This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Laws of war ‘consistently violated' in Israeli bombing of Gaza: UN rights office

The Israeli military’s bombing of Gaza likely “consistently violated” the laws of war with regard to the use of hugely powerful bombs in heavily built up areas, the Organization’s human rights chief said on Wednesday.

The finding follows investigations by his office, OHCHR, into six attacks that it described as “emblematic” of Israeli tactics during its more than eight-month offensive.

They involved the suspected use of bombs weighing up to 2,000lbs (920kg) on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market - between October and December - that caused 218 known deaths.

“The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimize to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. 

Here’s the UN rights chief’s spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, who urged Israeli authorities to conduct thorough investigations into the attacks covered by the OHCHR report:

“As time passes, it becomes much more difficult to carry out these investigations. So it is crucial that, we call first on the Israeli authorities to take steps to ensure that proper investigations, transparent investigations are held. And in the absence of this, and if there is continued impunity, there is a need for international action in this regard as well.”

Gazans barely surviving amid massive destruction, warns assessment officer

Staying with Gaza, UN teams have warned that people there continue to have to shelter amid massive devastation and health hazards. 

That’s according to Ajith Sunghay, Head of the UN human rights office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, who’s just returned from an assessment mission in multiple locations across Gaza.

He described how people are “barely surviving” after being repeatedly displaced amid IDF evacuation orders:

“The hospitals are packed to overflowing and the smell is unbearable. In most parts of Gaza, you see garbage everywhere but hundreds and hundreds of meters. Sewage is spilling into tents. There is no clean water. I feared a significant number will die from illness. If the bombs don't kill, disease will.” 

Mr. Sunghay was speaking to journalists after visiting Khan Younis, Rafah and Deir-Al-Balah. He described the constant sounds of bombs, guns and drones that went on “non-stop, day and night” and said that in his 22 years of working at the UN, he had never seen such a challenging environment for human rights and humanitarian aid partners to operate. “The destruction is unimaginable,” he said.

China urged to provide information on imprisoned Uyghur doctor

Finally, a top independent rights expert reporting to the Human Rights Council called on China on Wednesday to provide information on the whereabouts of imprisoned Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas.

Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, said in her appeal for information that in the nearly six years since her detention, Dr Abbas’s family members “still do not have information on where she is being imprisoned, the evidence used to convict her, or most worryingly of all, her health condition”.

Ms. Lawlor, who is an independent expert and not a member of the UN appealed to the Chinese authorities to comply with its international human rights obligations and at least furnish Dr Abbas’ family with this information.

She said she was appalled by the continued imprisonment of Dr Abbas in “apparent retaliation for her sister’s criticism of the Chinese authorities’ treatment of Uyghurs”. 

The expert noted that the former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, highlighted in her 2022 report on human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, an alleged pattern of “intimidations, threats and reprisals” against family members of Uyghurs in exile, who had engaged in advocacy in relation to the region.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.