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un security council
How the UN Can Act Decisively to End Genocide in Gaza
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel.
Sep 03, 2025
One year ago, the United Nations General Assembly demanded that Israel must end its occupation of the Palestinian Territories within 12 months.
The General Assembly voted, by 124 votes to 14, with 43 abstentions, for a strong resolution that not only “demanded” an end to the occupation within a year, but called on all countries to refrain from trade involving Israeli settlements and from transfers of weapons “where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The General Assembly was meeting on September 18, 2024, in an Emergency Special Session, invoking the “Uniting For Peace” principle to act where the UN Security Council has failed to do so. The General Assembly had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of the Israeli occupation and the legal consequences arising from it, and the new resolution was triggered by the court’s ruling, on July 19, 2024 that the Israeli occupation is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”
A year later, Israel has failed to comply with any of the demands of the 124 states. On the contrary. It has escalated its genocide in Gaza by cutting off nearly all food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance; launching relentless bombardments; expanding ground incursions; and displacing virtually the entire population. All over the world, people are calling on leaders and politicians to do whatever it takes to put a stop to this holocaust before it goes any further.
As world leaders gather again in New York for another UN General Assembly beginning on September 9, how will they respond to Israel’s ever-escalating genocide and continued occupation and expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem? Grassroots political pressure is building on all of them to turn the strong words in ICJ rulings and UN resolutions into meaningful action to end what the vast majority of the world recognizes as the most flagrant genocide of our time.
Countries have taken individual actions to cut off trade with Israel and cancel weapons contracts. Turkey announced a total trade boycott on August 29, and closed its airspace to Israeli planes and its ports to Israeli ships. Twelve members of the Hague Group, formed to challenge Israeli impunity, have formally committed to banning arms transfers and blocking military-related shipments at their ports. Sweden and the Netherlands have urged the European Union to adopt sanctions on Israel, including suspending the EU-Israel trade deal.
But most of the 124 countries that voted to demand an end to the occupation have done very little to enforce those demands. If they fail to enforce them now, they will only confirm Israel’s presumption that its corrupt influence on US politics still ensures blanket impunity for systematic war crimes.
What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In response to this unconscionable state of affairs, Palestine’s UN representative has formally asked the UN to authorize an international military protection force for Gaza to help with the delivery of humanitarian aid and protect civilians. So has the largest coalition of Palestinian NGOs, PNGO, as well as pro-Palestine groups and leaders such as Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins. There’s a growing global movement calling for the UN General Assembly to take up this request in another Emergency Special Session when it meets this month. That would be well within the authority of the General Assembly in a case like this, where the Security Council has been hijacked by the US abuse of its veto power.
Whether or not this initiative for a protective force succeeds, the truth is that the governments of the world already have countless ways to support Palestine—they simply need to muster the political will to act. Israel is a small country that depends on imports from countries all over the world. It has diversified sources for many essential products, and, although the United States supplies 70% of its weapons imports, many other countries also supply weapons and critical parts of its infernal war machine. Israel’s dependence on complicated international supply chains is the weakest link in its presumption that it can thumb its nose at the world and kill with impunity.
If the large majority of countries that have already voted for an end to the occupation are ready to back their words and their votes with coordinated action, a UN-led trade boycott, divestment campaign, and arms embargo can put enormous pressure on Israel to end its genocide and starvation of Gaza, and its occupation of Palestine. With full participation by enough countries, Israel’s position could quickly become unsustainable.
Two years into a genocide, it is shameful that the world’s governments haven’t already done this, and that their people have to plead, protest, and push them into action through a dense fog of spin and propaganda, while leaders mouth the right words yet keep doing the wrong things.
Many people compare the problem the world faces in Israel to the crisis over apartheid South Africa. The similarity lies not only in their racism, but also in the Western countries’ shameful complicity in their human rights abuses and lack of concern for the lives of their victims. It is surely no coincidence that the United States, with its own history of genocide, slavery, and apartheid, acted as the main diplomatic supporter and military supplier of apartheid South Africa, and now of Israel.
But it took over 30 years, from the first UN arms embargo and oil sanctions in 1963 to the final lifting of UN sanctions in 1994, before UN action helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was not until 1977 that the UN even made its arms embargo binding on all members. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the world cannot wait 30 years for its actions to have an impact. What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
One initiative that will be debated and voted on in the General Assembly is the one advanced by France and Saudi Arabia. In July they hosted a high-level UN conference on the “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the implementation of the Two State Solution.” But its agenda is weak, and it avoids any strong action to pressure Israel to end the genocide or the occupation.
The first steps the declaration calls for are a ceasefire in Gaza, the restoration of the Palestinian Authority’s control of Gaza, and then the deployment of an international military “stabilization” force. But Israel has already rejected the first two steps, and critics warn that a stabilization force would mean foreign troops deployed in Gaza, not to protect Palestinians from Israeli bombs and bulldozers, but to police them, contain resistance, and reinforce Israeli demands.
Moreover, the declaration contains no enforcement mechanism. Instead, it offers only carrots—promises of recognition, trade, and arms deals—while Israel pays no price for continuing its crimes.
And while the declaration could pave the way for more Western countries to join the 147 countries that already recognize Palestine as an independent state, without concrete pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and end the occupation, such recognition risks being symbolic at best—and, at worst, may embolden Israel to accelerate its campaign of mass killing, settlement expansion, and annexation before the world can act.
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel, conditioned on ending the genocide in Gaza and the post-1967 occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The arms embargo and economic measures against Israel should be binding on all UN members, with the full support of the UN secretariat, which can provide staff to organize and supervise them, in coordination with UN members. China, the largest supplier of Israeli imports, and Turkey, which was the third largest before it cut off trade with Israel, should both be ready to take leadership roles in a UN boycott and arms embargo. The European Union collectively does even more trade with Israel than China, and has failed to unite against the genocide, but strong UN leadership could help Europe to overcome its divisions and join the campaign.
As for the United States, its role in this crisis, under former President Joe Biden and now under President Donald Trump, is to encourage Israel’s crimes, provide unlimited weapons, veto every Security Council resolution, and oppose every international attempt to end the slaughter. Even as majorities of ordinary Americans now side with the Palestinians and oppose US military support for Israel, the oligarchy that rules America is as guilty of genocide as Israel itself. As the world comes together to confront Israel’s crimes, it will also have to confront the reality that Israel is not acting alone, but in partnership with the United States of America.
Aggressors and bullies get their way by dividing their enemies and picking them off one at a time, as the world has seen the European colonial powers and now the United States do for centuries. What every aggressor or bully fears most is united opposition and resistance.
Israel and the US currently apply huge political pressure against countries and institutions that take action to boycott, sanction, or divest from Israel, as Norway has by its decision to divest its sovereign wealth fund from Caterpillar for supplying bulldozers to demolish homes in Palestine. In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
Recent UN General Assemblies have heard many speeches lamenting the UN’s failure to fulfill its most vital purpose, to ensure peace and security for all, and how the veto power of the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council prevents the UN from tackling the world’s most serious problems. If, at this year’s UN General Assembly, the world can come together to confront the holocaust of our time in Gaza, this could mark the birth of a reenergized and newly united UN—one finally capable of fulfilling its intended role in building a peaceful, sustainable, multipolar world.
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Report Shows How Five Global Powers on UN Security Council Are 'Vetoing Humanity'
"The UNSC is failing people living in conflict, with Russia and the United States particularly responsible for abusing their veto power," said Oxfam.
Sep 19, 2024
As the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance worldwide has skyrocketed by 150% over the last decade, five powerful countries on the United Nations Security Council have had hundreds of opportunities to vote for progress in some of the world's most protracted conflicts—but in dozens of cases, countries including the United States and Russia have instead vetoed peace and security resolutions.
In its report, Vetoing Humanity, Oxfam International pointed Thursday to numerous vetoes made by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), or the P5, which the humanitarian group said have placed their own economic and political interests ahead of the council's mission.
The group examined 23 of the world's longest violent conflicts, including those in the occupied Palestinian territories, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen, which have collectively been the subjects of 454 resolutions passed by the UNSC since 2014.
But 30 resolutions have been vetoed by one of more of the P5 countries, including eight out of 12 regarding Palestine and Israel, 15 out of 53 on Syria, and 4 out of 7 on Ukraine.
"The UNSC is failing people living in conflict, with Russia and the United States particularly responsible for abusing their veto power," said Oxfam, noting that the two countries have together cast 75% of the 88 vetoes at the UNSC since 1989, with China casting the rest.
The other two permanent members, the United Kingdom and France, have not used their veto power since 1989, but they have still joined the other powerful countries in undermining global peace and security, said Oxfam.
In addition to veto power, the P5 has "pen-holding" privileges at the UNSC, allowing them to lead negotiations and decide how resolutions are drafted or whether they are ignored.
"The erratic and self-interested behavior of UNSC members has contributed to an explosion of humanitarian needs that is now outpacing humanitarian organizations' ability to respond. This demands a fundamental change of our international security architecture at the very top."
The P5 members have "deliberately cherry-picked which conflicts to address in the Council," reads the report. "Over the last decade, over 95% of the resolutions that the UNSC passed relate to just half of the protracted crises, leaving the other half mostly neglected."
France, the U.K., and the U.S. have held the pen on two-thirds of protracted crises over the last decade, allowing them to direct negotiations. For example, the U.K. has pen-holding privileges in talks on Yemen, "where it has interests due to historical colonial links and the strategic desire to maintain maritime routes."
The United States' use of its veto power at the UNSC has come under particular scrutiny in the past year, as it has vetoed three resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave and blocking humanitarian aid to its 2.3 million people, pushing the population toward famine. It has also vetoed proposals to grant U.N. membership to Palestine, despite the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) voting in favor, 138-9.
"While the UNGA has passed at least 77 resolutions over the last decade supporting Palestinian self-determination and human rights and an end to Israel's illegal occupation, the U.S. has used its veto power six times to block resolutions perceived as unfavorable to its ally Israel," said Oxfam. "The U.S. vetoes have created a permissive environment for Israel to expand illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory with impunity."
P5 vetoes have "more often than not," said Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar, "contradicted the will of the U.N. General Assembly, in which all states are represented."
The report details other vetoes by the P5, including a 2023 veto by Russia of a nine-month extension of cross-border assistance to northern Syria‚ a decision that left 4.1 million people with little or no access to food, water, or medicine. Russia has also vetoed several resolutions on the country's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, despite the fact that the U.N. Charter states that "a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting."
"China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. took responsibility for global security at the UNSC in what is now a bygone colonial age," said Behar. "The contradictions of their acting as judge and jury of their own military alliances, interests, and adventures are incompatible with a world seeking peace and justice for all."
While the P5 ostensibly helped form the UNSC with the aim of promoting and maintaining global peace and security, the report notes that "they are providing more resources in the form of military aid than they are in humanitarian assistance," with its assistance being used not just defensively by recipients but also helping "to fuel and perpetuate the conflicts that the UNSC is failing to prevent and resolve."
"In 2019, the USA provided three times as much security assistance as humanitarian aid: $18.8 billion versus $6 billion," reads the report. "China pledged $20 million a year in military aid grants to Africa over 2015–17, whereas its worldwide humanitarian assistance in 2016 totaled less than $21 million."
"Not only have the P5 governments repeatedly failed to act to avert conflict, many have profited from wars by directly selling weapons to warring parties despite violations of international humanitarian law and the human suffering resulting from these wars," the report continues.
Behar said that "the erratic and self-interested behavior of UNSC members has contributed to an explosion of humanitarian needs that is now outpacing humanitarian organizations' ability to respond. This demands a fundamental change of our international security architecture at the very top."
The report comes as the U.N. prepares for the Summit of the Future, scheduled to kick off next week with the aim of envisioning "a revitalized U.N."
Oxfam made several recommendations to end the P5's ability to undermine the mission of UNSC, calling on member states to:
- Abolish the veto and take the preliminary step of requiring the P5 to refrain from vetoing resolutions related to war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity;
- Increase UNSC membership to include under-represented and unrepresented regions and countries;
- Reform the tradition of pen-holding;
- Make humanitarian funding mandatory for UNSC members; and
- Require that members refrain from transferring weapons to countries when there is a high risk that they will be used in violations of international humanitarian law.
"We need a new vision for a U.N. system that meets its original ambitions and made fit for purpose for today's reality," Behar said. "A Council that works for the global majority, not a powerful few."
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Accusations of US Regime-Change Operations in Pakistan and Bangladesh Warrant UN Attention
The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan in Pakistan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.
Aug 19, 2024
Two former leaders of major South Asian countries have reportedly accused the United States of covert regime change operations to topple their governments. One of the leaders, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, languishes in prison, on a perverse conviction that proves Khan’s assertion. The other leader, former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, fled to India following a violent coup in her country. Their grave accusations against the U.S., as reported in the world media, should be investigated by the UN, since if true, the U.S. actions would constitute a fundamental threat to world peace and to regional stability in South Asia.
The two cases seem to be very similar. The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.
In the case of Pakistan, Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia, met with Asad Majeed Khan, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., on March 7, 2022. Ambassador Khan immediately wrote back to his capital, conveying Lu’s warning that PM Khan threatened U.S.-Pakistan relations because of Khan’s “aggressively neutral position” regarding Russia and Ukraine.
The Ambassador’s March 7 note (technically a diplomatic cypher) quoted Assistant Secretary Lu as follows: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” The very next day, members of the parliament took procedural steps to oust PM Khan.
On March 27, PM Khan brandished the cypher, and told his followers and the public that the U.S. was out to bring him down. On April 10, PM Khan was thrown out of office as the parliament acceded to the U.S. threat.
We know this in detail because of Ambassador Khan’s cypher, exposed by PM Khan and brilliantly documented by Ryan Grim of The Intercept, including the text of the cypher. Absurdly and tragically, PM Khan languishes in prison in part over espionage charges, linked to his revealing the cypher.
The U.S. appears to have played a similar role in the recent violent coup in Bangladesh. PM Hasina was ostensibly toppled by student unrest, and fled to India when the Bangladeshi military refused to prevent the protestors from storming the government offices. Yet there may well be much more to the story than meets the eye.
According to press reports in India, PM Hasina is claiming that the U.S. brought her down. Specifically, she says that the U.S. removed her from power because she refused to grant the U.S. military facilities in a region that is considered strategic for the U.S. in its “Indo-Pacific Strategy” to contain China. While these are second-hand accounts by the Indian media, they track closely several speeches and statements that Hasina has made over the past two years.
On May 17, 2024, the same Assistant Secretary Liu who played a lead role in toppling PM Khan, visited Dhaka to discuss the US Indo-Pacific Strategy among other topics. Days later, Sheikh Hasina reportedly summoned the leaders of the 14 parties of her alliance to make the startling claim that a “country of white-skinned people” was trying to bring her down, ostensibly telling the leaders that she refused to compromise her nation’s sovereignty. Like Imran Khan, PM Hasina had been pursuing a foreign policy of neutrality, including constructive relations not only with the U.S. but also with China and Russia, much to the deep consternation of the U.S. government.
To add credence to Hasina’s charges, Bangladesh had delayed signing two military agreements that the U.S. had pushed very hard since 2022, indeed by none other than the former Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the neocon hardliner with her own storied history of U.S. regime-change operations. One of the draft agreements, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington. The Government of PM Hasina was clearly not enthusiastic to sign it.
The U.S. is by far the world’s leading practitioner of regime-change operations, yet the U.S. flatly denies its role in covert regime change operations even when caught red-handed, as with Nuland’s infamous intercepted phone call in late January 2014 planning the U.S.-led regime change operation in Ukraine. It is useless to appeal to the U.S. Congress, and still less the executive branch, to investigate the claims by PM Khan and PM Hasina. Whatever the truth of the matter, they will deny and lie as necessary.
This is where the UN should step in. Covert regime change operations are blatantly illegal under international law (notably the Doctrine of Non-Intervention, as expressed for example in UN General Assembly Resolution 2625, 1970), and constitute perhaps the greatest threat to world peace, as they profoundly destabilize nations, and often lead to wars and other civil disorders. The UN should investigate and expose covert regime change operations, both in the interests of reversing them, and preventing them in the future.
The UN Security Council is of course specifically charged under Article 24 of the UN Charter with “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” When evidence arises that a government has been toppled through the intervention or complicity of a foreign government, the UN Security Council should investigate the claims.
In the cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the UN Security Council should seek the direct testimony of PM Khan and PM Hasina in order to evaluate the evidence that the U.S. played a role in the overthrow of the governments of these two leaders. Each, of course, should be protected by the UN for giving their testimony, so as to protect them from any retribution that could follow their honest presentation of the facts. Their testimony can be taken by video conference, if necessary, given the tragic ongoing incarceration of PM Khan.
The U.S. might well exercise its veto in the UN Security Council to prevent such a investigation. In that case, the UN General Assembly can take up the matter, under UN Resolution A/RES/76/, which allows the UN General Assembly to consider an issue blocked by veto in the UN Security Council. The issues at stake could then be assessed by the entire membership of the UN. The veracity of the U.S. involvement in the recent regime changes in Pakistan and Bangladesh could then be objectively analyzed and judged on the evidence, rather than on mere assertions and denials.
The U.S. engaged in at least 64 covert regime change operations during 1947-1989, according to documented research by Lindsey O’Rourke, political science professor at Boston Collage, and several more that were overt (e.g. by U.S.-led war). It continues to engage in regime-change operations with shocking frequency to this day, toppling governments in all parts of the world. It is wishful thinking that the U.S. will abide by international law on its own, but it is not wishful thinking for the world community, long suffering from U.S. regime change operations, to demand their end at the United Nations.Keep ReadingShow Less
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