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For the human rights discourse to remain relevant, it must be rooted in justice. It must acknowledge that the rights of individuals cannot be conditional, nor selectively applied. Injustice anywhere diminishes the rights of all people, and this is particularly true in Palestine.
By FAADIYAH GAFFOOR
To speak of human rights in theory is easy. To defend them in the face of massacre, displacement, and systematic erasure — that is where the discourse begins to fracture. In Gaza, where entire generations are being lost beneath rubble, where journalists are killed for documenting truth, and where starvation is weaponised, the human rights discourse faces its greatest ethical reckoning.
As a young Muslim woman raised in post-apartheid South Africa — a country whose very soil remembers resistance — I cannot look away from Palestine. I cannot pretend that declarations written in the aftermath of World War II mean anything if they do not apply here. If human rights are to be relevant, they must be relevant in the ruins of Gaza, under occupation in the West Bank, and in the memory of every Palestinian refugee still waiting for return.
This piece reflects on the relevance of the Human Rights Discourse in light of Israeli occupation — not through sanitised neutrality, but through the moral clarity demanded by Palestinian voices, Islamic ethical frameworks, and a critical decolonial lens. Because if human rights are not for Palestine, they are for no one.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948 — the same year as the Nakba, when over 700 000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced (United Nations, 2023; Institute for Middle East Understanding, 2023). This juxtaposition underscores a profound irony: a document meant to uphold human dignity and rights coincided with an event that violated those very principles for an entire population. Scholars like Mutua (2008, p. 24) have critiqued the human rights framework as ‘Eurocentric’, imposed upon non-Western nations, often failing to reflect the lived realities of those it claims to protect.
In Palestine, this contradiction is not theoretical. It is lived. The ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory has been condemned by numerous human rights organisations, including Amnesty International (2022), which defines Israel’s system as one of apartheid — a term not used lightly under international law. Yet, many governments refuse to acknowledge this designation, retreating instead into language that obfuscates more than it reveals.
Terms like ‘clashes’, ‘conflict’, and ‘disputed territory’ are often deployed in political rhetoric and mainstream coverage to reduce military occupation to a mere misunderstanding, hiding the truth beneath euphemism. These linguistic choices are not neutral; they serve as acts of ideological erasure, shaping who the world believes, whose pain is seen, and whose humanity is recognised. The global response remains tepid, fragmented, politicised, and painfully slow.
And so, we are left with a critical question: Is the human rights discourse truly universal, or does its relevance depend on who is suffering — and where?
The human rights discourse, as it currently stands, is not neutral. It is not universal. It is not apolitical. It is shaped by the very systems of power it claims to critique. It amplifies some forms of suffering while muting others.
And yet, despite these failings, the discourse still holds potential — not as a finished project, but as a global moral undertaking that must be reclaimed by the oppressed. By Palestinians. By those of us who refuse silence.
As Muslims, we are commanded to stand against injustice, to speak truth even when it is unpopular, and to uphold the sanctity of life as sacred. As South Africans, we carry the memory of apartheid in our bones, and with it, a responsibility to name it when we see it. To defend Palestinian life is not to be political. It is to be human.
If human rights are to mean anything at all, they must mean this: that no child should be killed while the world debates terminology. That no people should be occupied while global powers negotiate profits. That no voice — especially not a Palestinian voice — should be silenced in the name of diplomacy.
For the human rights discourse to remain relevant, it must be rooted in justice. It must acknowledge that the rights of individuals cannot be conditional, nor selectively applied. Injustice anywhere diminishes the rights of all people, and this is particularly true in Palestine. It is not enough to draft and issue declarations that speak of equality and dignity. These rights must be actively defended and enforced, no matter the geopolitical interests at play.
The recent hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where South Africa brought forward a case on Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, have only deepened the crisis of confidence in international law. While the ICJ holds symbolic power, its inability to enforce rulings against powerful states exposes the selective morality that continues to haunt the human rights project. Justice, it seems, is only actionable when it does not inconvenience empire.
The question of Palestine should not be reduced to a debate about borders or diplomacy. It is — and has always been — a question of moral integrity. Human rights are not abstract ideals. They are the scaffolding of justice. And in the case of Palestine, that scaffolding has collapsed.
The task, then, is not to discard the human rights discourse, but to decolonise it — to reshape it in ways that centre the experiences, voices, and resistance of those historically excluded, reclaiming it as a weapon for the oppressed. A reimagined discourse must confront its own silences and acknowledge that true universality cannot exist without justice. It must stop treating genocide as a grey area or labelling resistance as ‘terrorism’ when it comes from brown bodies defending stolen homes. There are no human rights without Palestine, because Palestine is the litmus test of whether the world means the words it signs into charters and conventions.
And perhaps, most radically, it is time to stop measuring morality solely through Western liberal frameworks. What would it mean to centre Islamic ethics — not as a ‘religious exception’, but as a legitimate moral tradition? One rooted in rahma (mercy), ‘adl (justice), and hurmat al-hayah (the sanctity of life). These are not abstract virtues. They are urgent moral imperatives.
In the face of every child killed in Gaza, every journalist disappeared, every mother mourning her tenth loss — we are reminded that a human rights discourse which cannot account for this grief, cannot carry its weight, is not merely irrelevant. It is complicit.
And yet, like the streets of Palestine, these words do not offer closure. There is no neat conclusion to a decades-long injustice. But there is something sacred in bearing witness — and in refusing to look away. Living in a world defined by these injustices is not merely about theorising justice— it’s about choosing it. It’s about deciding between neutrality and resistance. Between policy and people. Between silence and truth. Writing about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the lens of human rights is not a philosophical exercise — it is a confrontation with the moral crises that define our time. It’s to name not only the injustices of occupation but also the failure of the frameworks and promises that were meant to protect the oppressed.
As a South African, as a Muslim, and as a student of ethics, I do not speak for Palestinians. But I write from a land whose own history of apartheid taught the world that freedom is always the loudest whisper before it becomes a roar. I write from the Quranic command to ‘stand firmly for justice, even if it is against yourselves’ (Qur’an 4:135). And I write knowing that no institution, no government, no discourse — no matter how ‘relevant’ — has the right to decide whose life is mourned and whose death is ignored.
I do not write this with blind loyalty. I write it with deep responsibility. Because ethics, in the end, are not measured by our words. They are measured by who we stand beside and defend when it costs us something.
The human rights project is not dead — but it is in crisis. And from the ashes of Gaza, from the prayers of the oppressed, from the defiant laughter of children still learning under bombardment — it is being rewritten.
In the end, the meaning of human rights is not measured by the number of declarations or institutions, but by their willingness to see the humanity of all — even when it is inconvenient. Especially then.
Because if the world is to move toward true peace, it must first move through truth.
And truth — as uncomfortable as it may be — begins with Palestine, and it begins now.
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About the writer:
Twenty-two-year-old Faadiyah Gaffoor from Cape Town is a second-year BA student at the University of the Western Cape, majoring in Psychology and English, with Ethics as an additional subject. She originally wrote this essay as part of an Ethics assignment but, she adds, ‘it quickly became something more. As a young Muslim woman raised in South Africa, I felt both a personal and political responsibility to reflect on the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation through the lens of human rights and justice.’
Writer’s note on the featured image which she generated via AI:
Every element in the image was chosen with care and deliberate symbolism. The keffiyeh — a powerful emblem of Palestinian resistance — is draped over a notebook, grounding the image in both the act of writing and the spirit of solidarity. The olive branch beside it represents peace, endurance, and rootedness in the Palestinian struggle.
The notebook, specifically, carries intentional weight. As a student, it reflects my engagement with these ideas through learning, reflection, and emotional reckoning. Rather than a typed or stylised page, the handwritten and physical quality of the notebook points to the process behind the essay — something raw, developing, and deeply personal.
The pencil-style illustration of the Palestinian flag sits quietly on the page, carrying the spirit of resistance, identity, and hope.
The image is minimal by design, allowing it to reflect the essay’s contemplative and critical tone without overwhelming it visually or resorting to graphic or overt imagery.
Citation list:
- Amnesty International (2022). Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: A cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity. [online] 1 February. Available at: https://amnesty.org.za/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2025].
- Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) (2023). Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe). 5 April. Available at: https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba [Accessed 28 Apr. 2025].
- Mutua, M. (2008). Human Rights in Africa: The Limited Promise of Liberalism. African Studies Review, 51(1), pp. 17–39. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27667289 [Accessed 28 Apr. 2025].
- United Nations (2023). History of the Declaration. Available at: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/udhr/history-of-the-declaration [Accessed 28 Apr. 2025].
- Quran (n.d.). Surah An-Nisa, verse 135. Available at: https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/135 [Accessed 28 Apr. 2025].
- International Court of Justice (2024). Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel). Order of 26 January 2024. Available at: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192 [Accessed 4 May 2025].
- Human Rights Watch (2024). Gaza: World Court Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide. 26 January. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/26/gaza-world-court-orders-israel-prevent-genocide#:~:text=The%20court%20adopted%20%E2%80%9Cprovisional%20measures,punish%20incitement%20to%20commit%20genocide. [Accessed 4 May 2025].
