Gaza War | Conference for Legality

The Global South is building pressure on Israel. A group of more than 30 states met in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, on Tuesday and Wednesday to adopt measures against Israel's war in the Gaza Strip and its repeated serious violations of international law and war crimes.

Among the speakers was the UN Special Rapporteur for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Francesca Albanese. She described the Bogotá conference as a turning point, the Middle East Eye website reported, to, as Albanese put it, "return to the path of legality" by ending complicity with the State of Israel in its occupation of the West Bank and the war in Gaza: "Every state must immediately review and suspend all ties with the State of Israel (...) and ensure that its private sector does the same," she said, according to the Associated Press (AP) news agency.

Albanese was recently sanctioned by the US government for her criticism of Israel, primarily because of her recent report documenting the involvement of private companies, primarily from the US, in the occupation regime in the West Bank and the war in the Gaza Strip. At the Bogotá conference, she again emphasized the role of business: "The Israeli economy is structured to perpetuate the occupation, which has now become genocide."

The two-day conference in Bogotá was attended primarily by countries from the Global South, but the governments of Spain, Ireland, and China also sent delegates. The conference was co-chaired by the governments of South Africa and Colombia, which suspended their coal exports to Israel last year. The two countries are the main initiators of the so-called Hague Group: a loose alliance of eight states, founded in late January, that has pledged to sever military ties with Israel and execute the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The main goal is to implement the rulings against Israel and Israeli officials issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the UN. Specifically, the conference participants aim to follow up with concrete actions a 2024 ICJ ruling that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal. There is also a UN General Assembly resolution from September 2020 calling on Israel to withdraw its troops from the Palestinian territories and urging member states to stop selling weapons to Israel.

"It is important that we engage meaningfully in advocating for the rule of law," said Chrispin Phiri, spokesperson for the South African Department of International Relations, who is attending the conference in Bogota. "The notion that international law... can only be enforced in countries of the global South is no longer tenable."

According to Colombian Vice Minister for Multilateral Affairs Mauricio Jaramillo Yassir, the importance of the meeting is to "move from words to action and stop the genocide , draw the world's attention to Palestine, defend the human rights system and multilateralism, and ensure justice for the perpetrators of the genocide in Palestine," he said on Tuesday.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who hosted the conference, said the meeting would demonstrate that the world is finally moving from condemning Israel's military action to taking joint action to end it. To this end, a plan of political, economic, and legal measures will be agreed upon, such as blocking ships with links to the Israeli military in their ports.