UN Commission Of Inquiry Concludes Genocide Is Taking Place In Gaza

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) A report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concludes that genocide is ongoing in Gaza. Its authors point to the responsibility of Israeli leaders and call on states to act. Its publication has drawn little reaction in Europe. This content was published on September 19, 2025 - 11:06 6 minutes

Based in Geneva, I cover the work of the United Nations and other international organisations there. My focus is on humanitarian aid, human rights, and peace diplomacy. I studied business and economics at the University of Lausanne before training as a journalist and joining SWI swissinfo in 2021.

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Presenting the findings of the latest report in Geneva on Tuesday, Navi Pillay, Chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, did not prolong the suspense:“The Commission concluded that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and that it continues to commit this genocide,” she told reporters.

In their detailed 72-page reportExternal link , the result of two years of investigation, the three members of the Commission conclude that the“Israeli authorities and the country's security forces” have committed, and continue to commit, four of the five acts of genocide defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

These acts are: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting living conditions intended to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

'An important report'

“This is an important report,” says Vincent Chetail, Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute.“It is a thorough, factual inquiry which, unlike previous reports from NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, comes from an official commission mandated by the UN Human Rights Council.”

Pillay, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, together with the Commission's two other members, jurists Miloon Kothari and Chris Sidoti, had already documented crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Palestinian enclave. But they had never before investigated the crime of genocide.

>> In 2023, on the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we published a profile of Navi Pillay, retracing her long career in defence of human rights. Read it here:

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