UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has reinforced the UN’s role as “guardians” of international law in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaking last week at a press conference on UN work priorities in 2020, Guterres said: “We are totally committed to the two-state solution. And we are totally committed to supporting Israelis and Palestinians to come to a peace process for a two-state with the two-state solution based on international law, based on Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and based on the borders of 1967.”
Guterres: ‘We are the Guardians’
“Our position is very clear. We are the guardians of the UN resolutions and international law in relation to the policy in question,” the secretary-general added. “We have not changed our position.”
In the same conference—as the United Nations marks its 75th anniversary this year—Guterres warned that “a wind of madness is sweeping the globe.”
“As economies falter, poverty remains entrenched. As future prospects look bleak, populist and ethnic nationalist narratives gain appeal. As instability rises, investment dries up, and development cycles down. When armed conflicts persist, societies reach perilous tipping points. And as governance grows weak, terrorists get stronger, seizing on the vacuum.”
International Law Has Always Been ‘Questioned’
Global geopolitical wars and ethnonationalistic sentiments have emboldened governments to dismiss international law and foreign policy. Or, so it seems. Inderjeet Parmar, Professor of International Politics at the City University of London’s Department of International Politics said that the situation is much more complex than that.
International law has always been “questioned” within international politics, Parmar said. He argues that the Westernization of international organizations have left the West able to “impose” a liberal international order on less powerful, developing nations.
“The laws themselves have not been followed by the states which developed the liberal international order in the first place. In the last few years, there has been a growth of nationalism and greater level of rivalry between nationalisms which has a tendency to undermine international agreements, international institutions, and so on.
“It probably has intensified over the last few years,” continued Parmar, “but this isn’t the first time international law has been violated.”
“A very good example is the Korean War between 1950 and 1953, which occurred at the very beginning of the so-called international liberal order. The way in which weapons were used against civilians, how prisoners of war were treated, whether or not the war was conducted through the United Nations properly, and whether it followed the UN constitution process, as well as the American constitution process were all fought right outside of all the newly-formed international laws that governed the new order.
‘International Law is Really a Reflection of Who Has Power’
“International law is really a reflection of who has power. Law and power are fundamentally connected,” Parmar said.
Barring international wars of the past century, one major symptom of the twenty-first century breakdown of international law is the plight of journalists worldwide. On October 2, 2018, one of the most prominent and outspoken journalists in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world, Jamal Khashoggi, disappeared after walking into the Turkish consulate in Istanbul. He was there to retrieve documents legalizing his marriage to his Turkish fiancée. Saudi Arabia would later admit to his murder and dismemberment.
Khashoggi faced the plight of many journalists worldwide from Somalia, Nigeria, Brazil and China to the US, Malta, and many other locations, who are persecuted, imprisoned, disappeared and murdered outside the jurisdiction of international law, without international intervention calling for justice and protection.
Upholding International Law is Still Vital
Parmar insists that international law, when followed, is “necessary.”
“The air we breathe, the transport we use, the food we eat, and everything else are so closely integrated now. There has to be some kind of international laws just to have a normal life. Therefore, international bodies have developed,” Parmar said, adding that “at the same time, the power distributions determines which laws are followed by whom. Usually, this serves the interest of the most powerful.”
“If you look at the history of the laws of war, which goes back a long way, but particularly back to the nineteenth century, international rules were to govern the behaviour of military forces in wars between civilized states. Civilized states were considered to be the Western states. For the rest of the world, there were no rules protecting them. In a lot of ways, that imperialist, racialized position, is what pertains today as well: that is, international law can be violated in weak states where there are a lot of non-Western people who are casualties.
The Big Conundrum of International Law
“Protection from power is supposed to be through law, but the people who enforce the law are the ones with the power. That is the big conundrum of international law,” Parmar explained.
Another significant challenge to the breakdown of international law is the difficult nature of its enforcement. Parmar, who recently published an article titled: ‘Transnational Elite Knowledge Networks: Managing American Hegemony in Turbulent Times‘ contends that powerful nations cannot be made subject to international law unless there is a “world government” with enough militarized power to enforce the law.
Even then, it must be noted that a world government with such a powerful military presence would not be immune to abuses of power on a global level, neither would it be immune from global political problems either.
“The liberal international order is a product of imperial powers. They were former colonial powers. Even during the period of the formation of the United Nations in 1945, colonial powers continued to govern globally. The liberal international order was simply a replacement for what could not be tolerated any longer by most people in the world, either at home or abroad, which was colonial domination,” Parmar said.
“In effect, those powers trying to manage that change at the time were the ones establishing the new order, and they embedded their own powers into that order. These ex-colonial imperial powers set up international bodies in order to maintain their power, but without the colonial label. Colonialism and racism have been fundamental to the international system for five hundred years now.”
In another article, ‘Global Power Shifts, Diversity and Hierarchy in International Politics‘, Parmar examines that demand for greater diversity within international relations and in the representation of emerging global powers in international institutions.
Greater representation and engagement with developing nations within international institutions could effectively counteract the imperialist ethos of those institutions. But the nature of power and international law means that this would likely never be enough.