UN’s Volker Türk Addresses Strikes Near Humanitarian Centres in Gaza

(Syed Ali Taher Abedi)

Geneva, 3 June 2025 – The deadly attacks targeting desperate civilians seeking limited food aid in Gaza are utterly unconscionable. For the third consecutive day, lives have been lost near an aid distribution point operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. This morning, we received reports indicating that dozens more individuals have been killed or injured. 

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said that There must be a prompt and impartial investigation into each of these attacks, and those responsible held to account. Attacks directed against civilians constitute a grave breach of international law, and a war crime.  

Palestinians have been presented the grimmest of choices: die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available through Israel’s militarized humanitarian assistance mechanism. This militarized system endangers lives and violates international standards on aid distribution, as the United Nations has repeatedly warned. 

It is further said that the wilful impediment of access to food and other life-sustaining relief supplies for civilians may constitute a war crime. The threat of starvation, together with 20 months of killing of civilians and destruction on a massive scale, repeated forced displacements, intolerable, dehumanizing rhetoric and threats by Israel’s leadership to empty the Strip of its population, also constitute elements of the most serious crimes under international law. 

In 2024, the International Court of Justice found that there was a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the rights of Palestinians in Gaza under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Court issued binding orders on Israel to take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza. 

There is no justification for failing to comply with these obligations.