The Board of Peace, War, and Impunity

There has been so much discussion recently about the end of the “rules based order” that I hardly dare touch the topic, for fear of sounding utterly repetitive. But, for our Inside Geneva podcast, it really is a must.

When President Trump unveiled his “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, there were shivers at UN headquarters in New York. What was this new creature? Devised as we know by a man who has regularly complained that the UN is ineffective, and whose advisers refer to international law as unnecessary “niceties”.

Could this be a threat to, even a replacement for, the UN itself? Some of the coverage of the Board of Peace pointed out that the UN, at least the conflict prevention and resolution side of it, has been pretty ineffective recently. The UN security council, where the US, China, and Russia all have vetoes, and are all vying for global dominance, has been paralysed on Ukraine, and on Gaza.

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But what about Geneva? This city is home to the UN’s humanitarian agencies, and, arguably, they are still functioning, trying to bring some relief to people caught up in conflicts the security council has so disappointingly failed to resolve. These agencies are battling with savage funding cuts, many of them a direct result of Washington’s new policies. The agencies are struggling on, but just last week, a letter emerged, from UN secretary general Antonio Guterres to member states, warning that the United Nations was facing “financial collapse.”

The new Board of Peace, though, does not really address humanitarian issues in its charter. It makes no mention of human rights, nor does it seem to recognise a fundamental principle of the UN charter; that member states are not allowed to attack or invade one another.

New Jersey golf club

Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group tells Inside Geneva he is “befuddled” by the Board of Peace. UN watchers like Gowan had been waiting since November for details of President Trump’s new venture, but were expecting it to focus on peace-building in Gaza. Instead, when the Board was unveiled in Davos, it had become, Gowan says, “a global conflict prevention organisation, complete with a pre-baked charter that looks a bit like President Trump took the protocols for a golf club in New Jersey.”

Yes, Gowan, whose own organisation specialises in conflict prevention and best practices for sustainable peace-building, does not have high hopes for the Board of Peace. “I don’t really think this is a credible international institution that will have the capacities of the UN” he says, but adds “I do think that it is a very worrying signal for the UN.”

That’s because the UN itself is suffering, Gowan believes, “a real crisis of confidence.” The optimism of the post cold war years, the years when the UN hosted multilateral meetings on climate change, on women, when the landmine convention and the international criminal court came into being, has evaporated. Despite his best efforts, the UN Secretary General cannot persuade the big powers on the security council to work together for the good of humanity.

International law flouted

What’s more, as our second guest on Inside Geneva this week tells us, international law, the rules we created after the second world war to protect us from our worst instincts, is increasingly being abandoned.

Stuart Casey-Maslen, professor at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law, has this week published War Watch, International Humanitarian Law in FocusExternal link. The report warns that “international humanitarian law is at critical breaking point, as rampant impunity for grave violations increasingly undermines the legal framework designed to protect civilians, with consequences that risk destabilising the global order.”

Although Casey-Maslen reminds us that international law has never been wholly respected, and that member states have always tended to prioritise their national interests over the global good, he tells Inside Geneva “what I think is new is the extent to which it’s {international law} being flouted.”

What’s more, the institutions designed to uphold the law are being undermined; President Trump’s administration has sanctioned judges on the International Criminal Court. Casey-Maslen fears this is “a political decision rather than simply a legal one: respect for the law.”

Haiti – a job for the UN?

An interesting chapter in the War Watch report defines the unrest in Haiti, in which armed gangs are terrorising the population, as a non-international armed conflict. That means, Casey-Maslen says, that the rules of war apply. Haiti, he points out, is a signatory to the ICC, it could now join, and get investigators to start “looking at what is going on.”

And Haiti is where the doubts about the Board of Peace and the growing impunity for violations collide. While Washington has publicly been touting the Board as the great new contribution to conflict resolution, privately, it has been urging the UN to get more involved in resolving Haiti’s conflict. A sign, both Gowan and Casey-Maslen believe, that the US knows there are some things only the UN has the experience and capacity to do.

And, let’s not forget, the Board’s peace-making abilities remain entirely untested, however well meaning.  But, frankly, the invitations to indicted war criminals like Vladimir Putin to join it, and the price tag of $1 billion to become a permanent member call into question quite how well meaning this Board really is.

It’s original key goal, to bring peace and reconstruction to Gaza, seems to have been forgotten. Civilians are still being killed there, no re-building is taking place. Instead, we have seen an investor pitched power point presentation showing a Dubai/Disney scape which will be unrecognisable to Gazans who might still fondly hope to restore the homes they knew and loved.

So which international institution has the brightest future – the brand new Board of Peace, or the eight-decade old United Nations?

Richard Gowan is looking to the candidates for UN secretary general (Antonio Guterres steps down at the end of this year) to revive and inspire the UN.

And the Board? “I do think that for all the fuss and bother” he says, “there is a very real scenario where all that happens is the US will announce that it is establishing a headquarters for the board of peace, probably that will be in Florida, and there will be lots of gold.”

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