Israeli attacks on women's healthcare in Gaza amount to genocidal acts, UN says

Israel's systemic attacks on women's healthcare in Gaza amount to "genocidal acts", and Israeli security forces have used sexual violence as a weapon of war to "dominate and destroy the Palestinian people", a UN report states.

- Emma Graham-Harrison

The report on sexual and gender-based violence was drawn up by the UN's independent international commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, and presented to the UN human rights council.

It details attacks on maternity wards and other healthcare facilities for women, the destruction of an IVF clinic and controls on the entry of food and medical supplies into Gaza that together "destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group".

Israel's actions amounted to "two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome statute and the genocide convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births," the UN council said.

The report found that Israel's security forces had made certain forms of sexual and gender-based violence part of "standard operating procedures", including forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape and sexual assault.