By Benjamin Brown • 12 March, 2020

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has suspended its 43rd session amongst fears of a further spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVD-19).

The suspension means the council will not discuss Agenda Item 7 “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories” until an unspecified date in the future.

The session, which began on February 24th and was set to last until March 20th, will be suspended on Friday, thus meaning that the UNHRC will only have been able to discuss four of the ten agenda items. Agenda Item 7 will thus be discussed at a later date. The session was postponed following the classification of the Coronavirus outbreak as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Agenda Item 7 requires the body to discuss alleged Israeli human rights violations at every UNHRC session and it is utilized to condemn Israel regularly.

Israel has long complained about the UNHRC’s bias against the country with Israeli leaders and officials citing the UNHRC for its “obsessive hostility” toward Israel and “one-sided mandate.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March 2018 suggested that it was time for the UNHRC “to change the name to ‘The Council for resolutions against the only democracy in the Middle East’.”

Remarking on the infamous Agenda Item 7 in July 2018, then US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley noted that “this is the permanent part of the Human Rights Council agenda that is devoted exclusively to Israel. No other country – not Iran, not Syria, not North Korea – has an agenda item devoted solely to it.”

“Agenda Item 7 is not directed at anything Israel does. It is directed at the very existence of Israel,” Haley charged. “It is a blazing red siren signaling the Human Rights Council’s political corruption and moral bankruptcy.”

The US subsequently withdrew from the UNHRC.

Over the past decade, the UNHRC has passed dozens of resolutions condemning Israel. The world’s worst human rights abusers in Syria, Iran, and North Korea received far fewer condemnations collectively.