By Besir Ozbek, Floriane Borel, and Mitch Paquette
Each week students at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre prepare an overview of the past week’s human rights related news stories from around the world.
This week’s story in focus

UN Photo/Loey Felipe
According to their February 28th press release, the UN Commission of Inquiry into the 2018 protests in Gaza, has established “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israeli soldiers may have committed “violations of international human rights and humanitarian law” including war crimes and crimes against humanity during their suppression of Palestinian demonstrators. The Commission’s full 25-page report found Israeli forces responsible for 189 Palestinian deaths and more than 9,000 injuries during last year’s protests at the Gaza border.
The legal basis for finding such violations of international law, according to the report, is that Israeli forces fired on individuals who posed “no imminent threat of death or serious injury to those around them” as required under the right to life. The Commission of Inquiry also found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israeli soldiers deliberately targeted medics, journalists, children, and disabled persons. The panel recommended that UN members impose individual sanctions on those responsible and called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to share the Commission’s findings with the International Criminal Court (although Israel does not recognize the Court’s jurisdiction). Israel has rejected the investigations findings and criticized the Human Rights Council for its “obsessive hatred of Israel.”