On September 17, Brazil filed its application to join South Africa in its case vs. Israel for its actions in Gaza under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, now before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Brazil’s 33-page legal brief carefully constructs its arguments for the need to hold all states accountable under this Convention to which it is a signatory. The brief elaborates various standards which the Court must consider.
For example, on the issue of “Genocidal intent attributable to the State,” the Brazil brief cites various UN agencies’ reports, compiled by South Africa and submitted to the UN Security Council in February 2025, which contain “public declarations of Israeli officials,” including “calls for the annihilation of cities and refugee camps,” “suggestions that there would be no innocents or ‘uninvolved’ [people] in Gaza,” and other such cases.
Under the heading of “establishing the existence of a pattern of conduct revealing genocidal intent,” the Brazilian brief highlights six deliberate actions for the Court to consider. Of those, we note three examples. First, is the “systematic targeting of children and women.” Here, Brazil’s brief recounts that “more than 20% of all serious violations against children worldwide in 2024 were verified in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” according to the latest report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflicts, while a UNICEF report put the number of children “killed or maimed in Gaza” at 50,000, over the same period.
A second indicator cited of deliberate actions indicating intent, is “the policy of acute hunger, food and nutritional insecurity and starvation.” Here they cite the “famine in Gaza” wherein “132,000 children under five risk dying from acute malnutrition by June 2026”; how “Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system” and using “food as a weapon” against the Palestinian people”; and ensuring long-term hunger because only “1.5% of the original cropland” has remained “undamaged and accessible for cultivation.”
A third category of action taken to deny Palestinians the means of life is the “destruction of civilian infrastructure,” causing a lack of “housing, clothing, and hygiene.” The Brazilian’s brief cites the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report that “78% of all structures and 92% of housing units in Gaza are destroyed or damaged.” This translates into 1.35 million people “in need of emergency shelter items”; “around 1.4 million … require essential household items”; and “96% of households have experienced water insecurity.” According to the UN Environment Program, “water, sanitation, and hygiene systems are almost entirely defunct” and Gaza’s “five wastewater treatment plants have shut down,” leading to “sewage contaminating beaches, coastal waters, soil, and fresh water with a host of pathogens” creating long-term threats to the “health of Gazans, marine life, and arable lands.”
In concluding, Brazil “underscores that direct and public statements calling for Palestinians’ extermination and their mass expulsion from Gaza, the deprivation of conditions of life essential to the survival of Palestinians, and the total destruction of Gaza have not ceased since South Africa” brought this case to the Court.
This is a key point, as this Court in this case issued on January 26, 2024, “provisional measures” directing that Israel must, “in accordance with its obligations under the Convention …[on] Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” with regard to “Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures … to prevent” commission of acts under this Convention. Clearly, Israel has failed to do so.
