- If a better fit between the UN Charter and the patterns of world politics in the future is sought, it will require radical reform of the Security Council and the General Assembly—reducing the former's negative power while strengthening the latter
- UN lacks a constitutional mandate to stop genocide if its perpetrators are among the P5 or close friends. This betrayal of Palestinian rights is a revealing UN failure, but fortunately, it has not altogether undermined the UN influence
The author is a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and a former UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on occupied Palestine.
ISTANBUL
It is understandably felt throughout most of the world that the UN failed to stop genocide in Gaza over a nearly two-year period and is now a disappointing and useless presence on the global stage when it comes to either war prevention or global security. The UN can issue statements and condemn, but it cannot act when its only organ with enforcement authority, the Security Council, is blocked by a veto cast by one or more of its five permanent members (P5). Such a damning indictment is correct as far as it goes, but if left at that, it is deeply misleading.
The P5 privileges: A flawed architecture since 1945
A forgotten reality about the UN is that it was designed from its beginning to satisfy the priorities of the major winners of World War II when established in 1945, above all, the United States. In other words, by failing in Gaza, it was doing what it was supposed to do in such situations, given the UN architecture. As such, the privileges of the P5 were a crucial part of this superficially absurd idea of exempting the most militarily dangerous states, including the anti-fascist allies who, even before the war was over, were already widely regarded as dangerous post-1945 rivals. What is absurd is to exempt from the obligations imposed by the UN Charter the states most capable and inclined to upset the new global order. In effect, the ambitions of the founders of the UN were modest or arrogant, depending on your point of view, in that only the mice were to be caged, while the lions were allowed, as earlier, to roam the world as if it were their jungle.
Even so, this limited constitutional framework might have worked if the P5 architects of the UN had acted as if they truly believed in abiding by the constraints of international law or were themselves committed to the UN role proclaimed by the famous Charter words "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." 80 years of experience have demonstrated that the foreign policy of the P5 and other great powers during this period was guided primarily by balance of power, deterrent postures, alliance relations, and strategic ambitions. This orientation is associated with the perspectives of "political realism" dominant in the foreign policy practice of leading countries and exemplified in ancient times by the Greek historian Thucydides and in more recent times by Machiavelli and Kissinger. The failure to agree on nuclear disarmament was a decisive indication of the stubborn refusal of political realism, even after Hiroshima, to adapt to the grim realities of international relations.
As such, these ways of conceiving global security and world peace reject law and morality as bothersome distractions from the management of power. Given the strategic and ideological ties to Israel, it was predictable that the UN would be excluded from protecting a population from genocide if it was being victimized by a P5 member or ally. If a better fit between the UN Charter and the patterns of world politics in the future is sought, it will require radical reform of the Security Council and the General Assembly—reducing the former’s negative power while strengthening the latter, which represents all 193 UN members, with positive authority to enforce law and act against the criminality of all states, whether great or small. The prospects for such UN reform are not good, mainly because of the absence of political will on the part of the P5 governments and their allies, who remain tied to a concept of global security devised by political realists, and tied to powerful private sector arms developers whose influence keeps governments in line should they give expression to peace-oriented views of their citizens.
The UN's adaptive capacity beyond its limits
Yet it would be wrong to deduce from this assessment that the UN is worthless as a check on severe abuses of international law and morality. The UN has exhibited a creative adaptive capacity to compensate for its shortcomings in ways that strengthen the influence of law and morality on the crafting of global security. This does not imply any short-term strengthening of the war prevention roles of the political organs of the UN, together with the International Court of Justice, the three actors that continue to be the public face of the organization. What these organs do achieve indirectly is a great influence over the competing legitimacy and grievance claims based on international law and morality of the competing sides in major international conflicts. The side that prevails in such Legitimacy Wars has usually prevailed in controlling recent political outcomes of conflicts despite being greatly inferior on the military battlefield, as the European powers discovered in 20th-century anti-colonial wars and the US experienced in the Vietnam War.
The ICJ rulings and the resolutions of the GA reflecting the majority of the people in the world illustrate that Palestine has won the legitimacy war waged since Oct. 7, 2023. Israel's defeat is evident in the growing perception that it has become "a pariah state." Whether the weight of this historical trend will doom the Zionist settler colonial project, as happened in South Africa and Algeria, remains to be seen. Whether the Palestinian resilience holds steady and a justice-driven day emerges from the genocidal shadows darkening the skies over Gaza for the past two years is presently highly uncertain. If the Palestinians do succeed, the UN will finally receive the credit it deserves alongside the perseverance of Palestinian resistance and the solidarity initiatives of the Global South.
Civil society, special rapporteurs, and human rights advocacy
Additionally, the UN has contributed in more obscure ways to the Palestinian struggle for rights. For instance, the Human Rights Council, through its commissions and special procedures, has been able to depict the enforcement, accountability, and complicity gaps in an apolitical manner, confirming the failures of the SC and GA with respect to genocide prevention. This shifts enforcement activism and responsibilities to the peoples of the world acting through the energized segments of civil society.
The reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, especially her three reports analyzing and documenting Israel’s commission of genocide, have exposed the reality of Israeli lawlessness and discredited the obscuring rationalizations of supportive governments and the self-censoring Western mainstream media. To distract attention from Albanese’s reports, the US, on July 9, went to the extraordinary extreme of sanctioning an unpaid UN human rights expert appointee, including barring her entrance to the US to participate in the upcoming GA meetings. Such an action is a violation of the Host Country Agreement that requires the US to refrain from any interference with personnel carrying out UN functions. Sanctioning Albanese shows how sensitive the US has become about UN truth-telling and witnessing when it comes to Israel.
Barring Palestinians' entry to the US
This effort to distort the realities of Gaza is also evident in the sanctioning of globally respected Palestinian NGOs (Al Haq, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Palestinian Center for Human Rights) as well as barring entry to the US of the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and of all Palestinian visa holders during this time that the nations of the world are gathering for the 80th anniversary of the UN's birth. Such acts would not be happening if Israel were winning the legitimacy war. These punitive interferences with people performing their professional roles are expressions of frustration when a larger strategic mission goes off the rails.
It would be misleading not to mention the many years of humanitarian work in Gaza admirably handled by UNRWA during the most difficult conditions, dramatized by up to 360 staff deaths in Gaza due to targeted military attacks since Oct. 7 on its facilities sheltering many thousands of Gazans. Until it was banished from Gaza by Israel on trumped-up charges of collaborating with Hamas at the beginning of 2025, which ended its sheltering role, it delivered food, water, fuel, medicine, and education, and overall, heroically mitigated Palestinian extreme suffering. The Israeli disruption of humanitarian aid is a grave crime against humanity, as signaled tentatively by the ICJ.
The primary message on the 80th anniversary is that the UN lacks a constitutional mandate to stop genocide if its perpetrators are among the P5 or close friends. This betrayal of Palestinian rights is a revealing UN failure, but fortunately, it has not altogether undermined the UN influence. In this respect, the UN has contributed crucially to the growth of a global consensus condemning Israeli genocide, and, however belatedly, is inching toward an affirmation of the legitimacy of activist support of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. The time for UN action is past due, but if it occurs, it will not be too late to restore the reputation of the UN in the course of acknowledging the Palestinian victory. But what it would require is undertaking an armed intervention by a UN Protective Armed Force authorized by reliance on the empowerment of the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace Resolution. If this were to happen, it would be redemptive for the UN despite its long failure of response to Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu's editorial policy.
