France has reportedly reversed its decision to bar veteran Palestinian human rights defender Shawan Jabarin from entering the country, days after authorities denied him a visa. Jabarin, the director of the Ramallah-based rights group Al-Haq, has now obtained the documents needed to travel following mounting criticism of the government’s move to exclude him, French MP Sabrina Sebaihi said on Saturday. He had been due to appear before the European Parliament’s human rights committee in Strasbourg and hold high-level meetings in Paris and Brussels as part of an advocacy tour focused on accountability for Israeli violations in Palestine.

French authorities had initially refused to issue Jabarin a visa, blocking him from taking part in briefings at the French parliament, foreign ministry and the Council of Europe, as well as meetings at the European Parliament and with Belgian officials. It was the second time since October that he had been denied entry to the Schengen area, with officials citing vague "threats to public order or internal security" without providing evidence. Rights organisations condemned the move as an alarming attack on Palestinian civil society and an attempt to stifle scrutiny of Israel’s human rights violations at European institutions.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others pointed out that France had once honoured Al-Haq with the French Republic’s Human Rights Prize in 2018, yet was now shutting out its director while officials suspected of war crimes continue to move freely across Europe. Jabarin himself described the visa refusal as a "new sanction", coming on top of US measures imposed on Al-Haq over its work with the International Criminal Court. Jabarin heads Al-Haq, Palestine’s oldest human rights organisation, which has faced decades of Israeli repression and was designated a "terrorist organisation" by Israel in 2021, a move several European governments said was unsupported by evidence. The French government has not publicly explained why it has now reversed course on his visa, or whether the decision will allow him to travel freely to and from the Schengen area in future.