Geneva/Gaza — August 28, 2025: Hundreds of staff at the United Nations human rights office are urging their chief, Volker Türk, to publicly declare that Israel’s nearly two-year war in Gaza constitutes genocide, even as fresh Israeli airstrikes killed at least 16 Palestinians on Thursday, reported by Reuters.
In a letter seen by Reuters, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Staff Committee, speaking for more than 500 employees, said the scale of death and destruction in Gaza meets the legal threshold for genocide.
“OHCHR has a strong legal and moral responsibility to denounce acts of genocide,” the letter read. “Failing to denounce an unfolding genocide undermines the credibility of the U.N. and the human rights system itself.” The staff cited the UN’s admitted failures during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which more than 1 million people were slaughtered.
The appeal was signed by roughly a quarter of OHCHR’s global workforce. Human rights groups including Amnesty International, as well as an independent UN special rapporteur, have already described Israel’s campaign in Gaza as genocide. Israel, which has rejected such allegations, insists it is acting in self-defense following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 assault that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage.
The Gaza Health Ministry says nearly 63,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, while aid agencies warn famine is spreading. On Thursday, the ministry reported four more deaths from malnutrition, including two children, raising the toll from hunger-related causes to 317. Israel disputes the figures and has pressured a global hunger monitor to withdraw its famine designation.
Türk, an Austrian lawyer and veteran UN official, acknowledged the concerns in a reply to staff, saying he shared their “moral indignation” but urged unity within the office. UN officials have repeatedly said that it is for international courts—not the human rights office—to determine whether genocide is being committed. South Africa has already brought a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice, though hearings on its merits are still pending.
Meanwhile, the war continued to exact a heavy toll. Israeli strikes on Thursday killed at least 16 people across Gaza, according to local health officials, as bombardment intensified in Gaza City’s suburbs of Shejaia, Zeitoun, and Sabra. Residents reported families fleeing toward the coast as Israel prepared what it described as a decisive push into the enclave’s largest urban center—an operation that humanitarian groups warn could displace another million people.
In southern Gaza, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported treating dozens of patients with gunshot wounds at its field hospital in Rafah, four of whom died on arrival. Patients told doctors they were shot while approaching food distribution sites. Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis also received dozens of wounded, many with upper-body injuries. The Israeli military offered no immediate comment.
Israel’s campaign has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians to date, Gaza health authorities say. For UN staff and rights advocates, the unrelenting civilian toll has brought new urgency to a debate that has divided the international community: whether the destruction of Gaza is not only a war, but a genocide in real time.
