of glaring violations, let alone committed to investigating them. Both have received financial and military support from China. In Sudan, both the warring parties, the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, have demonstrated little concern for international humanitarian law as they carry out targeted attacks that have killed and injured civilians and launch explosive weapons from densely populated neighbourhoods. Between the eruption of fighting in April 2023 and the end of the year, more than 12,000 people had been killed, over 5.8 million others had been internally displaced and about 1.4 million had fled the country as refugees. The Israeli authorities have made particular efforts to frame the attacks that they have carried out on Gaza as complying with international humanitarian law. In reality, they have made a mockery of some of its core norms. They have disregarded the principles of distinction and proportionality with their acceptance of enormous civilian casualties and massive destruction of civilian objects. By the end of 2023, their relentless bombardment and ground offensive had killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, 21,600 Palestinians, a third of whom were children. Evidence of war crimes mounted as Israeli forces bombed crowded refugee camps and residential buildings, repeatedly wiping out entire families and destroying hospitals, UN-run schools, bakeries and other crucial infrastructure. They framed their evacuation orders of northern Gaza as effective warnings and precautions but, in practice, forcibly displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians (83% of the total population of Gaza of 2.3 million) from their homes and deliberately denied them humanitarian aid as part of the ongoing illegal blockade of Gaza. These and other factors, including the increase in racist and dehumanizing rhetoric against Palestinians by some Israeli government officials, were warning signs of genocide. Meanwhile, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups have justified the attack they undertook on 7 October 2023, prior to Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive, as resistance to Israel’s long-standing military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. However, the deliberate killing of hundreds of civilians in Israel, hostage-taking, and the firing of indiscriminate rockets into Israel, among other crimes, flouted international humanitarian law and amounted to war crimes. Despite the staggering levels of civilian bloodshed, destruction and suffering in Gaza, the USA and many European states publicly backed Israel’s approach. Some states, particularly the USA, continued to arm Israel with weapons used in flagrant violations of human rights. Given their well-founded protestations about war crimes by Russia and Hamas, those states have exhibited gross double standards, undermining respect for international humanitarian law and the protection of civilians. South Africa brought a case against Israel to the International Court of Justice regarding breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention in Gaza. Government forces and armed groups similarly disregarded international humanitarian law in armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen in 2023. Civilians bore the brunt of indiscriminate and other unlawful attacks, some of which constituted war crimes. Gender-based violence has been a key feature of some of these conflicts. In a broader context of sexual violence by the Eritrean Defence Forces, soldiers abducted at least 15 women and held them for nearly three months at a military camp in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, raping them repeatedly. In the DRC, over 38,000 sexual violence cases were reported in NordKivu province alone during the first quarter of 2023. Governments have clamped down at home on voices criticizing military actions and their impact on civilians. Russia raised war-time censorship to new heights in 2023. Human rights defenders, media and political activists working in conflict and post-conflict settings have been attacked. Women human rights defenders have faced particular challenges.1 The State of the World’s Human Rights 15