A report published by the Office documents attacks carried out between 12 October 2023 and 30 June 2024, raises serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law. Medical personnel and hospitals are specifically protected under international humanitarian law, provided they do not commit – or are not used to commit, outside their...
Briefing the Security Council in New York, Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Khaled Khiari, warned the Middle East was witnessing another dangerous escalation. He said that attacks in Israel and Yemen, as well as in the Red Sea, are of grave concern, and warned that further...
On 26 December, Israeli forces struck Sana’a International Airport, Red Sea ports and power stations. Tedros was at the airport when it was hit, along with Mr. Harneis and other members of a UN party negotiating the release of several UN workers held hostage by Ansar Allah, the de facto...
Why have the warrants been issued? The ICC can only investigate and prosecute if the national judicial system of the countries concerned are not, in the eyes of the Court, conducting genuine investigations or prosecutions for the same alleged crimes. “The primary responsibility is for the national judicial systems,” Fadil...
It details the obligations for Israel, third-party States and the UN to bring to an end the unlawful occupation, according to the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. “Israel’s internationally wrongful acts give rise to State responsibility, not only for...
“That’s why I have written directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express profound concern about draft legislation that could prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” he said at the Security Council stakeout in New York. He said such a measure would suffocate...
The development comes as the UN’s top official in Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert began an official visit to Israel to meet senior government officials, after insisting that “there is no military solution that will make either side safer”. In Lebanon, it has been reported that people in the south received phone and...
On the second and final day of preliminary hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel’s legal team insisted that the twin military objectives were to eradicate the existential threat posed by Hamas militants and to free some 136 hostages still held in the war-shattered enclave. “Israel is in...
The development came amid the ongoing and massive Israeli bombardment across the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October that left some 1,200 Israeli and foreign nationals dead in southern Israel and some 250 taken hostage. Laying out their case, the South African legal team told...
Volker Türk highlighted the dichotomy at the border crossing, describing it as a “lifeline” for the 2.3 million residents of Gaza over the past month, although “unjustly, outrageously thin.” But it is also “the gates to a living nightmare”, he continued, as people in Gaza “have been suffocating, under persistent...
Harmful disinformation about the ongoing conflict in the wake of the 7 October attacks by Hamas against Israel continues to circulate online, with potentially dangerous consequences on the ground. While misinformation refers to the accidental spread of falsehoods, disinformation can be circulated intentionally by State or non-State actors, including during...
The UN Secretary-General condemned “in the strongest terms” the attack by Hamas against Israeli towns, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Saturday. “The attacks have so far claimed numerous Israeli civilian lives and injured many hundreds,” Mr. Dujarric said. “The Secretary-General is appalled by reports that civilians have been attacked...