Top UN official in New York resigns over ‘genocide’ of Palestinian civilians

CAIRO – 31 October 2023: The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has resigned from his post, protesting that the UN is “failing” in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” The Guardian reported.

Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying: “This will be my last communication to you” in his role in New York.

Mokhiber wrote: “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it.”

He said that the UN had failed to prevent previous genocides against the Tutsis in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, the Yazidi in Iraq and the Rohingya in Myanmar and wrote: “High Commissioner we are failing again.

“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs … leaves no room for doubt.”

Mokhiber added: “This is text book case of genocide” and said the US, UK and much of Europe were not only “refusing to meet their treaty obligations” under the Geneva Conventions but were also arming Israel’s assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.

“We must support the establishment of a single, democratic secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews,” he wrote, adding: “and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.”

Mokhiber has worked for the UN since 1992, serving in a number of increasingly prominent roles. He led the high commissioner’s work on devising a human rights-based approach to development, and acted as a senior human rights adviser in Palestine, Afghanistan and Sudan.

A lawyer who specialises in international human rights law, he lived in Gaza in the 1990s.

In his role as director of the New York office of the high commissioner for human rights, he has come under occasional fire from pro-Israeli groups for his comments on social media. He was criticized for posting support of the boycott, divest, sanctions (BDS) movement and accusing Israel of apartheid – an accusation which he repeated in his resignation letter.