UN rights staff demand Gaza war be called genocide

Genocide. That’s the word more than 500 staff at the United Nations human rights office say their boss must use to describe Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed nearly 63,000 Palestinians in less than two years and pushed the besegied Strip into famine. 

In a letter sent Wednesday to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, employees said Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal threshold for genocide and accused the organisation of failing to speak out.

“OHCHR has a strong legal and moral responsibility to denounce acts of genocide,” the letter said, Reuters reported. “Failing to denounce an unfolding genocide undermines the credibility of the UN and the human rights system itself.”

The letter compared the UN’s inaction over Gaza to its widely criticised failure to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which killed more than a million people.

Rights groups including Amnesty International, along with UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, have already called Israel’s campaign a genocide. However, the UN itself has stopped short of using the term, insisting genocide determinations are for international courts.

South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in 2023, but a ruling on the merits could take years.