Earlier this month, a doctor who had recently returned from Gaza provided shocking testimony about the scale of human suffering that Palestinians are enduring under an Israeli military onslaught that has entered its sixth month. There exist no moral arguments that can justify the continued sale of weapons to Israel by states that respect the principle of the universality of human rights.
During my work as the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Palestinian human rights defenders have emphasized to me the importance of a ban being placed on such sales, given that Israel has demonstrated time and again that it will use such weapons indiscriminately against Palestinians.
Any claims of Israeli self-defense in reaction to Hamas’s illegal, immoral and appalling attacks on 7 October – which, according to the UN special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, probably included horrific acts of sexual violence – have long since been invalidated by the disproportionality of the response.
The concept of proportionality in conflict is included in article 51 of the first additional protocol to the Geneva conventions. What we now have, instead, are ideological arguments for continued weapons sales, which I can only conclude place the value of Israeli lives over and above the value of Palestinian ones. This is unconscionable.
Human rights defenders work to uphold the rights agreed upon as universal in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and codified in the various covenants and treaties adopted since then. Last December, to mark the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, more than 150 countries made pledges outlining how they would make those rights a reality. Some of the strongest pledges came from the US, the UK, Germany, France and Canada, all of whom highlighted their steadfast support for human rights defenders.
Yet these same states continue to arm Israel, with devastating consequences for human rights and for human rights defenders. Between 2013 and 2022, 68% of weapon sales to Israel came from the US. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said four months ago that “far too many Palestinians have been killed”, yet the Biden administration has maintained its steady supply of arms to Israel, apparently unable to make the connection between Palestinian deaths and US supply of weaponry.
The cognitive dissonance is striking. Similarly, Germany increased military exports to Israel nearly tenfold in 2023 compared with 2022, according to data from the German economic ministry cited by Al Jazeera.
Earlier this month, I received the awful news that another two female human rights defenders in Gaza, along with scores of their family members, had been killed by Israeli bombs. Nour Naser Abu Al-Nour and Dana Yaghy both worked for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, where they documented violations against women and children. I knew Nour personally and also know that in her last days she continued to gather testimony to add to the mounting evidence of war crimes committed by Israel.
These are two of thousands of women killed in what must be described as a war on women and children, who account for a reported 72% of the more than 30,000 Palestinians estimated by the ministry of health in Gaza to have died since the beginning of the recent conflict. On 12 March, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (Unrwa) wrote on X that “[t]he number of children reported killed in just over 4 months in #Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars around the world combined”. That number is 12,300.
Canada, France and Germany have all proudly subscribed to a feminist foreign policy that “aspire[s] to transforming the practice of foreign policy to the greater benefit of women and girls everywhere”. In its 2023 National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, the US stated: “Wherever the rights of women and girls are under threat, so, too, is democracy, peace and stability.” I fully agree, which is why I am horrified by the situation in Gaza and what may follow.
Some human rights defenders may have been explicitly targeted, including journalists whose role in bearing witness to the horrors have helped us understand the levels of destruction wrought. As colleagues in UN special procedures and I wrote last month, the information we have received about the targeting of clearly identifiable journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces suggests a deliberate strategy to obstruct coverage of the conflict and to silence critical reporting. Some journalists in Gaza have been killed at work, covering the war while clearly visible in press vests and helmets, and some reportedly received death threats before the attacks. This is also a war on journalists.
We further noted that more than 122 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to UN reports. The US, UK, France, Canada and Germany are all members of the Media Freedom Coalition and signatories to the global pledge on media freedom, which commits them to promoting media freedom at home and abroad; Germany is currently co-chair. Recently, in remarks celebrating the work of Ukrainian journalists, the US under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs said: “[I]t is our commitment to continue to lift up, empower, advocate for, and resource the voices that are showing what is happening on the ground.”
Not, it would seem, if those voices are Palestinian.
Health workers are another category of human rights defenders who have been killed or wounded by Israeli weapons in alarming numbers. Israeli attacks on hospitals, medical facilities, ambulances and now aid convoys continue as if there were no international legal prohibitions, including in the first and fourth Geneva conventions, against such attacks. This is a war against humanitarian personnel: 162 staff members of Unrwa have been killed, as have 404 internally displaced persons sheltering in their premises.
Late last month, an Israeli tank attacked a “clearly marked” Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders) shelter in Al-Mawasi, killing two people. The MSF said it had provided the Israeli army with the shelter’s precise location as a precaution. No warning was given before the shelter was shelled.
Ambulances have been targeted. An Israeli air strike on an ambulance outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital in November reportedly killed at least 15 people. MSF reports that in recent weeks “patients have voiced their fear of entering the hospital due to systematic attacks in and around healthcare facilities across Gaza”. The UN security council, on which the US, UK and France hold permanent seats, has adopted repeated resolutions on the protection of humanitarian personnel and healthcare facilities in armed conflict.
All of this may have repercussions outside Israel-Palestine, too. While I was on an official country visit to Algeria in December, a human rights defender there told me that he was seeing increasing resistance to his promotion of international human rights standards and mechanisms because of the slaughter that was being permitted in Gaza. In meetings I have had on the sidelines of the human rights council in Geneva this week, states from the global south have railed against the “lecturing” they say they have traditionally received from states in the global north on the promotion and protection of human rights, while those same states now veto or abstain on votes at the security council calling for a ceasefire.
The international human rights architecture is creaking under the weight of the hypocrisy of countries who profess support for a rules-based order yet continue to provide weapons to Israel that kill more innocent Palestinians. Above all, this is a war on human rights.
Mary Lawlor is the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders