Over 500 staff at the UN human rights office have urged Chief Volker Turk to declare Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, according to Reuters.
In a letter, they argued the scale of killings and destruction meets the legal definition and warned that silence would damage the UN’s credibility, recalling its failure during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Israel rejects the accusation, citing self-defense after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Since then, nearly 63,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, with parts of the enclave facing famine.
Rights groups and some UN experts already call it genocide, though the UN itself says such judgments rest with international courts. South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is still pending, Reuters reported.
