NEARLY six weeks into the war in Gaza, only one thing is clear: it is possible to commit genocide and mass atrocities, and get away with it. It is possible to commit these horrific acts in plain view of the international community, and get away with it.
The United Nations (UN) was built on the mantra of "Never Again". Out of the ashes of World War 2 and the Holocaust that accompanied it, the phrase became a rallying cry for the international community.
"Never Again" would the international community allow the mass slaughter, mass displacement, and mass persecution of an entire people to happen. Not while the UN still stood, and not while the international community still functioned.
To ensure that "Never Again" would be enshrined in law, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted on Dec 9, 1948, one day before the Universal Declaration on Human Rights was adopted.
That was 75 years ago.
On the 70th anniversary of the Genocide Convention in 2018, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, lamented that despite international determination, genocide was still happening in pockets of the world. She cited acts against the Rohingya (Rakhine State) and Yazidis (Kurdistan) and urged the international community "to do everything possible to hold those responsible to account".
Half a decade later, neither problem has been resolved and no one has actually been held to account.
It was thought that the problem lay not in the promulgation of the law against genocide but in accountability. Thus the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established at the turn of the century. But it quickly degenerated into a court where 98.8 per cent of the criminals investigated or tried were from the global south.
Accountability, it seemed, applied selectively. It was ironic that violators of the Rome Statute came from the developing world.
In 2005, the world was introduced to a new concept: Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The R2P put the onus on the country first, then the surrounding region, and finally the international community, to act, and act decisively whenever atrocities and genocide occurred.
It took massive international lobbying, through discourses in academia and in the corridors of power, before the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the R2P in 2017. Looking back, it was one of the hollowest victories to ever be claimed.
Genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are all happening with impunity in the world today. The ones that should be held to account are not. Never mind that some of the countries are not party to the Rome Statute. This is easily overcome by the UN Security Council referring the cases to the ICC.
And even if the absolute law could not go after these perpetrators, the safety net was that morality, humanity and international conscience would prosecute those responsible for their crimes. The UN General Assembly had a 'Uniting For Peace' loophole that would allow issues to be discussed and decided by the General Assembly as a whole whenever the 15-member Security Council failed to carry out its responsibilities.
If that still failed, then there was the Genocide Convention mentioned earlier. In 2007, the International Court of Justice ruled that Article 1 of the Convention put the obligation to "prevent and punish genocide" on all 153 of its States Parties. (And yes, all the states now alleged to either have committed genocide, or abetted its commission, are States Parties.)
Everything is in place and yet nothing is working. Events in Gaza unfold as we watch in helpless horror. When all is said and done, what is the benefit of all these safeguards that the international community has put in place, when there is no one to champion your rights.
Sanctions, the toothless old man of internation-al relations, are effective only when it matters to the party being sanctioned.
I am a multilateralist at heart. This means that I believe in the good that international organisations like the UN are doing and can do. It means that I put my faith in the collective — that working together, the voices of reason will prevail.
But not in this. If nothing else, the one thing the genocide in Gaza has taught us is that the international community cannot be relied upon. When push comes to shove, only we can help ourselves. Or save ourselves. The R2P is dead, sanctions are dead, prevention of war is dead. How then can we still say that multilateralism is not dead?
* The writer is a foreign service officer who has served in bilateral and multilateral posts