Gaza: “This is the Shame of Our Time” – Press Briefing by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese

15 September 2025

Geneva, 15 September 2025. Press Briefing by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967

Transcript:

It’s a painful honor to be here at such a critical moment for Gaza and for the Palestinians as a whole. Seven hundred ten. This is the number of days of absolute horror that the people in Gaza have endured.

65,000 is the number of Palestinians are certain killed, including over, of which 75% are women and children.

In fact, we shall start the thinking of 680,000, because this is the number that some scholars and scientists claim being the real death toll in Gaza.

And it would be hard to be able to prove or disprove this number, especially if investigators and others remained banned from entering the occupied Palestinian territory, and particularly the Gaza Strip.

But if this number is confirmed, 380,000 of these are infants under five.

1,581, this is the number of health workers killed in Gaza. 252 is the number of the journalists, your colleagues, killed in Gaza.

And 346 is the number of UN staff killed in Gaza.

10,000 Palestinians have been detained, mostly arbitrarily, by an unlawful occupation, which has been starving, torturing, and even raping inmates, including doctors and patients.

Seventy-five is the numbers of detainees who have been reported killed in Israeli custody just in the last 710 days.

Images of scores of Palestinians taken from their homes, shackled and blindfolded in the middle of the night, continues to reach us from the occupied Palestinian territory.

Homes, shelters, hospitals, schools, mosques continue to be destroyed.

over 85 percent of Gaza lies in ruin.

The ongoing assault to take the last remnant of Gaza, meaning Gaza City, will not only devastate the Palestinians, but endangers also the remaining Israeli hostages, putting their life in great danger.

Meanwhile, the West Bank is now having much better, a much better present.

The situation is unraveling under intensified pressure.

Over 1,000 Palestinians, including 212 children, have been killed in the last 710 days.

1,600 is the number of the raids, with a 22 percent increase compared to the previous years over Palestinian-inhabited areas.

And so the numbers of targeted killing is also going up, which is the most severe since the Second Intifada, with the full destruction of refugee camps, and 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced.

In all these, our annexation continues unabated, with families entering multiple times of cycles of displacement, facing the expansion of settlements and outposts.

No space is safe for Palestinians, but no space is safe for international law under this brutal occupation.

And behind every statistic is a human life, a story cut short, a family broken.

The trauma and grief will last generations.

Meanwhile, far too many states continue to look away, normalize the suffering, and they even profit from it.

Arms, trade, and diplomatic engagement with Israel continue unabated.

And this is not just morally wrong.

This is unlawful.

As I argued in my last report to the Human Rights Council, this genocide has become profitable, unfortunately, not just for some corrupt private entities.

And this is not only Israel’s crimes.

This is the world’s crime sustained by silence, complicity, and the supply of funds, weapons, and political cover.

History, we’ll remember, because it’s not that this is the first genocide that is been known.

No, the Holocaust, the genocide in Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda were also known to the people of the time.

But this genocide happened because the world didn’t care enough to stop them, like today, or not.

But today’s genocide is something different.

It’s openly incited, cynically denied, and relentlessly supported, armed, and weaponized, while those who oppose it are silenced, beaten, criminalized, and smeared.

This is why I say this is the shame of our time and the collapse of the international legal order in this moment, not only for the Palestinians, but for all of us.

So I asked, prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, so-called world leaders.

How do you sleep?

When will you act, truly act beyond the words?

But I also see courage.

Dockworkers, trade unions, students, mothers and fathers, ordinary people everywhere are refusing this complicity.

And their message is clear.

No more genocide.

No more apartheid.

starting in Palestine.

The future of millions demand is one of justice, equality, and freedom, and is still within reach if we act now.

Thank you.

To learn more about Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council and the Question of Palestine, click here to visit the dedicated webpage.