Trump’s “Board of Peace”: diplomacy or imperialism? : Shared by Robert Cohen

"Board of Peace"- Diplomacy or Imperialism?
Interview with Andrew Gilmour
Bigger than Five : TRT World

Note: Andrew James Gilmour CMG (born March 1964) is CEO of the Berghof Foundation and author of The Burning Question: Climate and Conflict - Why Does It Matter.  He was formerly United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, until 2019, and also served as Director for Political, Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Human Rights affairs in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, from 2012 to 2016. An environmentalist since joining the WWF at the age of 10, he has published articles on the links between climate change, environmental degradation, human rights and conflict for Bloomberg and Frankfurter Allgememeine Zeitung. - Wikipedia.org

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Interview

The Board of Peace can lay claim to being “the supreme example of megalomania in history,” said Andrew Gilmour, the UN's former Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, on TRT World’s Bigger Than Five.

Interviewed by Ghida Fakhry about the Board of Peace, its prospects, and what it might mean for the United Nations, Gilmour, who is the Chair of United Staff for Gaza, described the Board as farcical. “It’s a vehicle for an ego,” and, beyond Gaza, with its global-reach delusions, is just a “fantasy,” Gilmour said.

Full interview 👉🏼 Click here

Other key points that Gilmour raised:

- The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, who face pending arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court, were invited to join the Board of Peace but could not even attend its launch in Davos—as they'd have been arrested by the Swiss police—goes to show how unserious the Board is.

- The Board was first conceived to focus solely on Gaza, but its scope has since metastasized. At its launch, President Trump mentioned neither Gaza nor the UN Security Council resolution that had conferred a mandate upon the Board.

- The real-estate developers on the Board are motivated not by peace but by the idea of "some nonsensical riviera in Gaza."

- The United States, for decades, has denied that Palestinians have a right to security. In the narrative of successive US administrations, it is only Israel that has any right to security.

- Francesca Albanese is “extraordinarily courageous,” Gilmour said.

- It is unprecedented and unacceptable that Israel, a UN Member State, has killed hundreds of UN personnel members. Many among them were “assassinated,” Gilmour said. They were not “collateral damage,” he explained. “Their houses were targeted in many instances. The Israelis knew exactly where they lived.” The Governments of the world, which mandated the slain UN personnel members, must ensure accountability.

- Gilmour calls out the “moral cowardice of many European countries.” He says that their hypocrisy and double standards over what has happened in Palestine has done more damage to the United Nations and its ideals than anything else in his lifetime. Referring to Western Governments, he said: “Never before have we seen such a clear-cut example of people who say that they are concerned about war crimes and genocide, but actually what they mean is 'we are concerned about genocide only when we don't like the person carrying out the genocide.'”

- Though clearly designed to undermine the UN, the Board of Peace may actually have the effect of strengthening support for the UN, because however flawed the Security Council has become, when contrasted to the Board, even some critics of the UN may conclude that the world body is not so bad after all and can be reformed.