Clarion India
NEW YORK – A New York-based United Nations human rights official has resigned over the organisation’s response to Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza, citing the US, UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”, reported TRT World.
Craig Mokhiber, the director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, announced his resignation in a letter shared publicly on Tuesday, in which he protested the UN’s “failure” in its duty to prevent what he categorises as “genocide” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by Israelis.
“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it.” he wrote in an October 28 letter to Volker Turk, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Israeli army has expanded air and ground attacks on Gaza, which has been under relentless airstrikes since a surprise offensive by the Palestinian group Hamas earlier this month.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said 8,525 people have been killed in the narrow strip of land since Israel launched its bombing campaign on October 7.
“The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.”
He mentioned that the United Nations had not been successful in preventing past genocides targeting the Tutsis in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, the Yazidis in Iraq, and the Rohingya in Myanmar.
“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs … leaves no room for doubt,” he said, adding that US, UK and much of Europe were not only “refusing to meet their treaty obligations” under the Geneva Conventions but were also arming Israel’s assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.
He then outlined a 10-point plan to end the violence against Palestinians, including establishing “a single, democratic, secular state… with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews” as well as destroying Israel’s arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
He called for the UN to “proudly join the anti-apartheid movement” and “stand on the side of justice”.
Mokhiber, who has been with the United Nations since 1992, held various prominent positions.
He led the development of a human rights-based approach to development for the high commissioner and served as a senior human rights adviser in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Sudan.
A lawyer with expertise in international human rights law, he resided in Gaza during the 1990s. As the director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, he occasionally faced criticism from pro-Israeli groups for his social media comments.
He faced backlash for endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and for accusing Israel of practising “apartheid”, a claim he reiterated in his retirement letter.
