Her Excellency Minister of Justice Yvonne Dausuab,
Excellencies,
Representatives of Progressive International,

I would like to thank the organisers of this event, which marks a major step by States from the Global South to work collectively towards justice for the people of Palestine, and for a more just and equitable world, defined by the rule of just law.

South Africa fully supports the Declaration read out earlier.

I would like to make some remarks on a few points that are pertinent to the issues covered by the Declaration.

On 29 December 2023, South Africa brought an application pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against the State of Israel for their brutal assault on Palestinians in Gaza. The attacks at the time of the application had already created what many observers were characterising as a “crisis of humanity” and a “living hell” for Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants and had shocked the conscience of most in the world. South Africa sought to end the situation of unprecedented horror in Gaza, by referring the situation to the ICJ as the ultimate guarantor of the Genocide Convention.

South Africa also asked the Court to order Provisional Measures to compel Israel to end its genocidal acts in Palestine.

The Court made such orders, but Israel refused to abide by them. States supporting Israel sought to undermine the authority of the Court instead of enacting their third-State responsibilities to ensure that Israel meets its legal obligations.

On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a historic Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem declaring that Israel’s 57-year-old control over the Palestinian territories is unlawful.

The Court’s decision reveals a pattern of oppression which includes breaches of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which condemns and prohibits Apartheid, the unlawful annexation of land, the denial of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and flagrant violations of sovereignty over natural resources. This, accompanied by systemic violations of international humanitarian law, is typical of settler colonial forms of oppression.

The Court’s opinion gives credence to what Palestinians have been saying for decades, and what NGOs, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israeli NGO B’Tselem have said more recently: that Israel is an Apartheid State.

Despite the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion and its Provisional Measures order, Israel continues to sow destruction in Palestine as it seeks to further depopulate Palestinian territories through force and unlawful occupation and its genocidal actions in Palestine.

On 18 September 2024 the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to endorse the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion. The resolution put in place countermeasures for Israel’s breaches of international law.

The resolution welcomed the Advisory Opinion which ruled that all States have an obligation not to recognise as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In the debate preceding the vote, member states argued that it was the collective responsibility of Member States of the United Nations to hold each other to account and to ensure that legal decisions of its apex Court and the resolutions of the United Nations are respected and implemented.

Despite this, countries, most notably those that were at some stage settler colonial regimes themselves and have themselves committed some of the international crimes that Israel is committing today, including the Crime of Genocide, continue to support Israel’s unlawful presence and actions in Palestine.

In contrast to this, today, this group of developing countries have gathered to agree on a programme of action to defend the institutions of global governance, including the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the ICJ from egregious attacks due to these institutions having dared to hold Israel accountable.

It is the proverbial international law subalterns, that is the people and countries that many in the West believed that international law and its courts were established to control, that are at the forefront of building an international legal order that is just and fair.

We wish to highlight that the international community cannot proclaim the importance of international law, including that of the UN Charter, if it is only applied in some situations and not in others. We should not pick and choose which binding orders to abide by and which to set aside or simply ignore.

The international community should not condone impunity and exceptionalism. It cannot be that some countries are immune to accountability. We as the international community should reject attempts to manipulate international law to pursue accountability for some but evade accountability for others.

Enabling Israel to simply ignore decisions of the Courts and the United Nations with no consequence, is negatively impacting the integrity of the international legal order, including the organisations that are mandated to ensure accountability and ending impunity. This is unacceptable and we should not be complicit in Israel’s endeavours to irreparably harm the institutions that were established to build a more peaceful and just world.

As Member States of the United Nations who have pledged our commitment to upholding the UN Charter, we have the ultimate responsibility to ensure and protect the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.

In Conclusion, South Africa will continue to act within the institutions of global governance to protect the rights, including the fundamental right to life, of Palestinians in Gaza – which continue to remain at urgent risk including from Israeli military assault, starvation and disease – and to obtain the fair and equal application of international law to all, in the interest of our collective humanity. Notably, South Africa will continue to do everything within its power to preserve the existence of the Palestinian people as a group, to end all acts of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people and to walk with them towards the realisation of their collective right to self-determination, for, as Nelson Mandela momentously declared, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.

I ask all States to walk this journey to freedom for the Palestinians with us.

I thank you.

ISSUED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND COOPERATION

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