THE VETO SHOULDN'T BE A SHIELD: THE UN’S DOUBLE STANDARD MUST END

The United Nations was born out of the ruins of the Second World War with a solemn promise to humanity: never again should the world allow the powerful to determine  the fate of the weak through war, conquest and unchecked violence .

It was established to preserve international peace and security, defend the principles of international law and provide a collective mechanism through which nations, regardless of their size or military strength, could seek protection. Yet today that promise is being seriously undermined by a system in which the world's most powerful countries can use the veto to determine when international law should be enforced and when it should be conveniently ignored.

The question that increasingly demands an honest answer is this: Can the United Nations claim to represent international justice when justice itself appears to depend on the identity and political alliances of the accused? The question is no longer theoretical. It is being written in the blood of civilians in Gaza, Iran and other conflict zones where ordinary people, including children, are paying the ultimate price for decisions made by governments and military commanders far removed from the battlefield.

The Security Council has 15 members, but five of them—the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France—hold permanent seats and possess the power to veto substantive decisions. This arrangement may have been considered necessary when the United Nations was created in 1945, but in today's world it increasingly resembles a system of privileged immunity for the most powerful. A country without a permanent seat can be condemned, sanctioned and isolated, while a permanent member can block collective action simply by voting against it. The result is a dangerous imbalance in which the principle of sovereign equality of states is weakened by the reality of unequal political power.

The contradiction becomes particularly la ring when one compares the treatment of Iran and North Korea with the treatment of Israel and the United States. The Security Council has maintained sanctions regimes against Iran connected to concerns over its nuclear programme, while North Korea had faced a series of Security Council sanctions since 2006 because of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. The UN currently has multiple sanctions regimes, including those dealing with nuclear non-proliferation and international security.

Iran’s experience is particularly revealing because the international sanctions regime has been revived through the so-called "snapback" mechanism. Britain, France and Germany triggered that process in 2025 after asserting that Iran had failed to address concerns over its nuclear obligations, leading to the imposition of previous UN sanctions. The issue remains deeply contested, with Iran rejecting accusations that it is pursuing nuclear weapons and Russia and China challenging aspects of the sanctions process.

North Korea has likewise endured years of international sanctions, with the Security Council adopting nine major sanctions resolutions since 2006 in response to its nuclear and missile programmes. The sanctions have restricted trade, financial transactions and access to materials considered relevant to its weapons programme, showing how powerful the Security Council can be when its permanent members agree that collective punishment is necessary.

Nobody should argue that countries threatening international peace should escape accountability simply because they are politically inconvenient to confront. If Iran or North Korea violates international obligations, the international community has every right to demand compliance and, where legally justified, impose proportionate measures. The problem is that the same principle appears to become much more difficult to apply when the alleged violations involve a powerful country or an ally protected by one of the permanent members.

Israel illustrates this contradiction particularly clearly. Israel doesn’t possess a veto at the Security Council, but its principal ally, the United States, does. Consequently, any attempt to impose binding Security Council sanctions on Israel can be stopped if Washington chooses o exercise its veto. The same structural reality means that the United States itself cannot be subjected to Security Council sanctions against its wishes because Washington sits among the five permanent members.

This is what the credibility of international jurisprudence is most important. If a country can use its veto to prevent international sanctions against itself or its allies while supporting sanctions against countries with considerably less geopolitical influence, the message received by the developing world is unmistakable: international law may be universal n principle, but its enforcement is not necessarily universal in practice. That is not the kind of international order the United Nations promised the world.

The issue becomes even more disturbing when the consequences of these political calculations are measured not in diplomatic statements but in human lives. In Gaza, children continue to die amid a conflict that has already produced an extraordinary humanitarian catastrophe. UNICEF has reported that more than 50,000 children had been killed or injured in Gaza by May 2025, while further child deaths have continued since then. In August 2026, UNICEF reported that at least 300 children had reportedly been killed in Gaza during the 300 days following a ceasefire announced in October 2025.

The human cost remains visible even in the most recent incidents. On September 6, an Israeli air strike in Gaza City reportedly killed and injured many more children. Other attacks reported that same day killed additional people, including a three-year-old boy. Israel said it had targeted a Hamas militant, while the consequences once again fell upon innocent civilians and children.

These are not merely numbers to be inserted into diplomatic reports.

Behind every statistic is a child who had a name, a family, a future, and a right to live. Behind every destroyed home is a family whose memories, possessions and hopes have been reduced to rubble. Behind every dead parent is a child who may now grow up without the protection, love and guidance that every child deserves.

This is why the international community cannot continue to hide behind diplomatic language while civilians, especially, children are killed.

Israel has repeatedly argued that its military operations are necessary to defend its people and respond to security threats, particularly following the Hamas attacks of October 7. Those attacks were horrific and the killing of Israeli civilians cannot be justified. Israel has a legitimate right to protect its citizens, but the right to self-defence cannot be interpreted as a blank cheque to use unlimited force or to disregard the rules of international humanitarian law.

The same principle must apply to Iran. If Iran's nuclear programme creates legitimate international security concerns, those concerns should be addressed through lawful diplomatic and multilateral mechanisms. But if military force is used against Iran, the legality and proportionality of that force must also be examined under international law. A rule that applies only to America's adversaries is not international law; it is geopolitical preference.

The same argument applies to the United States. American military power does not place Washington outside the reach of international law. If the United States uses force in circumstances that other nations would be condemned or sanctioned for, the international community has a responsibility to examine those actions by the same legal standards. The credibility of the global system depends not on who possesses the largest military but on whether the same rules are applied to everyone.

The situation in the occupied Palestinian territories presents an equally serious challenge. In its July 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and stated that Israel is under an obligation to bring that unlawful presence to an end as rapidly as possible. The Court also addressed Israel's settlement policies and their implications for the Palestinian people's right to self-determination.

That opinion does not mean that every Israeli military action is automatically unlawful, nor does it erase Israel's security concerns. It does, however, make it impossible for the international community to pretend that the question of occupation and settlements is merely a political disagreement with no legal dimension. When an international court makes such a determination, the world should not respond with selective outrage and then return to business as usual.

The response of some countries outside the Security Council has demonstrated that alternatives to inaction are possible. Britain, France and Canada have now imposed measures targeting trade in goods produced in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, explicitly linking their action to opposition to settlement expansion and support for a two-state solution. The measures are limited and do not constitute a comprehensive economic embargo on Israel, but they demonstrate that individual countries can take action even when the Security Council is politically paralysed.

That raises another uncomfortable question: if individual countries can impose sanctions or restrictions on Israel because they believe its settlement policies violate international law, why should the United Nations Security Council remain incapable of taking meaningful collective action? The answer is painfully obvious: power politics. The veto has become one of the clearest manifestations of that power politics. A mechanism created to keep the major powers inside the UN system has gradually become a mechanism through which those same powers can shield themselves and their allies from collective accountability. The veto does not necessarily prove that a country is right; it proves only that a permanent member is unwilling to allow the proposed action to proceed. That distinction is fundamental. A veto is not a judicial acquittal. It is a political decision.

Yet millions of people around the world understandably interpret repeated vetoes as evidence that international justice has one standard for the powerful and another for everyone else. This perception is particularly dangerous for Africa. For decades, African countries have been told that international institutions exist to protect sovereignty, uphold international law and maintain global peace. Yet Africa has no permanent seat on the Security Council despite having 54 UN member states. When African countries watch powerful nations exercise extraordinary influence over decisions affecting the entire world, they are entitled to ask why the continent remains largely excluded from the most powerful room in the international system.

The same question can be asked by Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia and much of the Middle East. The Security Council was created in a very different geopolitical era, but the structure has barely changed while the world has changed dramatically. The consequence is a growing legitimacy crisis.

When sanctions can be imposed on Iran and North Korea, but similar measures against Israel or the United States can be blocked by a permanent member, people begin to question whether the United Nations is enforcing international law or merely managing international power. When children are killed in Gaza and Iran while diplomatic battles continue over which government should be condemned, ordinary people begin to wonder whether the international system values human life equally.

The United Nations cannot afford to ignore that growing cynicism. This is not a demand that Iran, North Korea, Israel or the United States be treated identically regardless of the facts of their respective cases. Justice does not mean pretending that every conflict is the same. It means establishing clear rules and applying them consistently, based on evidence and international law rather than political alliances.

If nuclear proliferation warrants sanctions, the standard should apply universally. If attacks against civilians warrant international condemnation, the nationality of the victims should not determine the intensity of that condemnation. If occupation and annexation violate international law, the prohibition should not depend upon whether the occupying power is a friend or an enemy of a permanent member of the Security Council.

The international community must also stop treating the deaths of children as unavoidable collateral damage in geopolitical calculations. A child in Gaza is not less valuable than a child in Israel. A child in Iran is not less valuable than a child in America. The life of an innocent Palestinian, Iranian, Israeli or American child should carry the same moral weight. That is the standard civilisation should demand.

The world cannot continue pretending that the veto is merely a technical feature of UN procedure. It is one of the most consequential instruments of power in international politics, capable of determining whether a country is sanctioned, whether an investigation proceeds, whether a ceasefire demand carries weight and whether the international community acts or remains silent.

When that instrument is repeatedly used to protect powerful interests, the victims are rarely the governments sitting around the Security Council table. The victims are usually ordinary people whose voices are weakest and whose governments lack the military or diplomatic power to protect them. That is why the debate over the veto is ultimately not about America, Israel, Iran or North The time has therefore come for the world to demand more than speeches about peace, more than resolutions without enforcement and more than expressions of concern after innocent civilians have been killed. The United Nations must reform the system that allows geopolitical privilege to override universal principles, because international law cannot remain credible if it is powerful enough to punish the weak but too weak to restrain the powerful.

Until that contradiction is confronted, every dead child in Gaza, every child killed in Iran and every civilian destroyed by war will serve as another painful reminder that the international system has not yet delivered the equality and justice it promised humanity. The world deserves better. And the United Nations must do better.

The Trial News