After Gaza: A Collective Re-assessment

This is the transcript for my YouTube video "After Gaza: A Collective Re-assessment".

I know that the genocide taking place in Gaza seems a long way from ending but I think it’s important that someone starts thinking about what happens after, about what the international community has to do to start to heal the wounds and, more importantly, ensure that when we say “never again” in relation to genocide, we actually mean it.

Along the way, perhaps we can make some improvements to some of the other things that need improving too.

It seems that the first thing we need to do is that we need to look a good long look at international law and the organisations that are meant to enforce them.  Here are my initial thoughts for the work that’s needed:

• We need to revisit the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to update the language, make the wording as inclusive as possible to reflect the modern world so that not a single individual is left out.
• Every State in the world should sign up to the revised Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  It should be mandatory and States that refuse should be subject to sanctions until they do sign up.
• The Genocide Conventions need to have their wording amended so that no State can claim that they do not apply to them.
• The United Nations has been shown to be absolutely unable to fulfil its duty to ensure that genocide never happens again so it must be reformed, dismantled and rebuilt or replaced over time if reform is deemed impossible.  The new UN or its replacement should be tasked with updating, reforming and creating international laws.
• The United Nations Security Council has been shown to be unfit for purpose due to a small number of States having permanent seats on the council and veto power that has stood in the way of holding Israel to account for its genocidal actions (as we have seen with the United States during the Gaza genocide.  The UN Security Council (or whatever replaces it) must dispense with the idea of permanent seats and veto powers offered to such States.
• Every State should accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court as a mandatory requirement of membership of the reformed UN or its replacement.
• Membership of the reformed UN or its replacement should come with benefits for trade and diplomacy and the duty that Human Rights are to be enforced as laid out in the revised Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Any State breaching their duty to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should lose their membership of the UN (or its replacement), their membership benefits and face sanctions in proportion to their Human Rights infractions.
• The ICJ and ICC will, in the short term, be subject to having fewer members from States that looked the other way during Israel’s genocide.
• The ICJ and ICC should be given a multinational force to ensure that their rulings on international issues are followed and international arrest warrants are carried out.
• All external States must remove their military forces from the Middle East and Middle Eastern States must be allowed to conduct their own affairs without external influence.  Trade and diplomatic ties should still be allowed but the Middle East should no longer be allowed to become pawns or victims of political and strategic moves by powers outside the Middle East.
• The reformed UN or its replacement should have a multinational force to create the peace between States, to patrol the borders of States that welcome them, not to intervene in aggressive acts between States but to freely the information gathered in their duties to both sides in the conflict to help resolve the dispute as peacefully as possible.  This multinational force could be the same as that created for the ICJ and ICC or a complimentary force.  Most importantly, members of States currently in conflict will not be made to serve together or in the States that are in conflict to ensure that no States or individuals will be placed in a position in which they cannot act impartially.

These are, of course, only a few suggestions of the work that needs to be done in a post-Gaza genocide world and suggestions that are not fully thought through but they form the start of a debate that’s needed.