by Lawrence Wittner | Aug 31, 2026 | Global Justice
Starvation is a particularly cruel and horrible way to die. Beginning with intense hunger and pain and followed by exhaustion and mental deterioration, starvation continues with the body gradually consuming its own tissues on a downward spiral toward death.
The major safeguard against mass starvation around the globe is the World Food Program (WFP), which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020 for its vital humanitarian work. With hundreds of millions of people in jeopardy thanks to poverty, famines, violent conflict, and extreme weather, this UN agency distributes massive quantities of food aid―last year alone, reaching more than 100 million people facing acute hunger―thereby saving millions of lives.
But with the advent of the second Trump administration in January 2025, the World Food Program, which in 2024 received nearly half of its funding from the U.S. government, entered a period of crisis that has only deepened in the months since then.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing all U.S. foreign assistance, declaring that the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases [are] antithetical to American values.” Within short order, the DOGE operation of multibillionaire Elon Musk terminated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provided the bulk of U.S. overseas humanitarian aid to impoverished nations. Calling USAID a “criminal organization,” Musk declared that it was “time for it to die.”
Emergency food assistance, a component of U.S. foreign aid, was a key administration target. In April 2025, the Trump administration ended funding to the WFP for food programs in 14 of the world’s most impoverished nations. Responding to the action, the WFP warned that “this could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation.”
In response to sharp public criticism of the cutbacks, some of the food aid cuts were restored. And in June 2025, the administration suddenly gave the WFP an $800 million grant. Although these actions brought total U.S. overseas food aid for 2025 to about $2 billion, during the final year of the Biden administration the U.S. contribution to the WFP had been $4.5 billion.
Thanks almost entirely to the shift in U.S. policy, the WFP experienced a 40 percent drop in funding during 2025.
The results of the financial cutbacks were horrific. In Kenya, where the Trump administration abruptly ended all U.S. funding for WFP operations, there resided about 720,000 refugees, among the most vulnerable people on earth. Although aid workers and local U.S. officials repeatedly appealed for a renewal of U.S. food assistance, none was forthcoming. As a result, a ProPublica study reported, the refugees “began to starve, and many―mostly children―died because their malnourished bodies couldn’t fight off infections.” In these circumstances, “mothers had to choose which of their kids to feed. Young men took to the streets in protests, some of which devolved into violent riots. Pregnant women with life-threatening anemia were so desperate for calories that they ate mud.”
Elsewhere, too, the situation grew increasingly desperate. In numerous impoverished nations where special packets of food paste had been distributed to 9.3 million children on the brink of starvation, the packets virtually disappeared. In one region of Nigeria alone, 150 clinics, operated by the WFP and providing nutrition treatment for 300,000 children below the age of two, shut down in July 2025.
Not surprisingly, acute food insecurity rose among people around the world, including an estimated 118 million children.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration pressed for further cuts in overseas U.S. food aid. Trump’s FY 2026 budget proposal, advanced in May 2025, called for the elimination of two long-established U.S. ventures partially channeled through the WFP—the Food for Peace program and the McGovern-Dole child nutrition program. But, as things turned out, Republican legislators with agricultural constituencies blocked the move. Anxious to keep farmers happy by providing a market for their excess commodities distributed through the programs, they joined Democrats in re-enacting both of them, though with a 23 percent cut in funding.
The Trump administration, however, remains determined to destroy what’s left of the existing U.S. government overseas food assistance program. In April 2026, its FY 2027 budget proposal called for the total elimination of the Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole programs. For the first time since the establishment of the World Food Program in 1961, no U.S. funding has been earmarked for that UN agency.
Admittedly, the dumping of surplus agricultural commodities from wealthy nations, especially when such commodity production is subsidized by their governments, can worsen food insecurity in impoverished nations by undermining their local agriculture. Although this situation could be remedied by subsidizing the food production of small farmers in impoverished lands, the Trump administration seems unlikely to do so.
Instead, this August, probably to deflect public criticism of the collapse of humanitarian assistance and to win favor with Trump’s religious base, the administration announced a new initiative for distribution of overseas humanitarian aid under the direction of Christian organizations. Compared to the U.S. government’s humanitarian aid of the past (e.g., $8 billion in 2024), the total funding was minuscule: $2 billion over five years. Moreover, although the new program would apparently provide some food assistance, it wouldn’t amount to much, as nearly three-quarters of the total funding was allocated for healthcare.
Naturally, thanks to the collapse of traditional U.S. food assistance policy, world hunger and starvation have soared. According to the WFP, “a staggering 266 million people are . . . facing crisis levels of hunger or worse” in 2026. Meanwhile, “severe funding shortfalls are forcing WFP to scale back assistance,” and “lost lives . . . will be the price to pay.”
Clearly, a new direction is needed to avert massive human suffering and death. In the immediate future, other wealthy nations could step up to fill the funding gap left by the Trump administration. Longer term, the United Nations and its agencies could be provided with an independent source of income, thereby ending their dependence on the whims of individual nations―especially those nations directed by people so fantastically wealthy that they lack any comprehension of hunger and its effects.
Until remedial action is taken, however, world hunger and starvation will continue as a disgrace to humanity.
by Lawrence Wittner | Mar 13, 2026 | Global Justice
The U.S. military attack upon Iran is but the latest indication that the system of international law―which provides guidelines for the behavior of nations in world affairs―is crumbling.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after thousands of years of violent international conflict, efforts to establish global norms for nations in connection with war, diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights accelerated. These efforts resulted in the founding of the United Nations (which develops, codifies, and enforces international law), the International Court of Justice (which settles legal disputes among nations and provides advisory opinions on legal questions), and the International Criminal Court (which investigates and tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community).
Of course, the current U.S. military attack on Iran flies in the face of the UN Charter, which, in Article 2, states that “all Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means” and that they “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Furthermore, contemptuous of the United Nations, Trump has withdrawn the U.S. government from dozens of UN agencies and blocked the U.S. government’s payment of billions of dollars in mandatory dues to the world organization.
Other nations are also clearly out of line with international law. The Russian government’s over four years of war and occupation of Ukrainian territory are flagrant violations of the UN Charter, as attested to by a ruling of the International Court of Justice and numerous overwhelming condemnations by the UN General Assembly. The Israeli government is also a prominent transgressor, having joined the U.S. military assault on Iran and conducted an illegal occupation of conquered Palestinian territory for decades while violating international humanitarian law in its treatment of the civilian population.
Disgusted by the ability of these and other nations to act with impunity, Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign policy advisor, remarked bitterly in 2025: “We are moving into a system where anybody can do whatever they like. . . . As long as you have the ability to wreak havoc, you can do it because no one will hold you accountable.”
This lack of accountability is striking. Within nations, there is usually effective enforcement of law. But, on the global level, law enforcement is weak, indeed. When the International Criminal Court announced warrants for the arrests of Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, a former Russian president threatened the judges with a hypersonic missile attack and the U.S. government imposed heavy sanctions on the judges. Meanwhile, Putin and Netanyahu remain at large.
Scornful of international law, some national officials openly champion a return to the traditional might-makes-right conduct of international affairs. “You can talk all you want about international niceties,” said Stephen Miller, Trump’s influential White House aide, “but we live in . . . the real world . . . that is governed by strength, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Naturally, officials of nations that are militarily powerful find a power politics approach appealing, as do people with militarist and nationalist views. Trump recently announced: “I don’t need international law.”
Conversely, officials of less powerful nations are dismayed by the resurrection of a might-makes-right standard, as are people with peace-oriented and internationalist views. They argue that what the world needs is not the abandonment of international law, but its more effective enforcement. Furthermore, they contend that a return to great power imperialism in a world bristling with modern weapons, including nuclear weapons, is a recipe for catastrophe.
But if effective enforcement of international law is preferable to a power politics approach to world affairs, can that effective enforcement be attained?
There are certainly feasible, small-scale actions along these lines that could be taken. One is to increase the number of nations that accept compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Currently, only 75 nations of the 193 UN member states do so. Another is to increase the number of nations that are parties to the statute of the International Criminal Court. The current number is 125, and does not include the United States, Russia, China, and Israel.
Even the use of the veto in the UN Security Council―employed most frequently by the U.S. and Russian governments―could be limited to some degree. One way is to simply enforce Article 27 in the UN Charter providing that a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting on that dispute. Another―championed by France and Mexico―is to exclude the veto in situations of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Also, of course, deadbeat nations could be pressured into paying their UN dues―for example, by denying them their vote in the UN General Assembly.
More thoroughgoing action would be difficult to secure, but not impossible. Perhaps the leading obstacle to a substantial strengthening of the United Nations and the international law it seeks to develop and enforce is the provision in the UN Charter that all five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France) must agree to any change in the Charter. Nevertheless, the Charter also provides that a two-thirds vote by the General Assembly and by any nine members of the Security Council can produce a Charter review conference. Consequently, there is now a significant campaign underway to call for one. And, if such a meeting is held, perhaps after the current crop of aging, reactionary officials has passed from the scene, who really knows what will occur?
Admittedly, the prospects aren’t good for halting the return of nations to their traditional practices of war and imperialism.
Even so, if people can create the scientific and technological marvels of the modern world, they might also be capable of developing ways to stop killing one another.
by Lawrence Wittner | Jan 25, 2026 | Global Justice, Peace & Disarmament
There is a widening gap today between global possibilities and global realities.
The global realities are quite grim.
Despite some advances in countering worldwide poverty, it remains at a startlingly high level. According to the World Bank, half of humanity lives on less than $6.85 per day per person, with over 700 million people living on less than $2.15 per day.
Moreover, economic inequality is vast and increasing. A recently-released World Inequality Report, produced in conjunction with the United Nations, found that, in almost every region of the world, the richest 1 percent is wealthier than the bottom 90 percent combined. Indeed, the richest 0.001 percent of the world’s population controls three times the wealth of the poorest half, and its wealth is growing at a faster rate.
As the charitable organization Oxfam has observed, there is no morally defensible justification for this state of affairs. “Extreme wealth is not accumulated simply as a reward for extreme talent,” it has noted. “The majority of billionaire wealth . . . is unearned, derived from inheritance, crony connections, and monopolistic power.” Moreover, billionaires and giant corporations are fostering greater economic inequality and misery by opposing labor laws and policies that benefit workers, undermining progressive taxation, employing modern colonial systems of wealth extraction in the Global South, and using monopoly power to control markets and set the rules and terms of exchange.
Furthermore, when it comes to respecting international law, the rulers of some powerful nations are behaving increasingly like gangsters.
Donald Trump is particularly flagrant in this regard. During his second term as President of the United States, he has already bombed seven nations (Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen), threatened to invade or seize five others (Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, and Mexico ), blown up 33 foreign boats and their sailors, kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation (Venezuela), and announced plans to “run” Venezuela and take control of its vast oil resources. “I don’t need international law,” he explained.
Trump’s “America First” policy―redolent of traditional great power imperialism―is complemented by other measures showing contempt for key international institutions. Trump quickly withdrew the U.S. government from leading UN agencies like the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, refused to participate in the UN Relief and Works Agency, and announced plans to withdraw from UNESCO. On January 7, 2026, the White House followed up by announcing U.S. withdrawal from 66 international and UN entities. It has also withheld at least two years of mandated dues to the UN’s regular budget and has placed sanctions on the judges and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Clearly, Trump has other priorities. He dramatically increased U.S. military spending soon after he returned to power and, in January 2026, proposed raising military spending by another $600 billion to a record $1.5 trillion, thereby creating his “Dream Military.” Apparently, this dream does not include ending the menace of nuclear annihilation, for―asked about renewing the last nuclear arms control agreement remaining with Russia, scheduled to expire next month―Trump responded: “If it expires, it expires.”
Unfortunately, leaders of other nations are also working full-time to destroy what remains of international law and humanity’s hopes for the future.
Vladimir Putin has stopped at nothing to revive what he considers Russia’s imperial glory by waging nearly four years of war to conquer and annex his far smaller, weaker neighbor, Ukraine. Ignoring strong condemnations by the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, Putin has pressed on with an imperialist war that has reduced cities to rubble, damaged or destroyed thousands of schools and health care facilities, and sent 6 million Ukrainians fleeing abroad. The wounded or dead number hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and as many as 1.2 million Russian soldiers.
Nor is this the extent of Putin’s military interventionism. Until quite recently, he conducted a brutal bombing campaign for nearly a decade in Syria to prop up the Assad dictatorship against its domestic foes. He also employed the Wagner Group, a shadowy private mercenary army headquartered in Russia, to conduct military operations elsewhere in the Middle East and in numerous African nations.
Like Trump, Putin has scrapped nuclear arms control agreements and occasionally threatened nuclear war.
Other national rulers, enamored with military power and widening their realms, have also turned their countries into rogue nations. Kim Jong Un, despite offers from the South Korean and U.S. governments to improve diplomatic relations, has chosen instead to dramatically expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, threaten nuclear war, and dispatch more than 14,000 combat troops to help Russia subdue Ukraine. Benjamin Netanyahu, while constantly claiming Israel’s victimization, has in fact superintended a genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians, staged military attacks on numerous nations, and―in defiance of a ruling by the International Court of Justice―refused to end Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory.
And yet, the possibilities for reversing this sad state of affairs are enormous, for―thanks to a variety of factors, ranging from increases in knowledge to advances in economic productivity―it’s finally feasible for all of humanity to lead decent and fulfilling lives.
No longer is poverty necessary, for the enormous global economy can produce adequate food, goods, and services for all the world’s people.
Human health and longevity can be improved substantially, thanks to breakthroughs in science and medicine.
Education, communications, transportation, and culture have made huge strides toward enriching human existence and could finally be made available to all.
Meanwhile, the rise of the United Nations and of international law holds the promise of moving beyond the violent, bloodstained past and securing peace, human rights, and justice on the international level.
Although it’s tragic that powerful forces seem intent on building an unjust, lawless, and violent planet, let’s not forget that another world remains possible. Indeed, with an organized international effort, it could be a wonderful world.
by Lawrence Wittner | Sep 25, 2025 | Global Justice
On September 13, the British public was startled when more than 110,000 people turned out for a raucous far-right rally in London featuring racist conspiracy theories, anti-Muslim hate speech, and violent assaults upon police. Whipping up the crowd, Tommy Robinson―a popular far-right agitator, march organizer, and five-time convicted criminal―told the assemblage that British government officials believed “that Somalians, Afghans, Pakistanis, all of them, their rights supersede yours, the British public, the people that built this nation.” Signs carried by the demonstrators invoked racist and xenophobic themes, such as: “Why are white people despised when our money pays for everything?”
Well-known speakers from abroad echoed these sentiments. The prominent French far-right politician, Eric Zemmour, warned the angry crowd that they were facing “the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture.” Elon Musk, the arrogant U.S. multibillionaire, demanded the dissolution of parliament and new elections. Thanks to the “rapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive uncontrolled migration,” he said, “violence is coming,” and “you either fight back or you die.”
In recent years, the racially-tinged hatred of immigrants, particularly Muslims, Arabs, Africans, and Latin Americans, has fueled the rise of political parties on the far right. These “populist” parties have made astonishing gains in European nations, and they top the polls today in powerful countries like Britain, Germany, and France. Far-right political parties, drawing upon anti-immigrant rhetoric, have also experienced surges of popularity in Japan, Australia, and the United States.
When nations face sharp xenophobic and racist divisions within, they do have governments that can take action to counter them. Responding to rightwing violence at the London rally, police made dozens of arrests and Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly proclaimed that Britain would “never surrender” to far-right protesters who used the British flag as a cover for violence and to instill fear. Britain is a “diverse country,” he said, and he would not tolerate people being “intimidated on our streets” because of their background or the color of their skin.
But the situation is quite different in the international arena, which more closely resembles a lawless wilderness in which nations can engage in criminal violence.
In February 2022, the Russian government―flouting the UN Charter and its 1994 treaty commitment rejecting the use of force against Ukraine―launched a full-scale military invasion of that much smaller nation. Seeking to justify the onslaught, Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine was “Russian land” and that he had to “denazify” it. On March 2, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion and calling for its withdrawal from Ukraine, 141 nations supported it, 5 nations (including Russia) opposed it, and 35 nations abstained. Two weeks later, the International Court of Justice ruled, by an overwhelming vote, that Russia should “immediately suspend” its military operations in Ukraine.
The Russian government, however, simply continued its military assault upon Ukraine and, over the ensuing years, nearly a million Russian troops and close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded. In addition, according to a February 2025 UNICEF report, thanks to the Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s housing, electrical systems, water supplies, and other civilian infrastructure, 3.7 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, more than 6.8 million have fled abroad, and much of the country lies in ruins. “No place is safe,” it noted. “Overall, some 780 health facilities and more than 1,600 schools have been damaged or destroyed.” This July, the United Nations announced that there had been some 48,000 documented civilian casualties in Ukraine, among them thousands of children.
The Israeli government, too, has displayed a shocking disregard for international law and human life. After the Hamas-led terrorist attack upon Israel of October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a massive military invasion of the tiny Palestinian enclave of Gaza. The assault, vastly excessive in firepower and bloodshed for the task of defeating Hamas or pacifying Gaza, sent millions of innocent Palestinians desperately fleeing death and destruction as Israel’s military forces obliterated homes, schools, hospitals, journalists, and humanitarian aid workers. According to observers, some 65,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, have been killed, famine is rampant, and much of Gaza has been pounded into rubble. A recent report by a UN commission of inquiry that examined the conduct of the invasion and the statements of the Netanyahu administration concluded that the government of Israel was committing the crime of genocide in Gaza.
Furthermore, the Israeli government has ignored international law for decades by refusing to withdraw from the West Bank―Palestinian territory seized by Israeli military forces during the 1967 war―and by bringing in hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers to colonize it. In turn, the settlers, now numbering 700,000, have engaged in widespread violence, recently escalating, against the residents of Palestinian villages in an effort to drive them out and seize their land.
The United Nations, of course, is supposed to maintain international peace and security. Unfortunately, however, it has never been granted the necessary power and resources to handle that job. Furthermore, the UN Security Council is hamstrung by the great power veto. As a result, effective global governance is sadly lacking, and rogue nations remain free to flout international law and the norms of civilization.
In addition to giving a free hand to national criminality, the absence of effective governance on the global level also cripples efforts to tackle other major world problems. After all, how are vital issues like curbing the nuclear arms race, combating climate change, and battling disease pandemics going to be addressed without a global approach and global enforcement?
Consequently, much of the world’s future hinges on empowering international institutions to enforce international law, overcome dangerous social divisions, and help ensure human survival.
by Hannah Fields | Aug 24, 2025 | Global Justice, Human Rights
From online news reports to social media platforms, the rise of authoritarianism and the surge in catastrophic armed conflicts are being broadcast in real time. The world has witnessed numerous atrocity crimes, causing many observers to speak out against the violence, but with no clear end in sight.
Sudan is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian disasters to date, with its two-year civil war resulting in more than 150,000 deaths and displacing at least 12 million people from their homes. In addition, the crisis has led to famine, mass starvation, and war crimes, including ethnic cleansing and sexual violence, all of which have received lukewarm condemnation and international neglect.
Similar circumstances prevail in Gaza as the Israeli government continues its crimes against humanity in the region. According to the Human Rights Watch World Report 2025, Israeli authorities have intentionally deprived Palestinians of access to humanitarian aid, including food and water essential for survival. They have also wounded and killed thousands of civilians, destroyed vital infrastructure such as homes and hospitals, decimated schools and camps housing displaced families, and left few or no safe spaces for those caught in their crosshairs.
More atrocities can be found in Ukraine, Haiti, Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and beyond. These atrocities range from war crimes to gendered violence to civilians suffering under the oppressive hand of authoritarian regimes.
As these violations mount, the international community is being called upon to demonstrate its commitment to democracy, human rights, and humanitarian action. Many nations, however, have failed to rise to the occasion or have sidestepped those commitments completely.
Even in the case of global governance institutions, such as the United Nations Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC), formally established to safeguard human rights and prevent atrocity crimes, their effectiveness is often undermined by structural and political limitations.
The Security Council is frequently paralyzed in its efficacy due to the veto power of its five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), leading to inaction or slowed response to atrocity crimes. Additionally, the ICC has come under intense scrutiny, with some nations accusing the court of targeting weaker states while powerful actors escape its purview. Other nations have sanctioned the ICC for taking action against the powerful or have refused to comply with its arrest warrants.
With both institutions falling short and coming under the attack of politically motivated aggression from countries like the United States and Russia, some practitioners fear that international law is beginning to erode at its edges. For example, in June 2025, former Pakistani law minister Ahmad Irfan Aslam lamented the diminishing capacity of these institutions to deliver real-world justice, cautioning that “[n]o matter what court you approach, you are not going to get justice,” in part due to politicized state behavior.
With mounting global human rights violations and a waning faith in established global governance institutions, there remains a universal feeling of “what next?” or “where do we go from here?” Some may see no path forward.
But there is still hope to be found, especially in civil society organizations, which serve as important counterweights to the gridlocked state-driven systems.
Civil society organizations can act quickly where institutions cannot and can serve multiple roles, such as first responders, watchdogs, pressure builders, and innovators, among others. These organizations have been stepping up to fill gaps where formal aid pipelines are broken, most notably in areas such as Gaza and Sudan.
Sudanese civil society organizations, along with everyday citizens, have established Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) — grassroots networks that provide shelter, food distribution, education, and medical aid. To date, these networks have assisted over 11.5 million people and earned a nomination for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
In Gaza, local groups, international NGOs, and independent journalists are collaborating to document abuses, distribute aid when possible (although often with limited success), and mobilize global solidarity. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also closely monitored the situation, publicly documenting statistics and personal testimonies of civilians, thereby raising broader awareness (and have kept that same awareness and documentation for Sudan).
In these situations, we see communities and civil society, not bureaucracies with billion-dollar budgets, fighting to save lives while countering attempts to normalize or erase suffering, whether in courts, newspapers, or public spaces.
However, activity by civil society organizations faces significant obstacles. Shrinking civic space, repressive laws, accusations of bias, and dependency on donor funding can undermine their autonomy and impact. According to the CIVICUS Monitor, 118 countries now restrict freedoms of association, assembly, or expression. In addition, activists are often harassed, jailed, or even killed, as documented in the Front Line Defenders Report 2024/2025.
Even so, civil society stands as a beacon of hope against the dysfunctional nature of institutional systems. Although civil society organizations can’t replace these systems completely, they can act as a beating heart to improve the overall circulation of these systems.
Institutions must be placed in a position where they work alongside, rather than above, civil society actors. Funding structures must shift to empower local organizations directly, reducing the crippling dependency on donor-state priorities. And civil society must have formalized roles in peace processes and accountability mechanisms. In short, it needs to be involved in institutional conversations, not left on the outside.
As human rights violations and atrocity crimes continue to unfold in full public view, the question is not whether civil society can fill the void being left by deficient institutions. The question is whether the global community will acknowledge, support, and integrate civil society actors into a truly multi-layered system of protection.
If institutions cannot act and civil society is stifled, then a future where human rights can take root at a global level is no more than a fleeting notion planted in the sand.
by Lawrence Wittner | Mar 26, 2025 | Global Justice, Peace & Disarmament
Although the nations of the world have pledged to respect a system of international law and global responsibility, the recent behavior of several countries provides a sharp challenge to this arrangement.
For over three years, the Russian government has conducted a brutal military invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine―the largest and most devastating military operation in Europe since World War II. Defying Russia’s international obligations―including a peace treaty it signed with Ukraine, a ruling by the International Court of Justice demanding Russia halt its military operations in Ukraine, the UN Charter, and repeated UN General Assembly condemnations of Russian behavior by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations―the Putin regime has stubbornly persisted with Russia’s imperialist aggression against its smaller, weaker neighbor.
The consequences have been horrific. Russian and Ukrainian military forces are estimated to have suffered a total of roughly a million deaths or injuries. Moreover, the war has taken a severe toll on Ukraine’s civilian population, with some 42,000 civilians killed or injured and over 10 million more fleeing the country or internally displaced. In July 2024, it was estimated that, thanks to the Russian military’s indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian infrastructure, Russia had damaged more than 1,600 Ukrainian medical centers and destroyed over 200 hospitals. In the first year-and-a-half of the war, Human Rights Watch reported, the Russian invasion “devastated schools and kindergartens throughout the country,” with “over 3,790 educational facilities . . . damaged or destroyed.” A more recent study by this leading human rights organization noted that, in areas of Ukraine that Russian forces occupy, they have “committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include torture and killings of civilians, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and forcible transfers and unlawful deportations of Ukrainians” to Russia.
For its part, the Israeli government has long been at odds with the United Nations over Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and, particularly, its refusal to end its military occupation of the Palestinian territory it conquered during the 1967 Mideast war. Committed to building a Greater Israel, rightwing Israeli government officials have seized Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and flooded it with about 700,000 heavily-subsidized Israeli settlers. In turn, the UN General Assembly, by an overwhelming vote, has called upon Israel to comply with international law and withdraw its military forces, cease new settlement activity, and evacuate its settlers from the West Bank.
The simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted once again in October 2023, when, in response to an Hamas terrorist attack, Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, launched a full-scale military invasion of Gaza with a colossal humanitarian impact. An estimated 46,788 Palestinians have been killed, most of them civilians, and 110,453 have been injured. According to the United Nations, 1.9 million people (90 percent of the population) have been internally displaced thanks to the Israeli bombing campaign, 69 percent of all structures have been destroyed (including 50 percent of hospitals, with the rest just partially functional), and about 1,060 medical workers have been killed. Thanks to the Israeli government’s blockade of food and water supplies, an estimated 91 percent of the population have faced severe levels of hunger.
Although only recently restored to the White House, Donald Trump has already embarked on an ambitious program of scrapping U.S. international commitments and proceeding, instead, with U.S. empire-building. Ordering U.S. sanctions on the International Criminal Court, as well as a U.S. pullout from two key UN agencies (the World Health Organization and the Human Rights Council), he has also chosen a U.S. ambassador to the UN, Representative Elise Stefanik, who has promised to bring the world organization into line with Trump’s “America First” priorities. Moreover, the American president has abruptly terminated nearly all USAID programs, putting millions of people around the world at risk of starvation, disease, and death. In sharp contrast to the severe cuts in domestic social spending that Trump is implementing, he has called for increased military spending, potentially raising the annual U.S. military expenditure from $842 billion to over $1 trillion. This enhanced military power should prove useful, for since returning to office he has championed seizing the Panama Canal and Greenland, taking over Gaza, and annexing Canada as the 51st American state.
In all three cases, the reckless pursuit of narrowly-defined national interests has taken precedence over the shared interests of the world community.
Nor is this an accident, for Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump are caught up in overheated nationalist dreams quite out of touch with global reality. Today, as human survival is threatened by climate catastrophe, a renewed nuclear arms race, disease pandemics, and widespread poverty―crises that cry out for global solutions―these government officials and their rightwing counterparts in other lands are driven by nationalist fantasies. Putin is enamored with Russian imperial glory, Netanyahu is obsessed with visions of Greater Israel, and Trump is intoxicated with America First. And, in their respective fantasies, each of them takes on heroic stature as the Supreme Leader.
Unfortunately, we have seen this phenomenon, along with its catastrophic consequences, many times before.
Fortunately, however, multitudes of people realize that things need not be this way. Indeed, Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump are out of line with the views of many national leaders and social movements that have recognized, and continue to recognize, that the reckless pursuit of narrow national interests is a recipe for disaster. To avoid this disaster, our far-sighted predecessors created the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other international institutions. That is also why these institutions must be strengthened, for without the enforcement of world law, national irresponsibility will thrive.
Indeed, if humanity is to survive in coming decades, it is imperative that reckless competition and conflict among nations give way to cooperation and collective action. War must be replaced by peace, privilege by equality, and the rule of force with the force of law.
Above all, no nation can go it alone, for we are all part of one world and must act accordingly.
