Ramona Wadi is a freelance journalist and book reviewer. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America.X:@walzerscent |Bluesky:Ramona Wadi
As is the case in any conflict, statistical data is essential to human rights investigations and accountability measures. Nowhere is that more apparent than Gaza amid Israel's genocide of Palestinians in the Strip. But without political will and moral clarity, can human rights mechanisms and international humanitarian law—supposed bedrocks of the international system and community—even meet the moment?
The statistics of Israel's genocide in Gaza remain highly debated. According to the latest information from Gaza's Ministry of Health, Israel has killed 68,872 Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023. Throughout the genocide, experts and leaders have criticized official Palestinian data, either noting that ministries in the Strip are "Hamas-controlled" or that the level of destruction in Gaza would have led to much higher stakes for the population.
These contentions produced a wide range of estimates. In January 2025, The Lancet estimated that 64,260 Palestinians were killed between Oct. 7, 2003, and June 30, 2024, suggesting that Gaza's Ministry of Health underreported deaths by 41%. Additionally, after considering deaths resulting from "indirect effects" of Israel's aerial bombardment, researchers concluded the toll could reach 186,000 for the same period. Considering The Lancet's study, Devi Sridhar, the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, estimated around 335,500 Palestinian deaths by the end of 2024, directly and indirectly due to Israel's military operations.
Less reported but compatible with medical experts' studies was U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese's statement during a press briefing at the U.N. Headquarters in Geneva, where she mentioned an estimate of 680,000 Palestinians killed in the genocide. "It would be hard to be able to prove or disprove this number, especially if investigators and others remained banned from entering the occupied Palestinian territory, and particularly the Gaza Strip," Albanese explained.
Statistical data is essential to human rights investigations and accountability measures. Nowhere is that more apparent than Gaza amid Israel's genocide of Palestinians in the Strip.
- Ramona Wadi
Over two years of genocide, statistics still err on the side of caution. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor recently released an infographic that put the toll at 75,190, concluding that 12% of the Palestinian population in Gaza "is either killed, injured, missing or detained." Most reports mentioning the Gaza genocide refer to statistics that are close to those published by the Gaza Ministry of Health. The proven numbers, however, do not calculate what cannot be counted.
In his book "One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This," journalist Omar El Akkad notes how an article published in the New York Times framed the death toll in Gaza as a result of altered Israeli tactics. However, the true reason, El Akkad notes, is that "Gaza's health system essentially collapsed, and no one [is] left to count the dead."
By December 2023, Reuters similarly reported on the difficulties of updating statistics, as Israel systematically targeted Gaza's hospitals. The report focused on Nasser Hospital, where the World Health Organization (WHO) collected available data alongside the Ministry of Health. Not three months into the genocide, only six out of 36 hospitals in Gaza were receiving Palestinian casualties at the time, prompting the WHO to speculate about an undercount in reporting.
Subsequently, in September 2025, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry published a report concluding that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Specifically, it said that Israel had committed "four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births."
Thus, while not stopping the commission or other human rights organizations—including DAWN—the absence of accurate statistics are an intentional act within Israel's genocidal assault in Palestine, complicating efforts to calculate the human cost that Palestinians have suffered. The erasure of Palestinians is accomplished through more than killing, however, and includes disappearances and the unclaimed bodies of Palestinians buried under the rubble. Destroying Palestinian infrastructure associated with maintaining statistical data—in this case, hospitals working with international institutions—ensured a multi-tiered level of erasure that led the commission to reach its genocide conclusion.
This Israeli erasure of Palestinians from Gaza further emphasizes the need for accountability. However, as former U.N. human rights official Craig Mokhaiber stressed, all states are not only obliged to end the genocide and punish the perpetrators, but "to prevent genocide in the first instance."
Accountability in Gaza starts with effective fact-finding efforts and access to sound data from within the Gaza Strip.
-Ramona Wadi
It took the United Nations almost two years to call out Israel's genocide, longer than most human rights organizations' official statements. The European Commission refuses to make a statement adopting the term. The United States, which played the leading role in arming Israel and negotiating ceasefires that Israel subsequently violated repeatedly, does not recognize Israel's genocide in Gaza.
As most world leaders refrain from publicly recognizing the genocide, allowing complicity to run rampant—from weapons transfers to tacit silence and contempt over the Geneva Conventions—it is the public that demands accountability.
In October, the Gaza Tribunal, a civil society initiative responding to the lack of accountability by established authorities, concluded that the genocide in Gaza is inseparable from earlier atrocities that began with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The Tribunal demanded accountability measures against all parties involved in Israel's genocide, suspending Israel from international organizations and dismantling Zionist structures. The latter, the Tribunal noted, is achievable by preventing Israel's forced displacement of the Palestinian people, alongside an internationalist confrontation with Zionism at all levels.
Such civil society measures run in parallel with existing legal mechanisms. In this regard, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) can issue legally binding rulings, unlike other U.N. institutions. However, an ICJ verdict is unlikely to be swift, while the ICC requires state cooperation to enforce international arrest warrants—a serious impediment amid U.S. efforts to cripple the ongoing ICC case against Israeli leaders for crimes in Gaza.
While legal processes are typically lengthy without such political gamesmanship, other overlooked obstacles similarly hinder accountability. The U.N. Commission of Inquiry's report is not legally binding on U.N. member states, although it does identify responsibilities under international law. That effort pressures member states to abide by international law while facilitating the work of legal institutions in terms of fact-finding.
States can ignore a non-binding document, however, just as the multitude of U.N. resolutions on the forced displacement of Palestinians over the decades became little more than a routine box-checking exercise without any real teeth. The words lost meaning long ago as unilateral state interests devoid of real international legal considerations on the part of the West increasingly took hold, with Palestinians forcibly displaced as a result.
If Israel's intent is to continue the genocide, as recently reported, the international community remains many steps behind in preventing it. But if world leaders are complicit, where does accountability work begin?
Ultimately, it starts with effective fact-finding efforts and access to sound data from within the Gaza Strip. However, for decades, the international community required Palestinians to seek recourse at international institutions, and yet genocide still occurred under the same system that prevented Palestinian self-determination and political autonomy. In that context, averting the erasure of Palestinians and counting those killed during the genocide is incumbent upon the same institutions that marginalized them—a difficult but possible, and morally and legally required, step.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.
