More than 500 employees at the Geneva-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) signed a letter urging High Commissioner Volker Turk to publicly describe the war in Gaza as a genocide. Staff asserted that reporting by UN mechanisms and independent experts meets the legal threshold for genocide and called for OHCHR to reflect that assessment explicitly in public communications. Concerned staff warned that failing to denounce an unfolding genocide would erode OHCHR's credibility and damage the global human rights system, expressed frustration at reported violations and civilian impacts, and invoked the UN's silence during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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.
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.
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