Doc. 10014

9 December 2003

Situation of Palestinian refugees
Recommendation 1612 (2003)

Reply from the Committee of Ministers

adopted at the 864^th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies (4 December 2003)

1.       The Committee of Ministers has examined carefully Parliamentary Assembly
Recommendation 1612 (2003) on the situation of Palestinian refugees, which it communicated to governments and forwarded to the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) for information.

2.       It follows with interest the debates regularly held by the Parliamentary Assembly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is responsible, inter alia, for the serious refugee crisis described in the recommendation.

3.       In its recommendations, the Committee of Ministers systematically analyses the position of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and takes into account the guidelines regularly issued by this organisation. The Committee of Ministers is for example currently examining a draft recommendation on the interpretation of the notion of “a particular social group” which includes the questions raised in particular by the latest UNHCR guidelines.

4.       With regard to the situation of refugees, the Committee of Ministers shares the concerns of the Parliamentary Assembly. It recalls, however, that the geographical remit of the Council of Europe requests that the limited resources of the Organisation must primarily be used to improve the serious situations with which the refugees are faced in certain member states.

5.       This being so, the Committee of Ministers wishes nonetheless to recall that the North-South Centre has developed relations of co-operation with a large number of actors in the Palestinian civil society, ever since the establishment of the Transmed Programme in 1994. The concrete implementation of the projects drawn up since then has been frozen due to the 2nd Intifada and the political situation in the Middle-East. The quadrilogue network developed and reinforced by the Centre in the region will enable collaboration to be relaunched and projects to be continued as soon as the political environment in the region improves. Representatives of Palestinian NGOs participated in the Seminar “Rights of Women in the Euro-Mediterranean Region” organised by the North-South Centre in Strasbourg on 13 and 14 October 2003. Other Palestinians will be invited to the Conference “Intercultural Dialogue in the Euromed Region: The Foundation of Peace and Stability”, which the Centre is organising in Amman (Jordan) on 6 and 7 December this year.

6.       Moreover, the Committee of Ministers informs the Parliamentary Assembly that, at the 7th Conference of European Ministers responsible for Migration Affairs held in Helsinki in September 2002, the Ministers undertook to ensure, for refugees and asylum-seekers, the observance of the full provisions of the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol and of the relevant instruments of the Council of Europe, and to adopt, where appropriate, other forms of protection for persons in need, such as temporary and/or subsidiary protection.

7.       Finally, the Committee of Ministers recalls that it regularly adopts recommendations, which aim at improving the legal situation of all recognised refugees in member states, irrespective of their nationality of origin. In this respect, it refers in particular to Recommendation N° R (99) 23 to member states on family reunion for refugees and other persons in need of international protection.