GENEVA: The United Nations human rights office released a long-awaited update to its database of companies with activities in Israeli settlements on Friday.
The non-exhaustive list now contains 158 firms from 11 different countries.
Major international companies such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Motorola Solutions, and Trip Advisor remain included on the updated list.
Several companies including Alstom and Opodo were removed from the database following the review.
Most of the listed companies are based in Israel, with others headquartered in Canada, China, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Britain, and the United States.
The accompanying report calls on all businesses to take appropriate action to address the adverse human rights impacts of their activities.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk has condemned Israel’s settlement policy on Palestinian territory in the occupied West Bank as a war crime.
“This report underscores the due diligence responsibility of businesses working in contexts of conflict to ensure their activities do not contribute to human rights abuses,“ Turk stated upon the database’s publication.
The list was first produced by the UN human rights office in 2020 following a Human Rights Council resolution from four years earlier.
The resolution demanded a database of firms that profit from business in occupied Palestinian territory.
The UN rights office was specifically instructed to list companies involved in any of 10 specific activities.
These activities include construction, surveillance, demolitions, and the destruction of agricultural land in West Bank settlements, including East Jerusalem.
The office has stressed that inclusion in the database is not a judicial or quasi-judicial process.
Despite a requirement for annual updates, the database has only been revised once before in 2023.
The 2023 update reviewed only the 112 firms that appeared on the original 2020 list.
Fifteen companies were removed during that update for various reasons, leaving 97 firms listed.
Friday’s release marks the first update to include entirely new names beyond the original list.
A total of 68 new companies were added to the list published in 2023.
Seven companies from the 2023 list were removed as they were no longer involved in the activities concerned.
The database exercise has been contentious since its inception.
Israel and its main ally Washington fiercely condemned the creation of the database in 2020.
Then Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz slammed it as a shameful surrender to pressure from countries and organisations who want to harm Israel. – AFP
