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List of humanitarian and human rights groups accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza
Organizations accusing Israel of genocide in ongoing conflict From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Hundreds of humanitarian and human rights organizations (NGOs, INGOs, and IGOs) have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza or implied Israel's actions may constitute genocide against Palestinians following the start of the Gaza war including a special committee and commission of inquiry of the United Nations, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Médecins Sans Frontières.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, humanitarian groups sometimes implied Israel's actions may constitute genocide without explicitly accusing Israel of genocide. Following the November 2024 International Criminal Court issuing of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant due to alleged use of starvation as a weapon of warfare,[1][2] groups overwhelmingly shifted to making explicit allegations of genocide.
Humanitarian groups have characterized Israel as engaging in four of the five acts constituting genocide under Article 2 of the Genocide Convention,[a] with the only absent allegation being the forcible transfer of children. The most frequent allegation made is of inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group. Specific acts cited by groups include allegations of collective punishment; restricting access to food, water, fuel, and electricity to induce famine; destruction of medical services; destruction of civilian infrastructure; sexual violence; shooting civilians; bombing civilians; and using chemical weapons on civilians.
Additional actions by Israel commonly cited by humanitarian groups as proof of genocidal intent include the use of dehumanizing language; population transfer; failure to distinguish between Hamas combatants and noncombatants (such as doctors) in official justifications; failure to distinguish between Hamas and civilians in official justifications; minimizing civilian protection obligations; ignoring ICJ demands of deescalating the conflict; ignoring or downplaying UN, ICJ, and humanitarian alerts of mass civilian death; the amount of health workers killed during the conflict; the amount of journalists killed during the conflict; and statements by state officials such as references to biblical passages cited by scholars as genocidal.
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United Nations
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Officials of the United Nations have made statements alluding to the Gaza genocide throughout the course of the war.
- In November 2023, a group of UN special rapporteurs wrote, "We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide."[66][67] UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation Pedro Arrojo said that based on the Rome Statute, which counts "deprivation of access to food or medicine, among others" as a form of extermination, "even if there is no clear intention, the data show that the war is heading towards genocide".[68] A group of UN human rights experts said there was "evidence of increasing genocidal incitement" against Palestinians.[69][70]
- In response to a January 2024 Times of Israel report that the Israeli government was in talks with the Congolese government to take Palestinian refugees from Gaza, the UN special rapporteur Balakrishnan Rajagopal said, "Forcible transfer of Gazan population is an act of genocide."[71][72]
- In May 2024, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Reem Alsalem said that Palestinian women "are experiencing a full-blown genocide. They are being exterminated. There are few places in the world where we've seen something like this."[73][74] The UNHCR Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, said that Israel's destruction of Gaza "constitutes an act of genocide as well because the purpose of that destruction, exceeding 70 to 80 per cent across Gaza, is to make the place uninhabitable".[75]
- In October 2024, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report that accused the Israeli military of "the crime against humanity of extermination" for killing health workers and targeting health facilities.[76][77]
- On 8 November 2024, the United Nations human rights office condemned many violations of international law that "could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even 'genocide'", calling on third states to prevent "atrocity crimes".[78][79]
- On 14 November 2024, the UN Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices concluded that they are consistent with the characteristics of genocide.[80][81]
- In February 2025, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri said that Israel is committing a genocide and is working to "slow down its genocide through a starvation campaign", concluding that the United States and Germany were complicit in the ensuing famine.[82]
- In May 2025, twenty UN independent experts and four working groups issued a statement accusing Israel of genocide and criticising the debate over the genocide terminology: "While States debate terminology – is it or is it not genocide? – Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity ... States must act swiftly to end the unfolding genocide, dismantle apartheid, and secure a future in which Palestinians and Israelis coexist in freedom and dignity."[83]
- In May 2025, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Tom Fletcher urged world leaders to act decisively to prevent genocide in Gaza.[84][85] The US has vetoed UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions on Gaza six times, remaining the sole opponent while all 14 other members backed the calls.[86][87]
- In September 2025, the UN Human Rights Council's Independent International Commission of Inquiry issued a report concluding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Commission found reasonable grounds to determine that Israeli authorities and security forces have committed, and continue to commit, four of the five genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.[88][89] The Commission further determined that genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference from the totality of evidence, and that Israeli political and military leaders have incited the commission of genocide.[88][89] The Commission has characterised its findings as the most authoritative UN determination to date on the Gaza war.[89][90][91] Israeli officials, the US State Department, and the US-and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) condemned the report. Netanyahu denied its core findings on starvation, while the GHF called the report a collection of "falsehoods" that "rewards bad actors and undermines" humanitarian efforts.[90][91]
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Other international organizations
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In February 2024 the then-African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki said: "Gaza is being completely annihilated and its people are deprived of all their rights. We denounce the Israeli operation, which has no parallel in the history of humanity."[92] The official communiqué of the 38th summit of the African Union stated that "Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and must be prosecuted internationally."[93]
On 26 March, Pakistan's OIC representative said that Israel's desire for a "final solution to the Palestinian question is plain for all to see, as its forces encircle Rafah like vultures and its ravenous land grab continues unabated".[94] In May 2024, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation called on member states to end "the export of weapons and ammunition used by its army to perpetrate the crime of genocide in Gaza".[95]
On 16 August 2025, 31 Arab and Islamic countries and the Arab League released a joint statement condemning "Israel's crimes of aggression, genocide, and ethnic cleansing" in Gaza, and highlighted the need to ensure access to humanitarian aid to "halt the systematic starvation policy used by Israel as a weapon of genocide."[96] A month later, the European Parliament passed a resolution on the Gaza war, which in its initial form mentioned "genocidal actions" from Israel, but this was ultimately omitted at the request of the European People's Party.[97][98]
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Footnotes
- Article 2 of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" through acts such as (a) murder, (b) inflicting serious bodily or mental harm, (c) inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births, and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[3]
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References
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