Long-overdue Gaza ceasefire agreement brings hope for safety and security of human rights defenders and their communities
Front Line Defenders joins Palestinian human rights organisations and defenders in welcoming the announcement of a ceasefire agreement amid 15 month of Israel’s ongoing, and well-documented, genocide in Gaza.
The long overdue ceasefire will bring some relief to the civilian population, including human rights defenders. It will hopefully improve their ability to meet the urgent humanitarian needs, address food insecurity, widespread diseases and recover and bury decomposing bodies under the rubble. It is an essential step towards the de-escalation of violence and the ongoing killing of Palestinians in Gaza. The agreed ceasefire, agreed on 14 January 2025 is expected to go into effect on 19 January.
Front Line Defenders recognises the important role that human rights defenders and frontline responders – journalists, doctors, health workers, community kitchen leaders and others – have played the last 15 months in delivering lifesaving support to their communities and demanding the upholding of international human rights laws and norms. Despite the risk to their lives, they continued to pursue their missions to ensure dignity and humanity to those they serve. For many months, Israeli authorities have targeted human rights defenders with unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, ill-treatment, killing, injuring and arresting human right defenders for resisting its military onslaught on Gaza by bringing lifesaving support and hope to their communities.
In the context in which Israel denied any access to Gaza by outside media, human rights organisations and defenders were continuously reporting on the countless atrocities committed against their own people, in contravention of international humanitarian and human rights law. This has included the overwhelming damage Israel’s assault has caused to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land; the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure in Gaza; the mass forced displacement of the civilian population; and the starvation and the deliberate restriction on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid.
Human rights defender Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, like other frontliners, continued to save people’s lives until his detention while posting daily updates on the apocalyptic situation on the ground, appealing to the international community to intervene to stop the genocide. He is one of many human rights defenders who were directly targeted for their human rights work. A number of defenders, including journalists documenting violations committed by the Israeli military in Gaza, were killed or injured while others are still subjected to to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment at Israeli detention facilities.
Front Line Defenders urges Israeli authorities to stop their widespread and systematic violations against human rights defenders in Gaza. Palestinian human rights defenders must be protected and allowed to carry out their painstaking work to pick up the pieces after the devastation. All human rights defenders arbitrarily detained in Israeli facilities must be released.
As the occupying power, Israel has a number of duties towards the civilian population. The international community must press Israel to comply with its obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law.
Front Line Defenders calls on the Israeli authorities to:
- Immediately release all HRDs from detention in Israel and return them to their families, wherever they are (inside or outside Gaza);
- immediately open the Rafah border with Egypt and facilitate HRDs’ access to travel opportunities beyond for educational, professional, family reunification or medical purposes;
- enable access to Gaza by international and Palestinian human rights organisations to document the full scope of the effect and abuses of the last 15 months;
- return the bodies of HRDs who were killed to their families;
- in cases of killings and torture of human rights defenders, allow investigations by independent international bodies to ensure accountability and justice.