On 30 May 2025, IDS Honorary Associate and former UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths described the situation in Gaza as genocide. Alongside IDS Research Fellow Philip Proudfoot, here he calls for a decisive realignment of humanitarian law and humanitarian action to halt genocide and other atrocities in Gaza.
Few acts more starkly violate humanitarian principles than soldiers firing on civilians seeking aid. In late May and early June 2025, Israeli forces have done exactly that — opening fire on crowds making their way to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution points. GHF is a joint Israeli-US entity among the very few organisations allowed to operate in Gaza and widely criticised by UN agencies and humanitarian experts. In one week alone, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported five mass-casualty incidents at its Rafah field hospital — the highest number of weapons-wounded patients since it opened a year ago.
“It’s difficult to describe what we saw with the young and the old, there was severe injuries to the head [and] severe injuries to the lung, and heavy proportion of head-targeted injuries from bullet wounds,” said Dr. Ahmad Abou-Sweid, an Australian working at the Nasser medical complex.
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres has called for an immediate and independent investigation and for perpetrators to be held to account.
Genocide in Gaza
Attacks on Gazan civilians seeking aid are not new. The violations are systematic. On 29 February 2024, 112 individuals were killed during the flour massacre when Israeli forces fired on crowds of Palestinians gathered to collect food. UN experts at the time warned that “Israel has also opened fire on humanitarian aid convoys on several occasions, despite the fact that the convoys shared their coordinates with Israel.”
That massacre and others like it stands in direct violation of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s 26 January 2024, 28 March and 24 May 2024 orders in South Africa v. Israel. The court ordered Israel “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” with a view to preventing a “risk of irreparable prejudice” to the “plausible rights of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide” pursuant to the Genocide Convention.
In January 2024, the ICJ ordered it to “take all reasonable measures within its power to prevent genocide” and to desist from depriving Palestinians in Gaza of access to adequate food and water; humanitarian assistance (including fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation); and medical supplies and medical care.
In March 2024, the Court added electricity to the list of basic services and further ordered Israel to increase “the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary.”
In May 2024, the Court further prohibited Israel from restricting “access by fact-finding missions, international mandates and other bodies” to Gaza.
The definition of genocide
In addition to killings and causing bodily and mental harm, the definition of genocide includes deliberately inflicting on a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
For months, it has been abundantly clear that Israel has neither implemented nor even intended to comply with the ICJ Orders. Instead, it has imposed a near-total siege — cutting off food, water, fuel and medical supplies — while bombing nearly all remaining hospitals, as well as displacement camps and farmland. It has repeatedly fired on aid convoys at distribution points, killed medical personnel and journalists, and caused more UN colleagues deaths than at any point in the organisation’s history. Meanwhile, local militias associated with Israel have looted and disrupted the delivery of assistance. And on 9 June 2025, Israel illegally intercepted and detained crew members of the Madleen, including Greta Thunberg, as they sought to break the siege and bring aid into Gaza.
The intent could not be clearer
The intent — often the hardest criteria to prove — could not be clearer: senior Israeli politicians and cabinet members openly call for Gaza’s eradication and ethnic cleansing again and again.
The January 2024 ICJ’s order demanded unhindered humanitarian access and a halt to attacks on civilians. In March 2024, the ICJ reaffirmed its previous order and further ordered Israel to “take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full co-operation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary.”
Nevertheless, humanitarian assistance to Gaza remained scarce and by choking off aid for months, including implementing an 11-week total blockade while targeting civilian infrastructure and openly inciting the destruction of Palestinians, Israel has inflicted deadly conditions, directly killed and harmed civilians. While Israel says its aim is to destroy Hamas, what it has displayed so far is an intent to “destroy, in whole or in part” (wording from the Genocide Convention) Palestinians in Gaza as a national group.
Weaponising aid and humanitarian camouflage
For humanitarians, the most urgent imperative is to end the creation of genocidal conditions, and we can address that immediately through a rapid surge of aid. Yet many Global North politicians insist this must await a ceasefire. But that claim is false. Aid can and must reach civilians now, even amid active fighting. This is why humanitarian norms and values demand not only respect, but enforcement. They require Israel to cease attacking aid workers and obstructing impartial relief operations.
Despite arguments to the contrary, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation does not meet the needs nor indeed the rights of Palestinians. As humanitarians, we know that practically everything about the Foundation is flawed – it is yet another form of ‘humanitarian camouflage.’ Operationally, no reputable aid agency would concentrate distributions in just one or two hubs to compel the population to move; instead, organisations like UNRWA deploy dispersed networks to ease travel burdens and prevent deadly overcrowding. The sector’s norm is that aid must reach people where they are and not vice versa.
Thousands more aid trucks are needed
The food parcels themselves are of minimal nutritional value and require access to cooking fuel and clean water — resources most people in Gaza lack today. They are also insufficient. Recent and earlier food security assessments found that the strip’s entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation. Only 60 trucks of GHF aid are crossing the border when thousands more are needed.
At the level of principle — humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality — GHF fails entirely, turning aid into an instrument of control. According to Jonathan Whittall, Head of OCHA in Palestine, “this new scheme is surveillance-based rationing that legitimizes a policy of deprivation by design.” This is not neutral relief but weaponised aid by a belligerent. The international community must categorically reject it using all available measures. To avert further genocidal acts, humanitarian organisations need immediate access to do their job.
Humanitarian law, humanitarian action and the responsibility to protect
International humanitarian law is more than a technical rulebook — it is the operational engine and moral anchor of any relief effort. Its purpose is to limit violence and safeguard civilians, even amid active hostilities. In practice, this obligation demands Hamas release all Israeli hostages, the release of all Palestinians held without charge, and that every leader and combatant cease ordering or committing war crimes.
But when the machinery of genocide is at work ordinary IHL safeguards no longer suffice. At a diplomatic level, invoking the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, which aims at protecting people from acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes, becomes imperative. And at field level, humanitarianism needs to evolve to further embed a justice framework into operations, meticulously documenting each war crime to support future prosecutions.
Collective action is required
Responsibility to Protect rests on three pillars. First, every state must shield the population under its control from mass atrocity — an obligation Israel clearly fails in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which includes Gaza. Second, the international community must apply measures such as sanctions, asset freezes, or other targeted pressures to prevent such crimes. And third, if those measures fail, collective action is required. Now that there is a broad consensus on the fact genocide and other mass atrocities are unfolding in Gaza, R2P must finally be on the negotiating table.
In the face of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the job of enforcing humanitarian law cannot remain detached or siloed from humanitarian action itself. In an era of impunity, it might be time for the UN to establish a dedicated ‘justice cluster’ tasked with monitoring IHL violations during any large-scale aid operation. Field NGOs and UN Agencies ought to embed legal advisors so that every obstruction — every diverted convoy, every attack on aid workers — is logged with even more forensic detail.
But above all how we classify the carnage in Gaza matters. Words carry consequences and must trigger concrete steps. When the legal threshold for genocide is met, we must call it genocide – and act accordingly.
