[News] End of empathy: Did the Gaza genocide render the UN irrelevant?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 End of empathy: Did the Gaza genocide render the UN irrelevant?
By Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012>

Saturday 16-November-2024 -
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Francesca Albanese did not mince her words. In a strongly worded speech at
the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee on 29 October, the UN
Special Rapporteur deviated from the typical line of other UN officials.
She directed her statements to those in attendance.

“Is it possible that after 42,000 people killed, you cannot empathize with
the Palestinians?” Albanese said in her statement about the need to
“recognize (Israel’s war on Gaza) as a genocide”. “Those of you who have
not uttered a word about what is happening in Gaza demonstrate that empathy
has evaporated from this room,” she added.

Was Albanese too idealistic when she chose to appeal to empathy which, in
her words, represents “the glue that makes us stand united as humanity”?

The answer largely depends on how we wish to define the role being played
by the UN and its various institutions; whether its global platform was
established as a guarantor of peace, or as a political club for those with
military might and political power to impose their agendas on the rest of
the world?

Albanese is not the first person to express deep frustration with the
institutional, let alone the moral collapse of the UN, or the inability of
the institution to effect any kind of tangible change, especially during
times of great crises.

The UN’s own Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, himself had accused the
executive branch of the UN, the Security Council, of being “outdated”,
“unfair” and an “ineffective system”.

“The truth is that the Security Council has systematically failed in
relation to the capacity to put an end to the most dramatic conflicts that
we face today,” he said, referring to “Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine”. Also,
although noting that “The UN is not the Security Council”, Guterres
acknowledged that all UN bodies “suffer from the fact that the people look
at them and think, ‘Well, but the Security Council has failed us.’”

Some UN officials, however, are mainly concerned about how the UN’s failure
is compromising the standing of the international system, thus whatever
remains of their own credibility. But some, like Albanese, are indeed
driven by an overriding sense of humanity.

On 28 October, 2023, mere weeks after the start of the war, the Director of
the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights left his
post because he could no longer find any room to reconcile between the
failure to stop the war in Gaza and the credibility of the institution.

“This will be my last communication to you,” Craig Mokhiber wrote to the UN
High Commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk. “Once again we are seeing a
genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears
powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber added.

The phrase “once again” may explain why the UN official made his decision
to leave shortly after the start of the war. He felt that history was
repeating itself, in all its gory details, while the international
community remained divided between powerlessness and apathy.

The problem is multi-layered, complicated by the fact that UN officials and
employees do not have the power to alter the very skewed structure of the
world’s largest political institution. That power lies in the hands of
those who wield political, military, financial and veto power.

Within that context, countries like Israel can do whatever they want,
including outlawing the very UN organizations that have been commissioned
to uphold international law, as the Israeli Knesset did on 28 October when
it passed a law banning UNRWA from conducting “any activity” or providing
services in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

But is there a way out?

Many, especially in the Global South, believe that the UN has outlived its
usefulness or needs serious reforms.

These assessments are valid, based on this simple maxim: The UN was
established in 1945 with the main objectives of the “maintenance of
international peace and security, the promotion of the well-being of the
peoples of the world, and international cooperation to these ends.”

Very little of the above commitment has been achieved. In fact, not only
has the UN failed at that primary mission, but it has become a
manifestation of the unequalled distribution of power among its members.

Though the UN was formed following the atrocities of WWII, now it stands
largely useless in its inability to stop similar atrocities in Palestine,
Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere.

In her speech, Albanese pointed out that, if the UN’s failures continue,
its mandate will become even “more and more irrelevant to the rest of the
world”, especially during these times of turmoil.

Albanese is right, of course, but considering the irreversible damage that
has already taken place, one can hardly find a moral, let alone rational
justification of why the UN, at least in its current form, should continue
to exist.

Now that the Global South is finally rising with its own political,
economic and legal initiatives, it is time for these new bodies to either
offer a complete alternative to the UN or push for serious and irreversible
reforms in the organization.

Either that or the international system will continue to be defined by
nothing but apathy and self-interest.

*-Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is
a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global
Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). *
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