Since 18 March 2025, the Israeli government has intensified its total blockade on humanitarian aid, air and ground assaults, and deliberate targeting of Gaza’s food, water, and health infrastructure. The Israeli engineered famine has been denounced by the UN, Oxfam, and humanitarian monitors as “worse than before the ceasefire,” and positioned to soon bring about the total collapse of infrastructure in Gaza, with 93% of Palestinians in Gaza facing acute food insecurity, bringing Gaza to IPC Phase 5- extermination by starvation- the highest level of food insecurity, which indicates widespread death due to starvation, extremely critical acute malnutrition, and collapse of livelihood systems. Bread has disappeared from markets; Palestinians are dying from dehydration and untreated wounds; all bakeries and flour mills have been destroyed; fuel, water, electricity, and medical supplies remain blockaded.

These acts clearly satisfy the elements of genocide as defined under Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention, namely, the “deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part.”

Because every mechanism to date- including diplomatic pressure, legal proceedings, and even declared ceasefires- has failed to stop Israel’s genocide and engineered starvation in Gaza, we issue this urgent call for immediate action to pressure and mobilize for multi-lateral State led humanitarian aid corridors and protective forces to halt the escalated extermination in Gaza.

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE

States, UN Agencies, and Civil Society Must Escalate Their Actions Now

States have a binding legal obligation to intervene when humanitarian aid is obstructed in a manner that contributes to genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity- pursuant to the 1948 Genocide Convention, customary international law, and Articles 23, 55, and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The obligation to prevent genocide mandates that all states- regardless of their involvement- are legally obliged to take action to prevent and halt the ongoing genocide by blockade.

Accordingly States Must Immediately:

• Deploy an International (Multi-Lateral) Humanitarian Aid Protective Force and Corridor to escort aid convoys, rebuild humanitarian access, and secure safe zones for aid distribution- – while mobilizing under the UN’s Right to Protect framework; and
• Enact binding sanctions and accountability against those obstructing humanitarian relief.
• Moreover, the governments of Qatar and Egypt, as custodians of the ceasefire’s compliance mechanisms, must regularly and publicly report all Israeli breaches, and immediately and publicly alert the international community to the risk of collapse in both the humanitarian and security frameworks.

If states do not act now, especially in the face of unimpeachable evidence, they will bear liability for complicity in the continuing (live-streamed) extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and UNICEF have failed to sufficiently sound the alarm over the catastrophic conditions in Gaza in light of the escalating starvation, aid obstruction, and systemic collapse of civilian infrastructure.

UN institutional failure cannot become a pretext for UN paralysis– UN agencies must escalate their mandates, not abdicate them. Accordingly, the IPC, WFP, OCHA and UNICEF must immediately escalate their work to fulfill their mandates by issuing urgent flash reports, holding global press briefings, and joining the call for urgent establishment of humanitarian access corridors and protection for civilians in Gaza.

Most critically, global civil society mobilizations– including unions, faith organizations, legal networks, health workers, students, and all sectors of society- must be directed toward building coordinated and targeted global pressure campaigns to compel their governments to join and form multilateral humanitarian protection forces and establish urgent aid corridors to Gaza.

These demands must remain consistent, prominent, and central to all civil society actions, including street mobilizations, call-in campaigns, strikes, and boycotts, until Israel’s assaults on the Palestinian people cease.

Civil society must undertake to :

• Demand their governments mobilize multi-lateral humanitarian corridors and a humanitarian aid protective force, by launching organized lobbying of their own governments’ foreign ministries, defense ministries, and parliaments – by rallies, petitions, sit-ins, call-in campaigns, and coordinated global days of action for a protective force;
• File domestic legal motions or inquiries demanding that governments meet their obligations under the Genocide Convention and Geneva Conventions by intervening to halt famine and protect civilians.

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Initiators: