UNs

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, has taken aim at states complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, calling for a new multilateralism that will prevent it from happening again in future.

Albanese presented her new report – “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime” – to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, addressing delegates remotely from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa.

Israel had, she said, left Gaza “strangled, starved, shattered”. Her report, which examines the role of 63 states in Israel’s actions in both Gaza and the West Bank, calls out the multilateral system for “decades of moral and political failure” in a colonial world order sustained by a global system of complicity”.

“Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have harmed, founded and shielded Israel’s militarised apartheid, allowing its settler colonial enterprise to metastasise into genocide, the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine,” she said.

Genocide had been enabled, she said, through diplomatic protection in international “fora meant to preserve peace”, military ties ranging from weapons sales to joint trainings that “fed the genocidal machinery”, the unchallenged weaponisation of aid, and trade with entities like the European Union, which had sanctioned Russia over Ukraine yet continued doing business with Israel.

The 24-page report analyses how the “live-streamed atrocity” was facilitated by third states, zooming in on how the United States provided “diplomatic cover” for Israel, using its veto power at the UN Security Council seven times and controlling ceasefire negotiations. Other Western nations had collaborated, it said, with abstentions, delays and watered-down draft resolutions, reinforcing “a simplistic rhetoric of ‘balance’”.

Many states had, it said, continued supplying Israel with arms, “even as the evidence of genocide … mounted”. The report noted the hypocrisy of the US Congress passing a $26.4bn package for Israeli defence, just as Israel threatened the Rafah invasion – supposedly a “red line” for the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

The report also points a finger of blame at Germany, the second-largest arms exporter to Israel during the genocide, with supplies ranging from “frigates to torpedoes”, and the United Kingdom, which has allegedly flown more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza since war broke out in October 2023.

While acknowledging the “complexity of regional geopolitics”, the report also highlighted the complicity of Arab and Muslim states through US-brokered normalisation deals with Israel.

It points out that mediator Egypt maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing” during the war.

Albanese said the UNGA should have confronted the “dangerous precedent” of sanctions imposed on her earlier this year by the United States over her criticism of Israel’s actions in Palestine, which had prevented her from travelling to New York in person.

“These measures constitute an assault on the UN itself, its independence, its integrity, its very soul. If left unchallenged, these sanctions will drive yet another nail into the coffin of the multilateral system,” she said.

The Gaza genocide “exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest”, said the report.

Speaking at the UNGA, the special rapporteur called for a new form of multilateralism, “not a facade, but a living framework of rights and dignity, not for the few … but for the many”.

Action taken in the past against South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Portugal and other rogue states had, she said, shown that “international law can be enforced to secure justice and self-determination”.

The UN chief says he values China’s support, where he is attending the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that China supports the global organisation playing a central role in international affairs and that it upholds “true multilateralism”, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

Xi shared this message with Guterres on Saturday as the UN chief visited China to attend the 2025 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

China will remain a reliable partner of the UN, President Xi added.

For his part, Guterres told Xi: “The support of China…is an extremely important element to preserve.”

The 25th SCO summit and the “SCO Plus” meeting will be held on Sunday and Monday in northern China’s Tianjin, showcasing Global South solidarity.

The high-level gathering comes amid rising geopolitical tensions, including Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its escalating assault on the occupied West Bank, security tensions in South Asia and the Asia Pacific region, notably between Thailand and Cambodia, and United States President Donald Trump’s global trade war.

As the rotating chair, Xi will preside over the summit, which marks the fifth annual SCO summit hosted by China.

Leaders from more than 20 countries and heads of 10 international organisations will attend the summit.

Among the participants will be Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masood Pezeshkian and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Xi will also meet Erdogan on the sidelines of the crucial summit.

The summit’s agenda includes promoting the “Shanghai Spirit”, improving internal mechanisms, and fostering multilateral cooperation in areas such as security, economics and culture.

A joint signing of the new Tianjin Declaration and the approval of a strategy for the next decade are other expected outcomes.

The summit will issue statements marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in World War II against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the 80th founding anniversary of the UN, aside from adopting a string of outcome documents on strengthening security, economic, people-to-people and cultural cooperation.

Founded in 2001, the SCO is a political and security alliance comprising 10 members: China, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.

The Chinese leader will also host Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a large-scale military parade on September 3 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia.

SEOUL, Aug. 20 (UPI) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un‘s influential sister repeated her dismissal of Seoul’s outreach efforts, state media reported Wednesday, saying that South Korea “cannot be a diplomatic partner.”

Kim Yo Jong “sharply criticized the essence of the deceptive ‘appeasement offensive'” by the administration of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

“We have witnessed and experienced the dirty political system of the ROK for decades,” Kim told North Korean Foreign Ministry officials during a meeting on Tuesday, using the official acronym for South Korea.

“The ambition for confrontation with the DPRK has been invariably pursued by the ROK, whether it held the signboard of ‘conservatism’ or wore a mask of ‘democracy,'” Kim said.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

Kim’s remarks come as the United States and South Korea are holding their annual summertime Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercise. The 11-day exercise began Monday and includes live field maneuvers, computer simulation-based command post exercises and related civil defense drills. Some 21,000 troops, including 18,000 South Korean personnel, are participating this year.

President Lee has stressed that the drills are defensive in nature and has made a series of overtures to North Korea since taking office in June in an effort to improve strained ties.

In a speech Friday marking the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, Lee vowed to “respect” North Korea’s political system and said Seoul would not pursue “unification by absorption.”

“We have no intention of engaging in hostile acts,” Lee said. “Going forward, our government will take consistent measures to substantially reduce tensions and restore trust.”

Kim called Lee’s defensive characterization of the joint military exercise “gibberish” and said his administration’s “stinky confrontational nature is swathed in a wrapper of peace.”

“Lee Jae Myung is not the sort of man who will change the course of history,” she added.

The Blue House, South Korea’s presidential office, responded to Kim’s comments Monday, calling them “regrettable.”

“The Lee Jae Myung administration’s preemptive measures for peace on the Korean Peninsula are not self-serving or for the benefit of one side, but rather are for the stability and prosperity of both South and North Korea,” the office said in a statement. “It is regrettable that North Korean officials are misrepresenting and distorting our sincere efforts.”

Kim Yo Jong has made multiple public statements in recent weeks dismissing Seoul’s rapprochement efforts, which include removing its anti-Pyongyang propaganda loudspeakers from border areas inside the DMZ.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday said the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise demonstrated the allies’ “will to ignite a war” and called for the rapid expansion of Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities

Rome Statute signatories Italy, France and Greece accused of ‘violating’ international legal order by letting alleged war criminal fly over territory.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, has hit out at countries that allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fly over their airspace en route to the United States, suggesting that they may have flouted their obligations under international law.

Albanese said on Wednesday that the governments of Italy, France and Greece needed to explain why they provided “safe passage” to Netanyahu, who they were theoretically “obligated to arrest” as an internationally wanted suspect when he flew over their territory on his way to meet United States President Donald Trump on Sunday for talks.

All three countries are signatories of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, which last year issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated during Israel’s war on Gaza.

“Italian, French and Greek citizens deserve to know that every political action violating the int’l legal order, weakens and endangers all of them. And all of us,” Albanese wrote on X.

Albanese was responding to a post by human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, who had said the previous day that the countries had “breached their legal obligations under the treaty [Rome Statute], have declared their disdain for the victims of genocide, and have demonstrated their contempt for the rule of law”.

Netanyahu’s visit to the US, during which he and Trump discussed the forced displacement of Palestinians amid his country’s ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, was not his first sortie since the ICC issued the warrant for his arrest.

In February, Netanyahu travelled to the US, which is not party to the Rome Statute, becoming the first foreign leader to meet Trump after his January inauguration.

Then, in April, Netanyahu visited Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban in Budapest, the latter having extended his invitation just one day after the ICC issued the arrest warrant, withdrawing the country’s ICC membership ahead of the Israeli leader’s arrival.

From Hungary, Netanyahu then flew to the US for a meeting with Trump, his plane flying 400km (248 miles) further than the normal route to avoid the airspace of several countries that could enforce an arrest warrant, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

Member states of the ICC are expected to take subjects of arrest warrants into custody if those individuals are on their territory.

In practice, the rules are not always followed. For instance, South Africa, a member of the court, did not arrest Sudan’s then-leader Omar al-Bashir during a 2017 visit, despite an ICC warrant against him.

European Union countries have been split on the ICC warrant issued for Netanyahu.

Some said last year they would meet their ICC commitments, while Italy has said there were legal doubts. France has said it believes Netanyahu has immunity from ICC actions.