Thread by @MouinRabbani

THREAD: A joint thread by @MouinRabbani and @hasmikegian. On 6 December 2023 United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter. A consensus has emerged that Guterres has deployed the heaviest instrument he has available under the UN Charter.

It is therefore worth exploring what he has done as well as its significance. Pursuant to Article 99, “the Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his (sic) opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

It is considered unusual for the SG to do so because such matters are as a rule brought to the Council by one or more of its 15 members, acting either on their own initiative or on behalf of other UN member states.

Essentially, Article 99 gives the Secretary-General the authority to determine that an issue on the Security Council’s agenda constitutes a threat to international peace and security.

It is context significant because the Council has since 7 October dealt with Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip primarily as a humanitarian matter. This includes the only resolution it has passed on the issue, UNSC 2712 of 15 November.

The last time the wording of Article 99 was explicitly invoked was in 1989, by Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar on account of the situation in Lebanon.

Guterres himself invoked the spirit but not the letter of Article 99 in 2017, during the first year of his tenure, to draw the Council’s attention to the situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.

According to Guterres’s 6 December letter to the Security Council, he acted to “urge the members of the Security Council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip” and “use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis”,

which “may aggravate existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security”.

The sequence of events is not definitively clear but appears to have developed as follows: earlier this week the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the only Arab current member of the Security Council, and acting on behalf of the Arab Group (Arab member states of the UN)

and states affiliated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), indicated its intention to submit a draft resolution to the Council calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Given Washington’s consistent opposition to a ceasefire resolution, it appears that a coalition of Arab and other states, including some Security Council members, called upon Guterres to act.

When considering their messages, he would have been further motivated to act by additional, alarming messages arriving from within the UN. Of particular note are those of Martin Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator,

who has been the most direct and outspoken UN official during this crisis about the impact of Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip. Together, these developments may have forced Guterres’s hand.

On 6 December Guterres issued his letter invoking Article 99. Shortly thereafter the UAE released its draft resolution, now explicitly presented as one “taking note and acting upon” the Secretary-General’s position.

It is unclear whether UAE would have gone ahead and introduced a draft UNSC resolution absent Guterres’s letter, given the strength of US opposition. It is therefore entirely possible that it took a final decision to do so only after the UN Secretary-General issued his letter.

US Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Robert Wood emphasized that Guterres’s letter changes nothing and that Washington continues to oppose a ceasefire and for that matter further Security Council consideration of the crisis.

The US, together with the UK, did attempt to have the term “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” amended to either “humanitarian pauses” or “another urgent humanitarian pause”. But this, together with their attempt to have the resolution focus on condemnation of Hamas,

was rejected by the UAE, the draft resolution’s author. Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen was less diplomatic, and accused Guterres of “endorsing Hamas terror” and acting in support of the Palestinian movement.

While a veto of the resolution by the US and perhaps the UK as well seems a foregone conclusion, Guterres’s letter is nevertheless significant.

Future historians are likely to identify it as accelerating the countdown to the end of Israel’s onslaught against the Gaza Strip and its Palestinian population.

Regarding the US role, some have speculated that Washington may be using the negotiations surrounding this draft resolution to influence Israel’s conduct of the war, which is isolating the Biden administration on the world stage.

Some have gone even further and suggested that if Israel’s response to Washington’s concerns is excessively rude and dismissive, the US may even consider abstaining. As noted, this is speculation.

There are two additional issues that need to be taken into consideration in evaluating the significance of Guterres’s letter. For those who have not read beyond its first paragraph,

the double standards in the language he uses make it indisputably clear that, once again, Guterres is going out of his way not to offend the United States and its Western partners.

Thus, in its third paragraph he recalls that he has “condemned repeatedly” the “abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas and other Palestinian organizations” in which “[m]ore than 1,200 people were brutally killed”.

Yet when referring to Israel’s violence inflicted upon the Palestinians in the subsequent two months, which has claimed in excess of 15,000 lives, he cannot bring himself to condemn anything or anyone. Rather, he speaks of those “who have reportedly been killed”.

Similarly, while “accounts of sexual violence during the [7 October] attacks are appalling”, none of the depredations Israel has been visiting upon the Palestinians since that date merit similar characterization.

This despite the fact that Guterres explicitly identifies these measures. In addition to the killings, “40 per cent of whom were children”, these include a “collapse” of the health care system as a result of which “more people will die”;

“desperate conditions” that make humanitarian relief “impossible”; a genuine risk of “epidemic diseases” and “increased pressure for mass displacement to neighboring countries”; a “severe risk of the collapse of the humanitarian system”;

and “a situation fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole”.

With respect to the “at least 130” UN employees killed since 7 October, “many with their families”, which represents the highest number of UN staff killed in any conflict since the world body was established in 1945, Guterres has yet to condemn these killings,

or even call for an independent investigation into them to ensure accountability.

The second issue is one of timing. The crisis erupted on 7 October, and alarm about the issues Guterres addresses in his 6 December letter have been on the international agenda since at least the second half of that same month.

The caution, hesitancy, and delay in his response to this crisis cries out for explanation. As does his continued absence from the region.

With the exception of Griffiths, the same observation applies to many of his most senior officials. Griffiths as a humanitarian official has successfully managed to repeatedly place those issues within his mandate prominently on the global agenda,

even as he cannot be expected to discuss the broader political crisis. The same cannot be said of the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, who has during this crisis been enveloped in an impenetrable invisibility cloak.

When DiCarlo finally visited the region in early December, the world only learned about it after her office issued a press release upon her return to New York.

When she subsequently briefed the Security Council, she seemed primarily concerned with efforts to ensure the Palestinian Authority (PA) was sufficiently empowered to play a role in the future governance of the Gaza Strip,

an agenda item that closely reflects that of her former employer, the US State Department.

Reportedly, China’s Permanent Representative to the UN presciently took DiCarlo to task for her focus on “the day after”, at a time when active hostilities are putting the security and stability of the entire region at risk.

In conclusion, Secretary-General Guterres’s letter invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter is politically significant. But as noted it also raises questions about other actions and opportunities the Secretary-General could and should have taken to promote a ceasefire. END