NGO Action News – 26 June 2025

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This newsletter informs about recent and upcoming activities of Civil Society Organizations working on the question of Palestine. The Committee and the Division for Palestinian Rights of the UN Secretariat provide the information “as is” without warranty of any kind, and do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, or reliability of the information contained in the websites linked in the newsletter.

Middle East

• On 25 June, Al Mezan issued an appeal calling for an immediate international intervention to preserve Gaza’s remaining health services. The NGO stated that since October 2023, Israeli forces have carried out 720 attacks on healthcare infrastructure in Gaza. As a result, only
  61 out of 157 health facilities remained operational, the article reads, stressing that the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system had a particularly devastating impact on cancer patients.
• On 24 June, Gisha published the report “The war on food production: Fishing”, affirming that Israel had systematically destroyed the means of food production in Gaza, including its once critical fishing sector since 7 October 2023. The sector, which had been an important source of food and livelihoods for residents of the Gaza Strip, has been almost completely obliterated by Israel during the current war, according to the report. The NGO added that the decimation of the fishing industry, together with the destruction of other means of food production, contributed to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and ensured continued dependence of the population on entry of aid.
• On 24 June, Al-Shabaka published the podcast “US Private Contractors in Gaza with Safa Joudeh”. Al-Shabaka policy analyst Safa Joudeh and co-director Yara Hawari discussed the privatization of aid and security in Gaza, and what they consider to be the weaponization of humanitarian assistance.
• On 24 June, BADIL published an article stating that Israel was implementing a unified campaign to dismantle Palestinian presence throughout Palestine, sever territorial and social continuity, and eliminate the possibility of return, amounting to grave violations of international law. The NGO added that this policy also attempted to deprive Palestine refugees of legal rights, essential services, and basic means of survival.
• On 23 June, Al Haq and Al Mezan published a letter from a group of 15 human rights and legal organizations urging “an end to the current privatized, militarized aid delivery model operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) and calling for a return to internationally recognized humanitarian channels through the United Nations across the occupied Gaza Strip”. The letter also warned all individuals and entities involved in this mechanism – including State actors, private security contractors, consulting firms, and donors, of potential legal liability for complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide. Gisha published an article on this topic as well.
• On 23 June, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights published an article calling for the protection of the lives of hundreds of infants and premature babies who face a life-threatening danger from the severe and unprecedented shortage of therapeutic milk across Gaza’s hospitals. The NGO added that this appeal came amid the ongoing full closure of Gaza’s crossings by the Israeli authorities for nearly four months, preventing the entry of humanitarian and medical aid.

Africa, Asia and Europe

• On 23 June, the Norwegian Refugee Council published the report “Restoring Dignity: The Urgent Need for Energy Access in Gaza”, which stressed that energy access underpinned key aspects of humanitarian response and daily life. According to this report, energy in Gaza became a rare and precious commodity, its absence keenly felt by every family, hospital, and humanitarian organization struggling to survive.
• On 20 June, Diakonia published the report “A Legal Appraisal of Israel’s Purported Aid Delivery Scheme in Gaza”. According to the NGO, in May Israel put in place a controversial new scheme regulating and de facto severely restricting the delivery of supplies into and within Gaza. The NGO argued that the restrictive and coercive conditions imposed by Israel on the passage of supplies make it impossible to meet the needs of the population in Gaza in an impartial manner, resulting in a violation of Israel’s obligation to allow and facilitate humanitarian activities.
• On 20 June, the Palestinian Return Centre marked World Refugee Day stating that the plight of the Palestinian people was not a temporary humanitarian crisis, but rather an ongoing and systematic crime of forced displacement and denial of the right of return, which began with the Nakba in 1948 and continued to escalate to this day. The NGO called on the international community and the United Nations to move beyond rhetorical condemnations and activate binding international legal mechanisms to hold Israel accountable, impose urgent measures to halt its ongoing displacement policies, and ensure the implementation of the right of return as an essential pillar of any just resolution based on international law and UN resolutions.

North America

• On 19 June, Human Rights Watch and over 110 organizations and trade unions issued a statement calling on the European Union to immediately suspend its trade agreement with Israel, as long as “Israel’s atrocity crimes” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) persist. According to the NGOs, they had published this statement as a review of the EU-Israel agreement was scheduled to take place on 23 June, and as Israeli authorities continued their military operations in Gaza, during which they had committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide, the statement reads.

United Nations

• On 9 July, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation will co-organize the 2025 Conference on the Question of Jerusalem “Palestinian Oppression and Displacement in Jerusalem in the Shadow of the War: A microcosm of the situation throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, in Dakar, Senegal. The event will reflect on the challenges faced by the Palestinian people in occupied East Jerusalem in terms of displacement, dispossession and violence and will provide the platform to assess the wider oppression across the OPT and for the unresolved legacy of the Nakba.
• On 23 June, OCHA warned that conditions in the Gaza Strip were deteriorating rapidly as scores of people of all ages were being killed and injured every day, while humanitarian operations of sufficient scale were not facilitated, leaving unaddressed the critical needs of those who had so far survived. OCHA added that most of Gaza also remained under displacement orders, including areas around hospitals.
• On 21 June, the Chair of the CEIRPP, Ambassador Coly Seck of Senegal, delivered a statement at the 51st Session of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Minister, stating that the Palestinian people were enduring an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe characterized by untold death, destruction, deprivation and displacement. Civilians in Gaza are starving, entire communities are flattened, families are shattered, and hope is being extinguished, he added, as the Nakba had not ended but continued in new and brutal forms. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini spoke at the same conference, raising alarm over the implementation, across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, of a long-standing project to undermine the viability of a Palestinian State, and to separate Palestinians from Palestine. The Head of UNRWA also appealed to the Organization for Islamic Cooperation and its Member States to throw their full political and financial weight behind efforts to safeguard Palestine Refugees’ access to protection and essential services.