Summary
The General Assembly’s resolution ES-10/26, adopted on 11 December 2024, which demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza to be respected by all parties and reiterates the demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, demands compliance on detained persons including release of all arbitrarily detained and all human remains, demands immediate access to basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale under United Nations coordination including to besieged north Gaza while rejecting any effort to starve Palestinians, demands full implementation of Security Council resolution 2735 (2024) including hostage release, prisoner exchange, return of remains and of Palestinian civilians to all areas of Gaza and full withdrawal of Israeli forces, affirms UNRWA as the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza, requests accountability proposals and two Secretary-General reports, and reiterates the two-State solution with Gaza as part of the Palestinian State unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority (Resolution ES-10/26: Demand for ceasefire in Gaza (11 December 2024), PDF p.1-3).
What the file is
United Nations document A/RES/ES-10/26, General Assembly, Distr.: General, 16 December 2024, Tenth emergency special session, Agenda item 5, 3 PDF pages, about 1,295 words in the text copy. Adopted at the 59th plenary meeting on 11 December 2024, the same meeting as ES-10/25, without reference to a Main Committee (A/ES-10/L.33). The text copy is clean and matches the original. Footnotes identify the Genocide Convention and the advisory opinion as A/78/968. No vote count is given in the file.
Section by section
- Preamble (PDF p.1-2). Charter, Palestine resolutions and all relevant Council resolutions; compliance and accountability for all violations; deploring attacks against civilians and civilian objects, violence, hostilities and terrorism, rejection of forced displacement including of children, hostage-taking prohibited; the International Court of Justice provisional measures orders of 26 January, 28 March and 24 May 2024 in South Africa v. Israel and its plausible-rights determination, and the advisory opinion of 19 July 2024, respect for the Court essential; deep alarm at the catastrophic humanitarian situation including inadequate healthcare and extreme food insecurity creating an imminent risk of famine notably in the north; commendation of United Nations, regional and international ceasefire and hostage efforts, obstruction of humanitarian actors as possibly contravening the Charter, and deep alarm at the number of humanitarian workers killed, no number given.
- Operative paragraphs 1-6 (PDF p.2-3). Paragraph 1 demands the immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and reiterates the hostage-release demand; paragraph 2 addresses detained persons, arbitrary detention and human remains; paragraph 3 demands access and assistance at scale under United Nations coordination including to besieged north Gaza, rejecting any effort to starve Palestinians; paragraph 4 calls for compliance notably on women, children, persons hors de combat and civilian objects; paragraph 5 demands implementation of all provisions of resolution 2735 (2024) as listed in the Summary; paragraph 6 affirms UNRWA as the backbone of the response, rejects actions undermining its mandate, welcomes the Colonna implementation commitment and calls for the Agency to be enabled in all areas.
- Operative paragraphs 7-11 (PDF p.3). Paragraph 7 requests accountability proposals through existing and new mechanisms in the paragraph 9 assessment, with the High Commissioner for Human Rights; paragraph 8 reiterates the two-State commitment, Gaza as part of the Palestinian State, rejection of demographic or territorial change in Gaza including reduction of its territory, and unification of Gaza with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority; paragraph 9 requests a written implementation assessment within three weeks; paragraph 10 requests a comprehensive report within 60 days with a needs assessment, consequences overview, United Nations system overview and coordination recommendations; paragraph 11 adjourns the session temporarily.
Key passages
- “Demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire, to be respected by all parties, and further reiterates its demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” (operative paragraph 1, PDF p.2)
- “rejecting any effort to starve Palestinians” (operative paragraph 3, PDF p.2)
Evidence the work relies on
A General Assembly resolution, not an evidentiary work. Its stated bases are the Charter, the recalled resolutions, Security Council resolution 2735 (2024) whose provisions paragraph 5 lists, and the Court’s 2024 provisional measures orders and advisory opinion as summarized in the preamble. It gives no casualty, aid, hostage or detainee figures.
Analysis
The Assembly’s ceasefire language completes the sequence begun in this batch: a truce call in ES-10/21, a humanitarian ceasefire demand in ES-10/22, and here a ceasefire that is immediate, unconditional and permanent, with the hostage demand reiterated in the same paragraph rather than traded against it. Paragraph 5 makes the Assembly the enforcer of a Council text, demanding implementation of resolution 2735 in full and listing its elements, while paragraphs 9-10 set the shortest reporting clocks in the batch, three weeks and 60 days. Its Gaza-specific additions are the starvation rejection, the besieged north Gaza access demand, and the unification of Gaza with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority in paragraph 8.
People, organizations, places and events
UN General Assembly Resolution ES-10/26, UNRWA, Gaza, International Court of Justice, UN Security Council Resolution 2735, Palestinian Authority
Concepts
How it relates to other sources
- Resolution 2735 (2024) on Gaza (10 June 2024) is the Council text paragraph 5 demands be implemented in full; the Council resolution itself welcomed a three-phase proposal, while this Assembly text lists its elements as demands on the parties.
- Resolution ES-10/22: Protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations (12 December 2023) demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire a year earlier; this resolution drops humanitarian as the qualifier and adds unconditional and permanent.
- Resolution ES-10/25: Support for the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (11 December 2024), adopted at the same plenary meeting, carries the full UNRWA defence of which paragraph 6 here is the compressed form.
Open questions
- No vote count is given in the file.
- No figures are given for hostages, detained persons, humanitarian workers killed or aid, so none can be quantified from this file.
- Whether the three-week assessment or the 60-day comprehensive report was delivered is not recorded in this file.
Coverage
PDF p.1-3 of 3, read in full.