UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations has called on Israel to dismantle its West Bank separation barrier as it marked the 5th anniversary of the International Court of Justice's verdict declaring the barrier illegal and a violation of Palestinian rights. The barrier separates Israel from the West Bank and in places cuts into Palestinian territory and severely restricts the movement of tens of thousands of people, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights Office said Thursday. Israel started building barrier in 2002 and 85 per cent of has been erected inside the West Bank, and not on the 1949 "green" armistice line separating Israel from the occupied territory. Over 35,000 Palestinians are trapped in the "closed area" between the barrier and the "green line," nearly 10,000 of whom need special "permanent resident permits" to enter the West Bank. Palestinians wishing to enter the closed area for family, economic, health or educational reasons need "visitor permits," which are difficult to obtain from the Israeli government, it said. "Life of people in the West Bank and in the closed area is reduced to a piece of paper," Michael Baily, of the British non-governmental organization Oxfam, told the news conference, referring to the permits. He urged the international community to pressure Israel toward implementing the ICJ advisory opinion. UN officials have charged that the route Israel was choosing for the barrier was "not necessary to attain its security measures." In the five years since the Advisory Opinion was issued, Israel continues to disregard the views of the ICJ, and the Wall remains under construction, being 60 per cent completed, the West Bank branch of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said. The Wall is but one element of the wider system of severe restrictions on the freedom of movement imposed by the Israeli authorities on Palestinian residents of the West Bank, according to a press release issued by OHCHR. At present, more than 600 closures block Palestinians movement in the West Bank, while an increasingly segregated road system restrict travel for them while Israelis can move freely. Such constraints not only curtail Palestinians freedom of movement, but also impede a host of other human rights, including the right to work, health, education and an adequate standard of living. And Palestinian residents currently lack meaningful access to an effective remedy judicial or otherwise for their plight, OHCHR said, calling on Israel to comply with the ICJs Advisory Opinion and make reparations for any damage caused. For his part, Maxwell Gaylard, the top UN humanitarian official in the occupied Palestinian territory, said today in Jerusalem that there is still time to change the situation. UN humanitarian agencies, he added, are calling for a freeze in the construction of the barrier in the West Bank and its re-routing to the Green Line, in light of both the Advisory Opinion and the humanitarian impact.