Statement by President Higgins on situation in Gaza
Date: Fri 27th Jun, 2025 | 17:47
“We are living in an era of profound challenges. The condition of our modern world too often seems to drift towards the opposite of solidarity: towards division, confrontation, and neglect.
Democracy itself is coming to be under attack. International agreements for conduct in war are being broken.
For example, UNICEF has warned that while the world's attention is focused elsewhere, the situation in Gaza is the worst it has ever been, with the distressing shortage of drinking water, children dying from thirst and malnutrition, all due to the continued failure to allow access to or adequately provide humanitarian aid. Gaza has now the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world, children in many cases without an adult support.
The death of over 400 Palestinians seeking access to what are private aid hubs, what the United Nations has called the weaponization of food for civilians, has thus been described by the United Nations Human Rights Office, OHCHR, as constituting a war crime.
Speaking this week, the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, has described the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as ‘a death trap’ and ‘an abomination that humiliates and degrades desperate people’.
It is imperative in this context that, as called for in a resolution overwhelmingly passed at the United Nations earlier this month, that UNRWA are allowed to resume their work in Gaza as the backbone of the humanitarian response.
Calls for countries to alternatively fund an alternative system, one which has been described in the stark terms which I have quoted, amounts to no less than an attempt to undermine the United Nations and its vital work.
As President of Ireland, I welcome the comments which the Taoiseach has made this week. As he has stated, it is a stain on the European Union, one which the people of Europe find incomprehensible, that Europe is not putting pressure on Israel to stop this war and allow aid to go to those who need it. I welcome the Taoiseach’s direct appeal to other Member States to take immediate action. Inaction and delay has human consequences.
As all of this is continuing, those living in the West Bank continue to be subjected to killings and attacks by violent members of those living in illegal settlements with the full support of the Israeli military.
The conclusions adopted by the European Council this week deplore the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, call on Israel to fully lift its blockade, and to allow immediate unimpeded access and sustained distribution of humanitarian assistance at scale into and throughout Gaza and to enable the UN and its agencies, and humanitarian organisations, to work independently and impartially to save lives and reduce suffering.
However, the time has now come to go further. The finding that Israel is in breach of the human rights obligations of the EU-Israel Association Agreement is clear.
Now is the time for an immediate call for action and assistance from the international community to ensure that no more time is lost, that there is no further loss of life as people exercise the impossible choice between risking their lives to access aid or starving. This is a call that I know has become ever stronger on the European Street.”