Hundreds of United Nations staff have made an appeal to the body’s human rights chief Volker Turk to publicly describe the war in Gaza as a “genocide”, saying his office’s failure to do so undermines the global rights protection system.
The appeal was made in a letter, signed by the Staff Committee on behalf of more than 500 employees at the Geneva-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and sent to Turk on Wednesday. A copy of the letter was obtained by Al Jazeera.
The letter said “a broad cross-section” of OHCHR staff believed that the legal threshold for genocide had been met in the case of Israel’s nearly two-year war in Gaza, “based on extensive reporting by UN mechanisms”, as well as independent experts.
Concerned staff felt that the OHCHR should “reflect this assessment more explicitly in its public communications”, and that the failure to do so “risks eroding OHCHR’s credibility as leading authority on human rights for everyone everywhere”.
The letter added that OHCHR staff felt “profound frustration at the scale, scope, and nature of reported violations and their impact on civilians, especially women and children”.
It urged the OHCHR to avoid repeating the mistakes of history, noting that the UN’s “silence” during the 1994 Rwandan genocide that killed more than 1 million people was “often cited as one of [its] greatest moral failures”.
“OHCHR has a strong legal and moral responsibility to denounce acts of genocide,” the letter continued. “Failing to denounce an unfolding genocide undermines the credibility of the UN and the human rights system itself.”
At least 62,966 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 160,000 wounded during the war, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, while more than 300 people – including 121 children – have starved to death, as famine has been confirmed in part of the enclave.
Turk: ‘Moral indignation’ shared
In Turk’s response to the letter, reported by the Reuters news agency, the UN rights chief said the staff had raised important concerns.
“I know we all share a feeling of moral indignation at the horrors we are witnessing, as well as frustration in the face of the international community’s inability to bring this situation to an end,” he said, adding a call for staff to “remain united as an Office in the face of such adversity”.
Asked to comment on the leaked letter, OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told the news agency that the war in Gaza had “shaken us all to our core” and created difficult circumstances for staff documenting the unfolding abuses to prompt global action.
“There have been and will continue to be discussions internally on how to move forward,” she told Reuters.
Genocide accusations growing
While a growing number of world leaders, including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide, the UN has not used the term, with UN officials having said it is up to international courts to determine genocide.
South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice in 2023, but it is yet to make its way through the court.
Some rights groups, such as Amnesty International, as well as the independent UN expert Francesca Albanese, have also used the term.
Israel rejects accusations of genocide in Gaza, claiming it is acting in accordance with its right to self-defence in response to the deadly Hamas attacks in October 2023, in which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 taken captive.
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