Statement in Defense of Humanitarian Action and Against the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza
We, healthcare workers and associations working for peace and in defense of human rights and international law, express our solidarity with Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, and those among the 37 NGOs that Israel has denied permission to operate in Gaza who will refuse to hand over lists of their Palestinian staff to Israeli authorities, deeming it a request incompatible with humanitarian principles and the duty to protect workers and the communities they serve. This courageous decision is not an act of defiance: it is an ethical and legal imperative.
In March 2025, Israeli authorities announced that NGOs operating in Gaza would be required to provide personal information about their staff. On December 30, it was then announced that the preliminary registrations of 37 humanitarian NGOs had expired and that organizations would have to cease activities within 60 days or transmit such data, without clear guarantees regarding staff safety.
This request for informing aims to force NGOs to participate in the colonial policy of surveillance and control of Gazans, a system that can be used to arrest, torture, or kill healthcare workers, as demonstrated by the data from the past two years. At the same time, this measure contributes to discrediting NGOs in the eyes of national and international public opinion, placing them in a no-win situation.
The data speaks with dramatic clarity. In 2022, Gaza had 16,259 healthcare workers, of whom 18.2% were employed by non-governmental organizations. Since October 7, 2023, approximately 1,700 of these professionals have been killed—10.4% of the entire healthcare workforce—with an average age at killing of 38.8 years and an estimated loss of 68,089 years of life. Among those killed, 15 were Médecins Sans Frontières staff members. In parallel, 656 healthcare workers have emigrated outside Gaza, while over 360 have been illegally detained by Israeli forces.
Violence against healthcare personnel is not limited to Gaza. The West Bank has also witnessed a dramatic increase in attacks on healthcare facilities and personnel by Israeli forces. According to Insecurity Insight’s consolidated data on attacks on healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory between October 7, 2023 and September 2025, 778 incidents were recorded in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with 12 healthcare workers killed and 161 arrested.
In this context, handing over the names of Palestinian colleagues would mean turning them into potential targets, exposing them to further risk of arrest or killing, violating our legal and ethical duty to protect them, and betraying the fundamental principles of humanitarian action. At the same time, preventing NGOs from entering Gaza means depriving hundreds of thousands of Gazans of essential care and once again violating international law.
Humanitarian access is not optional, nor conditional or political: it is a legal obligation enshrined in international humanitarian law
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has partially or completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, worsening an unprecedented humanitarian and health crisis. Hospitals operate without the most basic materials: gauze, antibiotics, anesthetics, IV solutions, surgical supplies. Physicians for Human Rights has documented how even scalpels have been classified as “dual use” material and blocked at entry. Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, Israel has not respected the agreements on aid entry: according to Al Jazeera, as of December 9, 2025, the ceasefire had been violated at least 738 times, with 377 Palestinians killed and only 38% of the agreed trucks actually authorized to reach their destinations.
On January 29, 2026, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged the Gaza Ministry of Health’s figures as accurate: over 71,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023. For more than two years, these figures had been systematically dismissed as “Hamas propaganda” by Israeli officials, Western media channels, and even the US Congress. The US Congress even legally prohibited government departments from citing the Gaza Ministry of Health’s statistics, actively contributing to the delegitimization of a source that has historically proven reliable. Israel itself has now confirmed what independent international organizations and articles in prestigious scientific journals had long maintained: these numbers are real. Indeed, they are conservative—they do not include the thousands still buried under rubble or those who died from starvation, infections, and preventable diseases. Studies published in The Lancet estimated, as early as July 2024, that the true death toll could exceed 100,000.
Gaza has witnessed the most severe collapse in life expectancy ever recorded, dropping from 75.5 to just 40.5 years between October 2023 and September 2024. With civilians representing over 80% of the victims and approximately 20,000 children killed, Gaza has the highest rates of civilian and child killings ever documented in a single context of organized violence against a population.
It is not only empirical and public health evidence that corroborates the verdict of genocide, but also the official positions of IAGS, the UN Commission of Inquiry, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and UN Special Rapporteurs, all in agreement that a genocide is underway in Gaza.
We therefore call upon our governments and civil society: to express strong support and solidarity with the NGOs that protect their staff by refusing to hand over lists that could become target lists; to demand that Israel respect international law and guarantee the continuation of NGO activities in the territory; to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid as established by agreements.
The Geneva Conventions are not suggestions. The protection of medical personnel is non-negotiable. When a humanitarian organization is forced to choose between handing over the names of its colleagues to a force that has already killed 1,700 of them, illegally arrested and tortured over 360 in just over two years, or ceasing operations, the choice itself reveals the nature of the regime imposing it.
We stand with MSF and Oxfam. We stand with the NGOs. We stand with Gaza.
Silence is complicity. Action is duty.