A petition has been signed by a total of 1,266 campaigners at the Canadian parliament urging the government to take action against Israeli violence against Palestinian children.
The petition, which opened for signatures on October 26 and will close on December 25, was launched by Liberal Party Toronto Deputy Salma Zahid on the official website of the Federal Parliament.
The use of violence by Israeli security forces against Palestinian children for a long time is reiterated by the petition, while also urging the government to protect “the rights of children around the world.”
The petition reads: “As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Israel has an obligation to ensure basic due process rights and the absolute prohibition against torture and ill-treatment of children in accordance with international juvenile justice standards.”
Calling upon “Israel to uphold international juvenile justice standards; to cease the use of administrative detention for children and end all forms of ill-treatment in detention, and to cease any attempted recruitment of detained children as informants,” the petition further recalled a 2019 UN report on children and armed conflict.
The petition went on to say that Israel prosecutes children in military courts without a fair trial, and concluded as follows:
“We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to call for an urgent study by the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development to review Israel’s treatment of children in Israeli occupied Palestine and compliance with its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
