UNSC – Asia Pacific Report https://asiapacificreport.nz Independent Asia Pacific news and analysis Tue, 15 Jul 2025 13:10:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 UN expert advocates peacekeeper path to break Israel’s siege on Gaza https://asiapacificreport.nz/2025/07/15/un-expert-advocates-peacekeeper-path-to-break-israels-siege-on-gaza/ Tue, 15 Jul 2025 11:40:22 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=117346 COMMENTARY: By Bruce King

Almost two months ago, a UN special rapporteur, Dr Michael Fakhri, penned an opinion article in The Guardian newspaper warning that “if aid doesn’t enter Gaza now, 14,000 babies may die.”

“UN peacekeepers must step in,” he added.

Dr Fakhri is the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food and an associate professor of international law at the University of Oregon.

His article came 15 days after a long list of UN experts — including Dr Fakhri and beginning with the outspoken Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese — published an extraordinary joint statement declaring: “End unfolding genocide or watch it end life in Gaza: UN experts say States face defining choice.”

The joint statement said humanity was descending into “a moral abyss”, and Dr Fakhri decried the response so far of nations as “slow and ghastly”.

On the other hand, he praised the individuals who “mobilise and enforce international law through their own hands”, particularly the Gaza Freedom Flotillas and the land marchers attempting to reach the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.

Dr Fakhri appears to consider the deployment by the UN General Assembly of UN Peacekeepers as the only feasible option that is practical and also fast enough and vigorous enough to properly address the gravity of the situation in Gaza.

Many others have expressed similar sentiments. For instance, just days after The Guardian article, Ireland’s Labour Party asked the Irish government “to use every lever at its disposal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza through a UN-mandated peacekeeping force”.


Dr Fakhri makes his case for UN peacekeepers action.       Video: Badil Resource Centre

As another example, DAWN, a group promoting democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa has long advocated for UN Peacekeepers for Gaza and has just started a petition.

Dr Michael Fakhri
Dr Michael Fakhri . . . deployment by the UN General Assembly of peacekeepers is the only feasible option that is practical and fast enough for saving Gaza. Image: UN

DAWN’s petition may have been timed to influence the “emergency summit”
on the crisis being held today and tomorrow in Bogota, Colombia. It is co-hosted by Colombia and South Africa and will be attended by representatives from more than 30 nations and prominent actors such as Albanese.

A crucial point is that Dr Fakhri and others have explained how the UN General Assembly can rapidly deploy a UN Peacekeeping Force for this purpose. This is important because of the widespread, but erroneous, belief that only the UN Security Council — the UN’s other main legislative organ — can authorise UN peacekeeping missions.

Arab League calls for UN peacekeepers . . . but officials wrongly say it is up to UNSC to make the call
Arab League calls for UN peacekeepers . . . but the subheading in this report wrongly says it is up to UNSC to make the call. Image: NYT screenshot

An example of this falsehood being spread by the corporate news media is shown by this New York Times claim.

Whereas all UN member states are equally represented in the General Assembly, the Security Council is dominated by its five permanent members — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, and France — with each having the power to veto all proposals.

But the US is actively supporting Israel’s activities in occupied Palestine, and it would surely block any such peacekeeping initiative if submitted to the Security Council. This leaves it up to the UN General Assembly to organise any UN Peacekeeping Force for Gaza.

As indicated by Dr Fakri, the founding UN Charter of 1945 provides for the General Assembly to step in to restore peace where the Security Council has failed in its primary responsibility to act.

Relevant sections of the UN Charter.
Relevant sections of the UN Charter.

As shown above, primary responsibility was given to the Security Council under the UN Charter for practical reasons only, “to ensure prompt and effective action”.

Formal protocols for the General Assembly to take over from the Security Council were added in 1950, in what is widely referred to as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution. It explicitly provides the option of setting up an armed force, as shown below.

The Uniting for Peace resolution.
The Uniting for Peace resolution, 1950.

As also shown, Uniting for Peace resolutions are addressed in Emergency Special Sessions of the UN General Assembly. These can be called within 24 hours and from a request by any member state. To be passed, a resolution requires a two-thirds majority of the states that voted either for, or against, the resolution.

Historically, the very first UN Peacekeeping force was set up in this way in response to the Suez Crisis of 1956-7 — see below. Those UN Peacekeepers oversaw the prompt retreat from Egypt of Israel and of the Security Council permanent members, Britain and France. Eventually, in 1957 they were present for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza itself, then a protectorate of Egypt.

UN General Assembly resolutions setting up the first UN Peacekeeping Force in 1956.
UN General Assembly resolutions setting up the first UN Peacekeeping Force in 1956.

Returning to the current circumstances, Dr Fakhri says that if a UN peacekeeping force is formed then Israel’s permission is not required for its deployment in Gaza.

The actual main impediment to the success of the plan may come from covert bullying of UN member nations by the US and Israel. As explained by prominent law professor Francis Boyle: “The US government will bribe, threaten, intimidate and blackmail all members of the UN General Assembly not to [act against] Israel.”

Dr King is a physicist researching topics in renewable energy, with an interest in humanitarian issues.

]]> Analyst condemns US ‘utter isolation’ after fifth Israel veto at UN Security Council https://asiapacificreport.nz/2025/06/05/analyst-condemns-us-utter-isolation-after-fifth-israel-veto-at-un-security-council/ Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:10:35 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=115677 Asia Pacific Report

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, has highlighted the growing isolation of the United States at the United Nations over its defiant stance over Gaza.

He emphasised the contrast between Washington’s support for Israel and mounting global criticism, with 14 members of the UNSC voting for a resolution calling for an immediate permanent and unconditional ceasefire.

Even close allies like the UK voted for the resolution 14-1 and condemned the American position, suggesting that the US has acted as a dam blocking ceasefire resolutions five times since October 23.

But, Bishara said, that barrier was beginning to crack — the US was “utterly isolated”, Al Jazeera reports.

With rising international and domestic pressure, he sees a swelling current of opposition that may soon challenge US policy at the UNSC.

The acting US Ambassador, Dorothy Shea, blamed the crisis on the Palestine resistance movement Hamas and said Israel was “defending Gaza from Iran”, a stance ridiculed by Bishara.

The US vetoed the UNSC resolution calling for a permanent and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, the release of captives and the unhindered entry of aid.

It was the fifth time since October 2023 that the US has blocked a council resolution on the besieged Strip.

‘No surprise’
In remarks before the start of the voting, Acting Ambassador Shea made the US opposition to the resolution, put forward by 10 countries on the 15-member council, painfully clear, which she said “should come as no surprise”.

“The United States has taken the very clear position since this conflict began that Israel has the right to defend itself, which includes defeating Hamas and ensuring they are never again in a position to threaten Israel,” she told the council.

Washington was the only country to vote against the measure, while the 14 other members of the council voted in favour.

A Hamas statement said: “This arrogant stance reflects [the US] disregard for international law and its complete rejection of any international effort to stop the Palestinian bloodshed.”


US isolated in UN Security Council.             Video: Al Jazeera

‘Human abattoir’
Meanwhile, former UN Palestine relief agency UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness slammed the Israeli-US aid operation as turning Gaza into a “human abattoir”, or slaughterhouse.

He was condemning the four distribution sites operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

“Hundreds of civilians are herded like animals into fenced-off pens and are slaughtered like cattle in the process,” Gunness told Al Jazeera.

The GHF announced two full day’s closure on Wednesday, saying that operations would resume after the completion of maintenance and repair work on its distribution sites.

This come after Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians seeking aid, killing at least 27 people and injuring about 90, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

The former UN official cast doubt on the reason for the suspension, saying its work had been halted “because it has rightly sparked international outrage and condemnation”.

]]> Israel’s planned expulsion of UNRWA – time for UN to walk the talk and invoke Security Council action https://asiapacificreport.nz/2025/01/15/israels-planned-explusion-of-unrwa-time-for-un-to-walk-the-talk-and-invoke-security-council-action/ Wed, 15 Jan 2025 10:48:20 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=109406 COMMENTARY: By Chris Gunness

‘In Gaza, only UNRWA has the infrastructure to distribute aid to scale, such as vehicles, warehouses, distribution centres and staff. However, Israeli authorities are making this extremely difficult,’ writes Chris Gunness.

In the last week of January, two Knesset bills ending Israel’s “cooperation” with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are scheduled to come into force.

If they do, UNRWA’s activities in the territory of the state of Israel would be illegal under Israeli law and any Israeli official or institution engaging with the agency would be breaking the law.

In a letter to the president of the General Assembly in October, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, revealed he had written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging his government to take the necessary steps to avoid the legislation being implemented.

He also expressed concern that these laws would harm UNRWA’s ability to deliver life-saving services in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

This provoked a detailed response from Israel’s UN Ambassador in New York, Danny Dannon, who responded laying out Israel’s strategic planning pursuant to the Knesset bills.

UNRWA to be expelled from Jerusalem
Much about Israel’s strategy was already known, for example its plan to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza and deliver services through a combination of other UN agencies, such as the World Food Programme (WFP) along with the Israeli military and private sector companies.

Dannon made clear that the occupying authorities plan to take over UNRWA facilities in Jerusalem.

According to UNRWA’s website, these include 10 schools, three primary health clinics and a training centre. Students would likely be sent to Israeli schools for the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem, whose curricula have been subject to “Judaisistation” in contravention of Israel’s international humanitarian law obligations to the occupied population.

There is also a major question mark over UNRWA’s massive headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah.

The UNRWA compound, which contains several huge warehouses for humanitarian goods, has been subjected to arson attacks in recent months, which forced it to shut down.

And, even before the two bills were passed on October 28 last year, several Knesset members demanded that water and electricity to the facility should be cut off and the agency expelled.

There have even been reports that Israel’s Land Authority will seize the UNRWA headquarters and turn it over to illegal Jewish settlers for 1440 housing units, in blatant breach of Israel’s international law obligations.

Nonetheless, it seems UNRWA’s Jerusalem HQ may be shut down in the face of Israeli threats, violence and pressure. Staff are being told to relocate to offices in Amman as a result of a performance review and UNRWA says its Jerusalem HQ was only ever temporary.

But a recent communication from UNRWA to its donors makes clear that the agency is ceding to Israeli intimidation: “While the review of HQ functions has been underway for a number of years, the review and decision has been fast-tracked as a result of the administrative and operational challenges experienced by the agency throughout 2024, including visa issuance, visa duration and lack of issuing diplomatic ID cards.

“These challenges have inhibited our effectiveness to work as a Headquarters in Jerusalem.”

De facto annexation
If UNRWA is expelled from East Jerusalem, this would have potentially devastating impact on over 63,000 Palestinian refugees who depend on its services.

Moreover, it would have profound political significance, particularly for the global Islamic community because it would set the seal on Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem, home to Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam.

It would also be a violation of the ruling last July by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanding that the occupation ends.

The annexation of Jerusalem as the “eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish state” which began with the occupation in 1967, would become another illegal fact on the ground.

Crucially, Jerusalem will have been unilaterally removed from whatever is left of the Middle East Peace Process.

Arab governments, particularly Saudi Arabia and Jordan, must therefore act now, and decisively, to save their holy city. The loss of Jerusalem will undoubtedly provoke a violent reaction among Palestinians and likely lead to calls for jihad more widely. In the context of an explosive Middle East this can only engender further destabilising tensions for governments in the region.

I therefore call on Saudi Arabia to make the scrapping of the Knesset legislation a precondition in the normalisation negotiations with Israel. The Saudi administration must make this clear to Netanyahu and insist that for Muslims, Jerusalem is sacrosanct, and that the expulsion of UNRWA is a step too far.

The Trump transition team has already been warned of the looming catastrophe if Israel is allowed to destroy UNRWA’s operations, and I urge Arab leaders to insist with their Saudi interlocutors that the regional fallout from this feature prominently in the normalisation talks.

Lack of contingency planning
Meanwhile, the senior UN leadership has adopted the position that the responsibility to deliver aid is Israel’s as the occupying power. To the consternation of UNRWA staffers, substantive inter-agency discussions across the humanitarian system about a UN-led day-after plan have effectively been banned.

For Palestinians against whom a genocide is being committed, this feels like abandonment and betrayal — a sense compounded by suspicions that UNRWA international staff may be forced to leave Gaza at a time of mass starvation.

Similar conclusions were reached by Dr Lex Takkenberg, senior advisor with Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), and other researchers who have just completed an as yet unpublished assessment of the implications of Israel’s ban on UNRWA, based on interviews with a large number of UNRWA staff and other experts.

Their study confirms that with the lack of contingency planning, the suffering of the Palestinian population, particularly in Gaza, will increase dramatically, as the backbone of the humanitarian operation crumbles without an alternative structure in place.

Contrary to UNRWA, Israel has been doing a great deal of contingency planning with non-UNRWA agencies such as WFP, which are under strong US pressure to take over aid imports from UNRWA. As a result, the amount of aid taken into Gaza by UNRWA has reduced significantly.

In Gaza, only UNRWA has the infrastructure to distribute aid to scale, such as vehicles, warehouses, distribution centres and staff.

However, Israeli authorities are making this extremely difficult. They claim to be “deconflicting” aid deliveries, but according to UN sources there is clear evidence that Israeli soldiers are firing on vehicles and allowing criminal gangs to plunder convoys with impunity.

Thus Israeli officials are able to say to journalists whom they have barred from seeing the truth in Gaza, that they are allowing in all the aid Gaza needs, but that UNRWA is unfit for purpose. This lie has gone unchallenged in the international media.

Further implications
According to Takkenberg, “Mr Guterres’s strategy of calling on Israel as the occupying power to deliver aid has backfired and is inflicting untold suffering on the Palestinians.

“The strategy also feels misplaced, given that Israel is accused of genocide in the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, and is facing expulsion from the UN General Assembly”.

He adds that Israel “has exploited the UN’s strategy as part of its campaign of starvation and genocide.”

In the face of this, I call on the Secretary-General to mobilise the UN system. He has said repeatedly that UNRWA is the backbone of the UN’s humanitarian strategy, that the agency is indispensable and key to regional stability.

It is time for the UNSG to walk the walk.

He must use his powers under Article 99 of the UN charter, granted precisely for these circumstances, to call the Security Council into emergency session and make his demand that the Knesset legislation must not be implemented the top agenda item. The General Assembly which gives UNRWA its mandate must also be called into session.

Though Guterres faces huge pressure from Israel’s powerful allies, he must stand up on behalf of a people the UN is mandated to protect and double down on those who are complicit in genocide.

The UN’s policy in Gaza along with acceptance of Jerusalem’s annexation with impunity for Israel, has major implications for its credibility and I confidently predict it will lead to further attacks by Israel on other UN agencies, such as the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which has long been an irritant to the Tel Aviv administration.

The de facto annexation of Jerusalem will also see an erosion of the international rule of law.

In its advisory opinion in July last year, the ICJ concluded that Israel is not entitled to exercise sovereign powers in any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory on account of its occupation. In addition, the expulsion of UNRWA would be in violation of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which obliges Israel as a signatory, to cooperate with UN Agencies such as UNRWA.

The UN’s historic responsibility to the Palestinians
Already, through its attack on UNRWA Israel is attempting unilaterally to remove the Palestinian refugees, their history, their identity and their inalienable right of return from the peace process.

As I have argued many times, this will fail. So must Israel’s unilateral attempt to take Jerusalem off the negotiating table by expelling UNRWA and completing its illegal annexation of the city.

That would see the international community and the UN abandoning its historic responsibilities to the Palestinian people and can only lead to further suffering and instability in a chronically unstable Middle East. The Muslim world must act decisively and swiftly. The clock is ticking.

Chris Gunness served as UNRWA’s Director of Communications and Advocacy from 2007 until 2020. This article was first published in The New Arab.

]]> UN overwhelmingly backs immediate Gaza ceasefire – but 3 Pacific nations vote against https://asiapacificreport.nz/2024/12/12/un-overwhelmingly-backs-immediate-gaza-ceasefire-but-3-pacific-nations-vote-against/ Thu, 12 Dec 2024 09:18:36 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=108143 Asia Pacific Report

The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to demand an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip — but three of the isolated nine countries that voted against are Pacific island states, including Papua New Guinea.

The assembly passed a resolution yesterday demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which was adopted with 158 votes in favour from the 193-member assembly and nine votes against with 13 abstentions.

Of the nine countries voting against, the three Pacific nations that sided with Israel and its relentless backer United States were joined by Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.

The other countries that voted against were Argentina, Czechia, Hungary and Paraguay.

Thirteen abstentions included Fiji, which had previously controversially voted with Israel, Micronesia, Palau. Supporters of the resolution in the Pacific region included Australia, New Zealand, and Timor-Leste.

In a separate vote, 159 UNGA members voted in favour of a resolution affirming the body’s “full support” for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

UNRWA has been the target of diplomatic and financial attacks by Israel and its backers — which have baselessly accused the lifesaving organisation of being a “terrorist group” — and literal attacks by Israeli forces, who have killed more than 250 of the agency’s personnel.

Nine UNGA members opposed the measure — including Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Tonga — while 11 others abstained. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, while General Assembly resolutions are not, and are also not subject to vetoes.

The US has six times vetoed Security Council resolutions in favour of a ceasefire in the past 14 months.

The UN votes yesterday took place amid sustained Israeli attacks on Gaza including a strike on a home sheltering forcibly displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah that killed at least 33 people, including children, local medical officials said.

This followed earlier Israeli attacks, including the Monday night bombing of the al-Kahlout family home in Beit Hanoun that killed or wounded dozens of Palestinians and reportedly wiped the family from the civil registry.

“We are witnessing a massive loss of life,” said Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, reports Common Dreams.

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