We are living through strange and shocking paradoxes that compel us to ask a series of questions. How sincere is the world in its commitment to human rights, from fundamental public freedoms to the broad range of individual liberties for which conferences are convened, funds allocated, and associations supported, when, on the other side of this rights-saturated discourse, the children of the Gaza Strip are subjected to systematic extermination while women and girls in Sudan endure sexual violence and crimes of mass rape?
Can such a situation be sustained while the global human rights order remains so fragmented and so deeply divided against itself?
We are, of course, not opposed to defending either public or individual freedoms, so long as they serve human freedom, well-being, and the right to integrate into society without being crushed or erased. Such a defense requires, at least in theory, a global environment committed to ensuring equal opportunities for all peoples to enjoy public and individual freedoms. These rights must be protected under all circumstances and treated as a red line that the entire world rises to defend whenever any hand attempts to cross it.
Another truth that must be confronted is that every assault on the right to live with dignity strikes at the very course of human rights and at humanity as a whole. Assessing the state of human rights must be based on the global human condition, not on the circumstances of a single people, because the real challenge is respecting every human being regardless of sex, color, race, religion, or social class.
There is no doubt that the journey toward human rights remains a long one. At the very least, what is needed is a minimum degree of consistency to narrow the vast gulf between rhetoric and reality.
The idea that deserves careful reflection is the need to change the mechanisms of conflict and war, so that wars no longer reproduce the same methods century after century. The wars of the third millennium cannot continue to rely on mechanisms identical to those of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Just as weapons and the nature of warfare have evolved, the status of civilians in armed conflict should also have undergone a fundamental transformation, with unquestionable guarantees of security and a permanent system of international protection.
For years now, the world has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the pace of conflicts and wars since the Second World War, reinforcing more than ever the role of international law in intervening to protect the victims of crimes against humanity. International law is the refuge of those harmed by conflict. Without it, their dignity and their lives are lost without any accountability for the perpetrators, and there can be no greater injustice than this. Allowing crimes against children and women to go unpunished will only ensure that such crimes continue to recur, making the promise of human rights increasingly illusory.
Is it conceivable, after all the advances in science, medicine, and technology, that 21,000 Palestinian children and 38,000 women and girls have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023?
The United Nations commission that investigated the war concluded that Israel deliberately targets children, making clear that the crimes committed against them are evident and fully constituted, while the media continue to document them in all their horrific detail. Even these figures pale beside the victims of starvation, cold, and the collapse of healthcare. All of this is taking place despite the world's adoption of an international convention on the rights of the child.
Likewise, amid this fragmented human rights landscape, the use of women and children as weapons of war in the conflict between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese army raises serious doubts about the credibility of human rights discourse and the effectiveness of mechanisms for protesting against the sexual violence spreading at an alarming rate in South Darfur, alongside cases of mass rape and the forced recruitment of children. The figures indicate that 2,000 women have suffered sexual violence, as though the global discourse on combating violence against women were nothing more than empty rhetoric.
Many societies today are shaken by domestic violence, which is, of course, a positive development, while the world remains silent as women are used as instruments of intimidation and subjected to rape in struggles for power.
We believe that nothing deters crime except the law. In the face of these crimes committed against children and women in Palestine, Sudan, and elsewhere, the solution lies in the hands of international law. Given the scale and repetition of these crimes, it is imperative that international law develop faster and stronger enforcement mechanisms. Here, we point to the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel, for which the International Court of Justice has set a deadline extending to November 2027. By then, the number of children killed in cold blood will have doubled.
What is clear is that strong and swift mechanisms are needed to confront the horror of these crimes. How, then, can international law protest against its own mechanisms?
