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Former New York Supreme Court judge appointed to UN Gaza investigation committee
Mary McGowan Davis, a former New York City judge, on Monday was appointed to the UN commission to investigate the Israeli offensive and the actions of Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, the UN’s Human Rights Council said. Lebanese-born British human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin was previously offered the job, but turned it down citing her existing professional commitments.
Davis is likely to be a controversial choice for Israeli, having served on another team which probed the Israeli offensive 2008-09 of Gaza – Israel had rejected the findings of that report.
The UN Human Rights Council had ordered the investigation in Gaza last month, despite fierce opposition from the United States.
The decision came in a seven-hour emergency session of the Human Rights Council, during which Palestinian and Israeli delegates accused each other of war crimes. The team was established after Palestine had lodged the resolution, but according to UN officials, its goal is to look into all international human rights violations in Gaza, regardless of who is involved.
“In carrying out its work, the Commission of Inquiry will aim to establish the facts and circumstances of human rights violations and crimes perpetrated in order to identify those responsible”, the council said on Monday.
Israel has already denounced the probe and said that the committee was biased against it, echoing similar criticisms it made of other UN investigations.
McGowan Davis, an acting justice in the supreme court of state of New York between the years 1986 and 1998, and is a renowned human rights law and transitional justice expert. In 2004 and 2005, Davis worked in the Afghanistan’s public defenders’ office, and was also a part of war crimes justice projects in Rwanda, Cambodia and Sierra Leone.
The Gaza commission also has Doudou Diene from Senegal, a for UN special saboteur on racism in Ivory Coast and Canadian international lawyer William Schabas. They are supposed to report back by March 2015.