Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law and, like other crimes against international law, have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.
Issues relating to the State of Israel and aspects of the Arab–Israeli conflict and more recently the Iran–Israel conflict occupy repeated annual debate times, resolutions and resources at the United Nations. Since its founding in 1948, the United Nations Security Council, has adopted 79 resolutions directly related to the Arab–Israeli conflict as of January 2010.
Richard Joseph Goldstone is a South African retired judge who served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa from July 1994 to October 2003. He joined the bench as a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa, first in the Transvaal Provincial Division from 1980 to 1989 and then in the Appellate Division from 1990 to 1994. Before that, he was a commercial lawyer in Johannesburg, where he entered legal practice in 1963 and took silk in 1976.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. The headquarters of the Council are at the United Nations Office at Geneva in Switzerland.
Ian Martin is an English human rights activist/advisor and sometime United Nations official. His most recent UN assignment was as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya. From 2015 to 2018 he was Executive Director of Security Council Report.
Sir Nigel Simon Rodley KBE was an international lawyer and professor.
Deshamanya Radhika Coomaraswamy is a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate who served as an Under-Secretary General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from 2006 to 2012. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her to the position in April 2006. In 1994, she was appointed the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women — the first under this mandate. Her appointment marked the first time that violence against women was conceptualized as a political issue internationally.
The 2006 shelling of Beit Hanoun by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) happened on 8 November, when shells hit a row of houses in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, killing at least 19 Palestinians and wounding more than 40. The shelling followed the IDF's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in completion of a week-long operation codenamed Operation "Autumn Clouds", which the Israeli government stated had been intended to stop the Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants. The Israeli government apologized and attributed the incident to a technical malfunction.
UN Watch is a Geneva-based non-governmental organization (NGO) whose stated mission is "to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter". It is an accredited NGO in Special Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council and an Associate NGO to the UN Department of Public Information.
David Matas is the senior legal counsel of B'nai Brith Canada who currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has maintained a private practice in refugee, immigration, and human rights law since 1979, and has published various books and manuscripts.
Issues relating to the State of Palestine and aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict occupy continuous debates, resolutions, and resources at the United Nations. Since its founding in 1948, the United Nations Security Council, as of January 2010, has adopted 79 resolutions directly related to the Arab–Israeli conflict.
The International Network to Promote the Rule of Law (INPROL) is a global, online community of practice, comprising 3,000+ rule of law practitioners from 120 countries and 300 organizations. INPROL works to assist specialists in the rule of law to stabilize war-torn societies.
The Gaza War, also known as Operation Cast Lead, also known as the Gaza Massacre, and referred to as the Battle of al-Furqan by Hamas, was a three-week armed conflict between Gaza Strip Palestinian paramilitary groups and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009 with a unilateral ceasefire. The conflict resulted in 1,166–1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths. Over 46,000 homes were destroyed in Gaza, making more than 100,000 people homeless.
The Dahiya doctrine, or Dahya doctrine, is an Israeli military strategy involving the destruction of civilian infrastructure in order to pressure hostile regimes. It is a type of asymmetric warfare. It endorses the employment of "disproportionate force" to secure that end. The doctrine was outlined by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of General Staff Gadi Eizenkot.
William Anthony Schabas, OC is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law. He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty.
Accusations of violations regarding international humanitarian law, which governs the actions by belligerents during an armed conflict, have been directed at both Israel and Hamas for their actions during the 2008–2009 Gaza War. The accusations covered violating laws governing distinction and proportionality by Israel, the indiscriminate firing of rockets at civilian locations and extrajudicial violence within the Gaza Strip by Hamas. As of September 2009, some 360 complaints had been filed by individuals and NGOs at the prosecutor's office in the Hague calling for investigations into alleged crimes committed by Israel during the Gaza War.
The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report, was a United Nations fact-finding mission established in April 2009 pursuant to Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-9/1 of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) of 12 January 2009, following the Gaza War as an independent international fact-finding mission "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression". South African jurist Richard Goldstone was appointed to head the mission. The other co-authors of the Report were Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers.
Desmond Travers is a retired Irish Army colonel. During his years with the army he served with various United Nations and European Union peacekeeping forces. Since his retirement from the army in 2001, he has taught military affairs at the Institute for International Criminal Investigations in The Hague. He also served on the institutes board of directors. In 2009 together with Richard Goldstone, Christine Chinkin, and Hina Jilani, he was appointed to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. The report that the mission subsequently published is commonly referred to as the Goldstone Report and Travers is credited as one of the four co-authors.
Dapo Akande is a British-Nigerian academic and lawyer. Akande is the Chichele Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC). Akande was the first Black professor to be honoured with a portrait at St Peter's College, Oxford. Akande is a founding editor of EJIL:Talk!, the scholarly blog of the European Journal of International Law.
Joy Ngozi Ezeilo is a Nigerian professor of public law, a senior advocate of Nigeria, an activist, and a six-year United Nations Special Rapporteur on Trafficking persons in Africa. She is also a former Commissioner for Gender and Social Development, Enugu State. She was a former Dean and HOD of faculty of law University of Nigeria Nsukka and the founder of the Women Aid Collective (WACOL). She is a recipient of Officer of the Order of Niger (OON) and one of the 2022 BBC 100 Women
