Genocide is a crime against humanity which ignores the human dignity and is one of the gravest human rights violations. Genocide is attempting to systematically eliminate a group willingly and knowingly because of their ethnic origin, race, religious or political views. The acts of a community being separated from their territory and cultural ties, the destruction or seizure of their living spaces are also considered within the scope of the definition of genocide. 

United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide with the resolution dated 9 December 1948. The Convention has the quality of being the first human rights document the General Assembly ever adopted. The main goal of the Convention was defined as establishing international cooperation for protecting humanity against the crime of genocide which caused great losses for humanity. United Nations General Assembly designated December 9, the anniversary of the adoption of the Convention, as "the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime",  with its decision dated 29 September 2015.

In the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide was defined as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. In this context, the states parties have been obliged to prevent the crime of genocide and to punish those who commit, participate in the crime, attempt to commit this crime and those who cooperate for the commitment of the crime.

In the attacks Israel has been carrying out against Gaza since 7 October, tens of thousands of people, including children and women, were killed and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. As a result of bombings which has been ongoing for more than 2 months, targeting civilian spaces, worship places, refugee camps and hospitals, people have been deprived of their basic human rights, especially the right to life, in a narrow space under open prison conditions. What is happening in Gaza has turned into the crime of genocide in accordance with the regulations of international documents including humanitarian law, especially the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The killing of the Palestinians who are the targets of the attacks because they belong to the same nation, ethnicity and religion, trying to remove them from the region; the acts of making living conditions intentionally harsher by depriving them of water, food, fuel and all other human needs constitutes the crime of genocide defined within the scope of the Convention. The silence of the world to this tragedy of humanity and some states even supporting the attack violate the obligation of preventing the crime of genocide regulated within the scope of the Convention.

Our Institution, main mission of which is to protect the right to equal treatment of persons on the basis of human dignity and prevention of discrimination in exercising the legally acknowledged rights and freedoms, commemorates the victims of genocide with respect and invites the international community to increase their common efforts to end the tragedy of humanity in Gaza on the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.