Le 9 décembre est la journée internationale de prévention et de commémoration des crimes de génocide
Une lettre a été remise à la direction de la CSSF :
Extrait:
“En vertu de la Convention sur le génocide, le Luxembourg a l’obligation négative de ne pas commettre ni être complice d’un génocide, ainsi que des obligations positives de prévenir et de punir le génocide”
Lors du piquet Jill Manchester a appelé la direction de la CSSF et avant tout à gouvernement.lu à revenir sur l’autorisation donnée:
On 9 December, UN Genocide Day, more than 20 people in Luxembourg, together with civil-society activists in Ireland, stood together to call out the role of our states and financial authorities in enabling genocide through the Israel Bond programme. We demanded that they acknowledge the words of the UN Secretary-General when he reminded us that:
“Preventing genocide is a shared duty. Genocide is an abomination. It is a horrendous crime. And it is the solemn duty of all States to prevent and punish it. This is the pledge the world made with the adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. We promised ‘never again’. States bear the primary obligation for preventing and punishing genocide. I urge all Governments to fully implement the Convention and hold perpetrators to account.”
Under the Genocide Convention, once a State becomes aware — or reasonably should have become aware — of a serious risk of genocide, it has a positive duty to act: using all means reasonably available to prevent genocide. To fail to act risks being complicit in genocide. As soon as the ICJ declared the “imminent risk of genocide” for the Palestinian people in January 2024, the State of Luxembourg had the legal obligation to warn its state bodies and businesses of their risk of being complicit in genocide.
The legal situation is clear: a State is responsible for complicity if “its organs were aware that genocide was about to be committed or was under way, and if the aid and assistance supplied, from the moment they became so aware onwards, to the perpetrators of the criminal acts… enabled or facilitated the commission of the acts.”
We have written to the Directors and Board of Governors of the CSSF to clearly state that by authorising Israel Bonds that pour money into a state accused of committing genocide, regulators and states are at risk of complicity by providing aid or assistance that enables or facilitates the crime of genocide. Irish figures give estimates of the bonds raising in the region of 25 million euros a month to directly support Israel at war.
We call on the Governors to request a full reassessment of their legal compliance with the Genocide Convention and all relevant international law.
We note that the CSSF authorised the Israel Bond programme in September 2025 after Israel requested a transfer from Ireland to Luxembourg. We asked the Governors if they are aware that this transfer request allowed Israel continued impunity and enabled it to evade ongoing scrutiny in Ireland, where there was immense public pressure to refuse Israel Bonds in the streets, and a parliamentary Finance Committee report on 5 August.
The report found that the Israel Bonds programme “further assists the financing of Israel’s violations of human rights and contravening international law”. It affirmed the obligations of the Central Bank to comply with international law and recommended the exercise of due diligence in relation to international law, the Prospectus Regulation, and specifically Article 88 on Fundamental Human Rights.
The transfer by the CBI of the State of Israel Bond Issuance prospectus to the CSSF in Luxembourg sometime prior to the end of August 2025, at Israel’s request, has been used by the CBI as cover for not carrying out the recommendations contained in the Report. We note that under the EU Prospectus Regulation both Ireland and Luxembourg had the “sole and absolute discretion” to accept or refuse any such request for transfer. With a lawsuit challenging the Central Bank of Ireland over failure to protect investors from risk, and with a series of strong recommendations for legal advice to ensure compliance with international law, this transfer should have been refused.
In a letter to the Government, the CSSF wrote that it “neither has the means nor the competence to assess whether such conventions or treaties apply to a specific situation — in this instance, particularly with regard to the current situation in the Gaza Strip.”
They asked the Government to take a position on restrictive measures that would allow them to refuse the Israel Bond prospectus. The Government refused to do so and voted against a parliamentary motion requesting such a position.
On UN Genocide Day, we once again highlight that the Government and the CSSF, a state body, are failing in their legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide. They are helping shield Israel from accountability.
In Francesca Albanese’s recent report Gaza: A Collective Crime, she describes the ongoing genocide in Gaza as a “collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential Third States that have enabled longstanding systemic violations of international law by Israel. This live-streamed atrocity has been facilitated through Third States’ direct support, material aid, diplomatic protection. The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met and justice is upheld.”
We call on the influential figures on the Board of Governors to use your authority to urge the CSSF to reevaluate its approval of the Israeli government bonds and their legal compliance with international law.
Helen Mahoney, Coordinator, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Stop Funding Genocide Campaign:
“The sale of Israel Bonds in the EU is enabled jointly by the Central Bank of Ireland — Israel Bonds’ home member state and a pivotal cog in Israel’s EU fundraising — and by the CSSF, which approved these sales in September. This shameful complicity in genocide, occupation, apartheid and crimes against the Palestinian people must end. The campaign in Ireland forced these bonds out of Ireland; together in Luxembourg and Ireland we will force them out of Europe.”