GENEVA - The President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Jürg Lauber (Switzerland), has appointed Srinivasan Muralidhar (India), Florence Mumba (Zambia) and Chris Sidoti (Australia), to serve as members of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. Mr. Muralidhar will serve as Chair of the three-person body, while Mr. Sidoti previously served as a member of the Commission and has been reappointed.
With resolution S-30/1 in 2021, the Human Rights Council decided to "urgently establish an ongoing, independent, international commission of inquiry to investigate, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and abuses of international human rights law leading up and since 13 April 2021".
The resolution further requested the commission of inquiry to "investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity." The Commission is mandated to report annually to the UN Human Rights Council and to the UN General Assembly.
In 2024, the Human Rights Council passed further resolutions requesting the Commission to present reports to it on settlers; and on sales of arms including those used during the Israeli military operation in Gaza since 7 October 2023. In September 2025, the Commission concluded in its report that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Biographies of the members of the Commission of Inquiry
Srinivasan Muralidhar (India) - Chair
Justice S. Muralidhar is an Indian jurist who practised before the Supreme Court of India for nearly two decades during which he served as counsel for the National Human Rights Commission of India and appeared as amicus curiae in several public interest cases. In 2002 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Delhi. Mr. Muralidhar was a part-time member of the Law Commission of India from 2002 to 2006. In May 2006, he was appointed as a Judge of the Delhi High Court. In January 2021, Mr. Muralidhar became the Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court, retiring in August 2023. His tenure in Orissa was marked by administrative reforms, including digitization of court records and the establishment of Judicial Archives and Museum of Justice in Cuttack. In October 2023, he was designated as a Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court of India and returned to legal practice. Mr. Muralidhar is the author of Law, Poverty and Legal Aid: Access to Criminal Justice (2004) and is the editor of a volume of essays on the Supreme Court of India titled [In]Complete Justice: 75 Years of the Supreme Court.
Florence Mumba (Zambia)
Ms. Mumba is a Zambian judge, and human rights advocate whose career spans national and international judicial service. She was the first woman to hold the office of Investigator General. She was also appointed as Ombudsman, and later as a Supreme Court Judge in 1997. Internationally, Ms. Mumba served as a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, where she contributed to the drafting of a resolution to include rape as a war crime under international law. She also served on the International Commission of Jurists from 1994 to 2003 and was elected as a Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1997, where she later became Vice President (1999-2001). She also served on the Appeals Chamber of both the ICTY and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (from 2003 to 2005). In 2012, she was appointed to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, where she served as a Supreme Court Chamber Judge.
Chris Sidoti (Australia)
Chris Sidoti is an international human rights lawyer and an expert in national human rights institutions and in international human rights law and mechanisms. Since February 2021, he has been a founder and an International Expert of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar. Between 2000 and 2021, he has provided consultancy services on human rights law and practices to the OHCHR, UNDP, UNICEF, the Asia-Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, and many national human rights institutions. Mr. Sidoti was Executive Director of the International Service for Human Rights (2003-2007), served as Australian Human Rights Commissioner (1995-2000), Australian Law Reform Commissioner (1992-1995), and was the Founding Executive Director of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1987-1992).
