UN’s genocide finding in Gaza seen hampered by ‘serious weakness’ in Security Council

An independent United Nations inquiry commission concluded in a 16 September report Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—but a “serious weakness” in the UN’s Security Council could prevent taking action in accord with the Genocide Convention, said Father Elias D Mallon, special assistant to the president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association-Pontifical Mission.

Israel has denied UN claims of violating the convention. In an analysis posted 17 September to CNEWA’s website, Father Mallon—a Franciscan Friar of the Atonement—said while “there is no question” that the Genocide Convention is “crucial in the world today,” its “practical impact” remains “limited by one of the major weaknesses—if not the major weakness—of the United Nations in general: its inability to enforce.”

Specifically, he said, the 15-member UN Security Council—which is “the only UN body that can legally use coercive force against a member state”—is hobbled by the fact that its five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US), each have “the total and absolute right of veto,” with “no mechanism” for override.

The real test of the Genocide Convention, he said, “is how to implement an effective and enforceable policy inhibiting one party from extinguishing another.”