The Palestinian foreign minister has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war against around a million people in Gaza and condemned the “international failure” to respect Palestinians’ rights at a UN meeting in Geneva, Reuters reports.

“As we speak, at least 1m Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, half of them children, are starving, not because of a natural disaster or because of lack of generous assistance waiting at the border,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told a UN event to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“No, they are starving because of Israel’s deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war against the people it occupied,” he said.

“Rather than insisting on respecting the Palestinian people’s basic right to eat and drink water, we are living through this dystopian reality that excludes Palestinians from the basic, most basic rights afforded to all human beings,” he said, describing it as an “utter international failure” to protect Palestinians.