The Hague Group Holds Emergency Conference on Stopping Genocide in Gaza
July 16—The Hague Group, founded by Colombia and South Africa, is holding an emergency 2-day ministerial summit in Bogotá, Colombia, ending today, to map out specific legal and political measures aimed at halting genocide in Gaza and ending Israel’s occupation. Aside from Colombia and South Africa, original founding members included Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Senegal, Malaysia and Namibia. The group’s membership has expanded, and representatives of 30 nations are attending.
The news outlet bne IntelliNews enthusiastically described the gathering as the “Global South’s legal break with the West over Gaza.” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who is participating in the conference, called it “the most significant political development in the past 20 months,” The Guardian reported.
Colombia’s Vice Minister of Multilateral Affairs Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir explained that the group’s primary goal is to propose practical legal and political measures to stop the genocide in Gaza, adding that this isn’t just a political matter, but one of defending international law, the right to self-determination, and Colombia’s commitment to the Genocide Convention. He stressed that now is the time to go beyond declarations and move into collective action.
Colombia’s Foreign Minister Yolanda Villavicencio told attendees that holding the conference shows that nations of the Global South don’t accept “law becoming hostage to geopolitics…. What’s happening in Palestine is no accidental tragedy but a regime of occupation and exclusion that the international community can no longer tolerate,” Infobae reported her saying. The summit, she said, will seek to support the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) investigations and demand compliance with the findings of the International Court of Justice, propose specific sanctions, “and mobilize all the tools which international law offers.”
Albanese, who was sanctioned on July 9 by the U.S. State Department for her “shameful promotion” of ICC action against the U.S. and Israel and “unabashed anti-Semitism,” called today for nations to completely sever all relations with Israel. “The world will remember what we, states and individuals, did in this moment—whether we recoiled in fear or rose in defense of human dignity. Here in Bogotá, a growing number of states have the opportunity to break the silence and revert to a path of legality by finally saying: enough. Enough impunity. Enough empty rhetoric. Enough exceptionalism. Enough complicity. The time has come to act in pursuit of justice and peace—grounded in rights and freedoms for all, and not mere privileges for some, at the expense of the annihilation of others.”
Albanese expressed confidence that “more states will align their policies” with the fundamental principles enshrined in the UN Charter “as we move forward in this existential hour—for both the Palestinian and the Israeli people, and the integrity of the international legal order itself.”