Urgent Debate on protection of children and educational institutions in international armed conflict by OHCHR, HRW, Just Security   27 Mar. 2026   United Nations Human Rights Council Urgent Debate on protection of children and educational institutions in international armed conflicts   Statement by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk:   "The bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran evoked a visceral horror. The images of bombed-out classrooms and grieving parents showed clearly who pays the highest price for war: civilians with no power in the decisions that led to conflict. In this case, a reported 168 pupils, teachers, school staff, and their loved ones. I send my deepest condolences to the bereaved families.   Whatever differences countries have, we can all agree they will not be solved by killing schoolchildren.   That is why we have the laws of war: to protect children and other civilians caught up in conflict, as well as schools and all civilian infrastructure.   In the case of this school, the onus is on those who carried out the attack to investigate it promptly, impartially, transparently and thoroughly, to determine the facts and lay the basis for accountability.   Senior US officials have said the strike is under investigation. I call for that process to be concluded as soon as possible, and for its findings to be made public. There must be justice for the terrible harm done.   It is gravely concerning that around the world, attacks on schools are increasing. In 2024, such attacks surged by a shocking 44 percent, leaving 52 million children out of the classroom. I call on all countries to take urgent steps to protect educational facilities, and those who study and work in them.   Resort to the use of force, at a time when negotiations were ongoing, is a strategic failure that has had a devastating impact on civilians. Bombs and missiles are not the path towards sustainable peace. They bring death, destruction and misery, in many cases only deepening grievances and fuelling future violence.   In Iran, as the conflict has progressed, US and Israeli attacks have increasingly struck densely populated residential areas and destroyed civilian infrastructure.   Homes, medical facilities, schools, courts, transport networks, and energy installations have been hit across all 31 provinces of the country. According to the Iranian authorities, more than 1,900 civilians have been killed and tens of thousands injured.   The targeting of nuclear facilities is reckless beyond comprehension.   These attacks raise serious concerns over compliance with international humanitarian and human rights law, under which the protection of civilians must remain central.   The people of Iran are caught between conflict and repression. I am gravely concerned by reports that since the start of the hostilities, the Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on civic space.   Law-enforcement authorities have repeatedly said that dissent will be treated as collaboration with the enemy, and punished harshly for acts including filming damaged sites or communicating about the conflict.   The authorities have intensified arrests, judicial cases, and bans against people and media outlets accused of promoting so-called enemy narratives.   We have reason to believe hundreds of people have been arrested, while journalists, activists, and public figures have been placed under surveillance. The internet has been shut down for nearly a month.   War does not reduce the responsibility of the Iranian authorities to abide by their human rights obligations.   The military escalation in the Middle East and the Gulf is reaching dangerous levels. It must end. There is a high and rising risk of further contagion and increased civilian suffering in the countries directly involved.   Beyond the region, there are fears of grave economic consequences, from deepening poverty and hunger to shortages of medicine and fuel.   It is imperative that all parties halt the escalation. I call on the United States and Israel to end their attacks against Iran. I call on Iran to stop attacking its neighbours, and to respect and protect the human rights of its own people.   I urge restraint on all sides, and implore the parties to conflict to return to negotiations – the only path towards a durable solution to their differences.   Divisions within this Council must not distract us from a shared focus on the human rights of people across the Gulf and the Middle East.   As I address you for a second time in three days, I urge all States to prioritize preventing further suffering; protecting all civilians regardless of nationality or location; and seeking long-term, sustainable peace".   http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2026/03/turk-statement-protection-children-and-educational-institutions http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/03/civilians-bear-brunt-reckless-war-middle-east-says-turk   In the latest escalation in the Middle East, warring sides have demonstrated disturbing disregard for civilian life, by Philippe Bolopion - Executive Director, Human Rights Watch.   "For decades, leaders who were responsible for war crimes tended to plead ignorance or insist it was a mistake and their hands were clean. What has changed in the Middle East is the swaggering contempt we have seen from the United States, Israel and Iran as they instead dismiss, mock or flout the international laws protecting civilians. If the international community does not urgently reassert support for those norms, it may be acquiescing to their destruction.   US President Donald Trump, who told The New York Times he doesn’t “need international law” and the only restraint on his power was his “own morality”, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has dismissed “tepid legality” in favour of “maximum lethality”, have expressed little regard publicly for the safety of civilians affected by the US-Israeli war on Iran, which just entered its second month.   After announcing that the US had “demolished” Iran’s Kharg Island, Trump told NBC News, “We may hit it a few more times just for fun.” Hegseth has declared that “no quarter” would be given to enemies in Iran. That phrase indicates troops are free to kill those seeking to surrender rather than capture them. Such scenarios have served as a textbook example of a war crime in US military academies.   The Trump administration is not alone in this regard. In language eerily reminiscent of the war in Gaza, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has threatened to demolish homes across southern Lebanon and block hundreds of thousands of civilians from returning.   Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has declared US banks, investment firms and commercial ships valid targets despite their civilian status. Its spokesman warned Iranians that any street protests would be met with “an even harsher blow” than the January massacres, in which security forces killed thousands across the country. A state television presenter was more direct, saying opponents in the diaspora would face consequences that would see their “mothers sit in mourning”.   These statements are worthy of our attention not only because they telegraph a blatant disregard for civilian life but also because these leaders seem to mean it.   More than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran, more than 1,200 in Lebanon, and 17 in Israel. Altogether, several million people across the Gulf, Israel and Lebanon have been displaced or forced to flee from their homes. Based on a preliminary US military report, US forces were responsible for a deadly attack on an elementary school in Minab, Iran, in which more than 170 people, including many children, were killed.   The Israeli military has fired white phosphorus, which can burn to the bone, on Lebanese homes despite a clear prohibition on its use as a weapon in populated areas. Iran has launched internationally banned cluster munitions at Israeli cities and attacked commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.   The international legal system, designed to protect civilians during armed conflict, did not falter overnight. Unflinching US support for Israel as it carried out acts of genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza, destroyed its hospitals and water systems, carried out countless air strikes that turned neighbourhoods into rubble and killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians over two and a half years contributed to a sense that some leaders would always be above the law.   Those double standards are alive and well, profoundly corroding respect for international law. When Iran struck Gulf energy infrastructure, condemnation rightly came within hours. But when Israel unlawfully dropped white phosphorus on Lebanese neighbourhoods, the same governments went quiet. Leaders need to say, with equal specificity and force, that attacks on Iranian power plants, Lebanese homes and Gulf civilian facilities are violations of the laws of war, regardless of who the perpetrator is. Otherwise, the rules are just a cudgel for punishing rivals.   The Geneva Conventions oblige every country not merely to follow the laws of war but also ensure global respect for them, including by refusing to arm forces credibly accused of violating them.   Yet arms continue to flow to belligerents on multiple sides of these conflicts with no apparent review of the likely impact. European governments that supply weapons or grant overflight and basing rights to forces unlawfully bombing civilians are not bystanders. If the actions of US and Israeli forces match the irresponsible rhetoric of their leaders, countries that arm or assist them could very well find themselves complicit in war crimes.   As during the war in the former Yugoslavia or more recently in Ukraine, the machinery of documentation and accountability needs to occur while the conflict is ongoing, not afterwards. Today, warring parties in the Middle East are working to prevent exactly that.   Iran has imposed a nationwide internet shutdown and jailed people for sharing strike footage. Israel has banned live broadcasts and detained journalists. Gulf states have arrested citizens for posting images online. In the US, the Federal Communications Commission chairman has threatened broadcasters’ licences over coverage of the war on Iran unfavourable to the Trump administration.   Governments with developed intelligence capabilities should be preserving and sharing evidence of war crimes right now: satellite imagery, communications intercepts, open-source footage. UN investigative bodies need immediate additional resources. And governments need to speak out clearly on the importance of justice for war crimes.   If this work waits until the shooting stops, the evidence may be gone, and the political will for accountability may quickly shift focus. The belligerents know it. They may even be counting on it.   The leaders repudiating the laws of war today may think they will gain from a world without rules, where brute force settles every question and all civilian harm is just written off as collateral damage. But by dismissing the principle of nonreciprocity, which makes clear that one side’s violations do not justify noncompliance by the other, they have spurred rounds of tit-for-tat strikes that put their own troops as well as their civilian populations in harm’s way.   Those who see the value of the existing system curbing the barbarity of war need to stand up for it. Otherwise, they may one day find themselves forced to explain to future generations why they did nothing while it burned".   http://www.hrw.org/tag/crisis-in-the-middle-east   Letter from over 100 American international law experts on the Iran war:   "We, the undersigned U.S.-based international law experts, professors, and practitioners write to express profound concern about serious violations of international law and alarming rhetoric by the United States, Israel, and Iran in the present armed conflict in the Middle East.   Due to our connection to the United States, our focus here is on the conduct of the U.S. government, but we remain concerned about the risk of atrocities across the region including the continuing risks posed by the Iranian government to Iranians through violent crackdowns on dissent, and to civilians across the Middle East through Iran’s ongoing unlawful strikes on civilian infrastructure using explosive weapons in densely populated areas.   One month has passed since the United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran. The initiation of the campaign was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter, and the conduct of United States forces since, as well as statements made by senior government officials, raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.   We collectively affirm the importance of equal application of international law to all, including countries that hold themselves out as global leaders. Recent statements from senior U.S. government officials describing the rules governing military engagement as “stupid” and prioritizing “lethality” over “legality” are profoundly alarming and dangerously short-sighted. These claims, particularly in combination with the observable conduct of U.S. forces, are harming the international legal order and the system of international law that we have devoted our lives to promoting.   The war, which is costing U.S. taxpayers between $1-2 billion each day, is imposing significant harm to civilians in the region, has resulted in the loss of many hundreds of civilian lives across the Middle East, and is causing serious environmental and economic harms.   We write to express our concern about 1) jus ad bellum, or the decision to go to war, 2) jus in bello, or the conduct of hostilities, 3) rhetoric and threats from senior U.S. officials and their allies, which portend further abuses, and 4) the decimation of civilian harm mitigation structures within the U.S. government as a part of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “gloves off” approach to warfare.   1. Jus ad bellum concerns: The strikes launched by the United States and Israel on February 28, 2026 clearly violated the United Nations Charter prohibition on the use of force. Force against another state is only permitted in self-defense against an actual or imminent armed attack or where authorized by the UN Security Council. The Security Council did not authorize the attack. Iran did not attack Israel or the United States.   Despite the Trump administration’s varied and sometimes conflicting claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat that could ground a self-defense claim. Many international law experts have concluded that Israel and the United States’ actions violate the UN Charter, including the President and President-elect of the American Society of International Law, and the President of the American Branch of the International Law Association; UN Secretary-General António Guterres also condemned the attacks as undermining international peace and security.   2. Concerns about violations of international humanitarian law: The laws of armed conflict constrain the conduct of hostilities of all parties to the ongoing conflict. We are concerned that these fundamental rules may have been violated, including in the context of reported strikes on civilians and civilian objects such as political leaders who have no military role, oil and gas infrastructure, including South Pars, and water desalination plants. On March 19, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned strikes on energy infrastructure, noting their “disastrous” impacts for civilians.   We are seriously concerned about strikes that have hit schools, health facilities, and homes. The Iranian Red Crescent reports that “67,414 civilian sites have been struck, of which 498 are schools and 236 health facilities.” A report by leading civil society organizations found that at least 1,443 Iranian civilians, including 217 children, were killed by U.S. and Israeli forces between February 28 and March 23.   The strike on Minab primary school is particularly concerning. On February 28, Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, Iran, was struck, resulting in the deaths of at least 175 people, many of them children, according to Iranian officials. Based on easily accessible online information and commercially available satellite imagery, it appears the building had been used as a school for a decade. President Trump denied U.S. responsibility, falsely stating that “It was done by Iran.”   However, a preliminary investigation by the Department of Defense reportedly determined that the U.S. conducted the strike, and the targeting had been based on outdated intelligence. The strike likely violates international humanitarian law, and if evidence is found that those responsible were reckless, it could also be a war crime. The strike is among the deadliest single attacks by the U.S. military on civilians in recent decades.   3. Concerns about rhetoric and threats from senior officials. We are deeply concerned about the dangerous rhetoric government officials have engaged in during the war, including:   a. Threatened denial of quarter: On March 13, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stated “We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” In international law, it is “especially forbidden” to “declare that no quarter will be given,” a prohibition also set out in the Department of Defense’s own law of war manual. Hegseth’s statement likely violates international humanitarian law as well as the U.S. War Crimes statute 18 U.S.C. 2441. Ordering or threatening no quarter is a war crime.   b. Dismissal of rules of engagement and international law: Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s “no quarter” statement followed similarly alarming statements by the Secretary, including on September 25, 2025 and March 2, 2026 that the U.S. does not fight with “stupid rules of engagement.” On January 8, 2026 President Trump had made the disturbing comment that “I don’t need international law.” On March 13, he stated that the U.S. may conduct strikes on Iran “just for fun.”   c. Threats on energy infrastructure: President Trump threatened on March 13, 2026: “I could take out things within the next hour, power plants that create the electricity, that create the water… We could do things that would be so bad they could literally never rebuild as a nation again.” International law protects from attack objects indispensable to the survival of civilians, and the attacks threatened by Trump, if implemented, could entail war crimes.   On March 21, President Trump further threatened to “obliterate” power plants in Iran. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, defended power plant attacks the next day, and also said that striking nuclear power plants was not off the table.   It is prohibited to attack civilian energy infrastructure. If a power plant has both civilian and military purposes (“dual-use”), it may be considered a military objective where it makes “an effective contribution to military action” and the attack “offers a definite military advantage.” However, any strike must respect the principles of proportionality and precautions in attack.   The proportionality principle prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental civilian harm that would be excessive in relation to the military advantage. The civilian harm to be considered includes foreseeable reverberating or indirect harm. In any attack, “all feasible precautions” must be taken to avoid civilian harm.   Attacks on nuclear power plants, even if they have a military purpose, require particular care because of the high risk of releasing radiation and radioactive material and consequent severe harm to the civilian population. Such a strike could harm the health and safety of millions of civilians.   On March 23, 2026, the ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger expressed her deep concern, noting that “War on essential infrastructure is war on civilians” and described threats to nuclear power plants as “Most alarming.”   4. Concerns about institutional safeguards against further violations: Since the start of the second Trump administration, the Defense Department under Secretary Hegseth has deliberately and systematically weakened the protections meant to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law. This includes removing senior military lawyers without publicly citing misconduct, and replacing the Army, Navy, and Air Force judge advocates general, directly undermining legal oversight of combat operations. It has also abolished “civilian environment teams” and other mechanisms specifically designed to limit harm to civilians during operations.   The 2026 National Defense Strategy omits references to civilian protection and international law entirely. These changes are especially concerning in light of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s comments that rules of engagement interfere with “fighting to win.”   We are gravely concerned that the conduct and threats outlined here are causing serious harm to civilians in the Middle East, and that they also contribute to escalating the conflict, damaging the environment and the global economy, and that they risk degrading the rule of law and fundamental norms that protect every nation’s civilians.   Public statements by senior officials indicate an alarming disrespect for the rules of international humanitarian law accepted by states, and which protect both civilians and members of the armed forces.   We urge U.S. government officials to uphold the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, and human rights law at all times, and to publicly make clear U.S. commitment to and respect for norms of international law.   We remind all states of their legal obligations not to aid or assist the United States, Israel, or Iran in the commission of internationally wrongful acts, as well as to cooperate to bring to an end through lawful means serious breaches of peremptory norms of general international law (jus cogens) including the prohibition of aggression and the basic rules of international humanitarian law.   We also urge the U.S. governments’ allies and cooperating partners to take steps to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law, in line with Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions and associated customary international law".   http://www.justsecurity.org/135423/professors-letter-international-law-iran-war/
	We cannot allow a world without civil society by Gina Romero UN Special Rapporteur, Freedom of Assembly and of Association   Mar. 2026   A year has passed since a 90-day freeze on U.S. foreign assistance signaled the deepening of a structural dismantling of international solidarity. Today, the “existential threat” to the freedom of association I warned of in my report to last year’s UN General Assembly (A/80/219) is no longer a warning; it is a lived reality.   Thousands of civil society organizations (CSOs) worldwide have been reduced to their minimum or are completely vanishing, while others are forced into transformations that compromise their core missions. This is not only creating more victims of human rights violations but has also left prior victims alone.   For the freedom of association, the impact is devastating. The dismantling of USAID, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), and other dedicated funds from other countries has cut the lifelines for NGOs that served as democratic watchdogs worldwide.   Therefore, this is not merely a budgetary shift but a coordinated attack on the infrastructure of dissent. In the U.S., for example, foundations and nonprofits are facing “three overlapping crises” (Maecenata Stiftung, Refugees International, other):   • Policy Threats: Executive Orders targeting DEI and redefining “charitable” status to strip tax exemptions.   • Organizational Targeting: Explicit vilification of networks like the Open Society Foundations and investigative letters targeting major funders like the Gates and Ford Foundations.   • Mass Closings: Organizations are laying off up to 95% of staff, leading to a “generational funding collapse” of the humanitarian system.   In the meantime, worldwide we also see ultra-conservative anti-rights groups and autocratic regimes rushing to fill the vacuum left by established aid agencies.   These groups are, among others, reshaping the global health landscape with actions that restrict reproductive rights and LGBTQI+ protections. In the Asia-Pacific region alone, 240 million young girls are facing a “coordinated global backlash” as programs focused on education and gender equality are the first to be cut (Women’s Agenda).   As I reported to the UN General Assembly last year, the right to association is an integral part of human nature. When states vilify aid as “criminal” or “corrupt,” they dismantle the lifelines that keep civic space alive. We must restore a sustainable aid architecture that serves human dignity and the planet rather than private profit or political control.   But the impact on communities and individuals is far too grave. The data emerging in early 2026 is devastating. Since the 2025 freeze, researchers estimate the dismantling of U.S. foreign aid alone has already caused 750,000 deaths, over 60% of whom are children—a rate of 88 preventable deaths every hour.   Projections indicate that without restoration, 22.6 million people could die from preventable causes by 2030 (The Lancet).   The “hammer” thrown at the aid system has undone decades of progress:   • Access to justice: Deeply affected by terminated grants funding for community violence intervention programs, legal assistance for crime victims from underserved communities, court-appointed advocates for children in cases of abuse or neglect, services for victims of hate crimes, shutting down the safety net for domestic violence survivors and closing of shelters and hotlines.   • Democracy and rule of law: Crisis in independent media and civil society reduces the critical voices that speak truth to the power and weakens checks and balances in democracies and hybrid regimes, while in authoritarian context the constraints of dissenting voices increases repression, especially against the most vulnerable groups (Global Democracy Coalition).   • Human rights: global and regional mechanisms of human rights protections have seen drastic cuts of funding, which jeopardize the human rights protections worldwide. The OHCHR received a 16% cut of its budget for 2026 and several Human Rights Council mandates are also being defunded, many tied to human rights violations investigations in authoritarian states (ISHR).   • Global Health: Access to PrEP and life-saving HIV drugs has been halved for 80% of community organizations. Cholera deaths in the DRC alone surged by 361% in 2025 after essential water projects were halted (Oxfam).   • Education: The abrupt cancellation of nearly 400 USAID-funded education programs in 58 countries risks leaving millions of children—predominantly girls and refugees—without access to quality learning.   • Food Security: In West and Central Africa, 55 million people are expected to endure crisis levels of hunger, or worse by the end of the first semester of 2026, including over 13 million children who are also expected to suffer from malnutrition during the year 2026 (WFP). In Afghanistan, monthly reach for emergency food aid plummeted from 5.6 million people to just 1 million (Refugees International).   Perhaps equally alarming is the collapse of data collection systems. As USAID programs disappeared, so did the reporting requirements that tracked disease, death, and human rights violations. We are entering a period where the true scale of suffering and needs may never be fully known.   Besides the cut of funding, the existential threat is also related to the reduction of possibilities of civil society organizations to collect new funding due to the increase of mis/disinformation about CSO work that leads to lack of trust in communities and therefore increases the shrinking civic space, already heavily affected by anti-NGO laws and persecution.   We cannot allow a world without civil society. It is a world without hope, where the most vulnerable are left alone to face the most pressing human crises and wars. The international community must move beyond “business as usual” to restore a sustainable and just aid architecture that empowers civic engagement rather than advancing its suppression.   http://www.ipsnews.net/2026/03/the-architecture-of-hope-under-siege-one-year-of-global-aid-dismantling/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/global-aid-dismantling-poses-existential-threat-collective-action-and-human http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80219-report-special-rapporteur-rights-freedom-peaceful-assembly-and http://www.ids.ac.uk/news/smart-city-surveillance-tech-across-africa/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/news/africas-biometric-id-systems-blocking-millions-of-citizens-from-rights-and-services/
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