The letter sent on behalf of more than 500 ochch workers says that describing war as a “genocide” undermines the global rights protection system.
Posted on August 28, 2025
Hundreds of United Nations staff have appealed to the Human Rights Manager of the Volker Turk organization to publicly describe the war in Gaza as a “genocide”, saying that the fact of not undermining the global rights system.
The appeal was launched in a letter, signed by the personnel committee on behalf of more than 500 employees at the Office of the High Human Rights Commissioner (OHCHR), and sent Wednesday to Turk. A copy of the letter was obtained by Tel Aviv Tribune.
The letter indicated “a large cup” of the OHCHR staff believed that the legal threshold for the genocide had been reached in the case of the War of Israel in Gaza, “on the basis of the in -depth reports of the UN mechanisms”, as well as independent experts.
The worried staff said that the ORHCH should “reflect this evaluation more explicitly in its public communications”, and that the fact of doing so “risk of eroding the credibility of the OCH as the main authority on human rights for everyone everywhere”.
The letter added that ochch staff had a “deep frustration on a scale, within reach and the nature of reported violations and their impact on civilians, especially women and children”.
He urged the OCHC to avoid repeating the errors of history, noting that the “silence” of the UN during the 1994 Rwandan genocide which killed more than a million people was “often quoted as one of the greatest moral failures”.
“Ohchr has a strong legal and moral responsibility to denounce the acts of genocide,” continued the letter. “The fact of not denouncing a deployment genocide undermines the credibility of the UN and the Human Rights system itself.”
At least 62,966 Palestinians were killed and nearly 160,000 injured during the war, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, while more than 300 people – including 121 children – are hungry to death, because famine was confirmed in part of the enclave.
Turk: “moral indignation” shared
In Turk’s response to the letter, reported by the news agency Reuters, the head of the United Nations said that the staff had raised major concerns.
“I know that we all share a feeling of moral indignation to the horrors that we are witnessing, as well as frustration in the face of the inability of the international community to end this situation,” he said, adding a call to the staff to “remain united as a office in the face of such adversity”.
Invited to comment on the disclosed letter, the spokesperson for the OHCHR, Ravina Shamdasani, told the press agency that the war in Gaza had “shaken us all to our heart” and had created difficult circumstances for the staff to document the abuse of progress to provoke global action.
“There have been and will continue to be internally discussions on how to go ahead,” she told Reuters.
The accusations of genocide increase
While a growing number of world leaders, notably the Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide, the UN did not use the term, with UN officials who said it was international shorts to determine the genoccide.
South Africa brought a case of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice in 2023, but it has not yet made its way before the Court.
Certain rights groups, such as Amnesty International, as well as the independent expert in the UN Francesca Albanese, also used the term.
Israel rejects the accusations of genocide in Gaza, saying that it acts in accordance with its right to self -defense in response to Hamas deadly attacks in October 2023, in which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 captives.