By Jan Servaes
The Guardian and Jewish Currents reported on February 3, 2025, that two Human Rights Watch (HRW) staff members had been dismissed, leaving the organisation’s entire Israel and Palestine team. They resigned after HRW leadership blocked a section of a 33-page report that called Israel’s denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees a “crime against humanity.”
The report is titled “‘Our Souls Are in the Homes We Left’: Israel’s Denial of Palestinians’ Right to Return and Crimes Against Humanity.”
The project began in January 2025. It was intended as a follow-up to a November 2024 report focusing on the internal displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. Inspired by the interviews in this report, it was decided to include not only the experiences of Palestinians recently expelled from Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli military forces, but also those of some Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria who were originally expelled by Israeli forces in 1948 and 1967.
The authors concluded that the denial of the right of return to these refugees falls under the crime against humanity known as “other inhuman acts.”
Under the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998, this designation was intended to address serious abuses that are similar in nature to other crimes that intentionally cause “great suffering”—for example, apartheid or extermination—but do not fit neatly into those legal categories.
Resignation
In separate resignation letters, Omar Shakir, a US citizen who led the team for nearly a decade, and Milena Ansari, an assistant researcher, argued that HRW management’s decision to suspend the report “pending further analysis and investigation” demonstrated that the organization prioritized fear of political backlash over its commitment to international law.
“I have lost faith in the integrity of our work and our commitment to principled reporting of the facts and the application of the law,” Shakir wrote in his resignation letter. “Therefore, I am no longer able to represent or work for Human Rights Watch.”
Shakir said his experience demonstrated that while public opinion on Israel has shifted in recent years – with “concepts such as apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing” increasingly voiced in mainstream circles – the right of return remains a sensitive issue. “The only issue,” he argued, “even at Human Rights Watch, for which there remains a reluctance to apply the law and the facts in a principled manner is the fate of the refugees and their right to return to the homes they were forced to flee.” Some Israeli advocates argue that allowing Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homes would mean the end of the Jewish state, as it would no longer have a Jewish majority.
Omar Shakir defended the report to Al Jazeera , saying it “attempted to connect the evacuation of camps in Gaza and the emptying of camps in the West Bank with the Israeli government’s full-scale attack on UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, and emphasized how, in the midst of this Nakba 2.0 unfolding before our eyes, it is crucial that we learn the lessons of Nakba 1.0.”
“The way our new leadership has handled this report has made me question their fidelity to our review process and the integrity of the investigation, at least as it pertains to Israel and Palestine.”
“A good-faith disagreement”
The report’s scheduled publication date, December 4, 2025, coincided with the week in which the new director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Philippe Bolopion, was to begin his term, following repeated leadership changes in recent years.
In an email to staff on January 29, 2026, Bolopion said that HRW had commissioned an independent investigation into “what happened and what lessons we should learn.” Bolopion described the events of the past two months as “a genuine and good-faith disagreement among colleagues on complex legal and advocacy issues” and emphasised: “HRW remains committed to the right of return for all Palestinians, as has been our policy for many years.”
Reputational Damage
Shakir and Ansari completed a draft of their report in August 2025. According to them, the report then went through HRW’s usual editorial process and was ultimately reviewed by eight different departments.
Some colleagues expressed concerns along the way to Shakir. In an October 21 email, advocacy director Bruno Stagno Ugarte anticipated challenges regarding the report’s broad scope. He suggested that a report on the recent forced displacements from Gaza and the West Bank might “resonate more.” He further expressed concern that the findings “would be misinterpreted by many, particularly our opponents, as a call to demographically eradicate the Jewish character of the Israeli state.”
Tom Porteous, then acting program director of HRW, also expressed concern about reputational damage. He wrote to Shakir that the report was well-reasoned, but “the question is how we will use this argument in our advocacy efforts without appearing as if HRW rejects the State of Israel and without undermining our credibility as a neutral, impartial observer of events.”
Nevertheless, the decision to retract the final report came as a surprise to Shakir and other staff members. They said that Bolopion—who has worked for HRW in various roles—had made significant contributions to the organization’s groundbreaking 2021 report, which accused Israel of apartheid.
In response, on December 1, 2025, more than 200 Human Rights Watch staff signed a protest letter calling the organization’s “rigorous vetting process” the “cornerstone of our credibility.” Blocking the report could “create the impression that HRW’s review process is susceptible to undue interference that could overturn decisions made in the process, undermine confidence in its purpose and integrity, set a precedent that work can be shelved without transparency, and raise fears that other work could be suppressed.”
In its response, HRW leadership stated: “Our internal review processes are robust and designed to protect the integrity of our findings. As with any organisation conducting such analyses, differences in professional judgment may arise in the process.”
‘Other inhumane acts’
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called for the right of return in previous publications—a universal human right enshrined in international law as UN Resolution 194. However, those earlier reports focused on other issues and did not argue that Israel’s continued denial of refugees’ right of return constituted a crime against humanity.
The report cites a 2018 preliminary finding by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which determined that obstructing the return of Rohingya to Myanmar after they were displaced to Bangladesh could be prosecuted as a crime against humanity or as one of “other inhumane acts.” Shakir said the report introduced a legal argument to the world of human rights activism, which had previously been confined to academia. It offers a “trump card” that could potentially help a refugee displaced in 1948 bring a current case against Israeli authorities.
“They deserve to know why their stories are not being told.”
Shakir was expelled from Israel in 2019 for his commitment to Palestinian human rights. He emphasized the organization’s responsibility to Palestinian victims of displacement. “Seeing the fear in the Palestinians I interviewed, who are effectively condemned to lifelong refugee status, is among the most difficult things I’ve ever witnessed,” he stated.
“They deserve to know why their stories aren’t being told.” [IDN-InDepthNews]