Palestine tables two draft resolutions at UN General Assembly
Palestine’s mission to the United Nations tabled two draft resolutions at the UN General Assembly on Thursday evening, which will be voted on December 11 when the Emergency Special Session on Palestine resumes.
The first draft resolution, among several statements, “demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, as well as immediate access to “humanitarian assistance indispensable” to the survival of its population.
The second draft resolution focuses on the status of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), deploring Israel’s judicial and physical attacks on the agency and “underscores that UNRWA remains the backbone of humanitarian response in Gaza”.
Read the full text of both draft resolutions in the post below:
Western denials of Israel’s genocide ‘a case-study in political cynicism’: UN expert
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, said facts of law are being ignored and prejudice and ideology has prevailed among Western politicians, who are protecting Israel as it perpetrates genocide in Gaza.
“One day the blunt denial of the Israeli genocide in Gaza by many Western politicians will be a case-study in political cynicism,” Albanese wrote in a post on social media.
The UN’s top expert on Palestine said she has written two reports this year alone that had analysed Israel’s “acts of genocide” and also placed the Israeli state’s “intent” to commit genocide against Palestinians in a historical context.
WHO chief says attacks on healthcare a ‘new normal’ in conflict
From Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine to conflicts in Afghanistan, Haiti, Myanmar and Sudan, attacking healthcare centres has become a new worrying trend, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
So far in 2024, the WHO has confirmed more than 1,200 attacks on healthcare across multiple countries, Tedros said.
“Over the past three years we have seen an increase in the frequency, scale and impact of attacks on healthcare,” he added.
Since WHO started monitoring such incidents in 2018, there have been more than 7,600 attacks on healthcare verified in 21 countries and territories, with more than 2,600 health workers and patients killed and 5,400 injured.
Without accountability for such attacks, they will continue, Tedros warned.
“The best medicine is peace,” he added.
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