Reflecting on a Lifelong Devotion to the United Nations System
Disillusionment with the United Nations System
It's been almost five years since the start of the pandemic that led to my growing disenchantment with the United Nations system, a system to which I had dedicated my life as both a scholar and a senior insider.
My Work and the United Nations
My book titled "The United Nations, Peace and Security" was published in 2006 and then revised and updated in 2017. It has received over 1,000 citations on Google Scholar. In the concluding chapter, I argued that the UN's challenge was to reconcile realism with idealism, to balance the world as it is with the idealised vision of a better world that humanity strives for. However, the World Health Organisation's handling of the novel coronavirus in 2020 betrayed both realism and idealism. The WHO trampled on fundamental human rights principles and may have caused more long-term public health harm worldwide than it helped to prevent or mitigate.
Questioning the Science and Data Behind Global Warming
Another consequence of my disenchantment was a fresh look at the science and data behind the global warming and climate change agenda. I began to question the reliance on assumption-driven modelling, the fear-mongering, the numerous failed alarmist predictions, and the concerted efforts to silence, suppress, censor and defund contrarian and dissenting research and voices.
Concerns about International Criminal Justice Institutions
The third aspect of my disillusionment relates to the institutions of international criminal justice. Here too, I see the arrogance of professional international elites and technocrats leading them to usurp the powers of sovereign states to make calculated policy trade-offs. To understand why, we need to go back almost 20 years to when the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued the first dramatic arrest warrant for a sitting head of state. Will this be the third strike that leads to a rejection of global governance?
Clarifying the Position of this Article
Not Taking Sides in the Israel-Palestine Conflict
It's important to note that this article does not take a position on the merits of the Israel-Palestine conflict or on the Gaza war per se. The moral arguments on both sides are deeply ingrained and revolve around the belief that reparations for the European genocide against Jews were paid in Palestinian currency, versus the right of Israel to exist as the Jewish homeland, a right earned through the lives of millions of Jews exterminated in the Holocaust.
Focusing on ICC Overreach
Rather, the main concern of this article is the overreach of the ICC against the backdrop of the displacement of sovereign states as the proper locus of policy trade-offs from the range of competing goals, interests, and values. As power has been centralised more in the executive office of the head of government even in democratic regimes, are we comfortable now to transfer this centralisation of power to unelected and unaccountable international technocrats?
Looking Back at the First Prosecutor of the ICC
Retelling the First Case
In retelling the first case, I rely entirely on two publicly accessible documents, available on the websites of the ICC itself and the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ILO Tribunal adjudicates more than 150 employee-employer conflicts annually involving 60 intergovernmental organisations, including the ICC, covering around 60,000 international civil servants.
The ILO Judgment
In Judgment No. 2757 handed down in 2008, the Tribunal ruled on an appeal by the ICC Public Information Adviser Christian Palme of Sweden against summary dismissal by the first ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. The majority of the judgment, as we shall see, was not favourable to the prosecutor or to the ICC judges.
Nuanced Initial Support for and of the ICC
Early Advocates of Universal International Criminal Justice
The 2008 ILO decision is relevant to current events for two reasons. First, it explains why some early advocates of universal international criminal justice who had welcomed the creation of the ICC began to have serious doubts about it. The judgment helped change my mind on the threat-benefit equation regarding the ICC. The arrest warrants against Israel’s PM and former defence minister have turned the 2009 disillusionment into outright opposition.
The ICC Ventures Once More into the Vortex of the High Politics of War
On 7 October 2023, Israel suffered the worst attacks on Jews since the Holocaust. Its war in Gaza in retaliation has put Israel in the dock both at the World Court, which adjudicates inter-state disputes, and the ICC, which deals with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Bottom Line
Damaging the International Criminal Justice Project
The absence of world government means that the World Court and the ICC depend on the UN Security Council for enforcement action. But the P5-dominated Security Council reflects the power structure of 1945 and is dangerously misaligned with the current distribution of power in the real world. It is also the supreme political organ of the UN system.
The blowback effects of criminal convictions of state leaders that remain unenforced damage the credibility, authority, and legitimacy of the courts themselves. The challenge to the ICC’s authority has only intensified in the decade since then.
What are your thoughts on this matter? Do you think the ICC is overstepping its boundaries? Share this article with your friends and sign up for the Daily Briefing which is every day at 6 pm.
