Category Archives: United Nations

Government, Israel, Legal, Myanmar, Politics, Society, United Nations

Genocide once had meaning. It has become a political tool

GENOCIDE

Of the many examples of moral collapse in society today, the debasement of genocide has been among the ugliest. Using the megaphone of social media, activists, hostile states, the media, and non-governmental organisations have corrupted a precise legal term to smear troops who were issuing evacuation orders, facilitating aid handouts, and fighting an enemy that used human shields. If the proper meaning of genocide is lost, no Western army will be safe.

As Keir Starmer’s failed attempts to marshal international law against our own troops who fought in Iraq demonstrated, such instincts are strong amongst progressives. As in London and Strasbourg, so in The Hague. Just days ago, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, finished hearing a genocide case against Myanmar. Given the appalling atrocities against the Rohingya, few would dispute the verdict if the crime is confirmed. Scratch the surface, however, and trouble is brewing.

Genocide as a modern legal concept first emerged in print in Axis Rule In Occupied Europe, a 1944 book by Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin. Crucially, it described mass violence with the intent to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group”. Lemkin was influenced by the 1915 Armenian massacres, but it was the Nazis’ attempted extermination of the Jews – in which 49 members of his own family were murdered – that provided the catalyst for its inclusion on the statute books.

Since 1945, only five legally confirmed genocides have been recognised by the British government: the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and the liquidation of the Yazidis by Islamic State. Between the Srebrenica massacre – the last time the ICJ delivered a guilty verdict – and Myanmar, times have changed.

As part of the Myanmar hearing a few days ago, hostile Facebook posts were presented as evidence. Social media has become part of life since 2007, but there are fears that relying on such contextual and emotive ephemera may eclipse the hard facts. This will especially apply to the ICJ’s next case against Israel.

Aggressive posts and videos of soldiers chanting bloodthirsty slogans already form the backbone of the prosecution’s case against the Jewish state. Whatever our view may be over Palestinian Gaza, are these really evidence of genocidal intent in an army that is said to warn civilians to flee before it attacks? The Myanmar precedent may lead judges to give such things undue weight.

Similarly, NGOs giving evidence against Myanmar included Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which have a well-established bias against Israel. None of this necessarily invalidates the case. But it reveals the weakness of the court.

One of the presiding judges, an 84-year-old South African jurist, has already been accused of turning genocide into a political tool. For many years the jurist headed a UN Human Rights Council “commission of inquiry” that was dismissed as laughably biased. As long ago as 2014, 100 members of Congress said the commission that this jurist led could “not be taken seriously as a human rights organisation”. Another commission member later claimed that social media was “controlled by the Jewish lobby”. Sanctions were then called for against “apartheid Israel”.

Last September, the commission produced a highly contemptible and skewed report which pre-emptively found Israel guilty of “genocide” and airbrushed out of its report all other parties to the conflict. Remove the combatants from any war and you have a crime against humanity. Is the jurist leading the commission, then, a proper person to preside over genocide cases at the UN’s highest court?

Like the rest of the world, the UN seems to be deploying “genocide” as a campaigning tool, fuelled by ideology and the often-empty rage of social media.

The California state senator Scott Wiener, who is in line for Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco congressional seat, said the quiet part out loud.

“In terms of the word ‘genocide’, it’s traditionally been a very technical legal term under the Geneva Convention. It is a descriptor for an extreme level of devastation of a people. It’s a heartfelt descriptor.”

Heartfelt or not, replacing facts with emotive feelings is a dangerous game. Just 10 days after October 7, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention accused Israel of “genocide”. Others may conclude that it was an unprecedented military operation. Members of Lemkin’s family are fighting to have his name removed from the institute’s title.

Last Tuesday, Holocaust Memorial Day was held. As any schoolboy knows, or used to know, victims of that genocide totalled about 11 million, of which six million were Jews. Regardless, the BBC and other broadcasters repeatedly paid tribute to the six million “people” who were murdered, erasing the Jews once again as a reprehensible coda to the genocide.

Was that “heartfelt”? It probably was. Unsurprisingly, of the 2,000 secondary schools that marked the Holocaust in 2023, 1,146 have since given it up. Lurking in the background is the cunning little piece of anti-Semitic propaganda, shamefully endorsed by the UN, that when it comes to genocide, the Jews are as bad as the Nazis. Yet nobody has used the G-word for massacres by the Iranian regime, an enemy of our democracies.

How easy it has become to dismiss truth as a quaint and old-fashioned habit. But unmoor legal definitions at your peril. When genocide becomes a political weapon, it is wielded against the West. Be careful what you are aiming for.

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Gaza, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, United States

Donald Trump’s Board of Peace

BOARD OF PEACE

Intro: This newly created body was supposed to give Gaza a future, but the US president is using it to attack and undermine the UN, international law, and multilateralism

Just a cursory glance at the logo of the Board of Peace tells you all you need to know. It is the globe and laurels of the UN – only gold, because this is Donald Trump’s initiative, and shows little of the world beyond North America.

The charter of the board, formally launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos just days ago, suggests that this is less America First than Trump Always. It is not “the US president” but Mr Trump himself who is named as chair, for as long as he wishes. He can choose his successor, decide the agenda, and axe whomever he chooses – even if they have down-paid the $1bn demanded for permanent membership. It is the institutional expression of his belief that he is bound not by law but “my own morality, my own mind”.

The body was born and constituted through subterfuge: the UN security council authorised a board of peace chaired by Mr Trump to oversee administration and reconstruction in Gaza. There were misgivings about the colonialist model and the free rein given to the US president, as well as the vagueness of the resolution. A desire to ensure his buy-in to a ceasefire won its passage.

What the US has created is something entirely different. The board’s charter does not mention Gaza once. A man increasingly fixated on landgrabs now heads an “international peace-building body” to replace “failed” institutions. To what extent this is a serious attempt to encroach upon, if not supplant, the UN, versus a symbolic declaration of power and creation of another forum for polishing his ego, is unclear. The early signs indicate that Mr Trump has overplayed his hand again. His claim that Vladimir Putin had joined (Putin disagreed) made it easier for the UK and others to back away from an offer they were not supposed to refuse.

Benjamin Netanyahu, another leader indicted by the International Criminal Court, will sit alongside stakeholders from Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Hungary. Eight Muslim-majority states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey have together agreed to join. Traditional US allies, however, are conspicuously absent. It remains unclear how others can make themselves heard on Gaza’s future if they rightly shun a deliberate attempt to undermine multilateral institutions. But they must. The already difficult, almost intractable task of winning peace in Gaza and justice for Palestinians has been further compromised. With an executive board – featuring Tony Blair and Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – and a Gaza executive board containing regional officials, Palestinians are relegated to a fourth-tier technocratic committee.

For 2 million Palestinians enduring a brutal winter amid the ruins and ongoing bombardment by the Israeli Defence Force, the presentation of plans for the next 100 days by Palestinian and US officials suggests that the administration has not totally lost interest. Mr Kushner’s ambitious proposals will displease those on the Israeli right who want to displace Palestinians entirely. Increases in aid, the reopening of the Rafah crossing, repairs to essential infrastructure, and the reconstruction of homes and hospitals are all desperately needed. But what will materialise and on what terms?

Mr Trump’s real-estate fixation and desire to be applauded as a peacemaker may be the best hope of keeping him engaged, and reducing Netanyahu’s sway. Nonetheless, the rights of Palestinians are most certainly being treated as an irrelevant detail. That cannot stand. Mr Trump has contempt for international law; others must continue to strive to defend it.

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Economic, G20, Government, Politics, Society, United Nations

The ‘inequality emergency’

ECONOMIC

Intro: Rising economic division is destabilising nations and eroding accountability. Joseph Stiglitz’s G20 blueprint proposes a way toward global economic renewal. For the first time the G20 has declared a global inequality emergency

WAS it a diplomatic nicety when Swiss tycoons and business magnates handed Donald Trump a gold bar and a Rolex watch, gifts that were reciprocated by a cut in US tariffs? No. It was a reminder of how concentrated wealth seems to buy access and bend policy. Alarmingly, this might just become the norm if the global “inequality emergency” continues. That’s the clear message being sent out in the most recent work by the Nobel laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz. The economist sees the widening gap between rich and poor as a human-made crisis which is destroying politics, society, and the planet. He’s not wrong.

The problem is no longer confined to a few fragile states. It is a global harm, with 90% of the world’s population living under the World Bank’s definition of “high income inequality”. The US sits just below that threshold and is the most unequal country in the G7, followed by the UK. Prof. Stiglitz’s insight is that the current system’s defenders can no longer explain its mounting anomalies. Hence he wants a new framework to replace it. His blueprint for change is contained within the G20’s first-ever inequality report, endorsed by key European, African, and middle-income nations.

It warns that the richest 1% captured 41% of all new wealth since 2000, while the bottom half gained just 1%. On average, someone in the global top 1% became $1.3m richer; a person in the poorest half gained $585. Meanwhile, 2.3 billion people are now moderately or severely food insecure – 335 million more than in 2019. Wealth concentration far outstrips income concentration, with the total assets of billionaires’ worth one-sixth of global GDP. Shockingly, billionaire wealth is rising almost in lockstep with global food insecurity.

The report argues that extreme inequality is a policy choice – produced by specific economic, political and legal decisions rather than by “globalisation” or technology. Financial deregulation, weakening labour protections, and privatisation all aid rising inequality. As does cutting corporate and top income tax rates. The report stresses that the most dangerous consequences are political, with highly unequal countries seven times more likely to experience democratic backsliding or authoritarian drift. Stiglitz points out that the super-rich account for a disproportionate share of carbon emissions, worsening climate risks borne by the poor. He rejects the pro-market argument that inequality is good for growth.

The G20 inequality report lays out a comprehensive redesign of global economic governance reminiscent of 1944’s Bretton Woods accord. What led to that overhaul is being identified again today: global rules and institutions that are generating crises, instability, and inequality. Prof. Stiglitz wants structural change – suggesting a rewrite of intellectual property rules as well as trade and investment treaties, a reform of global lenders, and an update of tax systems as well as sovereign debt arrangements.

A fairer global order must start where every paradigm shift begins: with knowledge, scrutiny, and shared facts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the UN-backed body assessing scientific opinion – was created in 1988 to give global authority to that knowledge. It reshaped climate politics. Prof. Stiglitz argues that the time has come for an International Panel on Inequality. Hundreds of experts agree. Endorsing it is by no means radical; it is simply the first step towards a saner world. Without it, the gold-bar diplomacy circling Trump will surely proliferate.

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