Credibility of world bodies at stake

The UN is crippled systemically through the systematic use in the Security Council of the veto powers resting with the five economic powers of the world holding permanent seats - the US, the UK, France, Russia and China. With a single swish of veto baton by any one member is written the fate of a whole country or nation, despite the overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly votes in favour of peace and justice.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, an intergovernmental organisation consisting of 57 member states, 48 of which are Muslim majority, despite its tall claims to be "the collective voice of the Muslim world" and to "safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony" is incapacitated, owing to parochial economic stakes and disunity in the Muslim world, to counter Israeli nefarious designs against Palestine.

For instance, in the joint summit of the Arab League and the OIC in 2023, the UAE and Bahrain opposed the move of imposing punitive economic and political measures against Tel Aviv; Pakistan didn't join South Africa in its petition in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Nowhere else could the paralysis of the Muslim world be starker than in the case of Israeli atrocities in Gaza: 57 vs 01 (US veto power); 57 vs 01 (Israel). All that silhouetted the Muslim organisations as nonentities on the global political landscape.

South Africa, which was then working under the apartheid system, remained suspended from 1974 to 1994 from the UN General Assembly "in the light of the constant violation of the principles of the Charter". On 29th December 2023, South Africa lodged a case against Israel in the ICJ, called the World Court, invoking the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip. South Africa alleged that Israel contravened the Genocide Convention in her 75-year apartheid, 56-year occupation, and 16-year blockade of the Strip.

Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer who formerly worked for the UN, said: "The UNGA should move at once to suspend Israel, ... to combat Israel's apartheid and gross violations of human rights, just as it did in South Africa." He added that no country had more consistently violated the principles of the UN Charter than Israel.

The court, however, neither gave any ruling on the genocide nor issued any orders binding Israel to suspend its military campaign. Israel, emboldened by the US-sponsored nonliability, rejected all claims of genocide and didn't follow any of the court's provisional measures to discourage Israel from perpetrating any acts contrary to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Gaza has exposed the selective humanitarianism and hypocrisy of the UN and Western world. When Russia attacked Ukraine, the global response was quick and potent. Resolutions were footed with unprecedented speed. The whole of Europe and the US imposed sanctions on Russia, and delivered weapons and mobilised humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Israel's Western allies, including EU, maintained silence on the ICJ case against Israeli genocide. The UK refused to support the ICJ case but it had joined the chorus in ICJ against Myanmar for committing genocide against the Rohingya community.

Similarly, the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002 to prosecute crimes against humanity, is yet to issue a single indictment or warrant for Israeli leaders despite ample documentation of war crimes. In contrast stands the ICC's hasty issuance of arrest warrants against Putin over the Ukraine war. World bodies lose their credibility if they wear political blinders.

Whether it is a matter of selective empathy or global power hierarchies, in either case, the institution's credibility depletes, making Gaza not the graveyard of its innocent people but rather of the UN's moral standing (impotence) in the 21st century claiming to be the acme of maturity and civilisation of human consciousness.

World bodies lose their credibility if they wear political blinders. When institutions hold their own principles and manifestos as relics or vestiges, they pose as being complicit with the evil and the tyrant.