Ronald Lamola, South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation at the Hague Group's UN meeting.
The Hague Group’s goal is to “. . . take coordinated legal and diplomatic measures against Israel’s violations of international law.” But international law was never a reality.
This columnist was honored to be invited to a United Nations High Level Meeting In Defence of International Law called by the Hague Group, which was held on September 25, 2026. Defending and protecting international law is surely a priority for anyone who claims to be concerned about the human rights of all people and the rights of all nations to be truly sovereign. The Hague Group was founded on January 31, 2025, when eight nations: Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal, and South Africa united in The Hague in the Netherlands to take “coordinated legal and diplomatic measures” against Israel’s violations of international law. But if international law had ever really existed the world would be made up of independent nations in control of their own destinies instead of being under control of the colonizers.
Yet at the very moment this meeting was held, the United States has increased coercive measures against Iran as part of a war of aggression it waged along with Israel. It is impossible for Iranian airlines to fly outside of that country, just one part of the U.S. “D-Day” pressures on a nation it attacked. The Donald Trump administration has publicly committed itself to destroying the International Criminal Court (ICC), “brick by brick,” by sanctioning its staff and judges and pressuring those nations that did sign on to the Treaty of Rome that brought it into existence to renounce their membership.
It is quite commendable that South Africa stepped forward in 2023 to charge Israel with war crimes at the International Court of Justice and to join with Malaysia in chairing the United Nations meeting. This is work that must be done if the words international law are to have any meaning. The work of the Hague Group is absolutely necessary, but there are also many contradictions to be addressed. The United Nations is an appropriate venue for such a discussion, but the UN is also complicit in bringing the principle of international law to such a low point.
UN Security Council Resolution 2803, passed on November 17, 2025, was one of the more ignominious acts to ever take place at that institution. Resolution 2803, falsely referred to as a Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, gave the United States’ so-called Board of Peace control over Gaza in violation of the United Nations Charter and of the rights of the Palestinian people.
Palestine is not the only scene of a United Nations crime. The 2025 Security Council Resolution 2793 called for a Gang Suppression Force in Haiti, but the existence of paramilitary groups labeled as gangs is the end result of the UN undermining Haiti’s sovereignty with its Core Group and a variety of occupations and interventions over the decades. How then can the United Nations be a venue to discuss the threats to international law?
The United Nations Security Council permanent members shirk their responsibilities and go along with the dictates of the United States because their strategic interests are not as different as we are led to believe. Of course, vassal states France and the United Kingdom vote along with their patron. But China and Russia often fail to live up to their perceived status as U.S. adversaries and take the path of least resistance when they have the power to say “no.”
Both Russia and China made eloquent statements against Resolution 2803 in 2025 but ended up abstaining instead of using their veto power to scuttle a corrupt arrangement that violated the principles they are sworn to uphold. Gaza is now firmly in the hands of Israel and the United States, the two nations most responsible for war crimes against the Palestinian people, and therein lies the problem for any call to defend international law.
There cannot be a meaningful process of upholding international law if the violations currently being committed are unaddressed. In the absence of a determined international commitment to call the violators to account, high-level meetings will be of little use. There also must be clarity and naming of the culprits who wage these attacks. The United States and its NATO junior partners and Israel are international rogues, thumbing their noses at the rest of the world and making a complete mockery of international law.
The U.S. has the ability to destroy the ICC even though it was never a member and actually passed legislation, the American Service Member Protection Act, aka the Hague Invasion Act, giving itself the right to forcibly release any U.S. service member from ICC custody. The purpose of dismantling the ICC is to protect Israeli officials from prosecution. The indictments of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a former defense minister have been ignored by ICC member states, in deference to and fear of the two rogue states. Netanyahu repeatedly flies over the airspace of ICC member states in defiance of the membership they apparently don’t take very seriously.
Perhaps the Hague Group should have called their gathering a High-Level Meeting to Oppose U.S. and Israeli Criminality. Although such a name would imply a level of seriousness that simply doesn’t exist. Those two countries are the elephants in the room when one speaks of violations of international law. The president of the United States addressed members of the General Assembly with an explicit threat against Iran, a U.N. member nation. “Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope?” The U.S. is unique in its determination to protect what it sees as its interests, while Russia and China have the power to take action but instead go along in hopes that they can placate a country that is devoted to their destruction.
Before the 81st General Assembly meetings began, the United States refused to give visas to Palestinian delegates, in effect banning them from exercising their right to participate at the United Nations, when they had been invited. Trump or any U.S. president can withhold visas, make threats to member nations, and violate the U.N. Charter with complete impunity.
If the United Nations lived up to its charter, both the U.S. and Israel would have been expelled long ago. Delegates may engage in performance when they walk out as Netanyahu speaks, but he has no reason to fear as long as Trump or any other presidential partner in crime backs him up.
The Hague Group has an important job and a duty to live up to its mission as millions of people have learned to be skeptical even as they would like to be more hopeful that international law will actually exist. Unless the international community finds ways to stand up to the two rogue nations, calls to protect and defend international law will be for naught, a tragic waste of precious time, as continued complicity and fake opposition will rule the day.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.
"In the same boat?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
Empire taught us what to believe about the Global South. It also taught us how to move through it, and being colonized here does not exempt us from carrying those beliefs with us.
The Bush administration had long planned a global war for U.S. hegemony, and the attacks of September 11 provided the perfect pretext to put those plans into motion.
Oklahoma prison inmates were making political calls for a conservative Super PAC during the primary.
