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UN rights chief demands action to stop Gaza ‘catastrophe reaching a new, unseen level’
The UN high commissioner for human rights has called on countries to halt a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, where an Israeli blockade on aid is pushing the Palestinian territory towards a collapse of critical life-saving support.
“As the complete blockade of assistance essential for survival enters its ninth week, there must be concerted international efforts to stop this humanitarian catastrophe from reaching a new, unseen level,” Volker Turk said in a statement.
Supplies are dwindling, and the UN’s World Food Programme said on Friday that it had sent out its “last remaining food stocks”.
The UN rights office cautioned that Gaza bakeries had now stopped working because flour and fuel had run out while the remaining stocks of food were being rapidly depleted.
“Any use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of war constitutes a war crime, and so do all forms of collective punishment,” Turk said.
Situation in besieged Gaza ‘dire on every level’: MSF
As the ICJ continues to hear about Israel’s humanitarian obligations in occupied Palestinian territory, the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, says a decision from the judicial body will take significant time, which the people in blockaded Gaza do not have.
“Waiting for any kind of legal recourse to end Israel’s intentional choking of aid, food and medicine into Gaza will condemn yet more Palestinians to avoidable death, while the world watches on impassively, doing nothing to avoid this indiscriminate and abhorrent cruelty,” Claire Nicolet, MSF head of emergencies, said in a statement.
Nicolet added that the situation in Gaza is “dire on every level” after Israel imposed a total ban on humanitarian aid and supplies on March 2, which is “severely limiting” MSF’s capacity as a humanitarian group to respond in “any meaningful or effective way”.
“States need to do more to pressure Israeli authorities into lifting the siege and letting aid enter the war-torn enclave at scale to prevent more suffering and death,” she said.
