The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) will hold a panel discussion titled “2023 War on Gaza: The Responsibility to Prevent Genocide” on 12 December 2023, from 10 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. (New York Time) in Conference Room 7 at UN Headquarters in New York. The event will also be livestreamed on UN Web TV.
The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as committing specific acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Article II of the Convention defines those acts as the killing of members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Article 6 of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court is also relevant in this context.
As the war continues in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian human rights organisations, Jewish civil society groups, Holocaust and genocide scholars, among others have warned that the crime of genocide may be committed against the Palestinian people. Furthermore, a joint statement from several Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council has underlined the “grave risk of genocide” against the Palestinian people and the obligation of the international community to prevent it.
This panel discussion will examine the legal implications of Israel’s military offensive against the Gaza Strip since 7 October and shed light on the applicability of key legal frameworks including those that define Genocide (i.e., Rome Statute and Genocide Convention). The event will also help clarify the international community’s responsibility to uphold international law, including its duty to prevent the recurrence of forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and uprooting of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
Speakers on the panel include Dr. Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University; Ms. Hannah Bruinsma, Legal Advisor at Law for Palestine; Mr. Jehad Abusalim, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund; and Ms. Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Watch the live stream on UN Web TV