Turning the Tide from Genocide at UNGA80
By Ray Acheson
3 October 2025
This year’s high-level debate at the UN General Assembly reflected a world on the cusp of profound geopolitical transformation. While those seeking to rule the world through military force and economic dominance sputtered on about how oppressed they are and how important they are to global security, many delegates called them out for talking nonsense and committing crimes. While there is still a long way to go to mounting an effective collective resistance at the state level, it is significant that most governments categorially denounced genocide, war profiteering, and the rule of force being imposed over the rule of law.
Turning tides
The so-called leaders of states that have dominated the world order through armed violence and hypocrisy, such as the United States and Israel, were unmasked and unhinged. Delegates walked out en masse on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sat in stony, incredulous silence through US President Donald Trump’s long tirade. Hungary’s overtly racist rant against migrants and screed against gender (the foreign minister repeatedly chanted “no war, no migration, no gender”) and Russia’s tired justifications for its war against and occupation of Ukraine were also not supported or echoed by other states.
Even as fascism rises and authoritarian governments project themselves as inevitable and undeniable, this is clearly not a majority position. Yes, a handful of governments were grossly obsequious to the US president, delivering weirdly gushing remarks of admiration and devotation. And yes, a handful of countries spoke loudly in favour of ending the “green revolution” (as if there has been one to begin with!) and returning to the heyday of wanton oil and gas extraction and the riotous burning of fossil fuels. But, overall, most of the world presented as done. Done with the psycopathopy of those commiting or facilitating genocide while claiming to be the victims and the vanguard of international law. Done with the rentless imperial extraction of resources and exploitation of labour from the Global Majority to line the pockets of the Global Minority. Done with the racism of anti-migration policies, done with war profiteering, done with climate change denialism and inaction.
“At the core of the destabilising actions of imperial powers and rising hegemons have been an absolutely insane ambition for unilateral dominance, globally and regionally,” said Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. “One or two rich and powerful countries have absurdly trotted out a proposition of untruth that they are the ones who have been disadvantaged and thus must use their commanding wealth and power, unilaterally, to become further advantaged.” He warned, “Such absurdities are contributing immensely to the global condition of descending, metaphorically, to hell in a hand basket. A more unequal, oppressive, resentful, and Manichean world is the emerging result.”
Most delegations spoke strongly against the militarism and violence of geopolitical competition. Delegates rebuked the fact, as President Nataša Pirc Musar of Slovenia did, that “international law appears to stand at the precipice of irrelevance.” She warned, “The independence of elected international judges, the integrity of human rights institutions, personal security of human rights defenders, and the authority of this Organisation are under siege.” Noting that the states sanctioning prosecutors of the International Criminal Court seem to “prefer to shield the alleged perpetrators of atrocities, rather than confront the truth and help deliver justice,” Slovenia’s President asked if the world must accept that this “is the new normal? That might makes right? That the strong may seize what they want—because they can? That they may kill with impunity—because they can? That they may pollute, wage wars, and trample on international law—just because they can?” She asserted:
If we, the leaders of this planet, can offer nothing but terror, conflict, pollution, fear, inequalities and war to eight billion people, then we must confront the truth: we are complicit in crimes against our civilisation and our planet. And not just us, heads of states, but leaders of international institutions, CEOs, and every individual with the power to make a difference, share this responsibility. None of us can claim ignorance of what is at stake.
The rejection of this world of competition and violence was louder and clearer than it has been in the past few decades, giving a definite sense of a turning point. In more ways than one, Israel’s accelerated genocide of Palestinians, after seven decades of unlawful occupation and apartheid, has become both a site of extermination and horror as well as a catalyst for global rupture.
“80 years after the end of the Second World War, we are watching, in high-definition, as genocide unfolds around the world. 80 years after the fall of the empires, colonialism is still alive,” said Malaysia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mohamad Hasan. This genocide is “armed, funded, and justified by some of the supposedly most liberal powers in the world. They have defended and supported the only party who has any real power in a conflict, as it makes a farce out of international law.” Similarly, Abdulla Khaleel, Foreign Minister of the Maldives, pointed out, “This genocide is sustained by weapons and money from the very countries that claim to defend human rights—the same countries that helped define the very norms and laws being broken. By their actions, they refuse to see Palestinians as equal human beings, deserving of life, dignity, and freedom. This complicity is the shame of the century.”
Khaleel argued that each strike Israel make against Gaza, the West Bank, and other countries in the region such Qatar, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Tunisia, and Iran, “is a reminder that borders are trampled when power speaks louder than law.” In each case, he said, where laws and norms give way to leverage, where responsibility gives way to convenience, the pattern is the same. “If this erosion continues, the question will no longer be whether it will happen again, but who will be the next victim.”
The writing is on the wall for the Western-led post World War II neoliberal world order. This order, marked by imperialism, colonialism, militarism, racism, and patriarchy, has led straight to the brink of World War III. For many people around the world, World War III has already begun. From ongoing armed conflicts to new military aggressions, the battle for power and dominance by the declining empires is intimately experienced by millions of people and the planet. And from the accelerating nuclear arms race to the introduction of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence into weapon systems, the potental for global, cataclysmic violence is close at hand. With the deliberate destruction of international law, which has ostensibly restrained the worst instincts of our world leaders from killing us all before now, the situation is bleak—and the general debate reflected this clearly.
But the failures of the Western colonial warmongers and their Eastern militarised, surveillance-obsessed, human rights abusing competitors is also an opportunity for a new world order to rise. As Guyana’s President Mohamed Ifraan Ali said, “It is precisely when the ideals of the United Nations are tested by horrific realities that the collective must act in defence of the UN Charter and international law.”
Calling for collective action
How does this call for the “collective” to act translate in the world outside of the UN building? It’s already happening. While too late to save so many Palestinian lives, some states are finally ending their complicity in Israel’s genocide. Catching up to the demands of people around the world who have been trying to stop the genocide for the past two years, some states have finally cancelled arms transfers, cultural or tech collaborations, and more. Members of the Hague Group have begun to disrupt the genocide by ending material support to Israel. Other states, including even some in the West like Spain, have started refusing to allow arms to be shipped through their bases or ports, are boycotting Israeli participation in sporting events, and more.
Led by the dockworkers preventing arms shipments, the students forcing their universities to end contracts with Israeli companies and institutions, and the protesters blockading weapon manufacturers, certain governments have finally started standing up for international law and moral conscience. At the UN’s 80th session, some even supported people on the streets, with Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro Urrego joining a protest outside the UN calling for Netanyu’s arrest in line with warrants issued by the International Criminal Court. Spain and Italy briefly sent naval ships to accompany the Global Sumud Flotilla, but retreated like cowards before they reached the point of Israel’s unlawful interception, leaving the unarmed civilians trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza to the vicious whims of the Israeli military.
Beyond the flotilla, in many Western countries, pro-Palestinian protesters are being criminalised, incarcerated, and deported. While global public opinion largely now supports ending support for Israel and freeing Palestine, many governments (even those paying lip service to the recognition of Palestinian statehood) are still violently repressing any direct action in support of Palestine, and some, like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, are still sending weapon components or other material support to the genocidal regime.
Yet, it is undeniable that after nearly two years of global pressure, the tide is changing. And those at the forefront of this turning tide—countries of the Global Majority—suggest more is to come. Colombia and Indonesia called for the establishment of a multilateral force under the auspicious of the UN General Assembly to end the genocide. Malaysia called for “concrete action against the occupying force.”
Such action could take many different forms. The Global Sumud Flotilla and previous flotilla efforts, the medical and humanitarian aid workers that have entered Gaza, and all the protesters globally have shown that brave civilians are willing to put their lives on the line to end this genocide. As Fadi Quran of Avaaz noted, “Nations don’t need to send soldiers—humanity will come and serve,” but governments must support them in these efforts by providing safe passage and funding civilian efforts. Above all, states must stop make symbolic gestures that do nothing to stop the bloodshed and risk entrenching colonial dynamics, and instead cut Israel off—no weapons, no tech, no fuel, no collaboration. Regardless of which direct actions are taken, the stakes are high and the demand is clear. The international community cannot sit back and watch the slaughter of Palestinians any longer.
To truly turn a new tide and build a new world order, states and people will have to end the culture of militarism and the profits of killing. The reason that the United States, Israel, Russia, and others that are committing or have committed genocide and war crimes are able to do so is because they are armed to the teeth. Their investment in military might above all else has led to unconscionable levels of violence through their military adventures abroad and to the suppression of human rights, disenfranchisement, incarceration, and poverty of people at home.
When a world order is built on weapons and war, it leads to people believing, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed, that “only weapons” can provide security. “If a nation wants peace, it still has to work on weapons,” he asserted. “Not international law, not cooperation—weapons decide who survives.” Zelenskyy argued that international law “doesn’t work fully unless you have powerful friends who are truly willing to stand-up for it. And even that doesn’t work without weapons…. There are no security guarantees except friends and weapons.”
The thing is, weapons are what have enabled Ukraine’s “friends” to violate international law with impunity in various conflicts and genocides around the world. It is weapons that enabled Russia to attack and invade Ukraine. Weapons do not uphold international law, they destroy it. Security that is based on death and destruction is security only for the weapon manufacturers, the economic elite, and the politicians that serve them. It is horror for the rest of us.
The world needs collective solutions to global inequality, injustice, and despair that confront the neoliberal world order’s war profiteering, not actions that enable it—not actions that require the manufacture and trade of more weapons; not actions that result in warfighting, which will lead to even more death and destruction. We need states that are committed to real change to work to abolish the current world order, not become part of it.
Disarmament now
And so while urgent direct action is necessary to end Israel’s genocide and occupation right now, major global shifts toward peace and security through cooperation instead of coercion is equally necessary. As Saint Lucia’s Minister for External Affairs argued, “Violence is not in consonance with the requirements of our times. In fact it is abundantly clear that military dominance, which is an expired currency of a bygone era, is not moral tender and cannot purchase peace and stability in the contemporary global political environment.” The growing global intolerance for Israel’s carnage in Gaza and the West Bank, said Saint Lucia, “is symptomatic of its resentment for needless bloodshed; while military superiority enables death and destruction, it cannot resolve the spectrum of challenges that we, as a global family, are called upon to confront, within the framework of our integrated whole.”
Very few countries said the word disarmament during the general debate. But it is an incredibly important element to building a new world order where the violent minority can no longer impose its will on the majority. As Iceland’s Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir said, “When the powerful abandon the rules, all nations are at risk. The same applies to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, with troubling erosion of longstanding commitments and the weaponization of emerging disruptive technologies.”
Countless delegates condemned rising military spending and the catastrophic violence it leads to, from nuclear threats to the bombing of towns and cities and the targeting of civilians, journalists, aid workers, doctors, to the armed violence perperated by gangs and state forces alike. Gaza is not the only place experiencing slaughter, as many countries noted. “The winds of conflicts are blowing across almost all continents,” noted Mauritius. “All marked with blatant violations of international law. Each of them represents the failure of humanity to protect its most vulnerable.”
New world order
Some delegations—though not enough—spoke about how states can start to address these failures to protect humanity. “Let's use the more than 3 trillion dollars that are spent annually on weapons around the world to improve people's lives, eliminate hunger, protect our environment and clean the air,” suggested Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Zhaparov. “After all, there are no borders for breathing air. We all breathe the same air. Therefore, I would like to invite you to live with the competition of which country's nature, which country’s air is clean, not with the competition of whose weapon is stronger.”
Some interventions at the general debate offered specific recommendations for UN reform and other multilateral initiatives to end the “catastrophic myopia” of militarism warned of by Qatar. For example, Bolivia’s President suggested converting the UN General Assembly “into a body with binding power so that it can be an effective voice for all peoples, and not a space where we simply realize the will of the most powerful.” He argued:
We need this forum to be an ethical nucleus, a political heart and the living spirit of a new era guided by the culture of life. We need the resolutions adopted within the UN General Assembly to not be vetoed by any superpower and to be truly complied with. This means ensuring that multilateralism is truly valid and not just a formality. We should declare the world as a zone of peace and promote demilitarization as far as possible. The immense majority of the population in the world refuses to accept that the revitalization or overcoming the cyclical crises of capital should be done on the basis of investment in billions of dollars to manufacture all types of conventional and unconventional weapons. Just 1/3 of military expenditure would give us better and greater education, health and housing guaranteed for everyone. The UN has to become a pact for peace and for life as the shared destiny of everyone who believes in living together.
Saint Lucia likewise called for a new model of the UN. It warned that the existing military order, “though fraught with contradictions, is pregnant with renewal; without guidance, its offspring may be disfigured by conflict, but with diplomacy as the midwife, this troubled gestation can deliver a new era of peace and stability.” A somewhat roundabout way to say that without diplomacy, the warmongers are going to win.
Finland’s President similarly called for “smart diplomacy,” arguing. “Regardless of size, each and every member state of the UN has agency—a say in how the new world order will look like. It is important that we all use this power wisely and responsibly.” Likewise, Slovenia’s President called for multilateralism, not multipolarism, urging states to “reject arrogance, hatred and willful blindness to a lack of equality and justice, to wars of aggression, crimes against humanity, and genocide—because they tear us apart, for generations.” She also called for personal and collective responsibility to uphold law and humanity.
For Saint Lucia, building this new world order involves reforming the UN’s decision-making processes, ending the veto, getting rid of bureaucratic inertia, and ensuring equitable representation from “developing” countries and marginalised goups. Saint Lucia also urged strengthening the UN’s capacity for rapid response to crises and fostering transparency and accountability. It claimed:
This model will give birth to an international environment of peace, of the absence of major conflicts and wars, of the decline of unilateralism, of a greater functioning multilateralism that protects us from climate change and climate injustice, from the scourge of illegal weapons smuggled into our countries, an international environment where nations honour their financial commitments and responsibilities, and respect and promote human rights, that supports our efforts at regional integration.
There have been many efforts over many years at the UN to change the rules and level the playing field so that force does overpower law. But most of those efforts have taken place in the UN Security Council, where the deck is stacked against any real change, since most of the most violent governments in the world can veto whatever they want. The answer lies in the UN General Assembly. Eighty years on, state must start using it to fullfill the promises they made through the Charter. This can no longer be treated as an option—the majority must make the UN work, or they must build something new.
Humanity does not need more weapons, it needs disarmament. It needs forces to stand down, it needs governments to stop extracting and start providing, it needs a collective reboot of the institutions that are supposed to end the scourge of war. As SVG Prime Minister Gonsalves said as a self-described spokesperson from the periphery, “While some sleep to dream, the rest of us dream to change the world for the better.” This dream must become our reality, or we will be consumed by the ongoing nightmare.
For details on what each country said about weapons and war, please see Reaching Critical Will’s UNGA Disarmament Index.
Photo credit: Ray Acheson