BARCELONA – 18th and 19th of MAY 2018
Dear colleagues,
As European trade unionists we are alarmed that despite the clear injustice inflicted on the people of Palestine and especially at a time when a total of 34 Palestinians have been killed and more then 1600 injured by Israeli soldiers during 10 days of protests at Gaza’s border with Israel according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The European states, the European Union (EU) and representative institutions have failed to fulfil their legal duty to hold Israel accountable for its grave violations of international law.
The failure of the international community to take action to ensure that Israel complies with international law has allowed Israel to continue its countless attacks on Palestinian civilians, including the recent killings of Palestinians in Gaza, which Human Rights Watch has called “unlawful” and “calculated” with complete impunity.
While the EU criticizes some aspects of Israel’s policies, they continue to provide it with political, economic and military support. We believe that as trade unionists and conscious citizens of this world, we have duty and power to act. We believe it is time for us to collectively stand in solidarity with the Palestinian labour movement, to develop strategies for holding our governments and the EU as a representative body accountable, and put pressure on corporations to end their complicity with Israel’s violations of Palestinian workers’ rights.
Therefore we are inviting you to participate at the Second Trade Union Seminar – Justice for Palestine! Ending European complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian workers’ rights that will take place in BARCELONA on the 18th and 19th of MAY 2018 at Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585, 08007 Barcelona
During the two day seminar we will:
- highlight complicity of the European Union, European governments and companies in the occupation of Palestine and the ways it is undermining decent work and violating Palestinian workers’ rights;
- discuss a common campaign strategy for decent work for Palestinian workers, ending European complicity and the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement;
- look at concrete steps to strengthen ties between the European and Palestinian trade union movement;
- discuss and share ways in which trade unions are effectively campaigning to pressure the European Union, governments, institutions and businesses to end their support for Israeli violations of workers’ rights, human rights and international law.
- explore possibilities for coordination and joint work between trade unions and trade union activists across Europe.
European Trade Union Network for Justice in Palestine is a coalition of 35 European trade union organisations representing more than 3 million workers. You can check updated list of endorsers here.
We do hope that you’ll be able to be present and participate at this seminar. The working languages of the seminar are EN, FR, ES, CA. Here you can read the program in EN, ES, CA and FR
To register please fill in this form http://bit.ly/2H5hNQi by May 17th.
The registration fee of 50 EUR will be collected at the registration desk on May 18th.
If you would like to find out more about our initiative please visit our website and read report in EN and FR from our previous seminar. To watch our short video click here.
European Trade Union Initiative for Justice in Palestine
Steering Committee