During a panel discussion at the OSCE Conference on Addressing Antisemitism in Skopje, North Macedonia, the World Jewish Congress released two reports on Tuesday outlining the state of the international battle against Jew-hatred.
The first report analyzes the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a U.N. Human Rights Council self-evaluation mechanism allowing for the review of the state of human rights in every U.N. member country and empowering other nations to make recommendations.
The report examined the 90,938 recommendations made during the UPR process between April 2008 and July 2021, finding that only 70 such statements referenced the fight against antisemitism and the need to safeguard the memory of the Holocaust —less than 0.08% of the total.
U.N. member states, despite engaging in other attempts to address antisemitism, have unfortunately failed to use the UPR process to raise concerns about Jew-hatred and have not prioritized those concerns in the vast majority of cases, the report noted. For instance, only the Netherlands and Israel have raised the issue of Iran’s, promotion of antisemitic propaganda around the world. Likewise, no country has made even one recommendation regarding restrictions on ritual slaughter, an important religious practice for Jews and Muslims around the world. These are missed opportunities that demonstrate that governments have tools at their disposal for the fight against antisemitism but are not using them.
The second report is a compilation of international commitments to the global fight against antisemitism adopted by the U.N., the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the European Union.
The compilation of commitments were grouped into 12 categories, including condemning all manifestations of antisemitism, appointing an envoy, adopting a national strategy to combat antisemitism, promoting interfaith dialogue, collecting data, and regulating online hatred. It is critical for lawmakers, Jewish communities, academics, and the media to hold governments accountable if they fail to carry out these commitments.
The World Jewish Congress hopes that these reports will provide new tools for governments around the world that will assist them to intensify their efforts to combat the scourge of antisemitism.
