A UN expert on Thursday condemned Israel’s violence on Palestinian women and girls, calling it a “femi-genocide,” and accusing the Israeli government of deliberate killing with the “intent to destroy” the continuity of the Palestinian people.

Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against Women and Girls, called Israel’s actions “so extreme” that “existing concepts in legal and criminal frameworks” cannot adequately capture their severity.

Alsalem expressed deep concern about the sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinian women by Israeli forces, including rape, which Alsalem alleges creates a “climate of desperation” within the civilian population in Gaza. According to a report from March 2025 of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel has been found to use sexual and gender-based violence as a method of war and as a means of undermining the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

Alsalem’s statement comes weeks after the introduction of her report on sex-based violence against women and girls to the UN Human Rights Council, where she recommended the recognition of biological sex as a determinant of violence. The expert warned that failing to account for gender-based violence in law and policy-making obscures the root cause of such violence and subsequently prevents international mechanisms from holding perpetrators accountable.

Sex-based violence, including rape, remains inadequately prosecuted under international criminal and international humanitarian law. In the 1948 Genocide Convention, for example, genocide includes only acts committed against “national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups,” thereby implicitly demoting gender and sex-based violence to a secondary crime rather than a core tool of genocidal intent.