humanitarian aid

Revealed: UK ‘double counting’ £500m of aid for war-torn countries as climate finance

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Original article by JOSH GABBATISS republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

The UK government has reclassified nearly £500m of aid for war-torn and impoverished countries as “climate finance”, in a bid to meet its international commitments under the Paris Agreement.

This follows reports that the UK’s pledge to spend £11.6bn on climate aid between 2021-22 and 2025-26 is slipping out of reach, due to government cuts.

A freedom-of-information (FOI) request by Carbon Brief reveals how, after the reclassification, money for humanitarian work in nations including Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia is now being double-counted as climate finance to help the UK hit its goal.  

The projects being double-counted include work to provide food and basic necessities that have no explicit link to climate action, Carbon Brief’s analysis reveals. Some of their internal reports even state clearly that they are not climate-finance projects. 

This is part of a wider revision of climate-finance accounting, introduced by the government in 2023 to ensure the UK achieves its £11.6bn target. 

By redefining existing funds pegged for development banks, investment in foreign businesses and humanitarian aid as “climate finance”, the government expects to add £1.72bn to its total.

Experts tell Carbon Brief it is “problematic” and “unjust” to relabel existing funds as climate finance rather than providing new money. One says the UK could meet its target, at least in part, by “double counting development and climate finance”.

The chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at UN climate talks says the UK’s actions are a “clear deviation from the path to climate justice”.

‘Moving the goalposts’

The UK government has committed to spending £11.6bn on international climate finance (ICF) between 2021-22 and 2025-26. This is the nation’s contribution to climate action in developing countries, which it is obliged to provide under the Paris Agreement. 

Developed countries, such as the UK, have committed to sending “new and additional” climate finance to developing countries. This is generally interpreted as spending extra money on top of existing foreign aid.

The UK government itself has described the £11.6bn goal as “dedicated ring-fenced funding that is distinguishable from non-climate [aid]”.

However, reports began to emerge in 2023 that the government was not on track to meet its target.

Experts attributed this to the government cutting its overall foreign aid budget. In November 2020, the government suspended a target to give 0.7% of national income as overseas aid – reducing it to 0.5% as a “temporary measure”. 

The government is also spending more of the remaining funds on supporting refugees within the UK. The latest figures show that in 2023, the UK spent more of its aid budget on supporting asylum seekers and refugees in the country than on overseas projects.

In order to remain on track for the £11.6bn goal, development minister Andrew Mitchell announced in October 2023 that the government was changing the way it calculated ICF spending.

This immediately sparked concerns that the government was inflating its climate-finance figures without providing any new aid money for developing countries. Mitchell provided limited details of how the government was getting its target back on track.

More information came in a report released in February by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI). It concluded that, by “moving the goalposts”, the government had reclassified £1.72bn of spending as climate finance between 2021-22 and 2025-26.

This figure includes four tranches of funding that had not previously been considered ICF:

  • £746m from assuming that a share of the “core” funding the UK gives to the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) will be assigned to climate-related projects.
  • £497m from automatically labelling 30% of the humanitarian aid spent in the 10% of countries that are most vulnerable to climate change as ICF.
  • An estimated £266m from defining more payments into British International Investment (BII), the UK’s overseas development finance institution, as ICF.
  • £215m from civil servants “scrubbing” the aid portfolio – namely, going back over existing projects and adding any climate-relevant funding they had previously missed.

The figures cited by ICAI are based on unpublished government analysis, which Carbon Brief has now obtained via FOI. 

The analysis includes the annual contributions each of these sources are expected to provide over the period from 2021-22 to 2025-26, which can be seen in the coloured sections of the chart below.

Annual UK ICF spending, £bn, by financial year for the period 2011/12 to 2025/26. The grey area indicates ICF spending under the original accounting methodology used until October 2023. Beyond 2022/23 the figures are forecasts, with the light grey area indicating the upper bound and the darker grey indicating the lower bound. The coloured areas indicate the funding newly reclassified as counting towards ICF, following methodology changes introduced in October 2023. For multilateral development bank contributions, Carbon Brief understands that the UK will pledge £495m to the World Bank in 2025/26, and the remaining contributions that make up the £746m total are spread evenly across the 2011/12-2025/26 period. Source: UK government.

As the chart indicates, even with the methodology changes, the £11.6bn target is still “backloaded”, with a significant uptick in ICF spending required beyond 2023-24 to meet it. 

ICAI notes that, since the government cut its aid spending from the UN-backed benchmark of 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI), “serious concerns remain over whether the heavily backloaded spending plan can be delivered”.

Core funding

The largest tranche of redefined ICF – some £740m – comes from the government starting to assume that a share of its “core” MDB funding counts as climate finance.

This is money that the UK government already hands to these organisations to distribute according to their own priorities, primarily through loans. None of this money has previously been counted by the UK government as ICF, even though some went towards climate action.

MDBs, including the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and others have placed a growing emphasis on climate change in recent years. The World Bank, for example, has a target of spending 35% of its finance on climate-related projects.

Following the reclassification, the UK government will simply assume that 35% of the money it gives to the World Bank – some £495m of £1.4bn total due in 2025/26 – counts as ICF.

It will use a similar approach for its funding of other MDBs, with these changes adding a total of £740m to the amount of the UK’s aid spending that is classified as ICF.

This move will not result in the UK providing any new funds for climate action, as it was already planning on distributing this money. In fact, the government has cut its spending on MDBs in recent years, due to the overall cut in the UK’s foreign aid budget.

Humanitarian aid

The second-largest tranche of newly reclassified climate finance is from projects in climate-vulnerable countries, an additional £497m of which is being counted as ICF.

The government dataset obtained by Carbon Brief via FOI reveals the 28 humanitarian projects and five more general, country-specific funds that will contribute to this additional £497m. 

The projects are based in some of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world – Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

They largely focus on essential provisions, such as food and basic infrastructure.

Prior to the recent changes, these programmes would have contributed just £47.5m to ICF, according to the government data released to Carbon Brief.

By automatically counting 30% of their spend as ICF, this figure has now multiplied more than 10 times. The chart below shows, in red, these additional ICF funds.

Annual UK ICF spending, £m, sourced from humanitarian aid projects for the 10% most climate-vulnerable countries, as defined by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. Blue columns indicate the ICF spending that was expected from these projects prior to the methodology change, and red columns indicate ICF spending from these projects after the change. Source: UK government.

For the 23 of the 28 projects with documentation available online, Carbon Brief assessed the relevant sections of their “business case and summary” documents for evidence that they were related to climate action.

Many of the project documents reference climate change and say they will provide climate benefits. For example, all four projects in Somalia, a nation that has faced devastating drought and floods in recent years, mention the importance of climate resilience in their work.

However, some of the projects explicitly state that they are not intended to provide climate-finance. 

The summary document for the Assurance and Learning Programme (ALP) in Afghanistan, published in 2021, states: “The programme will not be eligible for ICF nor will it monitor ICF funded programmes.”

Similarly, the Congo Humanitarian, Resilience and Protection (CHRESP) Programme summary document, also published in 2021, notes “we do not anticipate that any of our programming under this programme will be eligible as ICF”.

Another project, titled Yemen: Access, Logistics, Liaison, and Accountability, will provide “few opportunities” to address climate change, according to the summary document. A further four project documents do not contain any reference to climate change. 

Despite this, following the government’s reclassification, these seven projects will collectively contribute £166.9m of UK climate finance in the coming years.

Euan Ritchie, a senior development finance policy advisor at the thinktank Development Initiatives, says blanket approaches to assigning climate finance are “problematic”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“Just because humanitarian aid is going to a country that is vulnerable to climate change doesn’t mean it addresses that vulnerability. And these projects have already been screened for their climate focus.”

He points to one of the projects, the Somalia Humanitarian and Resilience Programme, as an example. Ritchie says, based on International Aid Transparency Initiative data, that officials had already decided around 12% of this programme’s spending was ICF, and asks:

“So what rationale is there for bumping it up to 30%? Were officials wrong the first time?”

Fatuma Hussein, a programme manager at the thinktank Power Shift Africa, tells Carbon Brief such an approach is “unfair and unjust” as it “risks conflating” the “distinct needs” of climate aid and other humanitarian objectives.

In its guidance for categorising what counts as climate finance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee recommends scoring many humanitarian projects “zero”, indicating programmes that “generally do not qualify” as climate aid.

More private investment

The third-largest tranche of reclassified development aid relates to state-backed private sector investment under British International Investment (BII).

The UK government will also now count more of its payments into BII as climate finance, amounting to around an extra £266m by 2025-26. Unlike aid spending, these are investments in the private sector and are expected to yield a financial return for the UK.

Previously, the government counted a fixed 30% of BII spending as climate finance. It now intends to include a higher percentage to reflect a growing focus on climate investments.

The new approach to BII investments assesses the share of each project that should count towards UK climate finance case-by-case, rather than using a blanket 30% share.

It will record 100% of investments in a programme covering the Philippines, Indonesia and other parts of south-east Asia as ICF, as part of the government’s “Indo-Pacific tilt”. Investments in other regions also contribute a higher share of ICF – rising as high as 46% in 2022-23.

The chart below shows the extra BII investment money (red) that now counts as ICF.

Annual UK ICF spending, £m, from British International Investment (BII) contributions. Blue columns indicate the ICF spending that was expected from BII prior to the methodology change and red columns indicate ICF spending from BII after the change. Source: UK government.

The figure above shows that the government expects private sector investment via BII to play an increasingly large role in its climate finance in the future.

Many observers have expressed concerns about the government leaning more on private investment through BII to boost its ICF spending. 

A report last year by the parliamentary international development committee criticised BII’s investment in, among other things, fossil fuels and “high-net-worth individuals”.

BII prioritises loans and projects in middle-income nations where there is money to be made, rather than the nations that are most in need of climate finance. 

ICAI highlighted this in its review of the UK’s climate finance commitments earlier this year, stating that private investment “is not always the most appropriate, realistic or preferred form of climate finance in the poorest and most fragile contexts”.

Not new, not additional

Developing countries will require trillions of dollars of investment in the coming years to meet their climate goals. 

To help achieve this, developed countries, such as the UK, are expected to provide finance under the UN climate system that is “new and additional”. Discussions around a new climate finance goal will take centre stage this year at the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

Experts tell Carbon Brief that the UK government’s changes to its ICF undermine the notion that it is providing new, “ring-fenced” funding. Regarding the “arbitrary” labelling of humanitarian funds as ICF, Ritchie says:

“If the UK is counting a fixed share of projects as ICF it can no longer claim that ICF is distinguishable from non-climate [aid].” 

Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy and advocacy at the international development network Bond, tells Carbon Brief:

“The change of definition means they will be able to reach the target by spending less money than they would have done otherwise through double counting development and climate finance.”

Development NGOs say the best way for the UK to scale up its climate finance would be to return its foreign aid budget to 0.7% of GNI. However, with an election looming, neither the ruling Conservatives nor their Labour challengers have indicated a willingness to do this.

There will be considerable pressure on developed countries in the coming months to commit to providing plentiful, high-quality climate finance in the run up to COP29. 

Evans Njewa, the chair of the LDC group, to which nearly all of the UK’s humanitarian aid ICF recipients belong, tells Carbon Brief:

“Reclassifying existing donor aid as climate finance is a clear deviation from the path to climate justice, and closing the finance gap cannot be achieved this way.” 

Climate-finance reporting has been described as a “wild west”, with countries announcing figures based on vastly different definitions. This has led to nations counting money for coal, hotels and films in their totals, as there is no binding international standard to guide them.

The UK government noted last year that its changes are in line with other countries’ methods. But experts point out that the UK was previously viewed as setting a high standard for other countries to reach. 

In contrast, the new approach “risks breeding cynicism and mistrust because you are going to find programmes that have very little to do with climate change, but end up being reported in the pot as climate finance”, Rabinowitz says.

Hussein agrees, telling Carbon Brief:

“This not only highlights the disparity between western countries’ rhetoric on climate finance and their actual financial commitments to developing countries but also risks undermining trust that underpins global climate action.”

She argues that nations should agree on common definitions and accounting methodologies for climate finance to ensure that governments cannot backslide as the UK has.

Responding to Carbon Brief’s questions about the government’s methodology changes, a spokesperson from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said:

“Since 2011, UK funding has helped more than 100 million people cope with the effects of climate change, given 70 million people access to clean energy and reduced or avoided over 86m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The UK remains on track to meet the £11.6bn international climate finance commitment.”

Original article by JOSH GABBATISS republished from Carbon Brief under a CC license.

Continue ReadingRevealed: UK ‘double counting’ £500m of aid for war-torn countries as climate finance

‘Genocidal Actions’ Persist in Gaza as Israel Blocks Aid and US Weapons Flow

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Palestinian children, holding banners and empty bowls, gather to protest the food shortages in the city due to Israel’s attacks and blockade on humanitarian aid on March 12, 2024 in Gaza City, Gaza. (Photo: Omar Qattaa/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“President Joe Biden must act now to make famine prevention a top priority and be prepared to deploy meaningful U.S. leverage—including pausing arms sales,” said two humanitarian aid group leaders.

A week after Israeli officials promised the Biden administration they would open a border crossing and a port to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, relief organizations and the United Nations reported Friday that life-saving supplies are still being blocked, and warned that the White House must take more decisive action to force Israel to stop starving Palestinians.

The U.N. reported that just 212 aid trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday, far lower than the 467 reported by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who promised to “flood Gaza with aid” after a tense phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden last Thursday.

The phone call came in response to Israel’s bombing of a World Central Kitchen aid convoy that killed seven aid workers. On the call, Biden reportedly threatened to halt weapons deliveries unless a surge in humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza.

But as The Guardian reported Friday, the Ashdod port has not been opened yet, and instead of opening the Erez crossing last Sunday as promised, Israel has opened another crossing into northern Gaza but has not yet allowed U.N. agencies to use it.

“Netanyahu scammed Biden again: A week after he promised to open the Erez crossing and Ashdod port to increase aid to Gaza, the [Israel Defense Forces] & port authorities say they NEVER received any instructions of this nature,” said Muhammad Shehada, communications chief for Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, citing reporting from Israel’s N12 channel.

The Guardianreports that Israel has set an ultimate target of 500 aid trucks per day to enter Gaza—the same amount that delivered relief to residents before the Israeli bombardment rendered the enclave’s food system, healthcare facilities, and other public services inoperable.

“The call for 500 trucks, with a combination of commercial and humanitarian shipments, is the absolute minimum,” Juliette Touma, communications director for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) toldThe Guardian. “Probably what Gaza needs is at least 1,000 trucks a day.”

The U.N. found that just 141 aid trucks entered the enclave on Wednesday. The Washington Postreported that Israeli authorities have blocked aid deliveries containing items such as chocolate croissants, maternity kits, sleeping bags, stone fruits, and oxygen cylinders.

Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said Friday that “very limited” aid deliveries have continued to contribute to low birth weights in babies who have been born in northern Gaza in recent weeks.

“It’s very easy for Israel to say, ‘We’ve sent you 1,000 trucks so please deliver them inside Gaza,'” McGoldrick said, noting that Israel has held trucks up at checkpoints “for hours” and that many roads are not open to deliveries.

“At no point in time in the last month and more have we had three or even two of those roads working at the same time simultaneously,” said McGoldrick.

The news that Israel has not allowed a “flood” of aid into Gaza since Biden threatened Netanyahu with an end to weapons transfers came days after Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), admitted to U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) that reports of famine in parts of Gaza are now “credible.”

Save the Children confirmed on April 2 that at least 27 children have died of starvation and disease as a result of Israel’s blockade, and U.N. agencies said in February that 5% of children under age 2 were acutely malnourished.

At least 33,634 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since October, with U.S. weapons used in much of the bombardment.

At Foreign Affairs on Friday, Refugees International’s president, Jeremy Konyndyk, and vice president for programs and policy, Hardin Lang, wrote that “as negotiations about a econd cease-fire and hostages-for-prisoners swap gain steam, the United States has a crucial opportunity to press Israel to change course and allow a major famine-prevention effort.”

Namely, they said, Biden must make good on his threat to cut off Israel’s military aid—of which the U.S. is the largest international provider.

“The United States is likely the only outside power that can ensure a famine is avoided, given the leverage it has with its ally Israel,” they wrote. “U.S. President Joe Biden must act now to make famine prevention a top priority and be prepared to deploy meaningful U.S. leverage—including pausing arms sales—if the Israeli government does not comply. Famine would not only constitute a humanitarian cataclysm; it would also represent a geopolitical failure that would damage U.S. credibility in the Middle East for years to come.”

Konyndyk and Lang’s call was echoed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which said Power’s comments must push the president to take action.

“Inducing a famine by besieging an entire population and slaughtering innocent civilians are acts which no one can ignore, let alone justify,” said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad. “President Biden and his administration are enabling this famine and the deliberate cruelty targeting the Palestinian people in Gaza. He must take action to prevent further atrocities by demanding an immediate cease-fire, securing full access to humanitarian aid, ending all weapons transfers and other funding for Israel, and holding the war criminals in the Netanyahu government accountable for their genocidal actions.”

Also on Friday, a U.S. coalition of groups including the Working Families Party, the Service Employees International Union, and the National Education Association wrote to Biden and urged him to enforce the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars the government from providing military support to countries that restrict humanitarian aid deliveries.

Ending arms transfers “will send a clear message that the Netanyahu government is not above the law and that the U.S. will not stand by while the war kills innocent Palestinians and continues to drive escalation throughout the region,” reads the letter. “U.S. law is unequivocal: Countries that obstruct U.S. humanitarian aid cannot receive U.S. military aid under the Foreign Assistance Act or the Arms Export Control Act.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading‘Genocidal Actions’ Persist in Gaza as Israel Blocks Aid and US Weapons Flow

USAID Chief Admits Famine Is Underway in Gaza as US Keeps Arming Israel

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

USAID Administrator Samantha Power testifies at a hearing in Washington, D.C. on April 9, 2024.  (Photo: Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

“In northern Gaza, the rate of malnutrition prior to October 7th was almost zero, and it is now one in three—one in three kids,” said Samantha Power.

The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development admitted during congressional testimony on Wednesday that famine is already underway in the Gaza Strip, publicly confirming an assessment that her agency’s officials outlined in a cable to the White House last week.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power, a well-known liberal interventionist and the author of a famous book on American leaders’ failure to act in the face of genocide, answered in the affirmative after U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) asked whether “famine is already occurring” in Gaza, which is under a suffocating Israeli siege and relentless bombing campaign.

“Yes,” said Power. “In northern Gaza, the rate of malnutrition prior to October 7th was almost zero, and it is now one in three—one in three kids.”

During her opening statement at Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Power said that “nearly the entire population” of Gaza is “living under the threat of famine.”

“USAID teams have been working day and night to address the catastrophic humanitarian crisis,” said Power, who earlier this year was confronted by current and former USAID officials over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s assault on the Palestinian territory, which the United Nations’ highest court has deemed a plausible genocide.

The hearing was interrupted by peace activists with CodePink, who pointed to the number of children Israeli forces have killed in Gaza and condemned the USAID chief for “not using her power and influence to end” the assault.

“Will Samantha Power continue to be a bystander and be complicit in genocide? Or will she, in her own words, be an upstander to stop the genocide?” asked Jennifer Koonings, one of the activists who took part in the protest.

Power’s remarks to the House panel came after HuffPost‘s Akbar Shahid Ahmed reported that USAID officials drafted a cable describing the spread of malnutrition in Gaza as “unprecedented in modern history” and warning that deaths from starvation will likely “accelerate in the weeks ahead”—echoing the conclusions of U.N. experts and human rights organizations.

The cable, Ahmed wrote, “shows the Biden administration is aware of the risk that the death toll there will rise dramatically as it continues to support Israel’s operation and resist calls for a permanent end to the war.”

Last week, hours after Israeli forces killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in a series of targeted airstrikes, The New York Timesreported that the Biden administration is pressing Congress to approve a proposed sale of $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel despite U.S. laws barring aid deliveries to nations committing war crimes and obstructing the delivery of American humanitarian assistance.

In late March, the Biden administration quietly approved weapons packages that included more than 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, which the Israeli military has repeatedly dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza.

“The idea that we have supplied and are continuing to supply 2,000-pound bombs which could wipe out an entire block and other military aid is unacceptable,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told journalist Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired earlier this week.

“There is an imminent risk of famine for the majority, if not all, the 2.2 million population of Gaza. This is not a point in debate.”

Fears of mass starvation in the Gaza Strip have mounted in recent days as Israel continues to restrict the flow of necessary aid to Gaza, sparking accusations that the Netanyahu government is using hunger as a weapon of war—a grave violation of international law.

“There is an imminent risk of famine for the majority, if not all, the 2.2 million population of Gaza,” David Satterfield, the U.S. special envoy for Gaza humanitarian efforts, said Wednesday during a virtual event hosted by the American Jewish Committee.

“This is not a point in debate,” he added. “It is an established fact, which the United States, its experts, the international community, its experts assess and believe is real.”

A report released earlier this week by the International Crisis Group found that the Israeli government has been directing limited Gaza aid to “big families who agree to embrace its agenda, while targeting those who refuse.”

“It has not coordinated military with humanitarian action, endangering aid workers and recipients, and frequently halting convoys,” reads the damning report. “It has attacked civilian police, citing links to Hamas, and compelled their retreat, which leaves supplies vulnerable to plunder, whether by profiteers or the desperately hungry. It has tried to work around the international aid system and its protocols for famine prevention and response, doling out assistance on an ad hoc basis in hopes of building a network to administer Gaza on its behalf after the war.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue ReadingUSAID Chief Admits Famine Is Underway in Gaza as US Keeps Arming Israel

World Marks Six Months of ‘Relentless Death and Destruction’ in Gaza

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

An aerial photography taken October 10, 2023 shows a neighborhood of Gaza City destroyed by Israeli bombardment. 
(Photo: Al Araby/Wikimedia Commons)

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his call for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Peace and human rights advocates on Sunday renewed calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and an increase in lifesaving humanitarian aid for its starving people as the embattled enclave marked six months since the start of Israel’s genocidal retaliation for the October 7 attacks.

In six months of bombardment by air, land, and sea following the Hamas-led attacks that killed more than 1,100 people in Israel—with over 240 people taken hostage—Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 116,000 Palestinians, including people believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings. Gazans—especially children—are starving to death as Israel severely restricts the amount of aid allowed to enter the strip. Women are “burying their newborns every day” as they have nothing to feed them.

Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, perhaps permanently, in what many Palestinians and international observers are calling a new Nakba, the ethnic cleansing catastrophe perpetrated by Jewish militants during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Gaza’s infrastructure has been obliterated, with reconstruction expected to cost $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine’s entire annual gross domestic product.

“Over the last six months, the Israeli military campaign has brought relentless death and destruction to Palestinians in Gaza—with more than 32,000 people reportedly killed and more than 75,000 injured—the vast majority women and children,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said during a press conference marking six months of a war in which the International Court of Justice has found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.

“During my visit to the Rafah crossing 10 days ago, I met veteran humanitarians who told me categorically that the crisis and suffering in Gaza is unlike any they have ever seen,” Guterres continued. “Meanwhile—as I saw on my way to the Rafah crossing—long lines of trucks loaded with humanitarian aid continued to face obstacle after obstacle.”

“When the gates to aid are closed, the doors to starvation are opened,” he said. “More than half the population—over a million people—are facing catastrophic hunger. Children in Gaza today are dying for lack of food and water. This is incomprehensible, and entirely avoidable. Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Guterres noted the 196 humanitarian aid workers—including more than 175 U.N. personnel and members of Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Crescent, World Central Kitchen, and other organizations—who have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets over the past six months.

“I repeat my urgent appeals for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, the protection of civilians, and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid,” Guterres said.

Demonstrators took to the streets of cities around the world to condemn Israel’s genocide and demand an immediate cease-fire.

There were also protests in cities including Tel Aviv and New York calling for the release of all Israelis and others held hostage in Gaza. New York rabbi Ellen Lippman said she wouldn’t be attending the rally because she “cannot call for the release of the hostages without an explicit demand for an immediate cease-fire and an end to the Israeli assault on Gaza.”

Left-wing Israelis held vigils outside the U.S. embassies in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Friday to demand an end to Washington’s military and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocide.

“The United States supplies the guns, and Israel pulls the trigger,” organizer Erez Bleicher told the crowd.

President Joe Biden in recent days has urged an immediate cease-fire, even as the U.S. continues to provide the bulk of Israel’s weapons. In a Thursday call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said in a statement. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”

Israel responded by saying it would temporarily allow more aid to enter Gaza.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingWorld Marks Six Months of ‘Relentless Death and Destruction’ in Gaza

ICJ expands urgent measures in genocide case against Israel as famine “sets in” in Gaza

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Original article by Tanupriya Singh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Photo: WHO via UN NEWS

The Court has issued orders for Israel to “ensure” the “unhindered provision” of humanitarian aid, as 31 people have been killed due to deliberate starvation in Gaza

Noting that the “catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further,” the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to take additional measures, including “unhindered provision” of basic necessities and humanitarian assistance, as the Occupation continues its genocidal war for the sixth month. 

The ruling was issued on March 28 in response to a request by South Africa calling on the Court to take further action “in light of the new facts and changes in the situation in Gaza— particularly the situation of widespread starvation”. 

According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, both North Gaza and Gaza Governorates are “classified in IPC Phase 5 (Famine) with reasonable evidence, with 70% of the population in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe).”

On March 24, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) stated that Israel had informed the UN that it would no longer approve the agency’s food convoys to north Gaza. Only 11 aid convoys of the World Food Programme have reached the area since the start of 2024. 

In January, Israel accused UNRWA, without any concrete evidence, of employing over 450 “military operatives”. Israel’s allies in the west immediately began suspending funding for the agency, even as it has been revealed that Israel had tortured and coerced UNRWA staffers into giving false confessions. 

Meanwhile, the US Congress has now voted to defund UNRWA as part of a USD 1.2 trillion spending bill. The legislation, which simultaneously provides the annual USD 3.8 billion in funding to Israel, will also limit aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank if the Palestinians initiate or support an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into Israel’s crimes. 

South Africa’s request was part of the case it brought against Israel in December, accusing it of violating its obligations under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Ahead of a full hearing of the case, South Africa had called on the Court to issue interim measures to prevent “severe and irreparable harm” to the Palestinians as Israel continued and escalated its attacks.

On January 26, the Court found that it was plausible that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and ordered six measures, including for Israel to “take all measures within its powers to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of the [Genocide] Convention.” 

These acts include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

As it became immediately clear that Israel had no intentions of obeying these legally binding measures, South Africa approached the ICJ for additional measures in February. However, the Court declined to expand on its order. 

Starvation and massacres escalate 

In a second attempt on March 6, South Africa stated that Gazans are no longer at “immediate risk of death by starvation,” noting that at least 15 children had died of starvation in the week leading up to its submission. 

“These deaths are “man-made, predictable and entirely preventable. It is predicted that they will increase exponentially and not linearly in the absence of a cessation of military activities and a lifting of the blockade,” it had said, adding that Israel had repeatedly used humanitarian aid as a “bargaining chip in negotiations” by creating a “hostile, inoperable environment for aid agencies.” 

The application was submitted days after the “Flour Massacre”—neither the first nor the last atrocity of its kind. The massacre “forms part of an escalating pattern of fatal attacks by Israel on the Palestinian people it is deliberately starving, as they seek access to aid,” South Africa stated. 

In its ruling on Thursday, the ICJ observed that “Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine… but that famine is setting in, with at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration.” 

Also cited it a statement made by UN human rights chief Volker Türk that the “situation of hunger, starvation and famine is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, displacement of most of the population, as well as he destruction of crucial civilian infrastructure.”

The Court held that “there is no substitute for land routes and entry points from Israel into Gaza to ensure the effective and efficient delivery of food, water, medical and humanitarian assistance; there is an urgent need to increase the capacity and number of open land crossing points into Gaza and to maintain them open…”

The ruling took “note” of “certain declarations of representatives of the UN and the various organizations… according to which the catastrophic humanitarian situation can only be addressed if the military operations in the Gaza Strip are suspended [emphasis added].” 

Also acknowledged is the UN Security Council resolution 2728, which “[d]emand[ed] an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire.” 

Not only was the Resolution’s text amended to call for a “lasting” instead of a “permanent” ceasefire under US’ threat of veto, the US ultimately went on to absurdly claim that the resolution was non-binding—statements also rejected by the UN and other SC member states. 

It is important to note that the month of Ramadan, and by extension the proposed ceasefire period, is set to end in less than two weeks. 

The Court also noted that since its ruling on January 26, Israel had killed over 6,600 additional people in Gaza and injured another 11,000. Given that the original provisional measures did not address the changes in the situation in Gaza—including the “unprecedented levels of food insecurity” and the increasing risks of epidemics—the ICJ concluded that its original decision had to be modified. 

The ICJ “reaffirmed” its previous provisional measures and has ordered three further measures: a) that Israel must take all measures to ensure “without delay, in full cooperation with the UN, the unhindered provision at scale…of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” and b) ensure “with immediate effect” that its military does not commit acts that violate the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention. 

Israel has been given one month to submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to implement the order. 

In its original application to the Court, South Africa had demanded an order calling on Israel to immediately cease its military operations in and around Gaza. While this measure was not explicitly granted, a ceasefire could be inferred, as South Africa’s foreign minister Naledi Pandor argued, because “without it, the Order would not work,” including the delivery of humanitarian aid. 

Nevertheless, while the ICJ ruling did not order cessation of Israel’s military actions on Thursday, seven judges from the Court’s bench issued separate statements stating that the Court should have explicitly ordered a suspension of Israel’s operations, “including its planned military operation in Rafah,” or at least acknowledging that a ceasefire was necessary for its orders to take effect. 

“It is indeed the very right of existence of the Palestinian population of Gaza that is currently at risk of irreparable prejudice,” said Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf. 

Importantly, he stated, “The argument that a State party to the Convention that is involved in a conflict with a non-State actor is not under an obligation to suspend its military operations to prevent genocide or should not be ordered to do so, unless the non-State actor is disarmed, makes no sense whatsoever. It is contrary to the very idea of prevention of genocide and to the objectives of the Convention…”

“All the indicators of genocidal activities are flashing red in Gaza… The provisional measures indicated by the Court are binding. They are not something that a State party to the Convention is free to respect or to ignore according to its own pleasure. They must be implemented,” ICJ Judge Yusuf had said. 

“In the same way that a State party to the Convention has a duty to prevent genocide in its territory whatever may be the nature of the forces or actors opposing it, it has also the obligation to prevent genocide in any territory which such party invades or occupies. This is the case with respect to the situation in Gaza.” 

This was reiterated in the joint opinion of Judges Xue Hanqin, Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant, Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo, and Dire Tladi—“Israel’s dominant control over Gaza explains why Israel has the primary responsibility to ensure unhindered and unimpeded access, in particular the land cross access for the delivery of humanitarian assistance… For that purpose, suspension of military operations… appears indispensable.” 

Israel’s “humanitarian camouflage” 

During the hearings on the provisional measures in January, Israel had deployed two key arguments to deny that it was committing genocide in Gaza. One being its supposed facilitation of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, even though it had already been reported at the time that the entire population of Gaza was suffering from “crisis or worse” levels of food insecurity; and it’s supposed adherence to international humanitarian law as a way to justify its mass killings and bombings of critical infrastructure. 

This second tactic was examined in a report published by the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories (OPt), Francesca Albanese, on March 25, titled “Anatomy of a Genocide” which concluded that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.”

The report documents three acts of genocide being committed by Israel—killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. 

“More broadly, [the context, facts and analysis] indicate that Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine.” 

“Punishing their indigeneity and rejection of colonization, Israel construed Palestinians as a ‘security threat’ to justify their oppression and “de-civilianization,” namely the denial of their status as protected civilians.” 

This “de-civilianization,” Albanese argues, has intensified since October 7 through Israel’s use of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) terminology such as human shields, collateral damage, safe zones, and evacuations, which has “transformed an entire national group and its inhabited space into a destroyable target, revealing an eliminationist conduct of hostilities.” 

The report notes that Israel has repeatedly accused Palestinian resistance groups of “deliberately using civilians as human shields” in its wars of aggression on Gaza and the 2018 Great March of Return protests—even as it was later proved that the evidence had been fabricated—to “justify widespread and systematic killing” of Palestinians. 

“Israel [has] transformed Gaza into a “world without civilians” in which “everything from taking shelter in hospitals to fleeing for safety is declared a form of human shielding.”

This strategy has been extended to the infrastructure required to sustain life in Gaza—including hospitals—with Israel systematically attacking medical workers and facilities for being Hamas “command centers” or “headquarters,” “legitimizing the destruction of Gaza’s entire healthcare sector.”

The report also connects this policy of shielding with Israel’s evacuation orders, particularly the one issued on October 13 forcing people to move to south Gaza—“Israel illegally categorized the inhabitants of northern Gaza who had remained (including the sick and wounded) as “human shields” and “accomplices” of terrorism.”

“This policy points to the intention by Israel to ‘transform’ hundreds of thousands of civilians into ‘legitimate’ military targets or collateral casualties through impossible-to-follow evacuation orders.” Not only that, Israel targeted evacuees and residents of designated safe zones—“safe areas were deliberately turned into areas of mass killing.” 

“Israel considers any object that has allegedly been or might be used militarily as a legitimate target, so that entire neighborhoods can be razed or demolished under fictions of legality… Rationalizing patterns of attacks on civilian objects, knowingly killing civilians en masse, has become military strategy premised upon probable war crimes,” Albanese notes. 

Importantly, she also addresses Israel’s use of the notion of “proportionate collateral damage to knowingly shell large numbers of members of the protected group”. The way Israel has gone about this, is by “defining military advantage, in each attack, in relation to the destruction of the whole Hamas organization both politically and militarily.” 

“It is manifestly illegal to declare as a war aim the destruction of the other side’s political capacity (particularly in the context of a 56-year military occupation which deprives the occupied population of its right to self-determination.”

Meanwhile, Ireland has announced that it will intervene in the case, as has the State of Palestine, which stated that despite the Court’s orders, “Israel’s relentless aggression persists… violating Palestinian rights under the Genocide Convention.”

“Equally, many states have failed to honor their erga omnes obligations [obligations owed to the international community as a whole] to adhere to and implement the ICJ’s order, thereby entrenching complicity in these grave acts, including the political and military aiding and abetting of the perpetrators of the genocide.”

Original article by Tanupriya Singh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

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