Date: 23 September 2025

Dear Dr. Beyani, 

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (Al Mezan) wish to extend our congratulations on your recent appointment as the United Nations (UN) Special Adviser of the Secretary-General for the Prevention of Genocide. Your mandate begins at one of the darkest times for the Palestinian people and our collective humanity: the ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. We trust that your expertise in international law and your proven record of advancing human rights globally will enable you to confront the reality of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a defining test for the credibility of the international legal order and the UN itself.

Al Mezan is a Palestinian human rights organization based in Gaza. For over 25 years, we have been on the ground monitoring and documenting violations of international human rights and humanitarian law against Palestinians, regardless of the perpetrator, and seeking to hold those responsible to account. Never in our organization's history have we witnessed such levels of devastation and disregard for human life as those now unfolding in Gaza. With the majority of our staff still in Gaza, struggling to survive while continuing to document and report events on the ground, we feel a profound responsibility to convey our urgent concerns regarding Israel’s conduct. We believe that your office has a crucial role to play in bringing an end to this genocide and hope this letter will mark the beginning of a strong and constructive dialogue with your office – a dialogue that has been lacking under your predecessors.

In less than two years, Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza has killed and injured more than 230,000 of Palestinians, that is, approximately 10 percent of Gaza’s total population. As of 19 September 2025, at least 440 Palestinians, including 147 children, have died from starvation, as Israel’s total siege deliberately seeks to deprive Gaza’s population of food, water, and medicine. Between October 2023 and October 2024 alone, life expectancy in Gaza declined by more than 30 years. Nearly all infrastructure capable of sustaining human life has been deliberately destroyed, including homes, roads, hospitals, schools, universities, water and sanitation systems. Every single Palestinian in Gaza has been forcibly displaced, most multiple times. As we write, the majority of Gaza’s surviving population is confined to a small area in central Gaza, in conditions amounting to those of a concentration camp, deprived of the basic means of survival and subjected to constant bombardment from air, sea, and land.

Palestinian human rights organizations, including Al Mezan, have been warning of genocide since 13 October 2023. On 24 January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued the first of three provisional measures orders in the case Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel). This order put Israel, all other States Parties to the Genocide Convention, and the international community as a whole – including the United Nations – on notice of a serious risk of genocide, thereby triggering their duty to prevent it. The reality of Israel’s genocide has also been and acknowledged by dozens of UN independent experts, prominent international human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, as well as humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza, including Médecins Sans Frontières. Last week, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, finding that Israeli authorities and military forces have carried out four of the five genocidal acts defined in the Genocide Convention.

We are now approaching a grim milestone: the beginning of the third year of the genocide in Gaza. And despite all the warnings that have been issued, the international community has utterly failed to adequately respond. As a result, rather than being halted, Israel’s genocide is intensifying. Israel is acting on its plan to take over Gaza City and is forcibly transferring Palestinians from their homes. This escalation is accompanied by mounting violence and accelerating settler-colonial annexation of the West Bank, marking the foreseeable expansion of genocidal acts against Palestinians beyond Gaza and across the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT).

The very mechanisms created in the 20th century to prevent genocide have failed Palestinians in Gaza, just as they have failed Bosniaks, Tutsis, and others before. The United Nations, too, is failing in its responsibilities: the Security Council remains obstructed by the United States, which, by providing political cover and military support, is aiding and abetting and is complicit in Israel’s genocide; countless General Assembly resolutions remain unimplemented, as UN Member States have failed to enforce their own calls. We urge you to ensure that, under your leadership, the UN Office on Genocide Prevention does not replicate this pattern of failure, but instead demonstrates its credibility by rising to its responsibility in addressing the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Dr. Beyani, in your new capacity as Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, your words carry moral and legal weight because of the institutional authority of your office within the United Nations system. We therefore urge you to act decisively and take all possible measures within your mandate, including publicly acknowledging the the nature of Israel’s actions and policies against Palestinians in Gaza as genocide; advising the Secretary-General; and mobilizing Member States to take coordinated action to end the genocide in Gaza and prevent its expansion to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.  

As it is currently High-level Week at the General Assembly, and we believe that now is the opportune moment for your office to start contributing to growing momentum to stop this genocide. Actions that you could take to build this urgently needed momentum include:

-       Issuing a public statement acknowledging that, consistent with the findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry, Israel’s conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide, and urgently reminding States Parties to the Genocide Convention that their duty to prevent was triggered at least as of 24 January 2024 by the first ICJ provisional measures order, and that this duty requires them to employ all available legal means, including imposing an arms embargo and lawful sanctions, to stop this genocide.

-       Meeting with Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations to be briefed on the situation on the ground and to directly hear from victims and survivors.

-       Proactively engaging with the General Assembly and the Security Council in your capacity as Special Adviser to mobilize UN Member States to act decisively to end the genocide in Gaza.

-       Condemning efforts to silence Palestinian human rights organizations documenting the genocide and seeking accountability for Israel’s crimes, including the recent U.S. sanctions against Al Mezan, Al-Haq, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights for pursuing legitimate accountability work before the International Criminal Court.

Our requests are firmly rooted in the belief that “never again” must mean never again for anyone, everywhere. History will judge how we respond to this genocide. The credibility of your office, and of the United Nations itself, depends on whether it acts to confront and end the genocide in Gaza. We remain available to meet at your earliest convenience.