Mass Resignations at Human Rights Watch After Report Condemning Occupation for Crimes Against Humanity Was Withheld

Human Rights Watch is experiencing one of its most difficult internal upheavals, after its entire team dedicated to Palestine and the occupation officially announced their resignation. This protest move by Omar Shakir, the team leader with ten years of experience, and research assistant Milena Ansari, followed the leadership's sudden decision to withhold a comprehensive human rights report that concluded that the occupation's denial of Palestinian refugees' right of return is not merely a violation, but a 'crime against humanity'. The resigning members considered the withdrawal of the report moments before its scheduled publication a blatant departure from professional standards, and evidence of the organization's submission to political fears at the expense of legal facts.

The report, titled 'Our Souls in the Homes We Left Behind', is 33 pages long and is the product of in-depth research that began in early 2025. The report argued that the continued prevention of return since 1948 and 1967 falls under 'other inhumane acts' according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The researchers based this on the precedent of the 2018 International Criminal Court ruling that condemned the prevention of Rohingya refugees' return, with the report attempting to apply this legal logic to the Palestinian situation to criminalize the occupation's policies that seek to maintain 'demographic superiority' through repression and displacement.

While Omar Shakir described the decision to withhold as a 'cowardly' act aimed at avoiding confrontation with supporters of the occupation and the Trump administration, the new executive director, Philip Bolopon, tried to portray the crisis as a 'professional disagreement' over strengthening the research basis. However, behind the scenes, the dispute revealed pressure to narrow the scope of the report to include only those displaced after 2023, which the team strongly rejected, considering that it removes the essence of the Palestinian tragedy represented by decades of forced deprivation, leading more than 200 employees to sign a petition rejecting political interference in human rights research findings.

This incident portends a deep rift in trust between Human Rights Watch and Palestinian civil society organizations, as activists, including Abay Aboudi, warned that the organization's reports would become suspect as long as they are subject to political considerations. Shakir concluded his journey with the organization with a bitter warning, emphasizing that the world needs a human rights voice that does not tremble in the face of violations, and that the new leadership's handling of the occupation file has undermined the integrity of research review, making the ability to defend Palestinian rights in this international forum subject to a new and serious evaluation.

Withdrawing the report moments before its scheduled publication is a blatant departure from professional standards, and evidence of the organization's submission to political fears at the expense of legal facts.