DayofPal— France has denied a visa to Shahwan Jabarin, the Director-General of Al-Haq and a prominent human rights advocate, preventing him from attending and addressing the European Parliament’s human rights committee in Strasbourg.
The decision has been widely criticized as a setback that undermines ongoing efforts to promote accountability and advance advocacy for Palestinian rights on the international stage.
Shahwan Jabarin had been slated to appear before the European Parliament’s human rights committee in Strasbourg on Tuesday, with additional high-level meetings scheduled later in the week, including engagements with officials at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday.
The move “entrenches its position in undermining efforts towards accountability and advocacy for Palestinian rights,” the Al-Haq said in a statement.
“At a time when Palestinians across Gaza and the wider occupied Palestinian territory are subjected to Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid and genocidal erasure, states that claim to uphold international law are deepening their complicity by targeting those who seek justice,” it added.
The Director-General of Al-Haq, based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, has seen his visa application rejected by European, specifically French, authorities for the second time since September, when the United States imposed sanctions on the Palestinian human rights organization.
Al-Haq said that Jabarin, who was presented on behalf of Al-Haq with the French republic’s human rights prize in 2018, alongside Israeli rights group B’Tselem, was also scheduled to attend briefings in the French parliament and in Belgium.
France’s last-minute refusal to grant him a national visa meant that Jabarin could not attend any of these meetings.
The human rights group added that “as mass atrocities continue unabated across Palestine, the international community’s failure to end the genocide is no longer passive but active”.
On 6 February 2025, Trump issued Executive Order 14203, imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC).
These measures marked a dangerous escalation in attacks on international justice mechanisms. Since then, the United States has designated ICC officials, a United Nations Special Rapporteur, and leading Palestinian human rights organizations, including Al-Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, for their longstanding work documenting violations and pursuing accountability for international crimes.
In October, Jabarin applied to renew his Schengen visa, which allows non-EU nationals to travel freely within 29 European countries for up to 90 days.
This application was rejected, Al-Haq confirmed, on the grounds that “one or more member states” considered the Palestinian to be “a threat to public order or internal security”.
Jabarin’s new visa application was submitted to Dutch authorities at the beginning of the year. They told him, on the eve of his departure, that while he could travel to the Netherlands and Belgium, he would not be granted a visa for France.
In 2021, the Israeli government placed six Palestinian groups, including Al-Haq, on its list of terrorist organisations. But France joined six other European countries in concluding that Israel had not provided any evidence to support its allegations.
At the time, Jabarin said of Israel’s then-defence minister, Benny Gantz: “Gantz says we are a terror organisation, when he himself is a war criminal.”
In September last year, the US sanctioned Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), saying these Palestinian human rights groups were engaged in the “illegal targeting of Israel” by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“These entities have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement at the time.
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders.
“The United States and Israel are not party to the Rome Statute and are therefore not subject to the ICC’s authority,” Rubio said in his statement. “We oppose the ICC’s politicised agenda, overreach, and disregard for the sovereignty of the United States and that of our allies.”
The Trump administration has also sanctioned 11 ICC judges, including French judge Nicolas Guillou, as well as Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied territories.
Jabarin said France’s refusal to grant him a visa felt like a “new sanction”.
Mounir Satouri, a French member of the European parliament, said that Jabarin was prevented from testifying before the parliament’s human rights committee – which Satouri chairs – in Strasbourg on account of France’s decision.
According to Satouri, the French interior ministry had expressed reservations about issuing the visa to Jabarin, but had not specified what those reservations were.
In a post on X, Satouri said that French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot “must reverse this decision to avoid aligning with US sanctions”. On Thursday, he called for Barrot to “explain himself”.
“France cannot speak out and act at the highest level in support of ICC judges under US sanctions while at the same time blocking European entry to NGOs that cooperate, collaborate and inform the ICC’s work. It’s completely incoherent,” Satouri said.
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