By decolonizing, I mean a transformative process that embeds the views of marginalized and most affected communities

Well before US president-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated in January 2025, the UN has been atrophying in power, credibility, and even relevance. The international organization has faced many challenges since its establishment in 1945 in the shadow of the most horrific chapter in modern human history. Yet few chapters of the UN have been darker than its meek looking on as Israel livestreams the genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza with “total impunity”.

The fact that Israel’s ongoing genocide is armed, funded and shielded from accountability by powerful western states, led by the US, has made this impunity more blatant than ever. Western hypocrisy in slapping Russia with the most severe regime of sanctions ever following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, while fully enabling Israel’s genocide and underlying, decades-old system of settler-colonialism, apartheid and illegal military occupation has also reached unprecedented levels, making a mockery of the west’s claim of even caring about universal human rights. Indonesia’s foreign minister at a recent UN debate on Gaza called on states to not “bury the Principles of the UN Charter and international law under the rubble of double standards, trust deficit and zero-sum game”.