The State of Qatar stressed the importance of having mechanisms in place to compensate victims of coercive measures for the violation of their rights and to prevent these violations to occur in the future.

This came in the speech of Second Secretary at Qatar’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva Mohamed Abdullah Al Buainain, which he gave at the 48th session of the Human Rights Council in a panel discussion on coercive unilateral measures. The discussion focused on the challenges related to judicial jurisdiction over events that takes place across regional borders.

He stressed in his speech the State of Qatar’s firm position that coercive unilateral measures are a violation of the UN Charter, and the international humanitarian law. He said that judicial jurisdiction over such practices remains to be vitally important, especially when it comes to countries’ accountability over human rights violations that take place outside its borders.

He added that in that in the context of international relations, penalizing such actions contradict with the principle of respecting the sovereignty of countries, as it is considered an interference in the internal affairs of another country. He added that the political nature of unilateral coercive measures further complicates the issue of accountability for these violation, but maintained that this should not come in the way of trying to find mechanisms that compensate the victims and prevent the recurrence of these violations.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs