One country, South Africa, has formally accused Israel of genocide before a court: its application under the 1948 Genocide Convention was filed on 29 December 2023 (Republic of South Africa, 2023). Officeholders and parliaments elsewhere have applied the word to Gaza in dated speeches and motions, among them Brazil’s president in June 2025 and Ireland’s lower house in November 2024. Those are political statements, not legal findings. No treaty depositary, court or United Nations register keeps a list of such recognitions, and the International Court of Justice has issued no judgment on whether genocide occurred.
Key Findings
- 1 state application accuses Israel of genocide: South Africa’s, filed 29 December 2023 and pleading jurisdiction under Article IX of the Genocide Convention alone (Republic of South Africa, 2023).
- Israel deposited its ratification of the Genocide Convention on 9 March 1950, and neither Israel nor South Africa entered any reservation to Article IX, the clause that gives the Court jurisdiction (Republic of South Africa, 2023).
- Security Council Resolution 2803, endorsing the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict on 17 November 2025, passed by a recorded vote of 13 to none, with 2 abstentions, and its text does not use the word genocide (United Nations Security Council, 2025).
- The Trump Declaration of 13 October 2025 carries 4 signatures, those of the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye; neither Israel nor any Palestinian body signed it (United States, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, 2025).
- Six Western states argued in a 2023 intervention in a different genocide case that the Court should assess intent “in a more holistic way” than the “only reasonable inference” test, a reading one scholar applies to Gaza (Sultany, 2024).
Which countries have formally accused Israel of genocide?
One state has. South Africa filed its application instituting proceedings in South Africa v. Israel on 29 December 2023, General List No. 192, and it is the only state application naming Israel as respondent under the Genocide Convention (Republic of South Africa, 2023). Its jurisdictional basis is a single treaty clause, Article IX.
The Application states its basis at paragraph 17: “pursuant to Article 36 (1) of the Court’s Statute and Article IX of the Genocide Convention, the Court has jurisdiction to hear the claims submitted in the present Application by South Africa against Israel.” Paragraph 9 dates each party’s entry into the treaty: Israel’s ratification was deposited on 9 March 1950 and South Africa’s accession on 10 December 1998. Paragraph 11 records that “Neither South Africa nor Israel has entered any reservation to Article IX.”
Article IX of the Convention, adopted by General Assembly resolution 260 A (III), provides that disputes between the parties “relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide,” shall be submitted to the Court “at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.” That clause is what turns a government’s use of the word into a justiciable claim. A speech has no equivalent route.
The Application requested nine provisional measures at paragraph 144, and at paragraph 148 it “reserves the right to revise, supplement or amend the terms of this Application, as well as the grounds invoked.” It is a pleading. It records what one state alleged and on which treaty, and its characterisations of events are South Africa’s own.
Other states have since filed declarations of intervention under Article 63 of the Court’s Statute. Those declarations sit on the International Court of Justice’s own docket, and as the third section below sets out, a filing under Article 63 asks the Court to construe the Convention rather than accusing the respondent in its own name. The count of declarants is held on that docket and is not reproduced here as an established total.
Is it often said that dozens of governments call it genocide?
It is often said that dozens of governments call Israel’s conduct in Gaza a genocide. The dated record shows the word used in more than one register, but one state, South Africa, carried it into a court filing (Republic of South Africa, 2023). No official body publishes a count of the rest, so any number attached to “dozens” is a compiler’s tally, not a register’s.
Two dated instances show the range of acts involved. On 7 November 2024, Ireland’s lower house, Dáil Éireann, passed a non-binding motion agreeing that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza,” as the Press Association reported that day (BreakingNews.ie, 2024). On 5 June 2025, beside France’s president in Paris, Brazil’s president called the war in Gaza “um genocídio premeditado,” a premeditated genocide, as the Brazilian news site Poder360 reported (Poder360, 2025).
These are three different kinds of act. An executive remark is a statement by an officeholder; it creates no legal obligation and can be withdrawn by the next speech. A parliamentary motion records the view of a chamber on a date; the Dáil’s was expressly non-binding, and the same report records the Irish government’s statement that it does not impose unilateral sanctions. A court filing under Article IX is a claim the respondent must answer and the Court must decide.
The base rate that gives such statements their scale is the Convention itself. It is a treaty of general participation, and every one of its states parties holds the same right South Africa used: to take a dispute over the Convention to the Court. As of the record assembled here, one state party has exercised it against Israel.
Circulating lists of “recognizing” countries are compilations, most prominently on open-web encyclopedias, that place executive remarks, parliamentary motions and support for South Africa’s case in one column. Support for a case, a declaration of intervention and an executive statement are separate acts, and a list that places them together counts different things as one.
Is joining the ICJ case the same as recognizing genocide?
No, on the text of the instrument. Article 63 of the Court’s Statute, a 1945 treaty text, gives a state the right to intervene “whenever the construction of a convention to which states other than those concerned in the case are parties is in question,” and the intervener is then bound by “the construction given by the judgment.” The subject of an Article 63 intervention is the meaning of the treaty, not the facts of the case.
Article 63 has two paragraphs. The first obliges the Registrar to notify every state party to the convention in question. The second gives each notified state “the right to intervene in the proceedings; but if it uses this right, the construction given by the judgment will be equally binding upon it.” An intervener does not become a party, does not plead the respondent’s responsibility, and accepts in advance whatever reading of the Convention the Court adopts.
What interveners argue about is illustrated by a genocide case that predates Gaza. In The Gambia v. Myanmar, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom filed a Joint Declaration of Intervention on 15 November 2023. Nimer Sultany of SOAS University of London, in a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Genocide Research published online on 9 May 2024, describes their position as “the arguments by six western states that the Court should lower this high legal requirement of ‘only reasonable inference’ from the materials and instead assess genocidal acts and intentions in a more holistic way” (Sultany, 2024). Those six states were arguing about the standard of proof, a question of construction, not accusing Myanmar in their own name.
Sultany then applies that reading to Gaza: “If this interpretation is applied consistently, without double standards, the conclusion should be that the threshold of intent is met, and Israel violated the Genocide Convention.” That is his own conclusion, and he reaches it by adopting a standard the six states argued for in another case, not by reporting a position those states took on Gaza.
Marko Milanovic, writing on EJIL:Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law, on 18 September 2025, in a post that is editorially curated and not peer-reviewed, locates the origin of the test: “The notion of an ‘only reasonable inference’ comes to international law from the jurisprudence of the first modern ad hoc criminal tribunals” (Milanovic, 2025). An intervening state’s arguments about that test are arguments about how the Court should reason, which the Court may accept or reject in its judgment.
Has the World Court itself recognized a genocide in Gaza?
No judgment on the merits exists. In its order of 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice indicated provisional measures by majorities of 15 votes to 2 and 16 to 1, and stated at paragraph 30 that it “is not required to ascertain whether any violations of Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention have occurred. Such a finding could be made by the Court only at the stage of the examination of the merits.”
The Court issued three orders in 2024, on 26 January, 28 March and 24 May, each by a differently sized bench of 17, 16 and 15 judges. In January it indicated six measures, every one addressed to the State of Israel. The measure to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II” of the Convention carried 15 to 2; the measures on incitement and on humanitarian assistance carried 16 to 1, with Israel’s own judge ad hoc voting in favour of both.
What the Court found plausible, at paragraph 54, was a set of rights: “the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts,” and “the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance.” That is a finding about the rights at stake in the case, reached at an interim stage, not a finding that genocide was occurring.
On 28 March 2024 the Court indicated, unanimously, a measure requiring Israel to ensure “the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.” On 24 May 2024, by 13 votes to 2, it required Israel to “Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The scope of that relative clause is disputed.
The Court explained in its March order, at paragraph 44, that it could indicate measures only to the parties before it, “but not by third States or other entities,” which is why no measure is addressed to any Palestinian party. In all three orders it called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the hostages “held since then by Hamas and other armed groups.”
These orders are the Court’s position on provisional relief, recorded by vote. They are the nearest thing to a judicial act on the question, and they state in terms that the question itself remains for the merits.
What does Israel’s government state in answer to these recognitions?
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a legal paper updated to 2 November 2023, states that “compliance is conduct-oriented, not result-oriented,” and that the Israel Defense Forces target only “members of organized armed groups or civilians directly participating in the hostilities.” That is the party’s own published legal position, attributed as such (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 2023).
The paper, “Hamas-Israel Conflict 2023: Key Legal Aspects,” rests Israel’s answer on the conduct of hostilities rather than on the word itself. It states that “Estimating expected civilian harm can be very challenging, especially when operating in a complex and dense urban environment where civilian presence is dynamic and often hard to ascertain,” and that “If the attack results in more collateral damage than expected, this does not necessarily indicate a violation.” It adds that “the IDF does not assume that there are no civilians in areas or sites where advance warnings had been given.”
The Ministry’s question-and-answer document, updated to 8 December 2023, sets out the proportionality test it applies: one “to be applied to each and every attack independently,” adding that “one attack causing 500 casualties should logically, and legally, be seen differently than 500 attacks against military objectives resulting overall in the same number of casualties” (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, December 2023). The same document reports, as Israel’s own cumulative count to that date, “over 15 million text messages” and “over 4.5 million leaflets” among its warning measures.
The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, an Israeli research institute, published an essay contesting the genocide charge by comparing death counts and population shares against other wars and historical genocides (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, 2025). It puts a ceiling of “at most 41,000” on civilians in Gaza who died of war-related causes through October 2025, derived by subtracting estimated natural deaths and Israel’s own count of Hamas fighters killed from the Gaza Ministry of Health total. The essay states that neither input “has been independently confirmed,” so the 41,000 is the institute’s arithmetic on two parties’ figures, and a ceiling rather than a count.
One formal fact sits beneath both positions. Israel has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 1950 and entered no reservation to Article IX, so it is answering South Africa’s claim in the forum the treaty names (Republic of South Africa, 2023). For a fuller reading of how the treaty text meets the Gaza record, see the Institute’s report on the Genocide Convention and the situation in Gaza.
Does the Security Council’s endorsed Gaza plan use the word genocide?
No. Resolution 2803, adopted on 17 November 2025 by 13 votes to none with 2 abstentions, endorses a Comprehensive Plan whose twenty points speak of the war ending, military operations “suspended” and battle lines “frozen”; its operative paragraphs set up a transitional Board of Peace and a stabilization force (United Nations Security Council, 2025). Neither text characterises the war’s conduct in legal terms.
Operative paragraph 1 “Endorses the Comprehensive Plan, acknowledges the parties have accepted it, and calls on all parties to implement it in its entirety, including maintenance of the ceasefire.” The annexed plan’s cessation clause, point 3, reads: “If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end.” The recorded vote at the 10046th meeting lists Algeria, Denmark, France, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia, the United Kingdom and the United States in favour, and China and the Russian Federation abstaining.
The preamble of the same resolution welcomes “the historic Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity of 13 October 2025.” That declaration was signed by the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, and its nearest operative clause commits the signatories “to the resolution of future disputes through diplomatic engagement and negotiation rather than through force or protracted conflict” (United States, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, 2025). Neither Israel nor any Palestinian body signed it.
A vote on one text records assent to that text on that day. It says nothing about a state’s other statements, which is why the Council’s record and a list of speeches cannot be read against each other. The two records answer different questions: one what fifteen members agreed to on a date, the other what individual officeholders have said.
Does the duty to prevent genocide require states to take positions?
Sultany (2024) argues it can, at a threshold he names: “States are under a positive obligation to prevent when there is a ‘serious danger’ of genocide, whereas complicity consists in assisting the perpetrator with the knowledge that the perpetrator is engaged in genocide.” On that reading, a third state’s obligations begin at serious danger, well before any court determination (Sultany, 2024).
Sultany’s article draws the duty to prevent from the Convention’s Article I and from the Court’s own case law, and he argues that the threshold for Gaza has been crossed. The duty he describes is a duty to act, by prevention and by not assisting. It is not a duty to adopt a particular word. A state could, on his account, meet or breach its obligation without ever saying “genocide,” and a state that says the word has not thereby discharged anything.
Milanovic (2025) addresses the standard of proof that separates a state’s view from a court’s. His argument is that the “only reasonable inference” test follows from the criminal standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, and that it binds only bodies applying that standard: “Other fact-finders are not bound to apply a high standard of proof or ORI, for genocide or other international crimes alike. This includes formal fact-finding bodies, like a UN CoI, but also governments, NGOs, academics, or ordinary people.” He adds that one “can, for example, rationally choose to believe that Israel is committing genocide or crimes against humanity in Gaza without requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt and without applying ORI.” That is his position on a contested question, stated in a blog post that was not peer-reviewed.
The Jerusalem Center (2025) contests the underlying charge on the numbers, as the fifth section sets out, and Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (November 2023) rests its answer on a conduct-based reading of the law of armed conflict. The dispute among these named sources is therefore not only over what happened in Gaza. It is over what a government is doing when it uses the word: meeting a treaty duty, stating a political view held to a lower standard of proof, or neither.
Does any official register record which states recognize genocide?
No. No treaty depositary, court or United Nations body keeps a register of states that “recognize” a genocide in Gaza. The one primary list of states that have taken a formal legal step is the Court’s General List entry for case No. 192: one applicant, South Africa, plus the states that filed declarations under Article 63 (Republic of South Africa, 2023).
The records that do exist each count something narrower. The depositary of the Genocide Convention registers which states are parties and what reservations they entered; it records nothing about their views of any conflict. The Court’s docket records who filed what, and on which article. The Security Council and General Assembly records hold votes on texts, which, as Resolution 2803 shows, can pass with the support of states whose officials use the word elsewhere.
Lists of recognizing countries that circulate combine three kinds of act into one column: executive remarks, parliamentary motions and support for South Africa’s case. Each entry is checkable only against its own source, a transcript, a chamber record or a court filing, and the three do not carry the same weight. The observation that there is no single official list is accurate, and it is the finding of this section: the only list a reader can check against a primary register is the court docket, and it contains one accusing state.
Methodology and limitations
This report draws on five source types. Primary and official records: South Africa’s Application of 29 December 2023, the Genocide Convention and the Statute of the International Court of Justice as treaty texts, Security Council Resolution 2803 with its recorded vote, and the Trump Declaration as published in the United States Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, whose Office of the Federal Register notes that “An original was not available for verification.” Party records: two Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs papers of November and December 2023, attributed throughout as Israel’s own position. Scholarship: Sultany (2024), peer-reviewed, and Milanovic (2025), an academic blog post that was not peer-reviewed. An Israeli research institute: the Jerusalem Center (2025), whose figures are its own arithmetic on parties’ inputs. Press: two dated news reports, used only to date and quote the two statements in the second section.
The three Court orders of 2024 are reported by date, operative wording and recorded vote only. The two statements in the second section are carried from dated press reports, the Press Association for the Dáil motion and Poder360 for the Brazilian president’s remark, and are illustrations, not a count; the chamber record and the presidential transcript were not read. The count of states parties to the Convention and the list of Article 63 declarants are held on the depositary’s and the Court’s registers and are not reproduced here as totals.
The central limitation is definitional. “Recognition” has no legal meaning in this context, so any count of recognizing states depends on which acts are counted. The Court’s merits judgment, when it comes, will be the first determination by the forum the Convention names.
Conclusion
So which countries recognize Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide? On the record that can be checked, one state has put the accusation into a court filing, South Africa in December 2023, and officeholders and at least one national parliament elsewhere have used the word in speeches and a motion. No register records more than that, because no register records recognitions at all.
The portrait across the record is consistent. The formal accusation rests on a single treaty clause. The Court has voted on interim measures by majorities from 13 to 16 and has said in terms that it has not yet asked whether genocide occurred. Israel answers with a conduct-based reading of the law of armed conflict. And the one text the Security Council adopted on the war endorses its end without naming its conduct.
The word is doing different work in each of these places: a claim to be proven in one, a political judgment held to a lower standard in another, absent from the text that states voted for in a third. When a single word carries a court’s standard and a speech’s register at once, which of its meanings travels, and who decides what a reader takes it to have established?
Frequently Asked Questions
What acts does the Genocide Convention define as genocide?
Article II of the 1948 Convention lists five acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” including killing members of the group and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. The intent element is what separates genocide from other international crimes, and it is the element the “only reasonable inference” debate concerns.
When did Israel become bound by the Genocide Convention?
Israel deposited its instrument of ratification on 9 March 1950, as South Africa’s Application records at paragraph 9 (Republic of South Africa, 2023). South Africa acceded on 10 December 1998.
Did Israel or South Africa limit the Court’s jurisdiction over this case?
No. Paragraph 11 of the Application records that neither state entered a reservation to Article IX, the clause giving the Court jurisdiction over disputes about the Convention (Republic of South Africa, 2023). Some other states have entered such reservations, which is why the point is recorded.
Is the Trump Declaration of 13 October 2025 a ceasefire agreement?
No. It is a joint statement signed by four third states, the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, and it contains no ceasefire term, monitoring mechanism or definition of a violation (United States, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, 2025). Neither Israel nor any Palestinian body is a signatory.
How long does Resolution 2803 authorize the Board of Peace?
Operative paragraph 8 authorizes the Board of Peace and the international presences it creates “until Dec. 31, 2027, subject to further action by the Council” (United Nations Security Council, 2025). The resolution requests a written progress report from the Board every six months.
Where does the “only reasonable inference” test come from?
Milanovic (2025) traces it to “the jurisprudence of the first modern ad hoc criminal tribunals,” and argues that it follows from the criminal standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt. On his account it binds bodies applying that standard, not governments forming a view.
Sources
- BreakingNews.ie (Press Association), 2024. Dáil passes motion that Israel is ‘perpetrating genocide in Gaza’, 7 November 2024. https://www.breakingnews.ie/israel-hamas/irish-parliament-passes-motion-that-israel-is-perpetrating-genocide-in-gaza-1692532.html. Press.
- Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948. Adopted by General Assembly resolution 260 A (III), 9 December 1948. Articles I, II and IX. Treaty text.
- Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 2023. Hamas-Israel Conflict 2023: Key Legal Aspects. Updated to 2 November 2023. https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/swords-of-iron-faq-6-dec-2023/en/English_Documents_Hamas-Israel%20Conflict%202023%20-%20Some%20Factual%20and%20Legal%20Aspects%20-%20Israel%20Ministry%20of%20Foreign%20Affairs%20(2%20NOV%202023).pdf. Official record (Israeli government body, a party’s own legal position).
- Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, December 2023. Hamas-Israel Conflict 2023: Frequently Asked Questions. Updated to 8 December 2023. https://www.gov.il/en/pages/swords-of-iron-faq-6-dec-2023. Official record (Israeli government body, a party’s own position and counts).
- Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, 2025. The Death of Genocide. https://jcfa.org/the-death-of-genocide/. Research institute.
- Milanovic, M., 2025. Proving Genocide. EJIL:Talk!, blog of the European Journal of International Law, 18 September 2025. https://www.ejiltalk.org/proving-genocide/. Academic law blog commentary, not peer-reviewed.
- Poder360, 2025. Lula classifica guerra em Gaza como “genocídio premeditado”, 5 June 2025. https://www.poder360.com.br/poder-governo/lula-classifica-guerra-em-gaza-como-genocidio-premeditado/. Press.
- Republic of South Africa, 2023. Application instituting proceedings and Request for the indication of provisional measures, South Africa v. Israel, filed 29 December 2023, General List No. 192. Official record (a state party’s own pleading).
- Statute of the International Court of Justice, 1945. Article 63. Treaty text.
- Sultany, N., 2024. A Threshold Crossed: On Genocidal Intent and the Duty to Prevent Genocide in Palestine. Journal of Genocide Research, published online 9 May 2024. DOI 10.1080/14623528.2024.2351261. Peer-reviewed.
- United Nations Security Council, 2025. Resolution 2803 (2025), S/RES/2803(2025), 17 November 2025, with recorded vote in S/PV.10046. https://documents.un.org/api/symbol/access?s=S/RES/2803(2025)&l=E&t=pdf. Official record (resolution and recorded vote).
- United States, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, 2025. The Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity, 13 October 2025. Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents DCPD-202501008. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-202501008/html/DCPD-202501008.htm. Primary record (signed joint statement).