Gaza/Ramallah, 5 September 2025 — While the ongoing Israeli, US – backed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is entering its third year, the United States (US), rather than end its complicity with Israel, has imposed sanctions against Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) – the leading human rights organisations working on international criminal accountability for perpetrators of atrocity crimes in Palestine. Sanctions have been imposed under Executive Order 14203 on our organisations for “directly engag[ing] in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent”. By sanctioning our organisations, the U.S. has chosen to safeguard and entrench Israel’s Zionist settler-colonial apartheid regime and its unlawful occupation.

We call on Third States, the international community, the United Nations, and fellow human rights organizations and defenders to:

• Condemn the application of Executive Order 14203 as an internationally wrongful act and exert meaningful pressure on the United States to lift all sanctions imposed under Executive Order 14203;
• Take concrete steps and activate all available means to ensure the safety and protection of our operations and staff in Gaza and the West Bank, facing heightened risks of being targeted for carrying out legitimate human rights work;
• EU Member States to immediately invoke and enforce the Blocking Statute to shield and protect Palestinian human rights organisations, defenders, UN Experts, and the ICC from unlawful U.S. sanctions;
• Impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on Israel, in addition to a full arms embargo, to end its genocide against the Palestinian people.
• To our partners, social movements, and solidarity groups around the world, to mobilise and amplify the voices of the Palestinian people. Stand with us: organise, protest, and use all available means to end the genocide of the Palestinian people and to hold all Israel accountable.

This attempt at silencing Palestinian voices is the latest in a relentless, decades-long campaign by Israel and its allies to erase the Palestinian people and systematically deny their collective right to self-determination and return, carried out under the cover of international impunity. Israel has bombed and destroyed the buildings hosting our organisations in Gaza, killed our colleagues and their families, carried out patterns of attacks to destroy and silence Palestinian journalists who document and report on Israel’s destruction of Gaza.

ICC staff and judges, UN Special Rapporteurs, and Palestinian human rights defenders have been sanctioned by the US, while Israel prevents their entry to the OPT, as it prevents access to media and the UN Commission of Inquiry. Now, Palestinian human rights organisations present on the ground documenting the evidence of Israel’s genocide are being systematically crippled and silenced by Israel’s allies.

Threatened by the impact and role of our advocacy, legal research, and documentation in exposing Israel’s ongoing international crimes, the United States has resorted to punishing individuals and organisations seeking to uphold the legal system upon which the international community was founded. The implications go beyond Palestine: by protecting Israel from accountability, they are dismantling the international legal order and undermining the possibility of justice for victims of grave crimes anywhere.

The collective organising around the world, including the continuing mass protests for Gaza, the student encampments, courageous flotillas, and the legal actions that have challenged States and Israel for their crimes or complicity, has shown powerful nations and leaders that our collective voice is loud – and powerful. Because of this, they have resorted to stripping us of the means to operate. But we will not give up nor be silenced. We will not bend to any State apparatus or system fuelled by violence and oppression.

The Palestinian people in Palestine and globally have shown tremendous steadfastness and strength in resisting Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime and its practices.

The world stands at a crossroads. People, movements, organisations, and States must choose either to stand with victims of atrocity crimes and speak out against these grave violations, or to side with the perpetrators and be complicit in genocide and other international crimes being inflicted on the Palestinian people.

Now is the time for all of us, human rights defenders and people of conscience, to act. We must move collectively, organise, and use every tool at our disposal to stop the genocide in Gaza and end Israel’s apartheid, unlawful occupation of Palestine, and all attempts of erasure of the Palestinian people. In these times, silence risks the collapse of the global order – and with it our shared humanity. When the principles of international law are not just ignored but egregiously violated, and when the very institutions that are meant to uphold truth, justice, and accountability are attacked, rather than protected, no people, no nation, can ever be truly safe.