NEW YORK, (PIC)
Amnesty International welcomed a UN report on Wednesday that concluded Israel committed “genocide” in Gaza, stating that “it is time to prevent genocide and implement the UN Security Council resolution for an immediate ceasefire.”
On Tuesday evening, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, said in a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that Israel committed the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
In response, the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, said in a statement that the UN report is “very important and should serve as a necessary call to action for countries.”
She emphasized that countries around the world “must fulfill their obligations under the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide and take concrete measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza.”
Callamard said, “It is time to act to prevent genocide, and other countries must exert political pressure on the warring parties to implement the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.”
She called on the world to “use its influence to insist on Israel’s commitment to the resolution, including stopping the bombing and lifting restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid.”
She continued, “Countries must impose a comprehensive weapons embargo on all parties to the conflict and exert pressure on Hamas and other armed groups to release all civilian hostages.”
She said that “a permanent ceasefire remains the best way to enforce the temporary measures ordered by the International Court of Justice to prevent genocide, further crimes, and civilian suffering.”
Callamard stressed that countries must focus their efforts on translating calls for a ceasefire in Gaza into “concrete reality.”
In the UN report, Albanese explained that “Israel committed three acts of genocide: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group of people, intentionally imposing living conditions on the group with the aim of wholly or partially destroying them physically, and imposing measures to prevent reproduction within the group,” according to the United Nations News website.
She said that “calls for violent genocide issued by senior Israeli officials with authority and directed at soldiers stationed on the ground are clear evidence of explicit and public encouragement to commit genocide.”
The Israeli war on Gaza since October 7th last year has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties, most of them children and women, and massive destruction, humanitarian disaster, and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly.
