3 Dec 2025

https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/how-the-world-can-resist-the-un-security-councils-rogue-colonial-mandate-in-gaza/

Lede: The UN Security Council resolution backing the Trump plan for Gaza is
clearly illegitimate, but there are several ways that states and individuals
worldwide can challenge its illegality.

...

In the wake of the Security Council adoption of resolution 2803 last month (a
resolution that shocked legal analysts and human rights defenders around the
globe for its blatantly colonial content, and about which I have written
previously) even critics of the resolution have thrown up their hands to declare
"oh well, the Security Council adopted it, so now its law." In other words, to
paraphrase Nixon, "if the Security Council does it, that means it is not
illegal."

Nonsense.

While the Security Council (UNSC) is an immensely powerful institution, is
subject to few checks and balances, and does not answer to judicial review, it
is not above the law and has no power to declare the unlawful to be lawful.

In fact, the UNSC derives all its powers from the UN Charter. It has no other
powers. And the UN Charter, as a treaty, is part of international law- it is not
above or outside international law. As such, the UNSC must operate within the
boundaries of the Charter, and within the boundaries of the broader body of
international law. Any actions that it takes outside those boundaries are
necessarily unlawful and ultra vires.

Acts of the Council that are unlawful and ultra vires cannot be said to have the
force of law. And, therefore, there can be no legal obligation to cooperate or
comply with such acts. Indeed, where such acts are manifestly unlawful, there
may be a duty to oppose them.

Many of the elements of UNSC resolution 2803 are indeed manifestly unlawful,
because (1) they conflict with other key provisions of the Charter itself, (2)
they violate jus cogens norms of international law with which all states are
familiar, and (3) they violate rights and (erga omnes obligations) recently
affirmed with great clarity by the International Court of Justice with regard to
the very same situation (i.e., the occupied Palestinian territory). These are
not breaches in the grey areas. They are obvious, bright-line transgressions of
international law. And that clarity brings a special obligation for states (and
others), as a minimum, to avoid participation in such breaches.