Human Rights Day in the age of Gaza
Human Rights Day, commemorated annually on 10 December, is intended to reaffirm the principles of dignity, equality, and universal protection enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Yet in the age of Gaza, these principles ring hollow. The world marks Human Rights Day with speeches and ceremonies, even as an entire civilian population endures bombardment, displacement, starvation, and the collapse of basic infrastructure—with almost complete impunity.
Gaza has become the starkest mirror of our time. It reveals a world in which “universal” rights are selectively defended, in which civilian lives can be extinguished during declared humanitarian pauses, and in which the international system proves unable—or unwilling—to enforce its own norms. The tragedy is not only that Gaza burns, but that it burns while the world insists it still believes in human rights.
The bitter paradox of Gaza is that even a “ceasefire” no longer guarantees safety. Israel announces pauses in fighting, yet strikes hospitals, refugee shelters, and residential blocks hours later. These are not accidents or isolated incidents; they signal a global shift. We live in an era where restraint has eroded, legality has weakened, and the protection of civilians has become politically negotiable. Each broken ceasefire broadcasts a dangerous message: the laws of war no longer function as limits for those powerful enough to ignore them.
Political theorist Carl Schmitt once argued that the sovereign is the one who decides the exception. Israel’s conduct in Gaza reflects this logic with unsettling clarity. By invoking “self-defence” without temporal or ethical boundaries, it asserts the authority to determine when international law applies and when it can be suspended. This produces a permanent state of exception—an elastic zone where lethal force can be justified regardless of circumstances, even during declared humanitarian pauses.
The post–World War II international order, built on the promise that war would be limited and civilians protected, now appears fragile and deeply inconsistent. The UN Charter and Geneva Conventions were meant to bind all states equally. Gaza shows that they do not. Instead, the enforcement of international law has become hierarchical and contingent on geopolitics rather than principles. Human Rights Day, intended as a celebration of universality, arrives as a glaring reminder of selective morality.
The double standards reveal themselves with painful clarity. Violations of ceasefires in Ukraine generate swift Western condemnation and calls for accountability. When similar violations occur in Gaza, they are reframed as “security measures,” “precision targeting,” or unfortunate collateral damage. This asymmetry destroys the credibility of the so-called “rules-based order” and reduces human rights to political rhetoric. It exposes a disturbing truth: rights are vigorously defended for some populations and quietly disregarded for others.
Israel’s repeated breaches of truces must also be understood as a philosophical act. Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the state of exception—a space where the law is suspended while still invoked to legitimise violence—describes Gaza with eerie accuracy. Ceasefires are transformed from humanitarian obligations into strategic intervals: time to reposition forces, tighten control, and resume bombardment. The truce becomes a tool of war rather than a reprieve from it.
Layered onto this political and legal impunity is a new technological dimension of violence. Israel’s military operations increasingly rely on AI-assisted targeting, biometric surveillance, predictive analytics, and real-time data extracted from Palestinians. Warfare is merging with digital governance; civilian life becomes a set of data points, and killing becomes “efficient.” Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” has evolved into a digital form—violence rendered algorithmic, bureaucratic, and shrouded in technological inevitability.
This raises a profound question for Human Rights Day: can human rights survive in a world where death can be administered through algorithms, where narratives are weaponised globally, and where geopolitics shields one state from accountability? Gaza suggests that without radical change, the answer may be no.
The UDHR proclaims the right to life, dignity, medical care, protection from collective punishment, and freedom from arbitrary violence. Yet in Gaza, families are bombed in their homes, displaced repeatedly under fire, denied water and electricity, and deprived of medical treatment even inside hospitals. These are not mere violations—they are the unravelling of the moral foundation on which Human Rights Day rests.
The crisis is not confined to Gaza. The collapse of enforcement in one place accelerates the decay of norms everywhere. When international law becomes optional for one state, it effectively becomes optional for all. The precedent now being set—that mass civilian casualties can be justified through political alliances—will reverberate globally. Other states will follow the model of impunity, confident that geopolitical alignment can shield them from scrutiny.
The Middle East has already begun to absorb the consequences. Across the region, the publics witness the destruction in Gaza with a sense of moral injury and political disillusionment. Trust in the international system—already strained by decades of selective intervention and unfulfilled resolutions—has further eroded. The perceived hypocrisy of global powers deepens instability and fuels the belief that justice cannot be obtained through institutions supposedly designed to deliver it.
Human Rights Day, in this context, risks becoming an empty ritual. States will issue statements praising the UDHR while declining to defend its principles in practice. International organisations will call for accountability, yet they are structurally unable to enforce it. And global powers will continue to speak the language of human rights while acting in ways that betray them.
In the age of Gaza, the meaning of Human Rights Day must be re-examined. It cannot remain a commemoration of ideals disconnected from reality. It must become a call to confront the political, legal, and technological structures that have allowed rights to erode so dramatically. That means addressing the paralysis of the UN Security Council, the political shielding of certain states, and the growing use of digital systems that dehumanise the populations they surveil.
Ultimately, the question for this Human Rights Day is not whether Israel has crossed the limits of lawful conduct. That question has been answered repeatedly, with every bomb dropped during a ceasefire, every hospital struck, and every civilian family buried. The real question is whether humanity still believes that limits must exist at all. If the world continues to tolerate the destruction of Gaza under the language of security and self-defence, then universality—the core promise of human rights—will not survive.
In Gaza, a city burns. And with it burns the credibility of the global human rights order. Whether Human Rights Day remains meaningful or becomes mere symbolism will depend on how the world chooses to respond to this moment.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.