The human rights watchdog Amnesty International has deplored Germany and other European countries’ approach toward Gaza, highlighting the ongoing suffering of Palestinians in the region. In its latest annual report, Amnesty International Germany’s secretary-general, Julia Duchrow, explicitly criticized German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock for not pursuing a human-rights based foreign policy, accusing her of double standards in her approach to the Middle East conflict.
The report states that, for millions of people all over the world, “Gaza now symbolizes utter moral failure by many of the architects of the post-World War Two system; their failure to uphold the absolute commitment to universality, our common humanity and to our ‘never again’ commitment.” Alongside the Israeli authorities and the United States, Amnesty International accuses “some of Europe’s leaders and the EU leadership” of dishonoring the principles enshrined in the UN Charter and international human rights law, calling their conduct a clear example of double standards.
Referring to the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas, the report speaks of “the horrific crimes perpetrated by Hamas.” During the attack, members of the group killed more than 1,200 Israelis and abducted around 245 people, who were taken to the Gaza Strip and held hostage. Duchrow stressed that Amnesty does not use the label “terrorist group” for Hamas, or any other organization, as there is no accepted definition of the term under international law.
Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘collective punishment’ in Gaza
According to the Amnesty report, after October 7, Israel instigated a campaign of retaliation that became a “collective punishment” involving “deliberate, indiscriminate bombings of civilians and civilian infrastructure.” Israeli authorities, it says, “have made particular efforts to frame the attacks that they have carried out on Gaza as complying with international humanitarian law,” while “in reality, they have made a mockery of some of its core norms.” For Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the report says, the situation today is “a far more violent and destructive version of the 1948 ‘Nakba.'”
The Arabic word for “catastrophe” is the one Palestinians use to refer to the establishment of the state of Israel, the war that followed, and the flight and forced displacement of the Palestinian people. For more than two years, Amnesty International, which was founded in 1961, has been heavily criticized by Israel and by Jewish organizations for its reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has rejected Amnesty’s accusations and has repeatedly accused the organization of promoting antisemitism and taking a biased view of the conflict. Amnesty has been urging an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Currently, the organization is also calling for Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups to release all the hostages, and has accused Hamas of committing war crimes.
World is moving backward on human rights
In her preface to the new report, Amnesty’s secretary-general, Agnes Callamard, remarks that it is as if the world is “spiraling through time, hurtling backward past the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” In 2023, she says, in many governments and societies, “authoritarian policies ate away at freedoms of expression and association, hit out at gender equality, and eroded sexual and reproductive rights.” The report also addresses Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Chinese violations of international law. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, it says, “has been marked by war crimes,” specifically citing the torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war, indiscriminate attacks on populated areas as well as civilian energy and grain export infrastructure, and the deliberate destruction of the Mariupol Drama Theater, which caused “vast environmental contamination.”
As another example of the disregard for international law, Amnesty cites the ongoing conflict in Yemen, accusing both sides of committing violations.
Resurgence of authoritarian systems
Amnesty also warns of growing pressure on those who defend economic and social rights, in settings as diverse as the UK, Hungary and India, where activists who denounced government expansion of fossil fuel production “were branded ‘terrorists.'” In the Middle East, “critics of governments’ handling of the economy were silenced and arbitrarily detained.” Overall, Amnesty reports a resurgence of authoritarian systems, noting that fewer and fewer people now live in a democratic society.
With regard to women’s rights, Amnesty deplores further restrictions in Afghanistan and Iran, and the fact that Iran is also deploying facial recognition software against women. The organization reports negative developments in the US and Poland around the legal regulation of abortion, with fifteen US states having either banned abortion completely or permitting it only in very exceptional cases. The report also worries that there are more than 60 countries around the world in which LGBTQ people are criminalized and their rights restricted.
Amnesty goes on to address the dangers of new technologies and “artificial intelligence” (AI), warning that we are spinning “ever faster forward into a future overtaken by Big Tech and unregulated generative artificial intelligence.” The report criticizes Big Tech for perpetuating racist policies, curtailing freedoms of expression and ignoring the harm this does, even in the context of armed conflicts. It refers specifically to “the alarming rise in hate speech and other harmful content against both Palestinian and Jewish communities,” which, it says, led in Europe and the US to “marked increases in anti-Muslim and antisemitic hate crime.” Amnesty’s annual report for 2024 examines the state of human rights in more than 150 countries, and runs to 417 pages.
