Hundreds of employees of the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have backed an internal letter telling its leadership to declare Israel’s offensive in Gaza a genocide and to call on UN member states to suspend arms sales to Israel, The Guardian reports.
The 1,100-word letter, signed by about a quarter of the 2,000 OHCHR staff, says the Israeli offensive in Gaza meets the legal threshold of genocide and that this means “arms sales, transfers and related logistical or financial support to Israeli authorities” constitutes a clear breach of international law by all those involved.
The letter, seen by The Guardian, says that based on the “available evidence and authoritative assessments by the UN-appointed experts, as well as legal and [international humanitarian law] professionals, the legal threshold [for genocide] has been met“.
OHCHR employees told The Guardian that they were frustrated with the failure of agency’s head, Volker Türk, to “move beyond condemning Israel”.
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