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volker türk
'Tipping Point' Feared in Sudan as Atrocities Mount
"Now is the time to renew focus on the human rights crisis in Sudan and take all necessary measures to protect civilians and prevent further violations and abuses," said one U.N. official.
Feb 18, 2025
Warning of potential war crimes including summary executions and deliberate attacks on civilians in Sudan, the United Nations human rights office on Tuesday issued a report calling for an expanded arms embargo and other measures to protect people caught in the crossfire of nearly two years of civil war there.
Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued the report on the conflict between Sudanese government forces and the government's former allied militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has left 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said forces on both sides of the conflict have used sexual violence as a weapon of war, with at least 203 victims affected by at least 120 documented incidents.
"Cases are likely vastly underreported due to fear, stigma, and the collapse of medical and judicial institutions," said the OHCHR.
More than 12 million people have been forced from their homes as violence has targeted civilian areas and acute food insecurity has spread across the country. Famine was declared in several refugee camps and other areas late last year, with experts projecting it would spread across war-torn northern Darfur.
Nearly 25 million people in Sudan are now suffering from "acute" levels of hunger, according to the OHCHR.
The hunger crisis is spiraling as armed forces attack civilian infrastructure including healthcare facilities, schools, and markets, with hundreds of civilians killed in recent weeks. More than 150,000 people have been killed since the war began, and the U.N. documented more than 4,200 civilian killings last year—noting that the actual civilian death toll is likely far higher.
On Tuesday, the rights group Emergency Lawyers reported that more than 200 civilians, including children, were killed by the RSF in White Nile state over the past three days.
"The attacks included executions, kidnapping, forced disappearance, looting, and shooting those trying to escape," the group reported.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said the RSF had killed 433 people in the al-Gitaina area in White Nile, while the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors' Trade Union said 300 people had been killed.
"The continued and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, as well as summary executions, sexual violence, and other violations and abuses, underscore the utter failure by both parties to respect the rules and principles of international humanitarian and human rights law," said Türk.
Li Fung, who leads the OHCHR office in Sudan, said in a video statement posted to social media that "the situation in Sudan has reached a dangerous tipping point."
"Now is the time to renew focus on the human rights crisis in Sudan and take all necessary measures to protect civilians and prevent further violations and abuses," said Fung.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the human rights office, said Tuesday's report calls for the arms embargo in place for Darfur to be expanded to all of Sudan, and for the entire country to be covered by the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
The international community, said Fung, "must stand with the people of Sudan."
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UN Report Condemns Israel's 'Appalling Destruction' of Gaza Hospitals
The recent raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza reflects a "pattern of attacks" on healthcare facilities across the enclave, said the United Nations.
Dec 31, 2024
As rights advocates and family members demanded that Israel release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the United Nations human rights office said Israeli attacks on healthcare infrastructure across Gaza for over a year raise "serious concerns" about the country's compliance with international law.
The "appalling destruction" of Kamal Adwan Hospital and the surrounding area is hardly an anomaly, said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a new report, and instead reflects a "pattern of attacks" that started in November 2023 when Israel launched its first military operation against al-Shifa Medical Complex.
Months later, a second raid left al-Shifa in "complete ruin" by April 1, and officials reported that after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew they found three mass graves containing 80 corpses, including some "with catheters and cannulas still attached, suggesting they had been patients."
"As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. "The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times."
The OHCHR's report documents attacks on hospitals between October 12, 2023 and June 30, 2024, before Kamal Adwan was destroyed in recent days.
Over that period, the IDF launched at least 136 strikes on at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities—killing and injuring patients and medical staff as well as other civilians and "causing significant damage, if not complete destruction of civilian infrastructure."
More than 500 medical professionals were killed in Gaza during the period covered by the report, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The OHCHR noted that the U.S.-backed IDF has apparently used MK 83 munitions in at least one airstrike on a hospital—one that was waged on January 10 on al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. MK 83 munitions are 1,000-pound bombs that have wide-area effects and are manufactured in the U.S., which has supplied Israel with at least $12.5 billion in military aid since October 7, 2023, and sends more than $3 billion per year to the IDF.
At least 12 people were reportedly killed in the al-Aqsa attack, which the OHCHR said raised "serious concerns of an indiscriminate attack."
The report noted that Israel has frequently claimed that Gaza hospitals are used by Hamas, but said that "insufficient information has so far been made available to substantiate these allegations, which have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information."
OHCHR emphasized that even in "exceptional circumstances when medical personnel, ambulances, and hospitals lose their special protection because they fulfill the strict criteria to be considered military objectives," militaries must still observe international humanitarian law when attacking medical infrastructure.
"Intentionally directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are treated, provided they are not military objectives; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such, or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities, including the launching of an indiscriminate attack resulting in death or injury to civilians; and intentionally launching disproportionate attacks, are also war crimes," reads the report.
The report comes days after Israeli raids on Kamal Adwan Hospital left northern Gaza—where the IDF has been conducting a ground offensive for nearly three months—without any operating medical facilities. Israel has confirmed that Abu Safiya was detained for questioning, prompting outcry from medical professionals and rights groups across the globe.
Gaza Health Ministry Director General Muneer Alboursh said Tuesday that Abu Safiya is one of 450 medical personnel who have been detained by Israel and said the doctor is being held in Israel's Sde Teiman prison, where Israel is accused of torturing healthcare workers.
Türk demanded "independent, thorough, and transparent investigations" of all Israeli attacks on hospitals and medical workers, "and full accountability for all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law which have taken place."
"It must also be a priority for Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure and facilitate access to adequate healthcare for the Palestinian population," he said, "and for future recovery and reconstruction efforts to prioritize the restoration of the medical capacity which has been destroyed over the last 14 months of intense conflict."
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'Horrific Reality': Nearly 70% of UN-Verified Gaza Deaths Are Women and Children
The United Nations human rights office noted the "unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction" wrought by Israel's 13-month onslaught.
Nov 08, 2024
Nearly 7 in 10 people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during an earlier six-month period of the ongoing assault on the Palestinian enclave were women and children, the United Nations human rights office said this week.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified 8,119 of the more than 34,500 Palestinians killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombs and bullets between November 2023 and April 2024. Among those killed were 3,588 children and 2,036 women ranging in age from newborns to nonagenarians. Minors under the age of 18 made up 44% of the victims in the analysis.
The OHCHR report noted the "unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction" wrought by Israel's onslaught, as well as the "wanton disregard" by Israeli forces and Hamas of international humanitarian law.
The analysis also highlights "the Israeli government's continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate, and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement."
"If committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population... these violations may constitute crimes against humanity," OHCHR said. "And if committed with intent to destroy—in whole or in part—a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, they may also constitute genocide."
South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. On Thursday, Ireland became the latest of around 30 countries and regional blocs to announce its intent to intervene in the case on behalf of Palestine.
OHCHR found that 88% of the verified Palestinian fatalities from Israeli attacks on residential buildings were people killed in strikes that claimed at least five lives. In recent weeks, Israel's renewed offensive in northern Gaza—which some experts believe is an attempt to ethnically cleanse the area by bombing and starving its people before forcibly expelling them to make way for Israeli recolonization—has wiped out a staggering number of civilians, including many women and children, in single strikes on homes, hospitals, and refugee camps.
"The high number of fatalities per attack was due to the IDF's use of weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas," the analysis states, adding that some Palestinians may have been killed by errant projectiles launched by Hamas or other Gaza-based militants.
The new report also raises concerns over Isrsel's forcible transfer of Palestinians, systematic attacks on medical workers, journalists, and reported use of white phosphorus munitions—which are banned in populated areas.
Israel has not yet responded to the OHCHR report but has previously said that it "will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law."
Since October 7, 2023, when Israeli forces launched their assault on the densely populated coastal enclave of 2.3 million people in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Gaza Ministry of Health and U.N. agencies say that more than 43,600 Palestinians have been killed and over 102,500 others wounded. More than 10,000 others are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the ruins of bombed homes and other structures.
Among those killed, say officials, are more than 18,000 children. Last month, the U.K.-based charity Oxfam International said that Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades.
The relentless death and destruction has caused the "complete psychological destruction" of Gaza's youth, according to the charity Save the Children. The same has been said of many Gazans of all ages.
Last December, the U.N. Children's Fund called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.
The ICJ—which is a U.N. body—has issued three provisionsal orders in the ongoing genocide case, including directives for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, stop its assault on Rafah, and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel has been accused of flouting all three orders.
"The trends and patterns of violations, and of applicable international law as clarified by the International Court of Justice, must inform the steps to be taken to end the current crisis," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Friday.
"The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid," he added.
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