25 June 2025
As Israeli military attacks continue across Gaza, including on healthcare facilities and workers, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has called on the UN Human Rights Council to take urgent action to ensure the protection of all Palestinian healthcare personnel and infrastructure, enforce a ceasefire, guarantee unhindered access to principled humanitarian aid, and work toward ending Israel’s unlawful occupation.
On 19 June 2025, during the 59th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Ms. Tlaleng Mofokeng, presented her latest report: “Health and Care Workers as Defenders of the Right to Health”. The report took note of 1,450 recorded attacks on healthcare workers, patients, hospitals, and other medical infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) since October 2023. It also highlighted the detention of hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers by the Israeli military, and the impact of sustained violence on the healthcare system and on Palestinians, including cancer patients.
In January 2025, MAP and partner, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, submitted evidence to inform the Special Rapporteur’s report, detailing a disturbing pattern of targeted reprisals and violence by the Israeli military against the Palestinian healthcare system.
At the Human Richts Council Session, MAP was the first civil society organisation to speak in the interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur. In a joint statement with Al Mezan, MAP warned that Nasser Hospital – the last major hospital still functioning in southern Gaza – is at imminent risk of being forced completely out of service, as Israeli forces issued forced displacement orders nearby and advance towards the area. The statement added:
“This fits a pattern we know too well, replicated across Gaza since the start of what human rights experts have identified as crimes of extermination and genocide.
“Nasser hospital has been attacked at least three times in the last two months. Last year, it was besieged and invaded, staff and patients were abducted, ill-treated and tortured, and mass graves were found”.
The joint statement further highlighted how Israel’s war on Palestinians and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system has affected Palestinian healthcare workers as defenders of the right to health:
“Palestinian healthcare workers and hospitals have been direct targets of the Israeli military.
“Over 1,500 Palestinian healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza in the past 20 months. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Medical supplies and fuel are blocked. Medical staff, like the rest of the population, are starved.”
In the coming weeks, the Council is set to discuss the human rights situation in the oPt under a standing agenda item on Palestine called ‘Item 7’. Despite the urgency and gravity of the situation, the UK has, since 2017, followed the US in opposing the existence of Item 7. This position was reiterated during the Council’s last session on 27 February 2025, when the UK stated that, while it supports universal human rights scrutiny, it “opposes the disproportionate focus of this item”.
Just days earlier, on 24 February 2025, the UK announced its candidacy for membership of the Council for the 2026–2028 term, pledging to defend civic space and fundamental freedoms; uphold the rule of law; champion equal rights for all; and respond to shared global challenges by prioritising human rights and governance principles.
MAP reiterates that Item 7 is not only justified – it is essential. Israel’s unlawful occupation remains the longest ongoing military occupation in the world, accompanied by systemic and widespread breaches of international law, committed with impunity. To oppose Item 7 is to ignore this reality without addressing the severe violations that give rise to it. Removing Item 7 would shrink civic space and entrench further impunity. Instead, the UK should focus on increasing global scrutiny of human rights by supporting the uplifting of other protracted situations to become standing items at the Human Rights Council.
The UK must live up to its stated pledged support for international law, including by reinstating its support for Item 7 of the Human Rights Council, expressing clear support for the independence of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and the UN Commission of Inquiry, and committing to implement the recommendations issued by these independent experts.
Your MP has a critical role to play in placing pressure on the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to do everything in their power to bring an end to Israel’s atrocities. Demand they use their voice.
Photo: A general view of participants at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in headquarters in United Nations in Geneva. 24 February 2025. UN Photo / Jean Marc Ferré.
