Deceiving the hopes of humanity

Organised by

• Department of Law

In 1945, the ‘peoples of the United Nations’ gathered in San Francisco committed to create an international organization to ensure international peace and security. From the wars and catastrophes in the Ukraine and Gaza, Sudan and beyond, to global inequality and climate change, the United Nations has deceived the hopes of humanity, no longer fulfilling the promises for which it was created. This essay explores the legality of a collective withdrawal from the United Nations by a coalition of states whose hopes have been deceived. A withdrawal may become a tactic not to reject, but to reclaim as well as force the realisation of the promises of 1945. Arguing that a withdrawal is legal under a fundamental change of circumstances, I specifically consider the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as such circumstances. The Russian-Ukrainian war is an exceptional circumstance, not as a war, but as a symptom of the erosion of and contestation over the great power privilege, that is, the special rights, powers and immunities enjoyed by permanent members of the Security Council. The war in Gaza presents an example of another type of circumstance. Responsibility over minimum conditions of peace, security and wellbeing were consideration for the recognition of this privilege. The great powers’ failure to meet their obligations is certainly not new yet it is another betrayal of the hopes of 1945. A formal request to withdraw would serve as a threat to force the fulfillment of these obligations. After a successful renegotiation of the privilege and renewed commitments from great powers to shoulder the burden of resolving conflicts like Gaza, or at the very least relieving its human toll, and to redistribute resources to tackle global inequality and climate change, withdrawing states would remain in a revamped United Nations. Without such commitments, an actual withdrawal would denounce the unequal regime behind the privilege. Reverting to an international order based on sovereign equality under customary international law, the exiting coalition of states would have to imagine new forms of equitable multilateral cooperation without great power inequality.