Dear Ms. Virginia Gamba, Acting Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and Ms. Mô Bleeker, Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect,
We, the undersigned Palestinian human rights organizations, write to you once more as the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza continues to unfold and intensify. We have reached a moment of existential reckoning, as we fear the ongoing genocide is entering its final and irreversible stage, with Israel intensifying its campaign of mass killings and large-scale destruction, alongside an escalating threat of forcibly expelling Palestinians from their homeland.
Since your last public statement issued in the context of Israel’s unilateral breach of the ceasefire agreement, the situation for Palestinians in Gaza has only deteriorated. We therefore reiterate our urgent call for you to issue an unequivocal public statement that explicitly acknowledges the genocidal nature of Israel’s actions in Gaza and urges all States Parties to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) to fulfill their legal obligations, including to prevent genocide.
What Is Happening in Gaza:
In early May 2025, Israel’s security cabinet unanimously approved a plan to further escalate its military assault on Gaza with the declared aim of taking over the territory, forcibly transferring the Palestinian population to southern Gaza, and potentially deporting them outside of Palestine. Al Mezan warned that this plan marked the final stage of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
This plan is no longer a looming threat: it is being actively implemented. The Israeli military is now carrying out the plan under the codename “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” signaling a formal and organized phase of its implementation. In recent days, Israeli atrocities in Gaza have escalated dramatically, accompanied by a new wave of forced displacement orders directed at a population that has already been displaced countless times. The entire territory is under blockade and siege. Ninety-two percent of homes in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged. Every shelter is overcrowded. Conditions in displacement camps are unfit for human life. There is nowhere to go and nowhere is safe.
This is unfolding while Israeli authorities have deliberately continued to block the entry of water, food, medicine, and other essential supplies into Gaza since 2 March 2025. Palestinian children are starving. Nursing mothers can no longer breastfeed their babies. Pregnant women are giving birth prematurely to underweight infants, while miscarriage rates continue to rise. Emergency services are paralyzed. Medical and civil defense teams cannot reach the wounded. Thousands of dead bodies remain trapped beneath the rubble, unrecovered and unaccounted for. The healthcare system is collapsing, overwhelmed, under-resourced, and incapable of providing even the most basic care.
On 19 May 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced Israel would allow a “minimal” amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza, “just enough to prevent hunger”. That same day, five aid trucks were permitted entry, marking the first time any aid had reached Gaza in over two and half months of total siege and blockade. Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher described this as merely a “drop in the ocean,” warning that without immediate and large-scale humanitarian relief, 14,000 Palestinian children could die within the next 48 hours.
Our organizations maintain that this is profoundly inadequate in the face of a man-made famine affecting over two million Palestinians and serves as a smokescreen for the continued execution of Israel’s genocide and its plan to annex and resettle Gaza. As long as Israel’s genocidal violence persists, no meaningful or safe aid distribution is possible. Furthermore, Israel is actively advancing the implementation of an aid distribution plan that serves its settler-colonial and genocidal objectives. This plan has already been categorically rejected by the Secretary-General and the Humanitarian Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Palestinians in Gaza are no longer living, they are trapped in conditions that defy life itself, waiting to die, whether from starvation, disease, or bombs. The window for action is rapidly closing. Every hour of inaction results in more Palestinians killed, more Palestinian families erased, and more life-sustaining infrastructure destroyed.
Israel’s objective is clear: to depopulate Gaza, destroy its people, and seize the land. Israeli leaders have made this intent explicit, and their military is carrying it out in full view of the world. What enables this atrocity is the continued failure of the international community to enforce respect for international law.
Our Urgent Demands:
The United Nations (UN) has historically borne a specific responsibility toward the Palestinian people, a responsibility that has consistently fallen short as Palestinians continue to be denied their inalienable rights to self-determination and return amidst 77 years of ongoing Nakba. The establishment of the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect was grounded in the recognition that the UN and its Member States had failed to prevent the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. Your mandates were created precisely so that such a failure would never happen again.
While we take note of the most recent public statement issued on 19 March 2025 by the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, we cannot overlook that it failed to publicly acknowledge the recent findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel that Israeli authorities have committed at least two genocidal acts as defined in the Genocide Convention: deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. We also regret that our previous letter addressed to your office on 27 March 2025 has remained unanswered.
In recent weeks, numerous UN offices and officials have sounded grave and escalating alarms over the catastrophic situation unfolding in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). Among them, we commend Mr. Tom Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, who addressed the UN Security Council in powerful and unequivocal terms, asking: “What more evidence do you need now? Will you act decisively to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law? Or will you say instead that ‘we did all we could?’”
We now once again turn to you, in your capacity as the Acting Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, to urgently request that you fulfill your Mandates exhaustively and without delay by taking all necessary measures to prevent yet another failure by the UN and the broader international community to prevent and stop genocide.
This includes rectifying the serious omission in your 19 March 2025 statement by issuing an updated and unequivocal public declaration that responds to the escalating reality on the ground and reflects the full gravity of the situation, specifically by acknowledging the findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry that genocidal acts have been committed against Palestinians in Gaza.
We urge you to take the following actions:
- Issue a public statement that unequivocally recognizes the genocidal nature of Israel’s actions in Gaza and calls on all UN Member States to fulfill their legal obligations under the Genocide Convention and broader international law by taking immediate and concrete steps to prevent further acts of genocide.
- Formally brief the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council on the situation in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, including a clear assessment of the risk of genocide, the nature of the acts being committed, and the international community’s legal obligations to prevent further atrocity crimes.
- Actively engage with UN Member States, particularly those with influence, to urge the use of all available diplomatic, legal, and economic measures to ensure respect for international law, compel Israel to halt ongoing violations, and to prevent further escalation of atrocity crimes against the Palestinian people.
- Advocate for and support independent, international investigations into atrocity crimes committed against the Palestinian people, including by acknowledging the findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry that Israeli authorities have committed genocidal acts.
This is not a moment for cautious language. Israel is erasing the existence of the Palestinian people in Gaza in real time. Silence is a form of complicity. The ongoing situation demands that the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect loudly and unequivocally sound the international alarm on the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Anything less will not only embolden the perpetrators but also betray the very purpose for which this Office was established.
Sincerely,
The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC), comprising:
- Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association
- Aldameer Association for Human
- Al-Haq
- Al Mezan Center for Human
- The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
- Defence for Children International – Palestine
- Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies
- Hurryyat - Centre for Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights
- Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights
- Independent Commission for Human Rights (Observer)
- Muatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (Observer)