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SvennoJ on 24 August 2025
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UN expert outlines steps states should take urgently to ‘stop Israel’s genocide’

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, has shared a list of actions “urgently needed” from states.

She said they include a “full arms embargo” as well as “navies carrying aid” to break Israel’s blockade.

Albanese also said the UN General Assembly should provide a “protection presence” in Gaza, referring to a resolution that allows the 193-member body to step in when the Security Council fails to act because one of its permanent members used its veto power.

You can read more about the so-called “Uniting for Peace” resolution here.



Palestinian Foreign Ministry calls for binding international action to end war on Gaza

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is calling for measures to stop the “kidnapping” of people in Gaza and to free them “from extermination and starvation”.

In a statement, the ministry said it was intensifying political, diplomatic and legal efforts to build an international front to pressure Israel to halt “crimes of extermination, displacement, and annexation”.

It said it was building on the recent declaration of famine in Gaza to urge states to meet their “legal and moral responsibilities” to end it.

The ministry stressed that famine in Gaza is “neither natural nor resulting from a scarcity of resources, but rather an intentional Israeli policy that falls within the framework of committing the crime of using starvation as a weapon in war”.

“The Ministry demands firm international measures and binding practical arrangements to save lives in the Gaza Strip,” the statement added.



UN expert demands EU action over Dr Hussam Abu Safia, detained Gaza hospital director

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territory, has urged EU leaders to act over the detention of Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital.

“I officially ask EU leaders [Ursula] von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas what demarches they have taken to set free Dr Abu Safia and the other thousands of Palestinian hostages who, like the Israeli hostages, have the sacrosanct right to return home,” she wrote on X.

Abu Safia, 51, was taken by the Israeli army in Gaza in December and moved to the Sde Teiman military detention camp in the Negev desert in southern Israel before being transferred to Ofer Prison near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

His lawyer previously told Al Jazeera that Abu Safia had been subjected to “intense torture and inhumane treatment” in detention.

Amnesty International has also condemned Israel’s actions, saying: “Dr Abu Safia’s arrest and ongoing arbitrary detention without charges or trial is a reflection of Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinian health workers.”


Dr Hussam Abu Safia shows the damage Israel caused to Kamal Adwan Hospital on December 18, 2024