In this episode of Expert Witness, Middle East Eye news editor Sondos Asem speaks to Martin Griffiths, the former UN aid chief to discuss the latest in Gaza and Sudan, where two of the worst humanitarian crises in the world have been taking place over the past two years. Griffiths had over fifty years of professional experience as a humanitarian, British diplomat and conflict mediator with the United Nations and other global institutions. He has served as the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, which is the top humanitarian aid position at the United Nations. In this capacity he served for three years between July 2021 and July 2024, under the leadership of Secretary General Antonio Guterres. He presided over the UN’s humanitarian aid efforts in the first nine months of Israel’s devastating onslaught on Gaza, widely considered a genocide.

Has Israel been using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza? In this episode of Expert Witness, leading international law scholar, Professor Tom Dannenbaum, discusses with Middle East Eye news editor Sondos Asem the nuts and bolts of the starvation war crime throughout history and what needs to be done to make the law more effective. He argues that under international law, there’s a very strong case for implicating Israeli leaders for the crime of weaponising starvation, and for failure to prevent genocide.

Filming date: 16 May 2025 London and Massachusetts

What can more than 100 years of the international justice system tell us about its present and future? In this episode of Expert Witness, Professor William Schabas, widely recognised as one of the world’s leading scholars of international criminal law, provides a reflection on his decades of experience as an academic lawyer and genocide expert, and the challenges facing international law after Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023. Schabas is the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the author of more than 20 books on genocide, the International Criminal Court, and international human rights law.

Date of filming: 4 April 2025, London