Strengthening the UN? For what purpose?

France and Brazil had different reactions to US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, although ostensibly pointing towards the same outcome. France rejected the invitation, stating that it would undermine the UN framework. Brazil asked the US to limit the Board of Peace to Gaza and to include Palestine. Recently both French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Lula da Silva called for strengthening the UN. France, however, was one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council that voted for Resolution 2803.

France, however, would do better to explain why it voted for a resolution it knew would undermine the UN. Brazil would do well to remember that the so-called Board of Peace is founded upon the impunity of an ongoing genocide. Both France and Brazil are playing a role in Israel’s genocidal impunity. The obfuscation that politics has become makes it hard to define allegiances, but no one can deny that both France and Brazil’s stances do not reflect concern for Palestinians and Palestine.

Strengthening the UN and adhering to the UN mandate do not automatically translate into Palestinian rights. The UNSC resolution relinquished power to the US. If the UN was truly serving its purpose, the resolution wouldn’t have passed. Not even the 1947 Partition Plan would have passed if the UN was truly upholding its charter. Throughout the decades, the UN has wrongly been associated with international legitimacy, human rights and the possibilities of recourse, when its trajectory spells collusion with international law violations, war crimes and genocide. At this point the UN doesn’t need strengthening as much as it needs decolonising from its roots.

The focus on strengthening the UN is only happening because the US under Trump risks disrupting a comfortable status quo. Without the Board of Peace, the UN would be serving the interests of former colonial powers that still decide where foreign intervention should take place and which states should fail in the name of democracy. When it comes to Israel, the same former colonial powers would still be protecting ethnic cleansing, colonialism and genocide, in their national capacity and under the auspices of the UN.

What is inferred by strengthening the UN? What sort of power is envisaged? More of the power that rests in complicitly turning a blind eye to genocide? If world leaders who refuse to join the Board of Peace continue to turn a blind eye to UN complicity in Israeli colonial expansion and violence, it is merely a choice between two varying institutions prioritising and maintaining international law violations.

For decades, Palestinians have been asked to refer to the UN, prior to the Board of Peace. For decades, the UN turned Palestinians into fodder for Israeli colonialism. The Board of Peace is building upon the UN’s legacy. If world leaders opposed to Trump’s plan aim to strengthen the UN in terms of its own role in managing and maintaining colonial violence, Palestinians have no choice between one option and another. The bottom line is that institutions strengthen themselves for their own relevance and survival; if the Board of Peace constitutes a threat, one can only imagine that Palestinians will suffer even more as a result of vying for power.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260129-strengthening-the-un-for-what-purpose/