The global rights monitor said that Hamas had carried out “horrific crimes” on Israeli communities bordering Gaza but that Israel had responded with “a campaign of collective punishment”.
“It is a campaign of deliberate, indiscriminate bombings of civilians and civilian infrastructure, of denial of humanitarian assistance and an engineered famine,” Callamard wrote in her foreword to the report.
“For millions the world over, Gaza now symbolises utter moral failure by many of the architects of the post-World War Two system,” she said.
Israel’s allies, including those arming them, were complicit, she said, lamenting a lack of action by international institutions and questioning whether postwar ideals of “never again” were now at an end.
AI THREAT
Other “powerful actors”, including Russia and China, are also “demonstrating a willingness to put at risk the entirety of the 1948 rule-based order”, Callamard warned.
The report documented “flagrant rule-breaking by Russian forces during their continued full-scale invasion of Ukraine … and the use of torture or other ill-treatment against prisoners of war”.
China too had acted against international law, the rights group said, “by protecting the Myanmar military” despite its attacks against civilians.
“Urgent measures” were required “to revitalise and renew the international institutions intended to safeguard humanity”, Callamard said.
“What we are calling for is an urgent reform of the UN Security Council, in particular reform on the right of veto so that it cannot be used in situations of massive human rights violations,” she told AFP.
