A few days before the ceasefire in Gaza, numerous statements from international organizations were issued about the genocide being “officially recognized”.
After yet another legal review by the UN Human Rights Council – Israel was found guilty of genocide – on paper. The report highlights the Rome Statute and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as the primary legal spine of the investigation – with further support from ICJ resources.
In the shadow of a media landscape still attached to institutional validation; the words of Omar El Akkad echo our shared Palestinian disappointment:
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this”.
But here lies a deeper frustration: since when are genocides “confirmed” and waited upon?
Hypocritical Phenomenon
To acknowledge the collective voice of Gaza which has run dry from screaming for two years, is to treat such recent “ngo-ized” recognitions of genocide as secondary – and the facts on the ground as primary, first hand witnesses of genocidal intent.
So why is it that even after the murder of over 200 journalists in Gaza, that Western society still cannot utter the right terms? It is not out of a lack of information. If anything, there is an overwhelming flow of never-ending gore that hasn’t stopped since October 2023.
In an age where consent is continuously manipulated – from framing atrocities in Sudan as an unfathomable “civil war” and nothing beyond – to linguistically diverting Israeli responsibility in German news, our reliance on Western acknowledgment has numbed us to the core. Should this continue, it will diminish a revolutionary potential that is already endangered.
This hypocritical phenomenon extends beyond the media lens – but has become a diplomatic communications tool for political parties on the left. Germany’s Die Linke for instance just recently expressed their concern about the genocide, (yes, genocide), which they finally added to their vocabulary after two years.
Bernie Sanders was also among the American politicians who followed suit with using the term, while simultaneously still imposing much of the accountability towards Netanyahu’s right-wing government – a rhetoric he has reiterated multiple times.
Delayed recognitions are regular visitors in the realm of the post-colonial humanitarian sphere. Across Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia and Darfur – the pattern of suddenly waking up to the mass extermination of a people has always come far too late, often past the point of return.
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In Srebrenica, Serbia was finally proved to be committing genocide after over 10 years – with a report concluding its role in the Bosnian genocide in 2007. The “never again” mantra is continuously plastered everywhere, initially created as something to soothe the European conscience and then becomes an annual content calendar item for a public relations team member, comfortably sitting from their own desk.
Colonial Interests
In the case of the Rwandan genocide, a valuable study by Cherice Joyann Estes delves deeper into the framing of political events in Africa around “tribalism”. The researcher continues to provide historical context which isn’t covered much by the media – which is that the Tutsi clan, who were later massacred in the genocide, were initially regarded as a superior race by the Belgian colonisation scheme as they were more physically European-looking, had Semitic features and were thus regarded as better “fit to rule”.
Consequently, this pushed the Belgian forces to deem the Hutu tribe as “secondary” and created a favoritism culture between different Rwandan tribes. Within this crucial framework, the Rwandan genocide was reduced from a product of colonialism into a far-away, hardly fathomable incident that absolves European responsibility from the narrative.
Whether through delayed institutional statements or outright governmental denial, genocide operates through racial gaslighting—an apparatus designed entirely to serve colonial interests. From sweeping Armenia under the rug to the blatant dismissal of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, lives in the Global South continue to be treated as case studies under bureaucratic microscopes rather than recognized in their full humanity.
What all these incidents share is the parallel existence of multilateral forces such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court—institutions that have done nothing material on the ground to save those being mercilessly killed.
So why has the humanitarian sphere still not broken out of its shell of memorialization, nor learned from its own failures to act? One verdict is clear: we cannot afford more decades suffocated under commemoration and reports. If “never again” means “never again for everyone”, then the promise must transition out of conference halls and into tangible impact, rooted in explicit accountability and measures for immediate justice and protection.
