05 June 2025 – The deliberate starvation, displacement and systematic destruction of the people of Gaza and the very conditions necessary for their survival is not war. It is not a war against Hamas. It is an abomination. It is cruelty in its most calculated form—a slow and brutal annihilation not only of a people, but of the possibility of life itself. It challenges all of us to question what it means to be human. It makes us in the most confrontational way aware of what a vicious cycle of trauma can unleash in destroying humans and human dignity. And it calls us to break that cycle, to take responsibility and to take action.
To deprive a population of food, water, shelter and safety is to destroy more than bodies and minds; it is to assault hope, memory and future. Such acts, committed in full view of the world, amount to a crime against humanity—a genocide not only of a people, but of our shared humanity. All of us around the world, and for generations to come are impacted.
The normalisation of the massacre of children—their bodies and minds broken, their humanity denied, their names unspoken, their deaths dismissed as collateral—is among the most terrifying markers of this descent into moral abyss. When the world grows accustomed to the sight of lifeless children pulled from rubble, burned alive, shredded into pieces, it is not only lives that are lost, but the very soul of our shared humanity.
This is not a political crisis. It is a moral catastrophe. A degeneration of human decency. If the international community fails to respond with principled urgency, it sanctions the erasure of the fundamental values and existential principles of life that bind us as human beings. Immorality should never be justified by any political or religious ideology, nor fuelled by the financial greed of those who provide the financial and material means. This is the curse that led to the horrors of the 20th century.
We call on all people of conscience, institutions of law and bodies of governance national and international to name this horror for what it is: a genocide—and to act accordingly, without delay, without excuse, without fear and without equivocation.
We demand urgent action.
We demand full protection for the people of Gaza.
We demand immediate ceasefire and the opening of every available border crossing for humanitarian transports.
We demand freedom of access for all Palestinians to the places where they live.
We also demand the immediate release of all hostages, and we want to reach out to the people in Israel in their need for safety and to them who want to stop this madness and bring it back to a human dialogue on all levels.
We demand accountability for those committing and supporting these crimes, along the principles of the International Court of Justice.
We demand Israel to live up to the UN resolutions.
We call for a lasting peace built on the solution of two states.
For the sake of all children.
For the sake of our shared humanity.
Signatories: Paul Shrivastava, Silvia Zimmermann del Castillo, Carlos Álvarez Pereira, Ugo Bardi, Peter Blom, Julia Kim, Christopher Mbanefo, Yi-Heng Cheng, Hunter Lovins, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Mamphela Ramphele, Anders Wijkman, Jude Currivan, Kate E Pickett, Mariana Bozesan, Tomas Björkman, Supriya Singh, Nebojsa Neskovic, Walter R. Stahel, Karima Kadaoui, Christian Berg, Per Espen Stoknes, Jaume Lanaspa, Ryan Jackson, Penelope Shihab Saidan, Morne Mostert, Friedrich “Fritz” Hinterberger, Mark McGuffie, Joerg Geier, Katherine Trebeck, John Fullerton, Charly Kleissner, Chandran Nair, Helmy Abouleish, Fred Dubee, Peter Hennicke, Jeremy Lent, Kerryn Higgs, F. J. Radermacher, Petra Kuenkel, Sharan Burrow, Gianfranco Bologna, Yoshitsugu Hayashi, Jayati Ghosh, Stefan Brunnhuber, Gaya Herrington, Mathis Wackernagel, Runa Khan, Mojib Latif, Anne Snick, Charalambos Mavreidopoulos, Lesley Green, Herbert Girardet, Arnaud Apoteker, Otto Scharmer, Edward W (Ted) Manning.
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This call is part of the activities that The Club of Rome is developing to promote Planetary Peace, a demanding vision that goes beyond the absence of military violence to address the systemic roots of wars among humans and with nature.
It intends to overcome the frameworks of whatever grounding (ideological, religious, economic, or otherwise) that have been feeding exploitation, extraction and supremacy over others, and hijacking our shared values and moral dignity. This is a call for the emergence of a new realisation of our humanity, at peace with ourselves, others and the Earth.
