UN Adds 68 Companies to Blacklist of Firms With Business Ties to Israeli Communities in West Bank

Latest Developments

Controversial UN Blacklist Updated: The United Nations added 68 companies on September 26 to the blacklist of firms it claims are violating Palestinian human rights by conducting specified types of business with Israeli communities in the West Bank. The list is designed to name and shame businesses that the United Nations deems supportive of Israeli West Bank settlements, which the international body deems illegal. “Businesses working in contexts of conflict have a due diligence responsibility to ensure their activities do not contribute to human rights abuses,” said UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani, adding that the United Nations calls “on businesses to take appropriate action to address the adverse human rights impacts of their activities.”
List Created Nearly 10 Years Ago: The “database of companies” now includes 158 firms after recent additions, mostly from Israel but also including companies from the United States, Canada, China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution creating the blacklist in 2016 despite Israel and the Trump administration’s opposition to the resolution and subsequent efforts to implement it. Only one full-time staffer assesses the claims against companies for their inclusion on the list, with hundreds of claims against additional companies still in processing.
Israel Rejects List’s Findings: Israel said that it “categorically rejects” the list’s updated publication. “This database is meant to serve as a blacklist against businesses that have committed no wrongdoing,” Israel’s mission to the United Nations stated, adding, “We call on friends not to yield to this ugly attempt to blacklist Israeli firms.” Israel Katz, foreign minister at the time, called the list “a stain on the Office of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights” in 2020, while former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in the past labeled the blacklist a “shameful initiative.”

FDD Expert Response

“The UN blacklist is a black stain on the international body and adds to the unique discriminatory infrastructure set up within the United Nations to harm Israel. This support for economic warfare against the Jewish state violates the UN principle of sovereign equality. Washington should ensure that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights cannot staff this witch hunt.” — David May, Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst

“This blacklist is clearly designed to spur boycotts of the listed companies. Persons and entities considering engaging in such boycotts should be aware that their doing so could run afoul of the various U.S. federal and state anti-boycott laws. There are more than 100 territorial disputes in the world today, including in Crimea, Cyprus, Kashmir, Nagorno-Karabakh, Tibet, and Western Sahara. Yet only the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were singled out for such a database. The decision to focus on Israel raises the question of whether the database is really about human rights or rather about hypocritically bashing Israel.” — Orde Kittrie, Senior Fellow