NEW YORK CITY: The UN Human Rights Office on Friday added 61 companies to its database of businesses involved with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The total number of companies on the list now stands at 214, from 11 countries. Of those, 200 were found to be contributing to adverse effects on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The remaining 14 were considered to be “directly linked” to such harm, according to the updated report.

“This report is another reminder to companies that they have human rights responsibilities and are expected to conduct due diligence to ensure that they do not become involved in human rights violations or abuses,” said Volker Turk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights.

The latest update centered on businesses operating in the agricultural, transportation, storage, waste-management, energy, and food and hospitality services sectors.

Following a public call for input in 2024, the Human Rights Office received submissions detailing concerns about 596 businesses. It reviewed 215 of them, including previously listed companies, for last year’s report, and has now assessed 126 of the remaining 381.

Of those examined this year, 61 were added to the list. Five previously listed companies were removed after the office determined they were no longer involved in activities warranting inclusion. Reviews of the remaining businesses continue.

For the first time, the report classified each company’s involvement with settlements based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which defines three tiers.

The most serious level, “causation,” applies when a company’s activities alone are sufficient to impair a person’s enjoyment of a human right. “Contribution” covers cases in which a business’s activities combine with those of another actor to cause that harm. “Direct linkage” applies when a firm’s operations, products or services are directly linked with adverse effects on human rights. No company was found to have reached the threshold for causation.

The report urged businesses to “meet their own responsibility to respect human rights under widely accepted international standards.”

It adds: “Where business enterprises are involved in listed activities, they should take appropriate action to address the adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved.”

The report stresses that governments also have obligations: “States must take appropriate steps to ensure, through judicial, administrative, legislative or other appropriate means, that when business-related human rights abuses occur within their territory and/or their jurisdiction, those affected have access to effective remedies, consistent with international law.”

The update came shortly after the office published reports examining the roles of business and economic interests in human rights abuses linked to the ongoing conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar.

The database, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016, was first published in February 2020, when it listed 112 companies. It was revised in 2023 and again in 2025. Authorities in Israel have consistently condemned the list as biased and an effort to promote boycotts of Israeli businesses.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled in an advisory opinion that Israel’s continuing presence in occupied Palestinian territories was unlawful, that settlement activity breached international law, and states were obliged not to render aid or assistance in maintaining this situation.