Global Alliance for Palestine: Statement on the Findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry into the Targeting of Palestinian Children
On 23 June 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published findings which establish that Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children amounts to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, and to war crimes in the occupied West Bank. The Commission identifies that targeting as one of the key elements through which the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities may be established.
For more than twenty months, Western governments have met the killing of Palestinian children with expressions of concern, calls for restraint and demands for investigation. This report removes the basis for treating those killings as contested or unintentional. It is consistent with the same body’s September 2025 conclusion that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The evidence is a matter of record. Approximately thirty per cent of those killed in Gaza since October 2023 have been children. According to UNICEF, more than fifty thousand children have been killed or wounded, an average of one child killed every day across the more than eight months since the October 2025 ceasefire was announced. The Commission further documents the targeting of neonatal and maternity care, the imposition of starvation through siege, and the destruction of schools and orphanages, a pattern that reaches beyond the children of Gaza to the capacity of Palestinian society to reproduce and to endure.
Under the Genocide Convention of 1948, the intent to destroy a group in part, through any of the prohibited acts, is sufficient to constitute genocide. The Commission has now reached that finding twice. For states party to the Convention, this carries a binding legal duty to prevent genocide and to refrain from complicity in it. That duty is not discharged by the issuing of statements.
The Global Alliance for Palestine therefore calls upon the international community to move from acknowledgement to consequence. This must include a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, the suspension of trade and cooperation agreements that sustain the occupation, the freezing of state assets, and the full and rigorous application of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It must include cooperation with the International Criminal Court, and an end to the sanctioning of the human rights organisations and UN experts who document these crimes. Every state that continues to supply arms, trade and diplomatic cover after this finding does so in full awareness of it, and assumes a share of the legal responsibility that follows.
Global Alliance for Palestine
30 June 2026
Media Officer: Raghad Osama
Email: media@palestine-alliance.org
Website: https://palestine-alliance.org/
