United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report, was a team established in April 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) during the Gaza War (January 2009) as an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate alleged violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza Strip, in connection with Gaza War. South African jurist Richard Goldstone was appointed to head the mission. Goldstone's work investigating violence led directly to him being nominated to serve as the first chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from August 1994 to September 1996.

The report accused both the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian militants of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It recommended that each side openly investigate its own conduct, and to bring the allegations to the International Criminal Court if they failed to do so. The government of Israel rejected the report as prejudiced and full of errors, and also sharply rejected the charge that it had a policy of deliberately targeting civilians. The militant Islamic group Hamas initially rejected some of the report's findings, but then urged world powers to embrace it.

The controversial report received wide support among countries in the United Nations, while Western countries were split between supporters and opponents of the resolutions endorsing the report. Critics of the report claimed that it contained methodological failings, legal and factual errors, and falsehoods, and devoted insufficient attention to the allegations that Hamas was deliberately operating in heavily populated areas of Gaza.

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