UN Inquiry Concludes Israeli Actions In Gaza Meets Legal Definition Of Genocide
On Sept. 16, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, a subsidiary body of the Human Rights Council, concluded, on reasonable grounds, that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023.
The CoI was established in 2021 to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since April 13, 2021.
Engaging with the question of genocide in the latest report, the CoI found that four prohibited acts were carried out, namely, killings, causing serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
As the CoI concluded, these prohibited acts were committed by the Israeli authorities and security forces with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. To make this determination, the CoI is said to have relied on extensive evidence of “systematic and unprecedented killings, destruction of homes and cultural sites, deliberate starvation, denial of healthcare, sexual and gender based violence, and the direct targeting of children.”
Genocide, sometimes referred to as the crime of crimes, defined in Article II of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), is an identity-based crime.
It is not enough to show the existence of the prohibited acts as listed in Article II, but they are to be directed against one of the protected groups (such as ethnic, religious, national or racial group) with the specific intent to destroy the groups in whole or in part. Because of the requirement of the specific intent, the crime is difficult to prove.
The Genocide Convention requires States to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, and as explained by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2007 judgment in the case of Bosnia, the duty to prevent arises at the instant the State learns or should have learned of the serious risk of genocide.
You can read the rest of Ewelina Ochab’s post at Forbes.com.
Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab is a human rights advocate, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. She’s authored the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East” and more than 30 UN reports. She works on the topic of genocide and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities around the world. She is on X @EwelinaUO.