The Legal and the Just at the UN General Assembly
3 October 2024
By Ray Acheson
Every year it seems like the context surrounding the UN General Assembly high-level debate is bleaker than the last. This certainly held true for 2024, a year in which Israel has waged genocide and war crimes against Palestine and now launched a military invasion of Lebanon, spreading violence throughout the region under the protection and facilitation of the United States and other major arms producing countries. At the same time, Russia continued its illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine, war raged in Sudan and Myanmar, imperialist sanctions and destabilisation of Haiti and Cuba continued, and the extraction and burning of fossil fuels enflamed climate chaos around the world.
“The main problem is that all these injustices are systemic, which means that if they are not legalized, then they are tacitly tolerated,” explained the president of North Macedonia. She quoted Thucydides, recalling that “justice is a word that has value in disputes between men [sic] only when both sides are of equal strength; in other cases, the strong do what they can, and the weak what they must.” The United Nations, built to serve as an institution to develop and implement international law, to hold all states to account as equals, and to foster cooperation among them, seems geared toward constraining the powerful and protecting the others. “The United Nations exists to bridge, or at least narrow, the gap between the legal and the just,” said president Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova. But how can this happen when, “Instead of increased cooperation and action on pressing issues, the geopolitical rivalry and the new arms race are intensifying that are rapidly pushing us towards a state resembling a new, second cold war and Orwell’s world too!”
This is the paramount question before the United Nations a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Can its structure support the goals of its creators, or will the pursuit of unipolar power by the most vicious and violent among us dictate a doomed future for us all?
Militarism rules
As the President of the General Assembly said in his opening remarks at the general debate, “At our disposal is one of the most powerful tools for positive change: international cooperation grounded in the undeniable truth that even the most powerful nations cannot solve these complex, borderless challenges alone.” Unfortunately, the arrogant defiance of rules built to protect people and the planet has led to failure to cooperate at every level.
Most government officials addressing the General Assembly came with the message that they seek cooperation over competition, peace over violence. Yet a minority of states, driven by a quest for dominance in a crumbling world they have lit on fire, are clearly intent on burning it all to the ground rather than share wealth or well-being with anyone else. The Israeli prime minister’s proclamation at the podium that he seeks peace, even as he later ordered attacks on Lebanon from the hallway of the same building, speaks volumes about how these governments perceive their self-righteous right to supremacy.
“In this room,” said the president of Colombia, “a president's ability to communicate depends on how many dollars he has in his budget. On the number of warplanes he has and, ultimately, on his country's capacity for destruction of mankind. A country's power in the world is no longer exercised by the kind of economic or political system or ideas it radiates, but by the power to destroy the lives of humanity.” President Gustavo Petro Urrego noted, “If we call for debt to be swapped for climate action, we are not listened to by powerful minorities. If we call for an end to war to focus on the rapid transformation of the world's economy in order to save life and the human species, we are not heard either. It is the power to destroy life that gives volume to the voice on the floor of the United Nations.”
As the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines put it, less militarised states—especially small island developing states—are treated by the economically powerful countries as if their existence is annoying. From the imposition of economic restraints by financial institutions to failures to address the impacts or origins of climate change, SIDS and other structrually vulnerable states “remain unequally yoked in a global community motivated by the baser instincts of the untrammeled power of money, ideology, guns, lethal weaponry, territorial and global dominance.”
Crimes of power
This is perhaps no more clear than the wars of aggression and occupation waged by two nuclear-armed states, Russia and Israel. The representatives of both used their UN speeches to justify their violence, reiterate Orwellian narratives of victimisation, and threaten to destroy even more lives.
The Russian foreign minister almost seemed to deliver yet another threat to use nuclear weapons in the context of its war in Ukraine, saying, “I will not dwell on the futility and danger of the very idea of trying to fight Russia, a nuclear power, to the bitter end.” The Israeli prime minister, meanwhile, described most countries of the Middle East as enemies needing to be destroyed in a “battle between good and evil,” denied the genocide it is orchestrating, and accusing everyone opposed to Israeli crimes as being antisementic. Fortunately, aside from a view lackey states whose economic and military power is bound to these vicious war mongers, the rest of the world savaged these remarks.
Nearly three years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, few states are buying its justification for bombing Ukrainian cities or attacking Ukrainian nuclear power facilities. Most countries called on Russia to withdraw its troops and agree to a negotiated peace plan.
Similarly, a year into Israel’s genocide—and decades into its apartheid, settler colonial occupation of Palestine—fewer and fewer governments are accepting the rhetoric that Israel is acting in “self-defence”. Indonesia’s foreign minister scoffed with disbelief at Netanyahu’s remarks that “Israel seeks peace,” saying, “Really? How are we supposed to believe that statement? Yesterday, while he was here, Israel conducted unprecedented massive air-attacks on Beirut. PM Netanyahu wants the war to continue.” Malaysia’s foreign minister was equally aghast, pointing out that just a few months earlier, “the world witnessed Israel’s mockery and utter disrespect of the United Nations in this very hall, with the insolent shredding of the UN Charter. Israel’s actions, with each passing day, raise our doubts as to whether it actually believes in the UN system, or values its membership in this organization.”
Other states rejected the false binary presented by the Israeli government. The foreign minister of Norway chastised Netanyahu’s message that states have to choose with they are for or against Israel. “We have seen this film before,” said Espen Barth Eide, noting, “I didn’t like the ending.” Twenty-two years ago, “in response to the terrorist attacks on this very city, another leader stated that we were either with him, or with the terrorists,” he said. “This division into a simplistic notion of black and white, leaving no space for nuance and complexity, let alone impartiality, and with an excessive trust in military force alone, is utterly dangerous. And indeed—it did not end well. We need to learn from past mistakes.”
Almost every delegation called for an immediate ceasefire both in Lebanon and in Palestine. Most countries also supported the UN General Assembly resolution to recognise the State of Palestine and demanded Israel comply with the Genocide Convention, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, International Court of Justice rulings and opinions, UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions, and countless recommendations from UN human rights bodies, such as by Commissions of Inquiry and the UN Special Rapporteur made over the years.
Yet some of the same countries denouncing Israeli war crimes are facilitating them, by providing weapons, ammunition, jet fuel, military equipment, and/or intelligence to Israel. Only a few delegations urged the end of material support to Israel, with Malaysia being the sole government to explictily call for an arms embargo.
Words against weapons
Much more is needed to make sure reality matches rhetoric. Issuing proclamations from the UN podium is one thing. Ending transfers of weapons and other war material; blockading or denying port access for the transshipment of weapons; and divesting from companies and institutions financing the genocide is another.
As the president of the Maldives said in relation to the Pact for the Future and the Sustainable Development Goals, “We can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep meeting, talking, pledging but not doing. We don’t want these days to come back to haunt us. The days when we had a chance but not a will.”
This applies to more than Israel’s aggression. It’s also relevant for preventing the impending dangers posed by autonomous weapon systems and military use of artificial intelligence. As Ireland’s minister of state said, “We must also act to prevent another arms race—for weapons beyond human control—and do so urgently given the pace of technological development.” It issued support for the UN Secretary-General’s call to conclude a treaty on autonomous weapons systems by the end of 2026, and despite majority support for this in other UN fora, was the only country to explictly endorse this call during the high-level debate.
But the appeal to take action while there is still a chance for change applies perhaps most of all to nuclear weapons. A number of delegations spoke with concern about, as San Marino’s minister of foreign affairs put it, the “upsetting increase of dangerous nuclear rhetoric and by the specter of nuclear escalation.” With investments in a renewed nuclear arms race growing, nuclear doctrines and sharing arrangements expanding, and rhetoric about the possible use of nuclear weapons becoming ever more dangerous, it feels like we are on a precipe of disaster. Any nuclear weapon use would have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental impacts—and in a world already on fire, the stakes to prevent this have never been higher.
The President of the General Assembly called for “urgent measures for the abolition of these tools of the annihilation of the human race and our environment.” The best chance we have is for all states to join and fully implement the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Several delegations, including Cuba, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, San Marino, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, and Tuvalu, highlighted the importance of the TPNW and urged others to join it. During the UN high-level week, three more countries—Indonesia, Sierra Leone, and Solomon Islands—ratified the Treaty, bringing it to 73 states parties and an additional 25 signatories.
People power
The progress made can be advanced through concerted efforts at the United Nations over the next five weeks and beyond. Monday, 7 October will mark one year since Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began. It will also be the first day of this year’s session of the UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security. As always, the work of this Committee provides an opportunity for states to “bridge the gap between the legal and the just.”
Reaching Critical Will’s First Committee Briefing Book provides analysis and recommendations to all delegations across the full range of issues that should be discussed, from cluster munitions to torture-free trade, from nuclear weapons to guns, from the arms trade to disabilities and disarmament. This year, with new resolutions seeking the establishment of a UN study on the impacts of nuclear war, organising General Assembly consultations on autonomous weapons, and conducting work on armed drones, there are concrete actions states can take to advance international law and protect humanity and all living things on this planet.
But beyond the UN meeting rooms, those working for disarmament and demilitarisation need to also build people power. “It is the time of the people,” said Colombia’s president. If governments decide “to play with bombs and senseless wars and killing children, power games, then it is time to take the solution of the great problems of humanity into the hands of the people themselves, the simple people of humanity.” We’ll see you in the UN basement, and in the streets.