Humanitarian situation in Gaza ‘beyond breakdown’: UN rights chief

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk addresses the assembly during an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at the United Nations Offices, in Geneva on Monday. AFP

The humanitarian situation in war-ravaged Gaza is “beyond breakdown”, the United Nations’ human rights chief warned Tuesday, appealing for international rights norms to be respected.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Volker Turk said it was hard to find words strong enough to describe the situation in Gaza.
“It is so precarious,” he said. “I don’t even know what words to find in terms of the precariousness. I don’t know whether you can give me a better word than precarious, extremely precarious?”
“I mean, it’s on the verge of, or well beyond, breakdown.”
Israel’s offensive has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 18,400 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The UN estimates that 1.9 million of the territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced by the war, half of them children.
Humanitarian leaders fear the besieged territory will soon be overwhelmed by disease and starvation.
“There is a clarion call for everyone and for the international institutions that deal with it, to take it very serious,” Turk said.
He was speaking at the end of a two-day event in Geneva marking the 75th anniversary since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Especially in this very difficult but also somber moment, it was incredibly important for us to rekindle the spirit, the momentum, but also the actual content and the essence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Turk said.
In light of the crisis in Gaza, but also in numerous other places, he said that “we need the political leadership to embrace human rights and make it the core essence of every and any decision that they take”.
“That’s really the message back to everyone: Take human rights seriously, more seriously. And make it central to your policy making and decisions.”