News in Brief 11 January 2024 |

This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Gaza: South Africa levels accusations of ‘genocidal conduct’ against Israel

South Africa addressed the UN’s highest court on Thursday in a bid to end the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, accusing Israel of carrying out genocide against Palestinians there – a claim that Israel has strongly denied as “baseless”.

The development came amid the ongoing and massive Israeli bombardment across the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October that left some 1,200 Israeli and foreign nationals dead in southern Israel and some 250 taken hostage.

The South African legal team’s Adila Hassim told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague that Israel had demonstrated a “pattern of genocidal conduct” since launching its full-scale war in Gaza, the 365 square kilometre strip of land it has occupied since 1967.

“This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately, no-one is spared, not even newborn babies.”

South Africa brought the case to court citing the Genocide Convention, which both it and Israel have signed up to. 

All signatories “are obliged not only to desist from genocidal acts but also to prevent them”, South Africa legal counsel John Dugard maintained.

UN rights chief Türk rejects ‘blood libel’ accusation 

In a related development, the UN’s top human rights official has defended criticism of the invasion of Gaza, saying that it is “not antisemitic” to call out “gross violations” of international humanitarian law.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Volker Türk once again strongly condemned “the shocking cruelty of the attack launched from Gaza by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7”.

The massacres that ensued created “intense and continuing trauma” across Israel”, the UN rights chief continued, before insisting that the country’s “campaign of overwhelming force” had been “tainted by grave breaches of international law”.

Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel has also continued, Mr. Türk noted, before expressing regret that some Israeli officials had tried to discredit his Office’s concerns by claiming that they constitute “blood libel”.

“It is not a blood libel to deplore the failure to hold to account Israeli soldiers and armed settlers who have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, or the prolongation of a war whose conduct has raised grave international humanitarian and human rights law concerns,” the UN rights chief stressed.

UN launches new plan to save migrants’ lives and promote legal pathways 

A lack of safe and legal pathways for migrants leaves many people open to abuse and worse, which is why the UN migration agency IOM has announced a new plan to provide assistance to these highly vulnerable individuals.

Launching the five-year initiative on Thursday, IOM Director General Amy Pope insisted that it was crucially important to reduce the risks and impacts of climate change which has become “the top driver” of migration.

Conflict and growing inequality have also increased migration pressures today, said Ms. Pope, who was speaking from N’Djamena in Chad. It’s there that many of the seven million people displaced by violence in neighbouring Sudan have now settled.

IOM said in a statement that its strategic plan is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and that the agency is using innovation and technology “to help migrants, their families, communities, and societies flourish”.

“There is not a corner of the globe that is not touched by, or is in some way invested in, the issue of migration,” said the IOM chief.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.