Published 01/09/2025 18:36
Hundreds of United Nations High Commissioner Office for Human Rights (UNUDH) asked the agency’s head Volker Turk who explicitly describe the war in Gaza as a genocide.
The letter, sent on Wednesday (28) and seen by the Agency Reuters, was signed by a committee that represents more than 500 employees worldwide-about a quarter of the entity’s global workforce. In the text, the signatories state that the legal criteria to characterize genocide have already been met, citing the scale, reach and nature of violations documented in almost two years of conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“The UNUDH has a strong legal and moral responsibility to denounce acts of genocide,” says the letter. For employees, failing to use the term of Minas Gerais the credibility not only of the High Commissioner, but of the entire international human rights system. The document also mentions the moral failure of the UN against Rwanda genocide in 1994, when more than 1 million people were killed.
Reactions and tensions
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel has rejected the content of the letter, stating that it does not respond to “internal letters of UN employees, even if they are false, unfounded and blinded with obsessive hatred against Israel.” The Israeli government had previously denied accusations of genocide, maintaining that its performance in Gaza fits into the right to self -defense after Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, which left 1,200 dead and resulted in 251 hostages.
Since then, the Israeli military offensive has already caused almost 63,000 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health of Gaza. In addition, UN monitoring warns of hunger and severe malnutrition in parts of the territory.
Legal and political debate
Although organizations such as Amnesty International and Independent UN experts, such as Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, already use the term genocide to describe war, the UN itself does not yet do so. Multilateral system authorities argue that the formal classification is for international courts.
In 2023, South Africa filed a lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice, accusing the country of genocide in Gaza. The case has not yet been tried in its merit, and the processing may take years.
Internal division
The episode also exposes tensions within the UN itself. In response to the letter, Turk acknowledged the feeling of “moral indignation” of his employees and the frustration with the inability of the international community to end the conflict. He asked, however, that the team keep the unit of the office “in the face of such adversity.”
UNUDH spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani confirmed that the issue has been discussed internally and admitted that the situation in Gaza “deeply shook” the organization, which attempts to document facts and sound the alarm in the face of the escalation of violence.
Source: vermelho.org.br
