What can we do? I mean, we have a lot of instruments at our disposal. In relation to the digital dimension and artificial intelligence, this will also be, again, a big priority of the future, because this will continue. Now in every human trafficking case, there's a digital dimension, be it in the context of recruitment online, exploitation online. I mean, we have to address this better.
And artificial intelligence is a challenge, but as I said, can also be an opportunity. So one of the instruments is also discussing with the platforms, with the online platforms. I had a meeting in March with online platforms in the context of the European Internet Forum, where we discussed specifically trafficking human beings and how to address it also in terms of prevention. So what else can be done? I mean I could go on.
We have the legislation, the directive. We have the operational actions, very concrete operational actions. I mean I don't have time now to go into the details of what Europol and Georgia are doing also to support member states and sub countries, which are also of interest to us. But again, what can the European Parliament do? I mean, there's a strategy coming up.
So you might also have ideas and fit into the upcoming strategy. Thank you.
Thank.
Mounir Satouri
thank you very much. I think I can conclude very quickly. Thank you for the explanations and clarifications we've had. I think this we can clearly say is a priority. We need a transnational solution to a transnational problem, and we will continue to follow these issues.
Thank you to the interpreters, and I wish you bon appétit to everybody.
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