– What UN Secretary-General António Guterres is doing now is forcing the Security Council to take a position on right and wrong in an ongoing war.
– This means that the pressure on the USA and the UK will increase. And it is the two countries in the Security Council that still give the green light to Israel’s warfare in the midst of Gaza’s civilian population.
This is what Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, tells NRK.
It was on Wednesday that UN Secretary-General António Guterres took the unusual step of writing a letter to the UN Security Council in accordance with article 99 of the UN Charter.
In doing so, Guterres pressed the biggest alarm button he has, triggering something he has never done before as Secretary-General.
This is so unusual that it has only happened explicitly in the UN twice before.
Humanitarian disaster
This alarm gives the Secretary-General the opportunity to draw the Security Council’s attention to “any matter which, in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.
The war in Gaza is now doing that, says Guterres.
– We are facing a serious risk of a collapse in the humanitarian system. The situation is rapidly deteriorating and is about to become a disaster with potentially irreversible consequences, both for the Palestinians and for peace and security in the region, says the letter to the 15 Security Council countries.
Guterres is now asking the Security Council to work to avert a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and is calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.
Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council believes it is important that the Secretary-General of the UN sounds the alarm about the situation in Gaza, but is unsure whether it will help.
Photo: Wakil Koshar / AFP
He gets full support from Egeland in the Norwegian Refugee Council.
– What is happening in Gaza is a bloodbath among completely innocent civilians. After two months of war, there are as many dead children there as after two years of war in Ukraine, says Egeland.
He believes it is essential to put pressure on the US and the UK as Guterres is doing, but is unsure what will actually come of it.
The war in the Gaza Strip has taken a particularly hard toll on children. Here injured children in Khan Younis in the south.
Photo: Reuters
Rare item
In a speech to the Security Council a month into the war, Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour quoted former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who said in 1954: “The UN was not created to bring humanity to heaven, but to save us from hell.”
Mansour added: – Saving humanity from hell today means, for the UN, saving the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip
It was precisely the Swedish Secretary-General who in his time was the first to adopt Article 99 in the Security Council. Hammarskjöld thought it was necessary because Congo crisis in 1960. A period of power struggles and major unrest in the first Republic of the Congo, the former Belgian Congo.
The second time a Secretary-General explicitly used this tool was in 1979 in connection with Iran’s occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran and the hostage-taking of diplomats.
– Explicit use of Article 99 is very rare, which shows how alarming the situation in the Gaza Strip is, says Gentian Zyberi, professor at the Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo.
Gentian Zyberi, who is a professor at the Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo, believes that the use of Article 99 shows how serious the situation in Gaza is.
Photo: Christian Grieg Sander / NRK
– This is a last attempt by the UN Secretary-General to get the Security Council to adopt a more long-term or permanent humanitarian ceasefire. That is what he is trying to achieve by this.
Zyberi is more skeptical about whether he will succeed.
– It may put pressure on the member states of the Security Council to take a position, but I cannot say whether that will happen. I don’t hold out much hope, after watching them drag their feet while the death toll has only increased.
Underlines the seriousness
Jørgen Jensehaugen at the Peace Research Institute PRIO agrees that the rare article underlines the seriousness of the situation.
– This tells us how incredibly precarious the situation is in Gaza. Precarious both in how extensive the use of violence is, and how extreme the humanitarian situation is. And that this is a specific UN disaster in the sense that it is the war for I don’t know how long that most UN employees have been killed. This is also a territory where a UN organization is by far the largest provider of humanitarian aid, he says.
Before the war, almost 80 percent of Gaza’s population needed international humanitarian aid, mainly from the United Nations.
– The second thing it tells us is the deep desperation over the paralysis of action in the Security Council, says Jensehaugen.
Jørgen Jensehaugen, who is a senior researcher at the peace research institute Prio, is not optimistic about truce now.
Photo: Robert Rønning / NRK
With its right of veto in the Security Council and support for Israel’s warfare, the US holds the key in this deadlocked situation, he believes. But even if Article 99 is a dramatic move, he doubts that it will have a decisive effect on American policy.
– Unfortunately, it will not change anything, but it will put more pressure on the United States. What is happening in Gaza is so ugly and brutal, and it is so obviously happening with American weapons and support.
– It is difficult to say where the pain threshold for this support is, but I think we should think of Article 99 as another tongue in the balance, but not necessarily the decisive one.
Pessimism about solution
Jensehaugen does not have much hope of an immediate halt to the hostilities. The political situation in Israel is too complex for that, while support from the United States does not seem to be waning for the time being.
– I don’t see what can change Israeli policy at the moment. There are so many factors that point in the direction of them doing exactly what they want here, he says, and elaborates:
– One is the Hamas attack in its total brutality and magnitude. Not only was there such a high death toll, but if you think about what Israel’s DNA is, namely to protect Jews, and that this was the biggest single attack since the Holocaust, this has totally challenged the entire identity of the state. The idea is that this must be answered for, this can never happen again.
An Israeli soldier in a burned house in Kibbutz Beeri, where at least 130 people were killed by Hamas on October 7.
Photo: Reuters
In addition, the attack took place in a context where Israel’s most far-right government ever existed, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in danger of ending up in prison if the government collapses.
– He is dependent on the support of the far-right, and the signals from there are that you have to keep the war going, otherwise the government is finished, says Jensehaugen.
He also sees no sign that support for the war from the United States is diminishing, despite the fact that more and more Arab-American voters say they will not be able to vote for President Joe Biden in next year’s election.
Perhaps this is something that will eventually be able to put more pressure on the government, but Jensehaugen is not at all sure.
– You can’t even get Israel to stop bombing. I am terribly pessimistic. And I don’t think realistically Netanyahu has an endgame here.
USA with the key
Apart from a resolution in the Security Council, there are certain other ways of putting pressure on Israel.
– But it is difficult to actually imagine. Sanctions can be turned on, if there is political will. But it is not realistic that it will happen or that Israel will allow itself to be pressured.
– It is also possible to have clearer international legal system mechanisms, but Israel has not recognized any of those courts, so it will not help here, says Jensehaugen.
Netanyahu is under political pressure. It can make the war more difficult to end.
Photo: Reuters
– I still think that Article 99, even if you don’t see a consequence of it, is an important step for a Secretary-General to make, to show that the world cares, and that the UN should play the role the UN is intended to play. That you keep this not only on the agenda, but at the top of the agenda.
Also, Secretary General Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council believes that the US and Great Britain hold the key to a ceasefire, but seem unwilling to use it.
– Both the American and British national assemblies look like they are still unwavering in their support for Israel. Regardless of what Israel actually does to children, women and other innocents in Gaza, says Jan Egeland.
When the UN’s alarm button doesn’t work, what needs to be done?
– Benjamin Netanyahu’s war machine does not listen to pressure from the world. It is only if the USA turns back its arms aid to Israel that a ceasefire will be pushed forward. This is what it all boils down to, Egeland believes.
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2023-12-08 10:15:22
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