How much do we still want a rules-based international order?
At the end of the recent G7 meeting, participants declared their commitment to democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Boris Johnson for one, but probably others, spared their own blushes by the blatant fraudulence of their host regarding Northern Ireland. But it is not just Northern Ireland. Last week his government declined its obligations under Common Article 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances. After Israels recent punitive and extensive destruction of life and property in the Gaza Strip, the UK rightly rebuked Hamas for its undoubted war crimes but declined to rebuke Israel, essentially because it is an important strategic partner for the UK. To our shame, we pick and choose. Currently, the UK defies the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea regarding the Chagos Islands, which in January ruled that the UK has no sovereignty, confirming the same conclusion by the International Court of Justice in February 2019. Of course, the UK should have recognised the human rights of the Chagossians at the outset in 1965, or when challenged in the ensuing decades. Persistent failure to do so constitutes a crime against humanity. I feel sullied and I expect you do too. Look, too, at the United States. Like the UK, it disregards international law (IL) when this suits it. In 2017 it recognised Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem, violating a fundamental principle of international conduct: the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, and repeated the offence regarding the Golan in March 2019. Last December it offered Morocco recognition of sovereignty over Western Sahara, territory occupied since 1975, on condition that it normalised ties with Israel. We like to think this was simply Trump and that now things will change. Not so much and currently it does not look as if he is going to. And to be fair to Biden (and Trump), the US and UK, twin architects of the Atlantic Charter and thus of the post-1945 rules-based order, have been busy eroding this order since the turn of the century, obviously with regard to their invasion of Iraq in 2003 (remember our principled legal adviser, Elizabeth Wilmshurst?) but in other ways, for example the way their much vaunted but futile Quartet Road Map ignored the prohibition on negotiating tracts of territory while still these are occupied. Almost no one has talked about this particular illegality, but perhaps one must put this down to widespread media ignorance about the law. Only three weeks ago, a distinguished Channel Four journalist referred to the Polisario Front as a secessionist organisation, as if Western Sahara were legitimately Moroccan. When it comes to international law, politicians are insufficiently respectful, while journalists seem insufficiently knowledgeable. Five years ago, I trawled the published memoirs of British foreign secretaries since 1967. Each mentioned the Israel-Palestine conflict as a headache. Not one, though, mentioned relevant IL, even though it is crucial to any resolution not only of that particular conflict but elsewhere, for example, Western Sahara, northern Cyprus, or Crimea (where we hypocritically remembered it). In 1946, Churchill reminded us that the League of Nations did not fail because of its principles or conceptions. It failed because these principles were deserted by those States who had brought it into being. The rules-based order is in peril today. It would be good to see the UK and US (and other parliamentary democracies) chivvied into greater respect for international law by persistent, well-versed journalists and media. * David McDowall lives in Richmond, and is a member of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine. He worked for UNRWA in the 1970s, and since then has written books and articles on the conflict.