Original text of an article by Alain Alameddine on the Middle East Monitor
Israel's holocaust of Gaza over the past 9 to 10 months has brought a number of questions to the fore regarding what is commonly called the international community. How is it allowing this to happen? Why have the United Nations not been able to stop the genocide? Are international courts powerless? Are all these institutions actually neutral and justice-driven?
A common response is that so-called "international institutions" and "international law" are imperfect or corrupted. A number of scholars, however, challenge this view. Ralph Wilde, an academic and expert in public international law, posits that far from being a tool of liberation, international law is actually "the Master's tool". Emilio Dabed, a lawyer specializing in constitutional matters, explains that far from being imperfect, the international order is actually working "exactly as intended": Not to end wars, but to make sure they serve imperial and colonial interests. Indeed, examining the origin, design and laws of these institutions reveals their colonial purpose; and shows the way to go.
"International institutions" with a colonial purpose
The origin of international institutions reveal their purpose. For example, the concept of international tribunals first originated after the so-called First World War and implemented after the so-called Second World War. Of course, the first of these wars was not a world war but a European war. The second was also really a war of the global North's colonial powers rather than a "world" war—the role of the Global South in it was mostly limited to being a battlefield or providing soldiers for the "Commonwealth" (yet another misleading colonial term). This is not incidental. The Eurocentrism and colonialism behind these words are relevant to our discussion: Why was the establishment of international tribunals never proposed while Europeans colonized, enslaved and genocided most of the rest of the world over hundreds of years? Why was it only proposed and implemented when colonial powers attacked other colonial powers? The origin of these institutions points to their real purpose: Protecting the colonizers from each other rather than protecting the world from the colonizers.
The design of so-called international institutions reveals the same purpose. For example, the United Nations (a name based on the European nation-state model) grants the "right" of veto to its five "permanent members" which means nothing can work if any of these five objects. This structure protects the colonial powers from each other and the rest of the world, rather than protecting the rest of the world from them. The UN was actually established as a confrontation and negotiation arena for the five victors of the second "world" war, to the detriment of all other societies in the world. For example, Zionism openly stated that it was a colonial endeavor, but since the five world powers recognized Israel as a legitimate state, it cannot legally be held liable for being a colonial endeavor. Colonial institutions (let's call them what they are) legitimize colonialism.
International tribunals were designed the same way. For example, although all member states of the UN are party to the International Court of Justice and subject to its decisions, the colonial powers that set it up decided that it cannot enforce its decisions and that only the UN can—provided, of course, none of the five vetoed such enforcement. A recent case of this is the 2022 ruling "binding" Russia to immediately suspend its military operations in Ukraine, which was simply not enforced.
To give another example: The US, Russia and China are not parties to the International Criminal Court, which means it has no jurisdiction over them. By design, this means that any country joining the ICC would be liable to it but would not be protected by it from war crimes by any of these three world powers. The result is that almost all of the 57 persons the ICC indicted are black or brown (in case you were wondering, war criminals like Bush or Blair who killed one million Iraqi civilians aren't among the few white people on the list). Such tribunals give an impression of stability and security—the illusion that we don't live in a jungle. The reality is that their rulings do not depend on superior moral values but on the outcome of confrontations and negotiations between colonial powers. They do not affect change by imposing anything on colonial powers but rather reflect the existing current balance of power between them.
International laws also reveal colonial intent. For example, Article 51 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians prohibits "indiscriminate attacks", which includes employing "a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective". This is of course perfectly legitimate. Yet, freedom fighters can rarely obtain accurate weapons such as those owned by colonial powers, and the Convention does not attempt to present national liberation movements with a way out of this (it actually doesn't even take note of this asymmetry). The result is that a rudimentary Palestinian rocket thrown in the general direction of an Israeli colony is more liable of constituting a crime than a US 2000-pound bomb thrown by Israel at an alleged Palestinian freedom fighter and killing dozens of civilians as "collateral damage" since the former is technically much more "indiscriminate" than the latter.
Another striking indicator is the answer to the question: Is settler colonialism a crime against humanity? The Rome Statute of the ICC, widely considered to be the reference with regard to crimes against humanity, lists a number of such crimes. Settler colonialism is not one of them. Although some elements of settler colonialism such as deportation or extermination of civilians are listed as crimes against humanity, other key components of settler colonialism aren't: Affecting the migration of a foreign civilian population to supplant the indigenous population, armed occupation, land and house appropriation and attacking and eliminating a country's defense forces for the purpose of colonizing its land—staggeringly, none of these are listed as crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, the Rome Statute makes absolutely no distinction between civilians residing in their own homes and civilians taking part in settler colonization, protecting both colonized and colonizers equally (!). This means that a houseowner is more entitled to use force against a burglar attempting to steal a TV (as per local law) than against settler mobs that have robbed the whole house (as per international law). Even more mindboggingly, this means that settlers deliberately robbing the homes of natives who have fled are not criminals, but that houseowners attempting to take back their homes from the settlers are!
How do we free ourselves from this colonial world order?
Understanding the colonial reality of this world order helps us not lose hope when it fails to deliver justice, since we were not expecting it to in the first place. This doesn't mean we cannot use them while they exist, such as using media coverage to bring attention to Israel's nature as a settler colonial entity. Understanding that such institutions are confrontation arenas between states also helps us pick our battles wisely: Instead of taking non-actions like waiting or hoping for favorable decisions, we work to affect the balance of power within these states to alter the course of negotiations and help impose favorable decisions. This includes organizing to affect the power balance, particularly organizing in political movements to rise to power in these states—"playing politics instead of making demands", to quote Ilan Pappe—and actually be there at the negotiation table. It also reveals the importance of the arenas of confrontation that were chosen by the freedom fighters, not the world's powers. In the case of Palestine, for example, this would include armed resistance, direct action, boycott, debunking hasbara and the fight to reclaim the narrative.
Our discourse is also something we should pay particular attention to. The fact that these tools are part of an oppressive world order should be reflected in our narrative. For example, the oft-mentioned UNGA resolution 194 with regard to the Palestinian right of return can easily be used to deny the right of return: it states "refugees wishing to return home and live at peace with their neighbors" have the right to return or to compensation. By these standards, Israel could argue (and has argued) that most Palestinians have no right to return because they support the armed resistance which is in contradiction with "living in peace with their neighbors". Actually, the mere mention of the right of return "as per a UN resolution" legitimizes the same institution that suggested partitioning Palestine in the first place. Instead, let us legitimize indigenous sovereignty and universal values of morality by focusing on natives' right to go back home and exercise sovereignty in their land, and on the world's moral duty to support that right.
The longer-term objective must be, not to learn how to deal with the colonial world order, but to work to dismantle it. This includes wondering about the alternative. Many propose the democratization of the United Nations which could solve the bias toward colonial powers. This would require understanding how exactly the power differential is in these powers' favor, determining what kind of policies and arrangements are needed to do away with this differential, and working to reach power in our home countries in order to be able to impose this democratic alternative.
On the other hand, such democratization, even if successful, would still not be a panacea. The concept of a worldwide body with jurisdiction over its members fundamentally implies a limitation of state sovereignty, giving free rein to neoliberal and identitarian influences within societies. This is what happened in Syria, Iraq and Sudan, among others: Dismantling the state led to societal fragmentation on sectarian grounds, which suppressed society's immunity to foreign interference, leading to violence, even civil wars. The actual solution would have been transitions of power from these dictatorial régimes to truly democratic ones while preserving state structure and legitimacy, thereby protecting society from both foreign interference and sectarian breakup. This is a feat that cannot be undertaken by other powers but only by local democratic political movements.
The establishment of such democratic forces to break up colonial relations of power in our home countries, both in the global North and the global South, thus seems to be the first step in freeing humankind from colonial institutions. This means that individuals longing for freedom throughout the world must join, or form, such democratic movements that are aware of the danger and pervasiveness of colonialism. They would also need to recognize the intrinsic role that capitalism and the politicization of identity plays in colonialism. Rather than copy/pasting rigid leftist doctrines, they would need to be able to master conceptual tools taught and developed by the revolutionary and decolonial Left over the past two centuries while developing the capacity for a critical analysis of reality and of change. And instead of limiting their interests to their own societies, they would need to build relations with other similar movements, if only in their regions—Colonialism is global, and so must the fight against it be.
