Published Sep 26, 2026 | 2:07 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 26, 2026 | 3:02 PM
Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, executive secretary of the Hague Group, seen at the UN General Assembly. (Special Arrangement)
International law will have little meaning if violators face no consequences and “might alone determines which laws are respected and which may be violated with impunity”.
This was the key argument at The Hague Group’s Extraordinary Meeting in Defence of International Law at the UN headquarters in New York.
Speaking at the meeting, Malaysian foreign minister Datuk Seri Mohammad Hasan emphasised that “defending international law is not a matter of choosing sides. It is about defending a rules-based order in which no state is above the law, and in which the rights of peoples are not subject to political convenience.”
Minister Hasan highlighted how Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territory “continue to witness blatant violations of international law, immense human suffering, and the systematic denial of fundamental human rights”, and yet Israel is being allowed to continue its genocide with impunity “despite binding court rulings, United Nations resolutions and clear legal obligations”.
“We cannot allow these violations and breakdown in international norms to be normalised,” he stressed.
Along with Malaysia, 39 other nations were in attendance.
The meeting came during a week when US President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the United Nations.
Trump had called the ICC an “out-of-control institution”.
“We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us. You’re an evil group of people,” he said.
“I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately,” Trump said.
Ronald Lamola, the foreign minister of South Africa, another of the founding members of The Hague Group, decried the threat of sanctions against the ICC that Trump had brandished.
“If imposed, such measures could fundamentally disrupt its operations. An independent court remains independent only if judges and officials cannot be punished for carrying out their mandates,” Lamola said.
The South African foreign minister criticised Israel’s open flouting of international law and its rulings.
Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, executive secretary of The Hague Group, also condemned President Trump’s statements against the ICC.
“It’s an absolute low point for the sacred grounds of the United Nations that President Trump has shown up here and attacked the international legal order,” she told Democracy Now.
On the floor of the UN General Assembly, Varsha Gandikota reiterated The Hague Group’s belief that “the authority of international law derives not merely from its proclamation, but from its enforcement”.
She also identified three key shifts that member nations at the meeting sought.
“The first is from complicity to compliance. Today states commit to cooperation and exchange across national and international mechanisms to give practical effect to states’ obligations under international law…,” she said.
“The second shift that we heard from speeches across the floor today is a shift from impunity to accountability,” Varsha Gandikota stated.
This involves “Accountability for settlers, officials promoting settlements, mass confinement, and violence…” alongside “coordinated measures to support the implementation and enforcement of the decisions of the international courts and tribunals…” and protecting officials through measures such as “blocking statutes” and “sustained financial support to organisations like UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East),” she added.
The Hague Group saw “a desire for a much larger, broader, paradigmatic shift towards a new multilateralism, to reaffirm the sovereign equality of nations large and small…,” she said, while calling for “renewed United Nations body modelled after the historic 1962 UN Special Committee against Apartheid.”
A statement signed by Lamola and Hasan, the foreign ministers of South Africa and Malaysia who convened the meeting, also called for continued efforts towards a United Nations Security Council arms embargo on Israel
Full remarks by The Hague Group’s Executive Secretary @VarshaGandikota. pic.twitter.com/vrdQPOFNm8
— The Hague Group (@The_Hague_Group) September 25, 2026
Such have been Israel’s flagrant violations that the United Nations’ independent Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar titled its report “The essence of childhood has been destroyed: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023”.
The Commission also found that Israel and its security forces had committed genocide.
“Three of the four categories of genocide are especially relevant to children (in Occupied Palestine), namely (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” the report stated.
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(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
