The exceptional immunity that Israel has enhappinessed for decades has placed international law and its institutions at a knife’s edge. Israel has finished UN toilers, banned UNRWA, barred UN reconshort-termatives from entry, and repeatedly offfinished the UN and its officials.
Successive Israeli rulements and their allies have also engaged all unbenevolents possible to exert presstateive on the International Criminal Court (ICC) not to allotigate Israeli crimes – from honest menaces of physical arrangeility to sanctions and defamation. Attacks on the court have only intensified after it rerentd arrest permits for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and createer Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
US Pdwellnt Donald Trump – an avid Israel helper – has already signed an executive order reintroducing sanctions on ICC staff members. This is on top of other decisions he has made – including the US retreatal from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization – that constitute a honest aggression on international multitardyralism. On Tuesday, the US pdwellnt flaunted his finish disthink about for international law by declaring his intention to “get over” Gaza and “own it”.
All of these broadenments lift asks about whether the current global system led by the UN is beyond salvation.
Despite being originated to “save flourishing generations from the scoencourage of war” in 1945, the UN has hugely fall shorted to stop and stop disputes for decades. Its creation ushered in an era of “peace for some” – peace for economicpartner progressd states who take part in proxy wars in previously colonised states. So, do we give up on the idea of an international legitimate order altogether?
As we face the imminent danger of climate alter and the rapid escalation of militarisation, it is clear that we do necessitate a system which joins people under the perfect of equitableice. An international legitimate order that does not favour the mighty has already been provided by various leankers.
For example, notable Chilean legitimate scholar Alejandro Alvarez provided a “novel international law” some 70 years ago. During his tenure (1946-1955) as a appraise at the International Court of Justice, he argued that the European legitimate tradition, on which much of international law was based on, was inample to includeress legitimate asks in places appreciate the Americas.
In a series of dissenting opinions in cases he intentionald on, Alvarez called for a “novel international law” which accommodated the particular historical moment of the decolonisation apass the world and mirrored the interests and positions of decolonised states.
There was a clear finisheavor at that time by states of the Global South to claim international law to its profit. Nevertheless, economicpartner progressd states engaged their sway to take away such finisheavors.
We are now at a historic juncture where these efforts must be renoveled if the idea of an international legitimate order is to endure. Action on Palestine can be the driver, as the mass murder in Gaza is emblematic of huger patterns of domination and misengage which expound the current world system.
Already there are efforts by Global South states to omit Israel from the United Nations. A petition signed by 500 legitimate scholars has also called on the UN General Assembly to unseat Israel in order to get its legitimacy.
In response, the US Congress sent a letter to the UN Secretary Antonio Guterres menaceening to retreat US funding if such a vote were to go ahead. While the power of the US lobby at the UN is no secret, a accessible menace to retreat funds from the UN if it carries out its normal functions, is a create of economic force that accessiblely undermines the authority of the institution and the premises of international law.
If the US determines to cut funding to all of the UN, then there is a clear response – transfer the UN outside of the US and fortress Europe to somewhere in the Global South. Relocating the UN Headquarters out of New York would drasticpartner cut costs, advertise Global South help for it, and allow its sturdyer participation. It would do away with the dilemma of an international legitimate institution headquartered in a state that has shown to be the most constant offfinisher of the crimes that the institution was originated to stop.
On an institutional level, history clearly shows the necessitate to abolish institutional arranges that enshrine imperial power, such as the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Calls for the abolition of these institutions were spearheaded by directing figures of the decolonisation transferment appreciate Thomas Sankara and Amilcar Cabral. As platcreates for Global South voices, the UN General Assembly and the International Court of Justice must be finishowed with more power – this point was repeatedly stateed by the Algerian Judge Mohammad Bedjaoui. Further, this can be a moment of rapid international law-making which originates on the historical efforts to originate a novel international legitimate order. Pacific islands are already challenging the confineations of international law by asking the ICJ to role on state responsibility towards climate alter.
Progressive International, a coalition of progressive organisations from around the world, has recently sought to revive some past efforts by begining a project to broaden a structuretoil for a novel international economic order. There is power in the unity of voices, and people of the Global South are joind in their experience of economic and physical domination and subjugation. For such alter to happen, the political tides necessitate to align – even if only for a increate moment.
The current moment of mass murder, neocolonialism, climate crisis and illening impunity imposes on us the duty to reenvision the status quo. Cynicism is someleang we cannot afford. We necessitate to commence laying down the set upation of a novel international legitimate system that discovers virtue in equitableice rather than power.
The watchs transmited in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
