Africa

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By External Source
Jan 12 2024 (IPS-Partners)

 

 
Find the answer in this interview with Frédéric Castell, Senior Natural Resources Officer at FAO

 

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Will it be third time lucky for Mohamed Salah with Egypt, with several contenders for glory at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations?

A moment of the march as it passes through Punjab. Led by women, the march was an unprecedented protest in Pakistan. Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

By Karlos Zurutuza
ROME, Jan 12 2024 (IPS)

“We are the mothers, daughters, and sisters of the missing and murdered Baloch. We are thousands.” Mahrang Baloch, a 28-year-old doctor from Pakistan’s Balochistan province, is blunt when introducing herself and the rest of a group protesting in central Islamabad.

“We are asking for an end to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. We also demand the elimination of private militias,” the young woman explains in a phone conversation with IPS.

Divided by the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Balochistan is the land of the Baloch, a nation of 15-20 million with a distinct language and culture. After the British withdrawal from India, they declared a state of their own in 1947, even before Pakistan did. Seven months later, however, Balochistan would be forcefully annexed by Islamabad

Baloch and the group arrived after a march that started in Balochistan last November. Nested in the country’s southeast and sharing borders with both Afghanistan and Iran, it’s the largest and most sparsely populated province in Pakistan, enduring the highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality. It’s also the one most affected by violence.

Mahrang Baloch stresses that the trigger for the protest was the murder of a young Baloch man last November while he was in police custody. Following a two-week sit-in, the group decided to take the protest beyond the local province, embarking on a march to the Pakistani capital.

Clad in colourful traditional Baloch costumes and bearing portraits of their missing relatives, they received the warmth and support of tens of thousands along the way. However, the march was eventually blocked at the gates of Pakistan’s capital on December 20.

It was then that a police cordon permanently cut off their path on the outskirts of the city. The protesters refused to disband, so security forces responded with sticks, water jets and made hundreds of arrests.

Many women were dragged onto buses that took them back to Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan – 900 kilometres southwest of Islamabad. The rest set up a protest camp in front of the National Press Club, in downtown Islamabad.

After spending several hours in police custody, Baloch was eventually released. “We have carried the mutilated bodies of our loved ones. Several generations of us have seen much worse,” the young woman stresses.

She claims to be “mentally prepared” for the possibility of joining the long list of missing persons herself. “We have reached a point where neither forced disappearances nor murders can stop us,” adds the activist.

 

Mahrang Baloch during a speech in the centre of Islamabad. This young doctor has become a symbol for people who have been so retaliated against. Credit: Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

 

Mutilated and in ditches

Divided by the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Balochistan is the land of the Baloch, a nation of 15-20 million with a distinct language and culture. After the British withdrawal from India, they declared a state of their own in 1947, even before Pakistan did. Seven months later, however, Balochistan would be forcefully annexed by Islamabad.

Violence has been rife ever since.

In a report released on January 2023, Human Rights Watch accused Pakistani security forces of committing “serious human rights violations which include arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial executions.”

In November 2021, Amnesty International published a report, titled “Living Ghosts,” calling on Islamabad “to end policies of enforced disappearances as well as secret and arbitrary detentions.”

Baloch human rights organization Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) points to more than 7,000 missing people in the last two decades.

It was exactly for that reason that Mahrang Baloch was first imprisoned at 13, when she was protesting the disappearance of her father, Gaffar Lango, in 2006 in Quetta. After his release, Lango would be kidnapped again three years later. His body was found savagely mutilated in a ditch in 2011.

Next on the list was her brother Nasir, who was abducted in 2018. “That was a turning point for me. It was clear that no one was safe, that it could happen to anyone,” recalls the activist.

Mahrang Baloch become one of the drivers of change that the traditionally conservative Baloch society is undergoing through civil platforms such as the Baluche Unity Committee (BYC). They launched this protest.

From a less visible position, Saeeda Baloch, a 45-year-old Baloch woman who works for an NGO she prefers not to disclose, has devoted herself to raising funds to offer food and shelter to the participants. Her reasons are powerful.

“My husband was shot to death in 2011 when he was working collecting information about the disappeared and the killed. Moreover, his brother and my nephew have been missing since 2021,” Baloch explains to IPS by phone from Quetta.

He says the initiative has been highly successful “despite the violence they had to face in Islamabad.”

“Women have taken to the streets, many of them spending sub-zero nights with their babies. I can’t think of a more eloquent image of the determination of our people,” says the activist.

 

The group arrives at the entrance of Islamabad. The march was blocked on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital. Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

 

Solidarity

It was not the first time that Baloch men and women marched to the capital of Pakistan to protest over enforced disappearances. In October 2013, an initiative that started in the permanent protest camp of Quetta turned into a foot march to Islamabad.

It was led by a 72-year-old man known as Mama Qadeer. His son’s body was recovered 800 kilometres from Quetta, where he had been kidnapped. He had two gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the head, cigarette burns on his back, a broken hand, and torture marks all over his body.

The figures of the so-called Great March for the Disappeared were as impressive as they were terrifying: 2,800 kilometres in 106 days during which 103 new unidentified bodies appeared in three mass graves.

“What differentiates both protests is the great participation of women in the last one and, above all, its leadership,” Kiyya Baloch, a Norway-based journalist and analyst of the Baloch issue, explains to IPS by phone.

“This last march has already become a movement. Other than gathering great support in Balochistan, the Baloch who live in the province of Punjab, historically more silent, have also mobilized for the first time,” the expert emphasises.

The expert also highlights the support received from sectors of Pakistan’s also neglected Pashtun minority, as well as from international personalities including activists Malala Yousafzai and Gretha Thunberg and the writer Mohamed Hanif.

The renowned British-Pakistani novelist made public that he had returned an award he had received in 2018. “I cannot accept this recognition from a State that kidnaps and tortures its Baloch citizens,” Hanif posted on his X account (formerly Twitter).

So far, the Pakistani government has turned a deaf ear.

In a televised appearance in January, Pakistani Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar referred to the protesters as “relatives of the terrorists” before adding that “anyone who supports the protest or writes about it should join the guerrilla.”

 

A protester makes graffiti in a Baloch town. The participants have had to reconcile activism and family for weeks. Credit: Baloch Yakjehti Committee

 

“Enemies of humanity”

At 80 years old, Makah Marri set foot in the capital of Pakistan for the first time in her life in the heat of the protest. She does not even speak Urdu, the country’s national language, but she is a well-known face at the numerous protests for the missing held in Balochistan.

She misses her son, Shahnawaz Marri. She has not heard from him since he was taken away in 2012. “What the relatives of the disappeared suffer is daily mental torture,” Marri recalls over the phone to IPS from Islamabad.

The images of the old woman, lifting the photo of her son above her head or being treated on the floor after fainting, have gone viral on social media. Today, she takes advantage of the conversation with the press to ask the rest of the world for “attention and support” for their cause.

The “enemies of humanity,” she emphasizes, not only took away her son but also the father of her grandchildren.

 

A view of the International Court of Justice where South Africa has launched a case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Credit: UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 12 2024 (IPS)

Israel disputed both South Africa’s jurisdiction and the provisional measures that it demanded the International Court of Justice impose on the State of Israel to prevent genocide.

Israel’s co-agent, Tal Becker, said in his opening address that Jewish people’s experience of the Holocaust meant that it was among “among the first states to ratify the Genocide Convention, without reservation, and to incorporate its provisions in its domestic legislation. For some, the promise of ‘never again for all people’ is a slogan. For Israel, it is the highest moral obligation.”

He then accused the South African government of bringing a fundamentally flawed case, which would in effect deny the country’s right to defend itself.

“The applicant has now sought to invoke this term (genocide) in the context of Israel’s conduct in a war it did not start and did not want. A war in which Israel is defending itself against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations whose brutality knows no bounds.”

Giving details of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which he said was “the largest calculated mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust,” he accused South Africa of trying to “weaponize the term genocide against Israel,” delegitimizing the country and its right to defend itself.

“What proceeded under the cover of thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately into Israel? Was the wholesale massacre, mutilation, rape, and abduction of as many citizens as the terrorists could find before Israel’s forces repelled them openly, displaying elation. They tortured children in front of parents and parents in front of children. Burned people, including infants alive, systematically raped and mutilated scores of women, men, and children. All told, some 1200 people were butchered that day, more than 5500 names, and some 240 hostages abducted, including infants, entire families, persons with disabilities, and Holocaust survivors, some of whom have since been executed, many of whom have been tortured, sexually abused, and stabbed in captivity.”

Becker said the applicant is essentially asking the court to substitute the “lens of armed conflict between a state and a lawless terrorist organization with the lens of a so-called genocide of a state against a civilian population” and that Israel’s action against Hamas was legitimate defense of the country.

Members of the Delegation of Israel Credit: UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.

Professor Malcolm Shaw argued that the applicants right to approach the court was premature as there was no dispute between the countries.

He argued that Israel had responded to the applicant on December 27, 2023, “in good faith,” and had attempted to hand deliver notes, but the South African Department of International Relations rejected them because it was a public holiday and instructed them to try again on January 2, 2024.

However, before the notes could be delivered, South Africa launched the court application on December 29, 2023.

Shaw also said statements relied on by South Africa to show intent to commit genocide were not grounded in the policy frameworks of Israel.

He argued that the Prime Minister, during ministerial committees, issued directives “time and again” on methods to prevent a humanitarian disaster, which included looking at solutions to ensure a supply of water, food, and medicine and the construction of field hospitals.

“The remarks or actions of a soldier do not and cannot reflect policy,” Shaw told the court, saying it’s response included statements from, for example, the Minister of Defense on October 29, which made it clear that the country was fighting Hamas and not the people of Gaza, and from the President declaring that the country was operating militarily according to international law.

These decisions show that Israel lacked “genocidal intent” and said its actions were contrary to the South African argument inherent in the rights of any state to defend itself, which is “embedded in customary international law and enshrined in the UN Charter.”

Galit Raguan, Director of the International Justice Division, Ministry of Justice of the State of Israel, told the court that it was “astounding that in yesterday’s hearing, Hamas was mentioned only in passing and only in reference to the October 7 massacre in Israel. Listening to the presentation by the applicant, it was as if Israel were operating in Gaza against no armed adversary. But the same Hamas that carried out the October 7 attacks in Israel is the governing authority in Gaza. And the same Hamas has built a military strategy founded on embedding its assets and operatives among the civilian population.”

She said urban warfare will always result in tragic deaths, harm, and damage.

Using the example of the blast at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which was blamed on the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), it was in fact independently confirmed as the result of a failed launch from within Gaza.

“South Africa does not consider the sheer extent to which Hamas uses ostensibly civilian structures for military purposes. Houses, schools, mosques, facilities, and shelters are all abused for military purposes by Hamas, including as rocket launching sites. Hundreds of kilometers of tunnels dug by Hamas under populated areas in Gaza often cause structures above to collapse,” she told the court.

Raguan also disputed South Africa’s version of Israel’s efforts to mitigate civilian harm.

“Here, the applicant tells not just a partial story but a false one. For example, the application presents Israel’s call to civilians to evacuate areas of intensive hostilities ‘as an act calculated to bring about its physical destruction.’ This is a particularly egregious allegation that is completely disconnected from the governing legal framework of international humanitarian law.”

Instead of 24 hours, as South Africa alleges, “the IDF urged civilians to evacuate to southern Gaza for over three weeks before it started its ground operation. Three weeks that provided Hamas with advanced knowledge of where and when the IDF would be operating.”

Raguan asked the court: “Would Israel work continuously with international organizations and states, even reaching out to them on its own initiative, to find solutions to these challenges if it were seeking to destroy the population? Israel’s efforts to mitigate the ravages of this war on civilians are the very opposite of the intent to destroy them.”

Dr Omri Sender elaborated on the humanitarian efforts, saying that more aid was reaching Gaza than before the war.

“The accurate average number for trucks specifically carrying food is 70 trucks a day before the war and 109 trucks a day over the last two weeks… Access to water has also been a priority. As with food supplies, there is no restriction on the amount of water that may enter Gaza. Israel continues to supply its own water to Gaza through two pipelines.”

Christopher Staker, a British barrister representing Israel, questioned whether “provisional measures require a state to refrain from exercising a plausible right to defend itself.”

The court, he argued, needed to take into account that Hamas was considered a terrorist organization by Israel and other countries, and secondly, it committed a large-scale terrorist attack on Israeli territory, so the country had a right to defend itself. The country was also taking steps to alleviate the humanitarian situation.

Staker also argued that the provisional measures would not constrain Hamas.

“This would deprive Israel of the ability to contend with this security threat against it. More rockets could be fired into its territory, more of its citizens could be taken hostage, raped, and tortured, and further atrocities could be conducted from across the Gaza border.”

The court’s president, Judge Joan Donoghue, closed proceedings and said the decision of the court would be communicated as soon as possible.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

On day two at the International Court of Justice, Israel replies to South African arguments that the country is in contravention of the Genocide Convention.

Its lawyer rebuffs South Africa's accusations while defending actions in Gaza at the UN's top court.

The island state becomes the first sub-Saharan country to get rid of the deadly disease in 50 years.

Surviving the flood at Ahoada in Rivers state Nigeria. Credit: Wikicommons

By Omer Javed and Dan Beeton
WASHINGTON DC, Jan 12 2024 (IPS)

The world faces the existential threat of a climate change crisis, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the outcome of the latest UN climate summit, COP28 — hosted as it was by the CEO of one of the world’s largest oil companies, and filled with a record number of fossil fuel lobbyists — is not going to do much to change that.

Even calls to “phase-out” fossil fuels were met with foot-dragging from the COP28 president and Saudi Arabian delegates. Meanwhile, highlighting the gravity of the challenge at hand, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pointed out that the last decade (2011–2020) was the warmest on record. Along with the COVID pandemic, this likely contributed to an increase in absolute poverty over the same period.

A key question that COP28 was supposed to tackle is how low- and middle-income countries will be able to pay for climate crisis response and adaptation. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been thrust into a key role in this regard, but it should not escape criticism for its own climate hypocrisy.

For the Fund to truly begin to join the fight against the climate crisis, it must first end its pointless, unfair, and damaging surcharge policy. The Biden administration could ensure that the Fund instead plays a crucial role in responding to climate challenges by supporting a major new issuance of IMF reserve assets.

Currently, the IMF’s solution is to offer more debt to already severely debt-burdened countries. An October paper from the United Nations Development Programme Global Policy Network noted: “At least 54 developing economies are suffering from severe debt problems,” of which 28 are among “the world’s top-50 most climate vulnerable countries.”

And more than 70 percent of climate finance for these countries has been in the form of loans, as a recent letter from 141 civil society groups points out.

Moreover, a Development Finance International-led report notes the lopsided spending priorities being forced on developing countries, many of which are highly vulnerable to climate change. Among these, “debt service is 12.5 times higher than the amount spent on climate adaptation,” a number projected to “rise to 13.2 times” in the next year.

Contributions to the “loss and damage” climate fund have also been far from satisfactory. Reports note that the US, the EU, and other rich countries have failed to meet their pledges to provide $100 billion per year.

Meanwhile, high-level UN officials estimate that these countries will actually need to spend about $1 trillion per year on climate response by 2025, and about $2.4 trillion per year by 2030.

These countries face debt distress partly because the IMF demands they follow overly broad austerity policies as conditions to receive the loans. This is an avoidable problem, considering that the IMF possesses a ready and appropriate alternative: Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a reserve asset intended to be issued during times of crisis.

The Fund last allocated $650 billion worth of SDRs in August 2021, in response to the COVID pandemic. But now even countries battered by the climate crisis, such as Pakistan, a third of which was flooded in 2022, are being pushed to take on more debt while the US Treasury Department refuses to green-light a new major SDRs issuance.

This points to the root of the problem: the governance structures of the IMF and World Bank. The US by itself has a veto over decisions, and in practice can control most of what the IMF does, because other high-income countries — mostly in Europe — almost always line up with the United States, giving high-income countries 60 percent of voting power, thereby leaving most of the world without a voice at the IMF.

Critics point out that most of the 2021 SDRs went to rich countries, since they provided the most to the IMF’s resources (their membership quotas); while efforts to rechannel those SDRs have also been wanting both in terms of speed and quantity.

Worse, the IMF’s rechanneling mechanisms turn the SDRs — an international reserve asset that countries receive without any debt or conditions attached — into loans, with conditions attached.

The IMF is contributing to the global debt crisis in other ways. It continues to levy surcharges, essentially, “junk fees” added onto its non-concessional lending. Writing for Eurodad, Daniel Munevar highlighted how climate crisis-ravaged Pakistan faced surcharges of $122 million in 2023, and another $69 million in 2024.

A country that faced catastrophic flooding in 2022, that is one of the most vulnerable to climate change, and that was simultaneously facing possible default, should not be forced to pay surcharges. Moreover, many countries in similar circumstances, such as Armenia, Jordan, and even war-torn Ukraine, also face surcharges.

A recent CEPR report noted, “The IMF will charge over $2 billion per year in surcharges through 2025,” which is unnecessary and counterproductive, given the already constrained fiscal space of developing countries.

Time is quickly running out. The IMF must be brought into the twenty-first century if it is to play a constructive role in ending the climate crisis. The IMF should end its punitive, unnecessary, and counterproductive surcharge policy. And there must be a new major allocation of SDRs to enable developing countries to better deal with debt distress and meet their goals for climate-resilient spending.

This will require leadership by President Biden, since the US is the largest contributor to IMF resources and has the greatest say in IMF decisions. The COP meetings could even be used for timing a yearly release of climate-related SDR allocations to highly climate-vulnerable countries, as suggested under Barbados’s “Bridgetown Initiative.”

These steps would at least show that the Fund is addressing the climate crisis with the leadership and seriousness required.

Omer Javed holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona, and previously worked at the International Monetary Fund. His contact on ‘X’ (formerly ‘Twitter’) is @omerjaved7.

Dan Beeton is the International Communications Director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net) in Washington, DC. He Tweets at @Dan_Beeton.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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After its civil war ended in 2011, Ivory Coast has now spent at least $1 billion on hosting the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.

A selection of the best photos from the African continent and beyond.

Burundi has accused Rwanda of being a 'bad neighbour' for funding rebel attacks on civilians.

South African lawyers present their case on the first day of a hearing at the UN's top court.

Armed Islamists have taken captive the aircraft's passengers and crew after it crash-landed.

Blinne Ni Ghralaigh KC makes her arguments as the Israeli legal team listen intently. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBurg, Jan 11 2024 (IPS)

Far from the mayhem, destruction, and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the South African government argued in the International Court of Justice in the Hague that it had an obligation and a right to bring a case to halt a genocide by the Israeli government and its military.

The top legal team, composed of both South African and international human rights lawyers, spent over two and a half hours arguing that it had an obligation as a signatory to the Genocide Convention to bring this case and that the court had an obligation to accede to the provisional measures included in the application, which include an immediate suspension of its military operations against Gaza and the prevention of acts of genocide against Palestinian people.

Professor Vaughan Lowe KC summarized the arguments heard throughout the day succinctly, saying:

South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola and Vusi Madonsela, Ambassador to the Netherlands, both wearing South African colors, with the legal team at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Credit: Chrispin Phiri/SA Ministry Justice and Correctional Services

“South Africa believes that the publicly available evidence of the scale of the destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza and the deliberate restriction of food, water, medicines, or electricity available to the population of Gaza demonstrates that the Government of Israel, not Jewish people or Israeli citizens, the government of Israel, and its military are intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza as a group and are doing nothing to prevent or punish the actions of others who support that aim.

“And I repeat, the point is not simply that Israel is acting disproportionately. The point is that the prohibition on genocide is an absolute, peremptory rule of law. Nothing can ever justify genocide,” he told the court.

“This is not a moment for the court to sit back and be silent.”

The preceding arguments included the reasons the court should act—and act urgently.

Blinne Ni Ghralaigh KC argued that if the bombardment continued, there would be irreparable harm to the Palestinian people, where entire multigenerational families would be obliterated.

She referred to what she termed a “terrible new acronym” that emerged from the Israeli action.

“WCNSF—wounded child, no surviving family.”

The first of two photos shared during proceedings. A big whiteboard at a hospital in northern Gaza, one of the hospitals targeted during the siege. The whiteboard is wiped clean as it is no longer possible to do surgical cases. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

The second is the same whiteboard shattered after an Israeli strike on November 21, 2023. The author of the words, Dr Mahmoud Abu Jayla, and two of his colleagues were killed in an Israeli strike. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

Ghralaigh argued there was no merit in the argument of Israel that it was not responsible for the humanitarian crisis; she told the court that humanitarian workers stretching as far back as the Killing Fields of Cambodia had not seen a humanitarian crisis so utterly unprecedented that they had “not the words to describe it.”

She also accused the international community of erring in their duty to prevent genocide.

“Now, notwithstanding the genocide conventions and recognition of the need to rid the world of the odious scourge of genocide, the international community has repeatedly failed. It failed the people of Rwanda. It had failed the Bosnian people and the Rohingya, prompting this court to take action,” Ghralaigh argued, saying it failed again by ignoring the early warnings and the grave risk of genocide to the Palestinian people.

“The international community continues to fail the Palestinian people, despite the overt, dehumanizing genocidal rhetoric by Israeli government and military officials, matched by the Israeli army’s actions on the ground—despite the horror of the genocide against the Palestinian people being live streamed from Gaza to our mobile phones, computers, and television screens—the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time.”

Professor Max Du Plessis argued that South Africa had jurisdiction to bring this matter to court. Quoting the court’s findings in the case filed by The Gambia against Myanmar in 2019, he said: “All the States’ parties to the Genocide Convention have a common interest in ensuring that acts of genocide are prevented.”

This court action should not have come as a surprise. Professor John Dugard explained that the South African application followed a long series of diplomatic efforts to express concern about the Israeli action in Palestine.

“South Africa has a long history of close relations with Israel. For this reason, it did not bring the dispute immediately to the attention of the court. It was harder as Israel responded to the terrible atrocities committed against his people on the 7th of October with an attack on Gaza that resulted in the indiscriminate killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, most of whom were women and children,” Dugard told the court. “The South African government repeatedly voiced its concerns in the Security Council and in public statements that Israel’s actions had become genocidal.”

Adila Hassim, an attorney, gave a detailed account of the effects of the bombardment on the civilian population when she informed the court that Israeli forces had killed 23,210 Palestinians during the continuous attacks over the previous three months, with 70% of them thought to be women and children. Some 7,000 Palestinians are still missing, presumed dead under the rubble.

“Palestinians in Gaza are subjected to relentless bombing, wherever they go. They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches, and as they try to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate in the places to which they have fled, and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes,” Hassim said.

Showing photographs of mass graves, she told the court: “More than 1,800 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members, and hundreds of multi-generational families have been wiped out with no remaining survivors. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, and cousins are often all killed together. This killing is nothing short of the destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies.”

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said the genocidal rhetoric was nurtured at the highest level of the state.

“There is an extraordinary feature in this case that Israel’s political leaders, military commanders, and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent,” he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public address when he declared war on Gaza, where he warned of an unprecedented price to be paid by the enemy.

On October 28, Ngcukayitobi said Netanyahu referred to the people of Gaza as the Amalekites, a biblical reference to the retaliatory destruction of a people, men and women, children and infants with their cattle and sheep, camels, and donkeys, considered the enemies of the Israelites.

The language of genocide had not stopped there, as the Palestinian people were often referred to as “human animals.”

Other high-level politicians also made comments that confirmed the country’s genocide intent.

Israel’s Energy and Infrastructure Minister, MK Israel Katz, called for the denial of water and fuel: “As this is what will happen to a people of children: kill us and slaughter us.”

Ngcukaitobi said there was no ambiguity. “It means to create conditions of death for the Palestinian people in Gaza to die a slow death because of starvation and dehydration, or to die quickly because of a bomb attack or snipers.”

South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told the court this was brought in the spirit of Nelson Mandela’s humanity, and the country unequivocally condemned the targeting of civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in the taking of hostages on October 7, 2023.

Vusi Madonsela, SA Ambassador to the Netherlands, read the provisional measures that the South African government requests the court consider, including responding to the application as a matter of urgency. Among others, these include:

• that military operations are immediately ceased;
• that the State of Israel take reasonable measures within its power to prevent genocide, including desisting from actions that could bring about physical destruction;
• rescind orders of restrictions and prohibitions to prevent forced displacement and ensure access to humanitarian assistance, including access to adequate fuel, shelter, clothes, hygiene, sanitation and medical supplies;
• avoid public incitement;
• ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts and
• submit a report to the court on all measures taken to give effect to the order.

Israel will respond on Friday, January 12, 2024.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The Gambia squad travelling to the Africa Cup of Nations "could have died" on an aborted flight, claims coach Tom Saintfiet.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands.

By Diana Buttu
TORONTO, Canada, Jan 11 2024 (IPS)

The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) published the following Q&A with human rights attorney and political analyst Diana Buttu on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice ICJ). The court is scheduled to hold hearings on the petition January 11-12.

She is a former advisor to Palestinian Authority President and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Question: What is the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and how does it differ from the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

Diana Buttu: The International Court of Justice is part of the United Nations system and deals with legal disputes between states. The International Criminal Court, which Israel does not recognize the jurisdiction of, deals with claims against individuals. Israel signed onto the UN Genocide Convention, as did South Africa. Therefore, the ICJ has the jurisdiction to deal with the petition being brought by South Africa.

Q: Why is South Africa filing the petition before the ICJ? What is being requested?

DB: Any country that is a signatory to the Genocide Convention can file a petition to the ICJ. They do not need to be directly affected. That said, it is very powerful that South Africa, a country that lived under a racist apartheid regime, is making a claim against the apartheid regime of Israel.

Diana Buttu

South Africa is seeking an expedited hearing and is hoping that the ICJ will issue a ruling calling upon Israel to immediately halt all military attacks and allow food and other humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza. To that end, South Africa has requested that the ICJ should order Israel “to cease killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinian people in Gaza, to cease the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group, to prevent and punish direct and public incitement to genocide, and to rescind related policies and practices, including regarding the restriction on aid and the issuing of evacuation directives.”

Q: What exactly is South Africa alleging?

DB: South Africa alleges that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians, half of them children, are trapped with nowhere to escape to. Since October 7, Israel has been carrying out a massive military assault by land, air and sea, on Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Israel’s assault is one of the most destructive and deadly bombing campaigns in history, killing more than 1 percent of the population of Gaza up to this point. At the same time, Israel has cut off food, water, and medical supplies, as part of a deliberate attempt to starve the population.

Israel has also driven nearly the entire population out of their homes in an act of ethnic cleansing, particularly in the north of Gaza. So far, Israel has destroyed or damaged 355,000 homes (approximately 60% of all homes in Gaza); displaced 1.9 million Palestinians (85% of the total population) and has left all of Gaza without food, clean water or sanitation.

Israel’s military has also targeted hospitals and other health care facilities in Gaza as part of its ethnic cleansing campaign. According to South Africa’s petition, “Israel has bombed, shelled and besieged Gaza’s hospitals, with only 13 out of 36 hospitals partially functional, and no fully functioning hospital left in North Gaza. Contagious and epidemic diseases are rife amongst the displaced Palestinian population, with experts warning of the risk of meningitis, cholera and other outbreaks. The entire population in Gaza is at imminent risk of famine…”

According to South Africa’s petition, Israel is:

1. Engaged in the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, a large proportion of them women and children —who are estimated to account for around 70% of the more than 21,110 fatalities. According to reports, Israeli soldiers have also summarily executed civilians;

2. Deliberately causing starvation and dehydration amongst Palestinians in Gaza by cutting of supplies of food, water, and electricity, and the destruction of bakeries, mills, agricultural lands and other methods of food production and sustenance;

3. Causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza, including through maiming, psychological trauma, and inhuman and degrading treatment;

4. Forcibly displacing – ethnic cleansing – around 85% of Palestinians in Gaza so far — including children, the elderly, and the sick and wounded — as well as causing the large scale destruction of Palestinian homes, cities, towns, refugee camps, and entire regions in Gaza, precluding the return of a significant proportion of Palestinians to their homes;

5. Destroying Palestinian life and society in Gaza, through the destruction of Gaza’s universities, schools, cultural centers, courts, public buildings and records, libraries, churches, mosques, roads, infrastructure, utilities and other facilities necessary to the sustained life of Palestinians in Gaza as a group, alongside the killing of entire family groups — erasing entire oral histories in Gaza — and the killing of prominent and distinguished members of society;

6. Imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza, through the reproductive violence inflicted on Palestinian women, newborn babies, infants, and children;

7. Failing to provide for or to ensure the provision for the medical needs of Palestinians in Gaza, including those medical needs created by other genocidal acts causing serious bodily harm, including through directly attacking hospitals, ambulances and other healthcare facilities in Gaza, killing doctors, medics and nurses, including the most qualified medics in Gaza, and destroying and disabling Gaza’s medical system; and

8. Failing to provide and restricting the provision of adequate shelter, clothes, hygiene or sanitation to Palestinians in Gaza, including the 1.9 million internally displaced people, compelled by Israel’s actions to live in dangerous situations of squalor, alongside the routine targeting and destruction of places of shelter and the killing and wounding of those seeking safety, including women, children, the disabled and the elderly.

Q: What is necessary to establish that genocide is taking place?

DB: According to the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Based on this, two elements are required: the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group and the act of doing so. In the petition, South Africa lays out both elements by highlighting numerous statements demonstrating the intent to commit genocide on the part of senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, the President of Israel, the Minister of Defense, the National Security Minister, the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Heritage, the Minister of Agriculture and the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. The petition also highlights the alarm bells raised by a number of UN experts warning that Palestinians are at risk of genocide. It also highlights the many acts that Israel has carried out since October 7 to meet those elements above.

Q: What will happen if the ICJ finds that Israel is committing genocide?

DB: At this stage, what is being sought is a provisional order asking that Israel cease its attacks against Palestinians in Gaza. For a provisional order, it is not necessary to prove that Israel is committing genocide; but rather that the acts complained of fall within the Genocide Convention.

That said, if after hearing the full case the court finds that Israel is committing genocide, this obligates not only Israel but also countries around the world to act to stop genocide. First, according to the ICJ, every UN member state must undertake to comply with a decision of the ICJ in any case to which it is a party. If they do not comply, the other party may go to the UN Security Council which may take measures to give effect to the judgment.

Beyond that, however, the crime of genocide does not just bind the party committing genocide but binds third party states too, whether or not they have ratified the Genocide Convention. What this means is that ALL states are bound and therefore must take measures to stop the genocide as well as measures not to aid Israel in committing genocide. This, of course, can take different forms including by imposing an arms embargo on Israel, boycotting and sanctioning Israel, and prosecuting war criminals.

For more information, contact Chris at chris@imeu.org or (202) 903-3271.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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