Forecasting war and genocide

At the crossroads of human rights and development, as with the passage of time, we often meet and reacquaint ourselves with warning signs that have gone before. It is cumulative memory—whether of lived experience or historical events—that should help us appreciate the lessons to be learnt.

On the occasion of this year’s World Habitat Day (6 October) and “urban October,” stakeholders address the UN Habitat’s chosen theme “response to urban crises” as Israel’s military obliterates Gaza City in a ghastly example of human-made urban crisis. With the imperial forces of the United States, Germany, Britain and other complicit governments still supporting it, the colony of Israel, as a society, continues to perpetrate genocide against the Palestinian people in full view. While we document and inform, and millions take to the streets in protest across the world’s urban spaces, whatever we do is not sufficient to stop this ultimate urban crisis and Zionism’s crime of crimes.

Both HIC’s lived experience and much history have led us to recollect and share deep understanding of Palestine through HIC’s recent teach-in series, which Land Times/أحوال الأرض reports here as a reference for a wider audience. That understanding in reflected also in the global message on this annual occasion in “HIC Solidarity with Palestine: Third October of Genocide.”

While Land Times/أحوال الأرض contributors remind readers of the human right to remedy in this case, the article “Documenting a Path to Nakba Reparations” on the recently launched Bseiso Family Archive exemplifies the importance of documentation in the pursuit of remedy and reparations. “Remedying Displacement across Arab Lands” makes visible that the case of reparations due to some 50 million persons within the Arab countries dispossessed and displaced for much of the past century.

An article from Syria recounts the aspirations—and frustrations—of refugee and displaced persons returning to the country’s embattled and neglected north. For diverse residents of that territory, the foreign occupation and war have not ended.

Fifty years ago, the General Assembly addressed the driver of serial wars in the region, recognizing Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. That followed a similar resolution by the first World Conference on Women, also in 1975, proclaiming Zionism as a form of racism comparable to the apartheid regime then in South Africa. That recognition still resounds half a century later in the recent “The First Jewish Anti-Zionism Congress,” reported here.

It was 50 years ago also when the Kingdom of Morocco failed to vindicate its claims of sovereignty over the Sahrawi People’s self-determination unit, today’s Western Sahara. That is when the UN Security Council deplored irredentist Morocco’s joint military and civilian “Green March” invasion of the territory in 1975, before it became a plundering occupation. Against a backdrop of the UN General Assembly consistently recognizing Western Sahara as colonized over these 50 years, a HIC Member commemorates this anniversary with a perspective from exile. Like its Zionist predecessor, Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara erodes the very foundations of international law and the Charter of the UN, which turns 80 this year under a deluge of unilateralism.

Attention returns also to the multiple occupations of Cyprus not only for hosting the British-“owned” Akrotiri base used to spy for and arm Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Israeli acquisition and colonization of Cyprus lands on both “independent” and Turkish-occupied sides of the UN-controlled Green Line have reignited local debate about the waning self-determination of the Island, as covered in “Cyprus: Israel’s Emerging Backyard.”

Also under-reported elsewhere, the ravages of war in Sudan continue, with an update “Sudan: Silent Displacement, Silent Starvation.” It characterizes the complex catastrophe that has been developing for many years as a result of the legacy of previous wars, long-term mass displacement, intermittent drought due to climate change, and three years of ongoing war crimes. Unavoidable is the link between displacement and famine.

Positive developments are the intended focus of this year’s High-level Political Forum (HLPF) on Agenda 2030 progress. At the two-thirds mark of global efforts toward cooperative sustainable development, four countries in the MENA region came under review. The civil society perspectives at the Forum are the subject of two critical articles: “Arab Region States at the High-level Political Forum 2025” and “HIC Addresses HLPF Review of Israel.”

As a complement to one of the region’s countries reviewed at HLPF, “Green Finance in Iraq” presents a snapshot of international cooperation in the mitigation of, and adaptation to climate change in that country. This forms the latest in a Land Times/أحوال الأرضseries of green-finance profiles of Arab states, following those of Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Tunisia and Morocco.

Further afield, “Congo, Rwanda: IDPs under Trump-backed October Security Measures” updates readers on the tragic consequences of the global scramble for Africa’s resources. It concludes with a call by refugee rights defenders, advocating urgent actions by the DRC and Rwandan governments to implement the current August Agreement calling for “a safe, voluntary and dignified return of refugees.”

Global developments in Indian-occupied Kashmir provoke analogies with Israel’s occupation of Palestine, as noted in “Occupier’s Law, Kashmiris’ Land.” Not only do the two colonization processes share a common chronology along with common contradictions and responsibilities on the part of the UN, the article updates readers on the occupiers’ common tactics of land grabbing and denial of human rights that provoke local resistance and interstate military confrontation.

While these current events point to the failure of democratic and responsible statecraft, the world’s highest courts have ruled on the obligations of states to combat and remedy the impacts of their malfeasance. On the global issue of climate change, Hala Murad explains how the subject has evolved “From Political Negotiation to Litigious Precision: The Duties of States Made Clear.”

At the same time, measures to operationalize the remedial Fund for responding to Loss and Damage have entered its start-up phase, enabling climate change-impacted communities to apply for remedy. That global development has come just in time for the women of Kosovo Informal Settlement in Kampala to make their case to repair the impacts of 2025 flooding. The Habitat Defenders Africa initiative to enumerate the costs, losses and damage for remedy is shared in “From Pain to Power: Women and Their Data Speak for Themselves.” Such are the curative civil society activities that generate solutions where states and other forces have violated habitat-related human rights by commission or omission.

Reflecting on the dire warnings of decades past, this issue of Land Times/أحوال الأرضconcludes with the civil society call for “Systemic Transformation Is Now or Never!” reflecting the theme of the recent Global Forum on Food Sovereignty. 

UN Habitat’s “urban crises” theme this World Habitat Day acknowledges multiple challenges—although confined to a self-fulfilling urban scope—the gravest of these crises are human made, despite the numerous warnings yet unheeded, forecasting war and genocide.