The United
Nations Special Rapporteur on Health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, urgently appealed on
Friday to world leaders to exert all efforts and use their power to stop the
ongoing genocide on the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS)
has evacuated its temporary administrative headquarters in the southern
Gaza Strip due to Israeli attacks on the area. (Photo: PRCS TW Page)
“We just need
all of the world leaders to summon the economic, political, diplomatic power
that they have to make sure that this genocide ends,” Mofokeng said at a news
brief in New York.
Nonetheless, the
special rapporteur slammed world leaders for their complicity in the ongoing
genocide through the support they continue to extend to Israel.
“Preparative
justice will require a profoundly different approach and solidarity, as well as
a caliber of world leaders who unfortunately up to now continue to display
their moral, political and diplomatic bankruptcy,” she said.
“And they must
carry this genocide with shame,” the special rapporteur stressed.
Health System
Obliterated
In the over
thirty-minute press brief, Mofokeng presented an extremely grim account of the
health conditions in the strip due to Israel’s continued aggression in the
besieged enclave, stressing that this has been “a war on the right to health
from the beginning.”
“The health
system in Gaza been completely obliterated and the right to health has been
decimated at every level,” Mofokeng continued.
The UN official
stressed that the right to health in the Gaza Strip has become “untenable” due
to Israel’s continued aggression, pointing out that Palestinian health workers
are “exhausted, harassed, killed, [and] impeded from fulfilling their tasks as
first responders.”
She added that
the dire conditions under which health professionals are working in Gaza oblige
many of them to operate on patients without anesthesia or basic medication.
‘Medicide’
“All of us
continue to bear witness to the very practice of medicine being under attack,”
she said, while describing Israel’s deadly attacks on the health care system as
“medicide.”
She commended
the work of the healthcare workers in Gaza by saying that “they are the oath
takers, the ones who refused to leave and stayed caring for their patients,
knowing their own fates.”
The UN official
revealed that she is coordinating with other UN experts to achieve
investigation and accountability of those in charge of the crimes being
committed in Gaza.
“We are
unlocking new levels that we can never undo,” she said, while warning of the
danger of the impunity Israel keeps enjoying.
Mofokeng ended
her press brief by calling for an immediate ceasefire.
“I am ashamed
and deeply sorry that the world has failed you,” she said choking back her
tears.
Addressing the
people of Gaza she said that “justice will prevail and you will return to
rebuild your beloved Gaza.”
Horrors of
Genocide
Along with three
other UN rapporteurs, Mofokeng said in a press conference, as part of the 57th
session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, on September 16 that the
world has witnessed the horror of genocide for the last eleven months in the
besieged Gaza Strip.
Mofokeng
stressed in her intervention that the nearly one-year genocide in the Gaza
Strip by the Israeli occupation army has witnessed record attacks on the health
system in the besieged enclave including those on hospitals and health workers,
which resulted in the destruction of the entire health infrastructure.
She revealed
that out of the 36 existing hospitals in Gaza, only 17 are partly functioning,
emphasizing that Israel continues to violate international law by targeting
Palestinian civilians including children and health personnel.
Gaza Genocide
Continues
Flouting a UN
Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced
international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza.
Currently on
trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against
Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to
Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 42,847 Palestinians have been killed, and 100,544
wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7, 2023.
Moreover, at
least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of
their homes throughout the Strip.
Israel says that
1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on
October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were
killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
Palestinian and
international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded
are women and children.
The Israeli war
has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the
death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli
aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million
people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced
forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with
Egypt—in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Later in the
war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to
central Gaza in a constant search for safety.
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