UN finds genocide in Gaza, but its record of prevention is painfully familiar

A United Nations independent international commission of inquiry has concluded—in painstaking legal detail—that Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip amount to genocide. The finding, made public in September 2025 and led by former UN human-rights Chief Navi Pillay, says Israeli authorities and security forces carried out four of the five genocidal acts defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention and that the pattern of conduct and public statements demonstrate the requisite genocidal intent. 

"The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza," Pillay said in the report's public statement. "It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention."  

That announcement landed not only as a legal judgement from an UN-appointed body but as a moral challenge to the international system built after World War II to prevent exactly this kind of crime. 

The document based on two years of investigation of events since 7 October 2023 and drawing on testimony, imagery and official statements through 31 July 2025 accuses Israeli political and military leaders of orchestrating a campaign that "meets the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention," and expressly names senior officials it says incited genocidal acts. 

The commission stressed four categories of actus reus—killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction (including blockade and denial of aid); and measures meant to prevent births—and concluded that the only reasonable inference from the combination of words and deeds was genocidal intent.  

We have seen this before

For scholars and practitioners of atrocity prevention, the Gaza finding forces a painful question: if a UN body can document genocide in real time, why does the organisation that spawned the Genocide Convention so often fail to stop the crimes it documents?

The short answer is political will and institutional constraints. Edward C Luck, a former senior UN adviser on atrocity prevention, charted the problem in a 2018 study which is relevant to this conversation: the UN possesses legitimacy and legal authority, Luck argued, but its capacities, institutional culture, and the political interests of member states often blunt preventive action. 

The UN's record is "mottled"—occasional quiet successes, but dramatic and public failures in Rwanda, Srebrenica and elsewhere—and the core problem is that the political power gathered in New York (UNSC) often blocks the timely, coercive measures that could deter or halt mass atrocities. 

Luck's critique is blunt: the Secretariat sometimes engages in "pre-emptive self-censorship," the Security Council is paralysed when great-power interests conflict, and the UN's tools (sanctions, mandates, peacekeepers) are only as effective as member-state backing allows. He concludes that the UN's failure is not merely technical but systemic: "Each time the UN fails to utilise its voice or try to make a difference, it feeds cynicism about the prospects for preventing mass atrocities." 

In 1994, as the genocide of the Tutsi began, a small UN peacekeeping force (UNAMIR) was already on the ground. Its commander, General Roméo Dallaire, pleaded for reinforcements. Instead, the Security Council, led by the US, UK, and France, ordered the withdrawal of most of the troops. 

While Western nations efficiently evacuated their own citizens—and their pets—not a single Rwandan was permitted to board the departing planes. 

President Bill Clinton later visited Kigali and apologised, claiming "we did not know." This was a falsehood. As Dr Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, has pointed out, a Pentagon cable on April 7, 1994—the first day of the killing—labelled the events "genocide.

Samantha Power—whose book "A Problem from Hell" chronicled U.S. and UN failures to prevent 20th-century genocides—captured the moral and political lesson in public remarks about the need for leadership: mass killing "was neither inevitable, nor unforeseeable, nor unstoppable" when governments failed to act. Those words echo now as advocates point to ICJ orders and the COI's report and ask why the international community did not adopt more forceful measures earlier. 

Measures, enforcement, and the stubborn geography of power

The UN system can name, document and admonish—and it did. The International Court of Justice's (ICJ) provisional measures (January–March 2024) were clear in legal language: states must prevent genocidal acts and facilitate humanitarian access; the court asked Israel to report on measures taken. 

But international law's enforcement levers are political and material: sanctions depend on consensus in capitals; peacekeeping depends on willing troop contributors and mandates; and the ICC, while able to issue arrest warrants, lacks a global police force to execute them. Human-rights groups warned within months that the ICJ measures were not being fully implemented and that denial of aid and continuing offensive operations risked irreparable harm. 

The commission urged states to stop arms transfers and to investigate individuals and corporations that may be aiding genocidal acts. But the political calculus is harsh: powerful states' diplomatic cover, military support, and vetoes in the Security Council can blunt collective action. As Luck wrote, prevention is not merely about command of facts; it is about marshalling coalitions and sustaining the political will to use hard measures when necessary. 

Accountability, credibility and the future

The Commission's report does not merely diagnose the problem; it prescribes stark remedies. It calls on all Member States to cease transferring arms to Israel, pursue legal action against individuals and corporations complicit in the genocide, and pressure Israel to comply with the provisional measures ordered by the ICJ.

"When clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity," warned Pillay. "Every day of inaction costs lives and erodes the credibility of the international community."

Yet, the mechanisms for enforcement remain weak. The ICJ lacks a police force, and the UN Security Council—the only body that can authorise enforcement measures like sanctions or military intervention—is often paralysed by the veto power of its permanent members, including the United States, which continues to provide Israel with vital military aid and diplomatic protection.

This impotence has led some experts to call for more radical solutions. Experts have argued for the creation of an international police force to execute ICC arrest warrants and even for targeted operations to remove genocidal leaders, challenging the long-held principle of national sovereignty. 

The UN's report on Gaza lands as both an indictment and a test. It is an indictment of actions on the ground and a test for an international system that has repeatedly vowed "never again."