HIC Addresses HLPF Review of Israel

Habitat International Coalition Intervention at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development on Israel’s VNR

The Habitat International Coalition-Housing and Land Rights Network participated in the High-Level Political Forum on the 2025 Agenda for Sustainable Development, held last week from July 14-23, under the theme Promoting sustainable, inclusive, science-based, and evidence-based solutions to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring that no individual or community is left behind.

The statement was delivered by Mr. Joseph Schechla, Regional Coordinator of the Housing and Land Rights Network, during the eleventh meeting of the Voluntary National Review (VNR), commenting on the voluntary report submitted by the State of Israel for the review of the Sustainable Development Goals: (3) Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all times; (5) Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; (8) Promote sustainable, inclusive, and productive economic growth to create decent work opportunities for all; (14) Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development; (17) Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

You can view the text of the statement below:

Thank you, Mr. President:

We remind of the need for multilateralism, human rights-based development and leaving no one behind.

Reading this VNR is a dystopian exercise. While feigning victimhood, it narrates like part of Israel’s forever-war effort.

This VNR evades the core development issues, as Israel erases the civilization that preceded its settler colony.

As we informed this Forum in 2019, Israel’s lopsided development reflects two-tiered civil status: a superior class of “Jewish nationals” and inferior status for mere “citizens.” Its apartheid-chartered parastatal development institutions and their racist affiliates pursue development and prosperity for settlers at the expense of the country’s rightful owners, and all this amid democide, ecocide, attacking health systems and industrializing starvation as a weapon of war.

The VNR even falsifies the state’s territory with maps and numbers, claiming all historic Palestine from the River to the Sea, plus parts of Syria.

With Israeli-Jewish population trends in flux, the VNR projects Israel will reduce the Indigenous Palestinian Arab proportion of the population by 2065 to under 20%.

The focus on technical advances masks their use as instruments of death. Digital progress aside, this VNR’s main message is Israel’s raison d’état and development project are practicing sustainable genocide; i.e., inflicting maximum harm on the Indigenous Palestinian People in perpetuity, with a widening footprint across the region.

We foresee this delegitimizing state behavior will continue to harm all parties for generations yet to come.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Photo on front page: The Director General of the Ministry of Environmental Protection Rami Rosen presenting the Israeli VNR. Source: Kiara Worth/IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Photo on this page: Joseph Schechla making the Major Groups oral intervention at Israel’s VNR presentation at the HLPF, 21 July 2025. Source: Kiara Worth/IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletin.