(Beirut) – The 14-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has had devastating effects on civilians in Lebanon and resulted in a significant number of overt war crimes and violations of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. today in its 2025 Global Report.
Between October 2023 and December 2024, Israeli strikes killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including more than 240 children, 220 health professionals and rescue workers, and 700 women. The Lebanese government has still not taken steps to ensure accountability at the international level, including to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In the 35th edition In its 546-page World Report, Human Rights Watch analyzes human rights practices in nearly one hundred countries. Across much of the world, executive director Tirana Hassan writes in her introductory essay, governments have wrongly repressed, arrested and imprisoned political opponents, activists and journalists. Armed groups and state forces have unlawfully killed civilians, forced many from their homes and prevented them from accessing humanitarian assistance. In many cases among the more than 70 national elections held in 2024, authoritarian leaders have gained ground based on discriminatory rhetoric and political agendas.
« More than 4,000 people have died in Lebanon, including hundreds of children and health workers, and the international community has still not once and for all ended impunity for violations of the laws of the warsaid Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “ Lebanon should play its role by urgently granting the ICC a mandate to investigate, so that those responsible for serious crimes are brought to justice. »
- Human Rights Watch has documented a series of illegal attacks and blatant war crimes by the Israeli military, including apparently deliberate attacks on journalists, peacekeepers, health workers, and civilian institutions, as well as the illegal use of IEDs and the widespread use of white phosphorus, particularly illegally over populated residential areas.
- Hezbollah fired thousands of munitions into northern Israel and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, killing at least 30 civilians. On July 27, an attack on the town of Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights also killed 12 children. Israel claimed it was a rocket attack by Hezbollah, which denied responsibility.
- On September 23, more than a thousand Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed 558 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. In the following weeks, more than a million people were displaced, thousands of buildings and homes were destroyed, and entire border villages were reduced to ruins. More than 330,000 Syrians, many of whom had lived in Lebanon for more than a decade, have fled to Syria.
- Lebanese authorities have arbitrarily detained, tortured, and forcibly returned Syrians to Syria in 2024, including opposition activists and an army deserter.
- The investigation into the August 2020 Beirut port explosion is still pending and Lebanese authorities have not taken any significant steps to allow the investigation to proceed unhindered.
The US, UK and Germany should halt arms transfers to Israel due to the Israeli military’s repeated illegal attacks on civilians. Lebanon should give the ICC prosecutor the mandate to investigate serious crimes committed on its territory. Furthermore, Lebanon and other countries should convene a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to open an international investigation into human rights violations committed by all parties involved in the conflict in Lebanon.
