Cairo Institute for Human Rights (CIHRS)

Activities

• In April 2023, CIHRS was a signatory on a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General urging the UN to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. According to the letter, the IHRA definition “opens the door to labeling as antisemitic… findings of major Israeli, Palestinian and global human rights organizations that Israeli authorities are committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians.”
  • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• In November 2022, CIHRS researcher Elizabeth Rghebi was one of the authors of Palestinian NGO Al-Haq’s report “Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism.” The antisemitic report defined Zionism and the State of Israel as inherently illegitimate and extorted the international community to dismantle the Jewish State. The report also called on Member States of the UN General Assembly to “adopt a resolution to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid to address Israeli authorities’ commission of the crime against humanity of apartheid against the Palestinian people as a whole, and empower these bodies to proactively pursue the dismantlement of Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime.”
• In November 2022, CIHRS was a signatory on a letter to the ICC Prosecutor to “Urgently expedite his investigation into the Situation of Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” 
• In September 2022, CIHRS endorsed a campaign titled “Investigate and Dismantle Apartheid.” The campaign is a “global Palestinian-led anti-apartheid effort…directed towards activating UN mechanisms to investigate and dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime by mobilizing grassroot efforts.”
• In August 2022, CIHRS signed a joint statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. The statement called for the international community to “take effective measures to end all other actions that deny Palestinians their inalienable human rights” and to “their support and increase funding to the organizations and engage with financial institutions to ensure the transfer of funds to the organizations.”
• In January 2022, CIHRS, alongside Addameer, Al Mezan, Al-Haq, amd JLAC, submitted a joint report to the UN Human Rights Committee referring to Gaza as an “open-air prison,” and alleging that “to realize the objective of creating a Jewish state in Palestine, the Zionist movement pursued settler colonialism—with its inherently racist ideology—and the transfer of the Palestinian population as foundational prerequisites. These policies have become the driving force behind Israel’s apartheid regime.”
• In April 2021, CIHRS was a signatory on a joint submission to the UN Secretary-General on Intimidation and Reprisals for Cooperation with the UN, stating that “Since its establishment, Israel has created and maintained an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression, amounting to apartheid, over the Palestinian people as a whole…Israel has sought to fundamentally undermine key human rights and accountability work and thereby further entrenched impunity for its apartheid regime over Palestinians” (emphasis added).
• In March 2021, CIHRS was a signatory on a joint statement to the United Nations calling to “Recognise and to declare that the laws and policies Israel have created, and continue to maintain, as an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, which amounts to the crime of apartheid” and to “support[] a full, thorough, and comprehensive investigation into the Situation in Palestine by the International Criminal Court.”
  • CIHRS is part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel. (Read NGO Monitor’s Policy Paper “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State.”)
• In 2021, CIHRS endorsed US Congresswoman McCollum’s proposed legislation “to prevent United States tax dollars from supporting the Israeli military’s ongoing detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children.” The entirety of the proposed bill is premised on factually inaccurate claims from anti-Israel advocacy NGOs, including direct quotes from DCIP’s “No Way to Treat a Child” 2016 report and website.
• In July 2020, CIHRS was a signatory on an appeal to the United Nations referring to Israel’s alleged “shoot-to-kill policy” as “contributing to the maintenance of Israel’s apartheid regime of systematic racial oppression and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole, which, embedded in a system of impunity, prevents Palestinians from effectively challenging Israel’s apartheid policies and practices.”
• In May 2020, CIHRS signed a statement referring to the “Nakba” as being “far from a distant memory for the Palestinian people: it is an ongoing reality of Israeli settler-colonialism, population transfer, apartheid, and dispossession, policies which have never ended and continue to be entrenched today.” The statement also called to “take effective legal and political measures to eradicate colonialism, to bring perpetrators of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice at the ICC, and to publicly recognise and collectively overcome Israel’s apartheid regime imposed over the Palestinian people as a whole.”

BDS

• In July 2023, CIHRS was a signatory on a joint statement “Welcom[ing] the Release of OHCHR’s Update of the UN Database of businesses facilitating Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line selectively targets Israel apart from all other nations, is aimed at economically damaging companies that are owned by Jews or do business with Israel, and is ultimately meant to harm the Jewish State.
  • In September 2022, CIHRS endorsed a report by Al-Haq and Just Peace Advocates calling to “Update the UN database annually” and “Continue to exert the necessary efforts to ensure transparency and promote accountability for business activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, to counter the pervasive impunity stemming from corporate- related violations and grave breaches of international law in such contexts.”
• In March 2022, CIHRS was a signatory on an oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council calling to “adopt effective measures, including sanctions, to end Israeli apartheid.”
• In February 2022, CIHRS participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements,” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
• In March 2021, CIRHS was a signatory on a statement calling on the international community to “intervene immediately to economically sanction Israel.”