Mevlüt Özkan
23 September 2025•Update: 23 September 2025
ISTANBUL
South Africa is calling on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue a ruling that genocide is being committed in Gaza and to order an immediate end to the violence, the nation’s president told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
“South Africa has acted in the interests of saving lives by insisting that the International Court of Justice should make a ruling that indeed genocide is being committed in Gaza and that it should stop,” said Cyril Ramaphosa.
“We have the ultimate responsibility to ensure and protect the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” consistent with South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel, he said.
South Africa filed the case against Israel in December 2023, accusing it of violating obligations under the Genocide Convention in its actions against Palestinians in Gaza. Since then, the court has issued a series of provisional measures ordering Israel to take steps to prevent acts of genocide.
Last week, Brazil joined a growing list of countries that have sought to intervene in the case, including Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Türkiye, Chile, Ireland, and others.
“There is growing global consensus that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Ramaphosa said, pointing to last week’s report of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which confirmed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
The South African leader also praised Monday’s “historic” UN conference on the two-state solution.
He said the conference reflects the determination of a global growing majority of 142 countries that “Palestinians deserve a peaceful state alongside a peaceful Israel.”
“Many nations in the world are calling for that, and that is the voice that we believe that Israel should heed, and those powerful nations that can make a two-state solution viable and possible and implementable should act in that regard,” Ramaphosa said.
“The long overdue announcement by increasing number of countries to recognize the state of Palestine is testament to this determination,” he added.
With the latest announcements, the number of UN members states that officially recognize the state of Palestine rose to 159 out of 193.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. The military campaign has devastated the enclave and led to famine.
