Press Releases

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights participated in a side-event parallel to the 59th session of the Human Rights Council, convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, held at the Global Center for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion in Geneva, followed by a press conference. Titled Genocide is a Medical Emergency, the event gathered frontline doctors, health workers, and human rights advocates to examine the catastrophic impact of deliberate Israeli destruction of the Palestinian health system.

All interventions highlighted that the killing of over 1,600 Palestinian medical workers is not a series of isolated incidents but reflects the three pillars of the Israeli regime: colonization, apartheid, and forced displacement and transfer. “The Israeli attacks against doctors, ambulances and hospitals are not random wartime violations,” said BADIL’s representative. “They are part of a decades-long pattern rooted in a system of structural violence and domination.”

Within the context of genocide, the provision of care was described as an act of counter-genocidal resistance, underscoring why Palestinian healthcare workers are systematically targeted: their work directly challenges efforts to erase Palestinian life. The discussion also framed genocide as a “disease of humanity,” one that spreads through both global silence, including that of the medical establishment, and institutional failure and complicity. As one speaker put it:

“Genocide does not simply occur when a group of people enact eliminatory violence—it also occurs when institutions, systems, and processes that are meant to protect us and defend human rights engage in active silencing and passive silence.”

The event further emphasized that starvation in Gaza is not incidental but a deliberate policy that predates the current assault. As one intervention noted:

“Genocide, occupation and apartheid do not happen in a vacuum. There is an ecosystem that sustains and maintains the status quo—that is Zionist settler colonialism and the ongoing Nakba.”

Framing genocide as a preventable, diagnosable disease, participants called for a permanent global mechanism to monitor early warning signs and intervene before atrocities escalate. They urged the international medical community to break its silence: “There is no place for neutrality in the face of annihilation.”

The event concluded with urgent calls to:

• Demand an immediate and unconditional ceasefire;
• Lift the siege on Gaza and ensure unimpeded, unconditional humanitarian aid is delivered by the UN, including UNRWA.
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