The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on July 19 that Israel's occupation and settlement of Palestinian territory breach international law. The decision came after the UN General Assembly requested an advisory opinion from the body on Israel's practices in the occupied territories. The ruling held that Israel's practices violate a number of international agreements including the Hague Convention of 1907, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

A mass grave containing two dozen unidentified bodies was discovered in the coastal city of Sirte, once controlled by ISIS, a Libyan government agency said July 15. The National Authority for Searching & Identifying Missing People, a body of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, said its team is recovering the 24 bodies found under destroyed buildings in the district of al-Kambo. No details were provided on a potential date when the bodies were interred. However, Sirte was a stronghold for ISIS from February 2015 to December 2016, when the militants were driven out by US-backed forces loyal to the Tripoli government. (AP) A mass grave was similarly uncovered in the city in October 2022.

United Nations experts affiliated with the Human Rights Council declared July 9 that famine has now undoubtedly spread throughout the Gaza Strip. The expert determination follows the deaths of three more Palestinian children in May and June. Six-month-old Fayez Ataya, 13-year-old Abdulqader al-Serhi, and nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida were all found by the experts to have died from malnutrition. The experts stressed that inaction by the international community amounts to complicity, adding: "Israel's intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza."

Russian missile attacks on Ukraine killed dozens of people, injured hundreds, and damaged the country's largest children’s hospital, UN and Ukrainian officials announced July 8. Numerous commercial and residential buildings were struck in the wave of strikes on cities including Dnipro, Kramatorsk, Pokrovsk, Kryviy Rih and Kyiv, leading to the death of at least 36 and injuries to no less than 140 people. Kyiv's Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital was damaged with at least 16 injured, including children and medical staff, and two adults dead.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Jue 26 convicted al-Qaeda-linked militant leader al-Hassan ag-Abdoul Aziz ag-Mohamed ag-Mahmoud of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in terrorizing the civilian population of the Malian city of Timbuktu. The charges against al-Hassan stem from his time as de facto leader of the Islamic Police, an unofficial enforcement body established by armed Islamist groups when they controlled the city between 2012 and 2013. The group patrolled the city day and night, imposing harsh new rules that severely restricted daily life. The force imposed extreme punishments, including flogging and amputation, for such perceived violations of Islamic law as extramarital relations, alcohol consumption, and smoking. The Court found that al-Hassan played a "key role" in the Islamic Police throughout the period of control of Timbuktu by Ansar Dine and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). 

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on June 18 said that Russian authorities have violated human rights obligations by suppressing the Ukrainian language and injecting propaganda into educational curricula in occupied Ukrainian territories. Changes to the school curriculum include an array of disinformation aimed at justifying Russia's invasion and portraying Ukraine as a "neo-Nazi state." According to HRW, Russian authorities have also introduced military training in school, mirroring the resurgence of youth-military training in Russia, and have required secondary schools to send lists of all students aged 18 and up for conscription into the Russian military. International law prohibits the forced enlistment of an occupied population into the occupier's military.

There is "credible" evidence that Ethiopian forces committed genocide during the two-year war in northern Tigray region, a new report has concluded. Ethiopia's National Defense Force and its allies—the paramilitary Amhara Special Forces and the Eritrean Defense Forces—are accused of committing "at least four acts" constituting genocide against Tigrayans, including: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent childbirth. The report by the New Lines Institute, a US-based foreign policy think-tank, called for Ethiopia to be referred to the UN's top court, the International Court of Justice.

Israeli forces have committed war crimes and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and there are "reasonable grounds" to conclude Hamas and loyalists have done the same, a UN inquiry concluded in a report released June 12. The report, which covers Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli civilians and the initial phase of Israel's retaliatory invasion and bombardment of Gaza, was produced by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, & Israel (Commission). The UN Human Rights Council established the Commission in 2021 to monitor human rights and humanitarian concerns in the region.