International

The US has seized a vessel in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, US officials have told BBC News partner CBS.

It is the second time this month that the US has seized a ship off the country’s coast.

The move comes after US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was ordering a “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

Venezuela has not yet responded to the latest US seizure, but has previously accused Washington of seeking to steal its oil resources.

The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.

The operation was led by the US Coast Guard, similar to the operation earlier this month, CBS reports. The ship was boarded by a specialised tactical team.

In recent weeks, the US has been building up its military presence in the Caribbean Sea and has carried out deadly strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats, killing around 100 people.

The US has provided no public evidence that these vessels were carrying drugs, and the military has come under increasing scrutiny from Congress over the strikes.

The US has accused Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro of leading a designated-terrorist organisation called Cartel de los Soles, which he denies.

The Trump administration accuses him of and the group of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping”.

Venezuela – which is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves – is highly dependent on revenues from its oil exports to finance its government spending.

Trump’s announcement of a “blockade” came less than a week after the US seized an oil tanker believed to be part of the “ghost fleet” off the coast of Venezuela, which allegedly used various strategies to conceal its work.

The White House said the vessel in question, called the Skipper, had been involved in “illicit oil shipping” and would be taken to a US port.

Venezuela’s government decried the move, with Maduro saying the US “kidnapped the crew” and “stole” the ship.

European farmers are protesting against the EU-Mercosur deal.

That is as signing has been postponed until January, due to disagreements in Europe.

The European-South American deal, planned for more than 25 years, would create the world’s largest free-trade zone.

So, why is there division?

Presenter: Folly Bah Thibault

Guests:

Pieter Cleppe – Editor-in-chief at BrusselsReport.eu
Ciaran Mullooly – Member of the European Parliament for the Independent Ireland group
Gustavo Ribeiro – Founder and editor-in-chief of the Brazilian Report online newspaper

EU delays Mercosur trade deal until January amid farmer protests and opposition from France and Italy.

The European Union has delayed a massive free-trade deal with South American countries amid protests by EU farmers and as last-minute opposition by France and Italy threatened to derail the agreement.

European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho confirmed on Thursday that the signing of the trade pact between the EU and South American bloc Mercosur will be postponed until January, further delaying a deal that had taken some 25 years to negotiate.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was expected to travel to Brazil on Saturday to sign the deal, but needed the backing of a broad majority of EU members to do so.

The Associated Press news agency reported that an agreement to delay was reached between von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – who spoke at an EU summit on Thursday – on the condition that Italy would vote in favour of the agreement in January.

French President Emmanuel Macron had also pushed back against the deal as he arrived for Thursday’s summit in Brussels, calling for further concessions and more discussions in January.

Macron said he has been in discussions with Italian, Polish, Belgian, Austrian and Irish colleagues, among others, about delaying the signing.

“Farmers already face an enormous amount of challenges,″ the French leader said.

The trade pact with Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay would be the EU’s largest in terms of tariff cuts.

But critics of the deal, notably France and Italy, fear an influx of cheap commodities that could hurt European farmers, while Germany, Spain and Nordic countries say it will boost exports hit by United States tariffs and reduce reliance on China by securing access to key minerals.

Brazil’s President Lula says Italy’s PM Meloni asked for ‘patience’

The EU-Mercosur agreement would create the world’s biggest free-trade area and help the 27-nation European bloc to export more vehicles, machinery, wines and spirits to Latin America at a time of global trade tensions.

Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said Germany, Spain and the Nordic countries were “all lobbying hard in favour of this deal”. But ranged against them were the French and Italian governments because of concerns in their powerful farming sectors.

“Their worry being that their products, such as poultry and beef, could be undercut by far cheaper imports from the Mercosur countries,” Kane said.

“So no signing in December. The suggestion being maybe there will be a signing in mid-January,” he added.

“But there must now be a question about what might happen between now and mid-January, given the powerful forces ranged against each other in this debate,” he added.

Mercosur nations were notified of the move, a European Commission spokeswoman said, and while initially reacting with a now-or-never ultimatum to its EU partners, Brazil opened the door on Thursday to delaying the deal’s signature to allow time to win over the holdouts.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Italy’s Meloni had asked him for “patience” and had indicated that Italy would eventually be ready for the agreement.

The decision to delay also came hours after farmers in tractors blocked roads and set off fireworks in Brussels to protest the deal, prompting police to respond with tear gas and water cannon.

Protesting farmers – some travelling to the Belgian capital from as far away as Spain and Poland – brought potatoes and eggs to throw and waged a furious back-and-forth with police while demonstrators burned tyres and a faux wooden coffin bearing the word “agriculture”.

The European Parliament evacuated some staff due to damage caused by protesters.

Brazilian president says it is now or never after Italy joins France in saying it is not ready to sign trade deal.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has warned he may abandon a long-awaited trade deal between members of the South American bloc Mercosur and the European Union after key countries sought a delay.

The Brazilian leader issued the threat on Wednesday after Italy joined fellow heavyweight France in saying it was not ready to commit to the pact to create the world’s biggest free-trade area.

The EU had expected its 27 member states to approve the deal in time for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to fly to Brazil to sign an agreement with the host, along with Mercosur partners Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, on Saturday.

“I’ve already warned them: If we don’t do it now, Brazil won’t make any more agreements while I’m president,” Lula told a cabinet meeting.

“We have given in on everything that diplomacy could reasonably concede.”

‘Premature’ to sign: Meloni

The deal, more than two decades in the making, has been keenly backed by economic powerhouse Germany, along with Spain and the Nordic countries, amid rising Chinese competition and recent United States tariffs, which have increased the incentive to diversify trade.

It would allow the EU to export more vehicles, machinery, spirits and wine to Latin America, and more beef, sugar, rice, honey and soya beans to flow in the opposite direction.

France, eager to protect its agriculture industry, had already called for a delay on a vote to approve the deal, and gained the support necessary to potentially block the agreement when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Wednesday that Rome was also not ready.

“It would be premature to sign the deal in the coming days,” she told parliament, saying that some of the safeguards Italy is seeking on behalf of farmers were yet to be finalised.

She said Italy did not seek to block the deal altogether, and was “very confident” that her government’s concerns would have been addressed to allow it to be signed early next year,

French President Emmanuel Macron told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that his government would “firmly oppose” any attempts to force through the deal.

Hungary and Poland are also lukewarm on the agreement.

By contrast, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday he would push “intensively” for the bloc to approve the deal by the year’s end, in what he described as a test of the EU’s “ability to act”.

EU reaches agreement on agricultural safeguards

In an effort to allay some of the concerns, the EU struck a provisional deal on Wednesday to set tighter controls on imports of farm products, amid a background of farmer protests against the deal.

It determined the trigger for launching an investigation into such imports if import volumes rose by more than 8 percent per year or prices fell by that amount in one or more EU members.

EU leaders will discuss the matter at a Brussels summit on Thursday, a commission spokesman said.

Paris says EU member states cannot vote on the trade agreement in its current state.

France has urged the European Union to postpone a vote on a trade deal with the South American bloc Mercosur, saying conditions are not yet in place for an agreement.

In a statement from Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office on Sunday, Paris said that EU member states cannot vote on the trade agreement in its current state.

“France asks that the deadlines be pushed back to continue work on getting the legitimate measures of protection for our European agriculture,” the statement added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is due to visit Brazil on Monday to finalise the landmark trade pact, which the 27-member union has been negotiating with the Mercosur trade bloc for more than 20 years. The agreement is being negotiated with four Mercosur members: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

But the Commission first has to get the approval of the EU member states before signing any trade deal, and Paris has made its objection to the deal with the Mercosur countries clear.

“Given a Mercosur summit is announced for December 20, it is clear in this context that the conditions have not been met for any vote [by states] on authorising the signing of the agreement,” the statement from Paris said.

Earlier on Sunday, in an interview with the German financial daily Handelsblatt, French Minister of the Economy and Finance Roland Lescure also said that the treaty as it stands, “is simply not acceptable”.

He added that securing robust and effective safeguard clauses was one of the three key conditions France set before giving its blessing to the agreement.

He said the other key points were ensuring that the same production standards that EU farmers face are implemented and proper “import controls” are established.

Farmers in France and some other European countries say the deal will create unfair competition due to less stringent standards, which they fear could destabilise already fragile European food sectors.

“Until we have obtained assurances on these three points, France will not accept the agreement,” said Lescure.

European nations are expected to vote on the trade pact between Tuesday and Friday, according to EU sources.

The European Parliament will also vote on Tuesday on safeguards to reassure farmers, particularly those in France, who are fiercely opposed to the treaty.

The EU is Mercosur’s second-largest trading partner in goods, with exports of 57 billion euros ($67bn) in 2024, according to the European Commission.

The EU is also the biggest foreign investor in Mercosur, with a stock of 390 billion euros ($458bn) in 2023.

If a trade deal is approved later this month, the EU-Mercosur agreement could create a common market of 722 million people.

Incident in November latest reported instance of Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive maritime tactics.

United States forces raided a cargo ship travelling from China to Iran last month, according to the Wall Street Journal, in the latest reported instance of increasingly aggressive maritime tactics by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Unnamed officials told the newspaper that US military personnel boarded the ship several hundred miles from Sri Lanka, according to the report on Friday. It was the first time in several years US forces had intercepted cargo travelling from China to Iran, according to the newspaper.

The operation took place in November, weeks before US forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela earlier this week, citing sanctions violations. It was another action Washington has not taken in years.

US Indo-Pacific Command did not immediately confirm the report. An official told the newspaper that they seized material “potentially useful for Iran’s conventional weapons”. However, the official noted the seized items were dual-use, and could have both military and civilian applications.

Officials said the ship was allowed to proceed following the interdiction, which involved special operation forces.

Iran remains under heavy US sanctions. Neither Iran nor China immediately responded to the report, although Beijing, a key trading partner with Tehran, has regularly called the US sanctions illegal.

Earlier in the day, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun condemned the seizure of the oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, which was brought to a port in Texas on Friday.

The action came amid a wider military pressure campaign against Venezuela, which Caracas has charged is aimed at toppling the government of leader Nicolas Maduro.

Beijing “opposes unilateral illicit sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law or authorisation of the UN Security Council, and the abuse of sanctions”, Guo said.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday the Trump administration would not rule out future seizures of vessels near Venezuela.

AN ‘international’ railway station has revealed its £1million refurbishment.

Harwich International train station in north-east Essex is technically international despite having no trains actually go to Europe from the station.

That’s because it is located near Harwich International Port, a major cruise and ferry terminal with a number of daily sailings to the Netherlands.

Through September, Greater Anglia carried out work on the roof of the station, as well as improving lighting, the staircases and station entrance areas.

The entire train station was also repainted.

Andrew Goodrum, from Greater Anglia, said: “These improvements make a significant difference to the overall passenger experience.

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“The station is now brighter, more modern and more welcoming, while our new energy-efficient lighting reduces our carbon footprint.”

Each year, over 100,000 journeys start or end at the station.

The station serves some local destinations such as Harwich Town and also travels to London Liverpool Street, where passengers can change and travel on to a number of other destinations including Norwich, Ipswich, Heathrow Airport and Stansted Airport.

A number of other ‘international’ stations in the UK are set to undergo upgrades.

For example, Stratford International Station may see services to Europe in the future for the first time ever.

Virgin Trains is looking to launch high-speed services through the Channel Tunnel in around 2030, competing with Eurostar.

As part of the operators’ plans, it is exploring the potential to use Stratford International to carry out these services.

Virgin Trains was given permission by the UK’s rail regulator (ORR) to use the Temple Mills depot in London – a crucial part of operating international services through the Channel Tunnel.

And they plan to connect London with Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.

Ashford International and Ebbsfleet International used to have international services until Eurostar suspended them in 2020.

Virgin Trains is also looking at how these stations could be used for international rail services.

Major improvements are planned for London St. Pancras as well, which is currently the only major station in the UK used for rail services to Europe.

By 2028, Eurostar wishes to double its capacity at the station, as well as improve security, border control and the main concourse in the station.

If these changes were carried out, then the hourly passenger throughput would rise from 2,000 to around 5,000.

The station is also looking to potentially move the arrivals flow to the upstairs parts of the station.

In other rail news, a world-famous English city is getting a new train station in huge £6.7billion plans.

Plus, the super modern train station in the UK that people say looks like it’s from Alien.

“The summit supported the IOC EB’s recommendation that youth athletes with a Russian or Belarusian passport should no longer be restricted in their access to international youth competitions, in both individual and team sports,” said an IOC statement issued about the summit meeting., external

“The summit participants committed to take these discussions back to their organisations for their consideration. It was recognised that implementation by the stakeholders will take time.

“In addition, the standard protocols of the international federation (IF) or the international sports event organiser regarding flags, anthems, uniforms and other elements should apply, provided that the national sports organisation concerned is in good standing.

“The above principles should apply to the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, and are recommended for adoption by all IFs and international sports event organisers for their own youth events.”

It added: “With its considerations today, the Olympic Summit recognised that athletes, and in particular youth athletes, should not be held accountable for the actions of their governments – sport is their access to hope, and a way to show that all athletes can respect the same rules and each another.”

The statement added that while Russia should still be barred from hosting international events, “this recommendation no longer applies to Belarus”.

The move follows nine Russian and Belarusian athletes being granted permission to compete in qualifying events for next year’s Winter Olympics as neutral athletes following the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned a ban.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israeli fire since the start of the ceasefire has killed at least 377 people.

Hamas has said the ceasefire cannot move forward while Israel continues its violations of the agreement, with Gaza authorities saying the truce has been breached at least 738 times since taking effect in October.

Husam Badran, a Hamas official, called on mediators to increase pressure on Israel to fully implement its existing commitments.

“The next phase cannot begin as long as the [Israeli] occupation continues its violations of the agreement and evades its commitments,” Badran said.

“Hamas has asked the mediators to pressure the occupation to complete the implementation of the first phase,” he added.

The ceasefire, which came into effect on October 10, focused on the exchange of captives held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

But details of the next phase, including Gaza’s future governance, the potential deployment of an international stabilisation force, and the establishment of what has been termed a “board of peace”, remain unresolved.

Meanwhile, anger continues to rise among Palestinians and the international community as Israeli attacks persist. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Israeli attacks since the start of the ceasefire have killed at least 377 people and wounded 987.

Talks progressing, but major challenges remain

A United States official told Al Jazeera Arabic that negotiations on the next phase of the ceasefire are advancing, but key obstacles still need to be overcome.

The official said Washington expects the first deployment of an international stabilisation force to begin in early 2026.

Talks are currently focused on which countries would contribute to such a force, how it would be commanded and what its rules of engagement would be.

It comes as former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair has reportedly been dropped by the “board of peace”, a panel envisioned by the US to oversee redevelopment in Gaza.

The official said the US-backed ceasefire plan, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, clearly stipulates Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’s disarmament.

They added that discussions are under way to form a police force drawn from the local population in Gaza.

The US is also aware of the increasing demands for humanitarian access, the official said, and is working to remove barriers to aid delivery.

Meanwhile, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric responded to a claim by Israeli Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir that the so-called “yellow line”, currently marking Israeli-held territory inside Gaza, constitutes a “new border”.

Israeli forces have remained in about 58 percent of Gaza since a partial withdrawal to the yellow line. Under the ceasefire plan, Israeli forces are meant to withdraw fully from the territory, although there is no timeframe for a withdrawal in the agreement.

More Israeli strikes reported

The Israeli military has launched an air strike and artillery attacks on areas of Khan Younis still under its control. There have been no reports of casualties.

In northern Gaza, the Israeli army has continued building demolitions in Beit Lahiya.

“These actions constitute a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and a deliberate undermining of the essence of the ceasefire and the provisions of its attached humanitarian protocol,” Gaza authorities said in a statement.

Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza has killed at least 70,366 Palestinians and wounded 171,064 since October 2023, according to Gaza health authorities.

At least of 1,139 people were killed during the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli statistics, and more than 200 others were seized as captives.

Russia’s Lukoil has until December 13 to negotiate the sale of most of its international assets following U. S. sanctions and the rejection of Swiss buyer Gunvor. Lukoil’s international assets, which include oil and gas ventures, refining, and over 2,000 gas stations across various regions, are valued at around $22 billion, and any deals must be approved by the U. S. Treasury.

Potential buyers for Lukoil’s assets include major U. S. oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the Abu Dhabi International Holding Company, Austrian investor Bernd Bergmair, Hungary’s MOL, and U. S. private equity firm Carlyle.

Lukoil’s significant upstream operations in the Middle East include a 75% stake in Iraq’s West Qurna 2 oilfield and a 60% stake in Iraq’s Block 10 development. In Egypt, the company holds stakes in various oilfields alongside local partners. In the UAE, Lukoil has a 10% stake in the Ghasha gas development. In Central Asia, Lukoil owns portions of important oil and gas projects in Kazakhstan and operates fields in Uzbekistan.

In Africa and Latin America, Lukoil holds interests in several offshore oil blocks in Ghana, Congo, Nigeria, and Mexico.

Lukoil also possesses refining assets, including the Neftohim Burgas refinery in Bulgaria, which is the largest in the Balkans. The Bulgarian government has made moves to potentially seize and sell these assets. The U. S. Treasury has allowed some transactions involving Lukoil’s Bulgarian refinery until April 29, 2026. In Romania, Lukoil owns the Petrotel refinery and has about 300 gas stations, with companies reportedly interested in purchasing these assets.

For fuel retail, the U. S. Treasury extended the deadline for transactions involving Lukoil’s gas stations outside Russia to April 29, 2026. Despite this, Lukoil’s Finnish subsidiary Teboil has filed for restructuring and anticipates selling its petrol stations. The Romanian government is also moving to take control of Lukoil’s assets in the country. Lukoil operates around 200 gas stations in the U. S.

U. S. sanctions are dismantling Lukoil’s trading arm, Litasco, causing significant layoffs in its offices worldwide.

With information from Reuters

Chinese exports climb as exporters reroute shipments to other markets amid slump in shipments to the US.

China’s annual trade surplus in goods has topped $1 trillion for the first time, with plunging exports to the United States amid a tariff war more than compensated for by shipments to other markets, new data shows.

Figures released by China’s General Administration of Customs on Monday showed the trade surplus for the first 11 months of the year hit $1.08 trillion in November, as exports climbed 5.9 percent year-on-year that month, reversing a 1.1 percent decline the month prior.

The leap came despite a continued slump in exports to the US, which fell 28.6 percent to $33.8bn last month, the data showed.

Beijing and Washington have been locked in a bitter trade war involving hefty tariffs during the second administration of US President Donald Trump, forcing Chinese exporters to pivot to other markets – although the leaders of the world’s two largest economies agreed to pause the hostilities during a meeting in South Korea in October.

“China’s trade surplus this year has already surpassed last year’s level, and we expect it to widen further next year,” Zichun Huang of Capital Economics wrote in a note.

Huang said the weakness in exports to the US was “more than offset by shipments to other markets”.

Exports were “likely to remain resilient”, Huang added, due to trade rerouting and rising price competitiveness for Chinese goods, as deflation pushed down its real effective exchange rate.

French warnings over surplus

Exports have proven critical to China’s economy as it grapples with a debt crisis in the property sector and sluggish domestic spending, impacting its growth.

But China’s towering trade surplus has rankled leading Western trading partners, with French President Emmanuel Macron the latest to threaten action if the imbalance is not addressed.

Macron, fresh from a state visit to China, in an interview with the French newspaper Les Echos on Sunday, warned that Europe could follow the US in imposing tariffs on Beijing if the surplus were not reduced in the coming months.

Exports to the European Union grew by an annual 14.8 percent last month, while shipments to Australia rose 35.8 percent. Meanwhile, the fast-growing Southeast Asian economies took in 8.2 percent more goods over the same period.

That boosted China’s trade surplus to $111.68bn in November, the highest since June, from $90.07bn recorded the previous month, and above a forecast of $100.2bn.

Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note that November’s rebound of export growth had helped to “mitigate the weak domestic demand”, amid a slowdown in economic momentum being partly driven by weakness in the property sector.

In an indication of China’s weak domestic consumption, new customs data showed that imports rose 1.9 percent on-year in November, less than had been predicted.

After the US government placed sanctions on the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, her life turned upside down.

Credit cards stopped working, she told Al Jazeera. A hotel reservation booked by the European Parliament was cancelled. Medical insurance was denied. For Albanese, the consequences of her work on Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza were not just professional — they were personal, too.

“We are turned into non-persons,” she said at the Doha Forum, calling the sanctions imposed against her “unlawful” under international law.

“But again, for me, it’s important that people understand the extent … the United States, Israel and others would go to silence the voice of justice, the voice of human rights,” Albanese said.

As leaders, diplomats, and legal experts gathered in Qatar’s capital for the Doha Forum this weekend under the theme “Justice in Action: Beyond Promises to Progress”, the crisis in Gaza dominated discussions.

Allegations of genocide against Israel, repeated vetoes blocking UN ceasefire resolutions, and growing pressure on international justice mechanisms have made Gaza a test case for the rules-based international order, raising questions about whether international law is capable of providing justice.

‘Sense of insecurity around me’

According to Albanese’s legal assessments, Israel’s conduct in its war on Gaza constitutes a genocide, a term that prominent human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem have also used.

When announcing the sanctions on Albanese, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused her of waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel”. She says the allegation is baseless.

“I have been subjected to smear campaigns,” she said, adding that US officials have accused her of being an anti-Semite, of supporting violence, and of failing to condemn the crimes committed on October 7 against Israeli civilians.

“It has created a sense of insecurity around me. I have received threats from all corners,” Albanese said.

In addition to targeting Albanese, the US imposed sanctions in August on nine judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC), including two European citizens, after the court began investigating alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

“This is mafia-style intimidation that we are subjected to, just for doing our job,” Albanese noted, warning that sanctions and intimidation of legal experts set a dangerous precedent.

“There will be that pressure [on ICC judges and legal experts] that, if I go on this route, this is going to be scrutinised. This is the idea, to make it impossible for the organisation, for the ICC to work,” she cautioned.

“Imagine that every US person interacting with us, someone who works in the US or is a citizen, could go to jail for up to 20 years. It creates a chilling effect.”

Western hesitance

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged “war crimes”.

The US called the move “outrageous”, and while the United Kingdom and Canada said they would adhere to international law, they did not make clear if they would uphold the warrant.

Many Western countries have not described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and have continued to send the country arms, despite growing allegations of war crimes occurring in Gaza.

Albanese emphasised that nations continuing to transfer arms are failing in their legal obligations.

“They have the obligation to prevent a genocide that has already been recognised as plausible in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice,” she said.

Janine Di Giovanni, co-founder of the Reckoning Project, which documents war crimes in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza, said the position of many Western states reeked of a glaring “double standard”.

“There is one set of laws and rules that pertain to Ukraine … and another set for brown and Black people,” she said, pointing to the ICC’s historical focus on African leaders and the failure of Western powers to hold Israel accountable.

Di Giovanni directed her criticism at European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, saying the former Estonian prime minister had been “negligent” when it came to Gaza.

“She points out over and over again what [Russian President] Putin has done in Ukraine, but not a word about Gaza,” she added.

“She’s the EU foreign policy chief. She has a responsibility to point out Israel’s criminality.”

Is international law still relevant?

With multilateral institutions and the international law system coming under growing pressure from nation-states, Albanese said that international law does work and that “we need to make it work”.

“I often make the example, if a cure doesn’t work, would you trash all medicine? No,” she asserted.

“This is the first genocide in history that has awakened a conscience, a global conscience, and has the potential to be stopped.”

Meanwhile, Reckoning Project’s Di Giovanni said the UN General Assembly could be “activated to work at a higher level and a more effective level than what they’re doing, while the Security Council is blocked”.

“But maybe this shows us that we need to have a greater reform for how the Security Council works,” she said.

Di Giovanni added that it was crucial to address the “extraordinary heinous crimes that Netanyahu and others” have committed, or else it would send a message that “impunity is rampant”.

“Without accountability, there is no global security,” she said.