The movement against apartheid was advanced by every means necessary: mass protest, civil disobedience and armed struggle in South Africa; international boycotts and disinvestment by workers, social movements, sporting organisations and companies; economic sanctions and arms embargoes implemented by international organisations and states. Amidst all of this a United Nations body known as the Special Committee against Apartheid played its own specific but significant role.
Established in 1962, the Special Committee against Apartheid was mandated to report on institutionalised racism in South Africa to the UN General Assembly and Security Council. It had the support of the majority of UN members states, though notably not the Western states at first. It quickly became, as the Indian diplomat and anti-apartheid activist ES Reddy put it, “one of the most dynamic and action-oriented committees in the United Nations”.
The special committee helped raise global consciousness of the apartheid regime’s injustices. It arranged assistance to political prisoners and oppressed communities in South Africa. It worked closely with anti-apartheid leaders like Oliver Tambo, and organised regular sessions to hear from those working on and witnessing the situation in South Africa. It engaged with states and solidarity movements to promote the global anti-apartheid campaign. The special committee also escalated the call for sectoral boycotts and sanctions against the apartheid regime, and ultimately shaped UN policy in these areas by the 1980s.
Shortly after his release from prison in 1990, Nelson Mandela appeared before the special committee to call for final decisive action to end apartheid, and to remind the world that “it will forever remain an indelible blight on human history that the apartheid crime ever occurred”.
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With the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa the special committee was dissolved by the UN. But in the meantime a consensus has developed across global civil society that “the apartheid crime” continues to occur in another place: Palestine.
Mandela himself famously said that “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”. And Palestinians themselves have long argued that Israel has imposed an apartheid regime against them. As the late Palestinian sociologist Elia Zureik showed back in 1979, for instance, Israel’s brand of settler-colonialism constituted a form of “national apartheid” between Jewish-Israelis and Arab Palestinians which “manifested in segregation in housing, land ownership, education, modes of political organisation” and more.
Many of those who work on racism and equality have come to echo Zureik’s analysis. Israeli apartheid has now been condemned by all of the main Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations.
Under international law apartheid is defined as an institutional system of domination by one racial group over another. Israel’s legal, constitutional and governance regimes systematically discriminate in favour of Jewish-Israelis and against Palestinians. Jewish-Israelis have preferential access to land, citizenship, residency, housing and employment. Palestinian refugees and displaced communities are barred from returning to their homes.
The legal centre Adalah’s Discriminatory Law Database comprises over 65 racist Israeli laws which deny Palestinians basic equality in all walks of life: citizenship rights, political participation, education, land and housing, cultural, language and religious rights.
In the occupied territories Israel operates an entirely two-tiered apartheid legal system: civil law and civil courts for Jewish-Israeli settlers; draconian military law and military courts (with a 99.7 per cent conviction rate) for Palestinians. Palestinians who protest these inequalities are routinely arrested or killed by the Israeli military. All of this adds up to apartheid.
In 1987 Ireland became the first country in the West to ban the import of South African produce. This was the upshot of groundwork and political education that filtered up over many years from grassroots campaigns to institutional spaces
Post-apartheid South Africa itself has been clear in its position. Last year foreign minister Naledi Pandor emphasised that South Africa believes Israel should be classified as an apartheid state, and called on the UN to verify this.
To that end at the UN General Assembly in New York, a global coalition of 285 civil society organisations (including members of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine) is calling for the Special Committee against Apartheid to be re-established to investigate Israeli apartheid. The General Assembly can do so whenever enough states agree, and while some European states may remain reluctant for now the Irish Government should lead the way and support the call.
Ireland is proud of the role it played in response to apartheid in South Africa. In 1987 Ireland became the first country in the West to ban the import of South African produce. This was the upshot of groundwork and political education that filtered up over many years from grassroots campaigns to institutional spaces.
The boycott pledge by Irish playwrights in 1964 and the strike initiated by the Dunnes Stores workers in 1984 were pivotal moments, and remain iconic in the narratives of global solidarity. The UN Special Committee against Apartheid also had its own chapter in the Irish anti-apartheid story. In May 1974 the committee convened a special session in Dublin to meet with the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement and to launch a set of UN actions against apartheid across Europe.
Here we must recall that for years after the special committee was established it was shunned by most of the Western nations, who said the committee was going too far in its criticisms of apartheid. The strength of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and around the world eventually pushed the Western powers to support the work of the special committee and take a stand against apartheid. Today those same powers like to give the impression that they were on the right side of history all along. Something similar will ultimately come to pass with the anti-apartheid struggle in Palestine.
A UN committee will not will not bring about equality and decolonisation by itself, but a revived special committee can certainly make a particular contribution to the broader freedom struggle in Palestine. With the Israeli apartheid system only deepening as the state leans further into racist, expansionist and authoritarian policies, it is a moral and political imperative for the Irish Government to support the re-establishment of the Special Committee against Apartheid.
John Reynolds is associate professor of international law at Maynooth University, and is a member of Academics for Palestine