Efforts have been in full swing by our international team and pro-Palestine partners to announce the official launch of “My Return” international campaign during a press conference slated to be held in the Turkish metropolitan province of Istanbul.
Civil society representatives, human rights activists, and representatives of Turkish institutions are expected to take part in the conference, in a gesture of solidarity with millions of Palestinian refugees wishing to freely exercise their right of return to their motherland—Palestine—from which they have been displaced for over 70 years.
The conference will be staged by PRC in cooperation with a number of NGOs operating in the Turkish territories. The event will tackle practical mechanisms to thwart the US Middle East peace plan, protect the internationally-recognized rights of the Palestinian people, and block all attempts to have Palestinian refugees resettle in other destinations.
Earlier, last month, a meeting was convened in Istanbul, February 02, to usher in the birth of the international campaign. The meeting brought together a consortium of pro-Palestine NGOs and human rights organizations operating in the UK, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, along with other countries in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.
“My Return” initiative is an international campaign launched by PRC in partnership with Palestinian and international human rights partners and NGOs in order to amass the largest possible number of signatures showing Palestinians’ unyielding commitment to their right of return to their homeland—a right guaranteed by International Law and relevant UN resolutions.
The campaign comes at a time when efforts have been intensified by Israel and its allies, most notably the US, to negate Palestinians’ refugee status and, as a result, rescind their right of return to their homeland and delegitimize any institution providing assistance to the refugees, such as UNRWA.
The right of return refers to the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland from which they have been expelled since 1948. It implies both first-generation refugees and their descendants, regardless of their place of birth or residence and their political, social, and economic condition.