Israeli attack on World Central Kitchen convoy, April 1, 2024 In a press release from 14 May Human Rights Watch said that Israeli forces have carried out at least eight strikes on aid workers’ convoys and premises in Gaza since October 2023, despite aid groups having provided their coordinates to Israeli authorities to ensure their protection. Israeli forces have killed at least 15 people including 2 children in attacks on convoys or buildings used by humanitarian organizations. According to the UN, Israeli authorities did not issue warnings to any of the aid organizations before striking...
President Joe Biden has warned Israel that the US will stop supplying some weapons if it launches a major ground operation in the Gaza city of Rafah. The comments amount to the president's strongest warning yet over a potential ground invasion of Rafah, and mark the first time he has said the US could stop shipments of American weapons to Israel. The weapons being held back by the US are related to a future delivery, so the move is unlikely to have an immediate impact. But given the rate at which Israel is bombing it will probably affect future strikes fairly soon. This follows the...
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias killed “at least thousands of people” in West Darfur state, Human Rights Watch has said, in what it called apparent “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”. In a report published on Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that RSF attacks on the Masalit tribe and other non-Arab groups between April and November 2023 were some of the worst atrocities in the ongoing civil war which started that April. The HRW report documents evidence of a systematic campaign by the RSF and allied militias to remove Massalit residents from El...
Canadian police on Friday arrested and charged three Indian men with the murder of Sikh activist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year and said they were probing whether the men had ties to the Indian government. Nijjar, 45, was shot dead in June outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. A few months later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited evidence of Indian government involvement, prompting a diplomatic crisis with New Delhi. India’s government called the claim “absurd” and took steps that led Canada to withdraw more than 41 of its...
The International Criminal Court's prosecutor's office last Friday called for an end to what it called intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the world's permanent war crimes court. In the statement posted on social media platform X, the ICC prosecutor's office said all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials must cease immediately. It added that the Rome Statute, which outlines the ICC's structure and areas of jurisdiction, prohibits these actions. The statement, which named no specific cases, followed Israeli and...
Last week a US judge ruled that French bank, BNP Paribas, must face a lawsuit accusing the bank of helping the Sudanese government commit genocide between 1997 and 2011 by providing banking services that violated American sanctions. U.S. District Judge in Manhattan, Alvin Hellerstein, found substantial evidence that showed a relationship between BNP Paribas' financing and human rights abuses perpetrated by the government. The class action lawsuit was brought by U.S. residents who had fled non-Arab indigenous black African communities in South Sudan, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains in central...
Hundreds of bodies have been uncovered so far at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, central Gaza, and at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north, responding to the harrowing discovery the international community is calling for independent investigations to guarantee accountability for any violations of international law.
Germany said on Wednesday that it plans to resume funding for the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) after an independent review found no credible evidence of Israel's allegations that 12 UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 attack on Israel. The allegations led 16 donor countries including two of UNRWA's largest donors, the United States and Germany, to halt funding for the agency. In response to the investigation's findings, the German foreign and development ministries urged UNRWA in a statement to implement the report's recommendations. The statement also said: "In support of...
The UK’s House of Lords currently considering a landmark piece of legislation which would see UK courts empowered to make a determination on if a genocide is occurring and compel the government to act. The Bill has been described the first of its kind and has been accompanied by an open letter addressed to the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and Foreign Minister, Lord David Cameron, urging them to support the Bill. The letter notes the passage of the 75 th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide and notes that Bill would fill a “gap in the international justice system...
The United States has once again used its veto power in support of Israel after it vetoed a widely supported draft resolution that would have granted the state of Palestine full UN membership. Speaking to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) ahead of the vote, Ziad Abu Amr, UN special representative of the observer State of Palestine, emphasized that making Palestine a full member would be an "important pillar in achieving peace in the region.” Palestinians currently hold non-member observer status, granted by the UN General Assembly in 2012. An application to become a full member with...