UN to review US veto of Gaza ceasefire resolution on Tuesday

The General Assembly of the UN meets on Tuesday in a special emergency session to discuss the veto presented by the United States to the latest Security Council resolution last Friday, which called for an immediate ceasefire in Loop.

The United States veto, despite not being the first it has used – almost always to support Israel – has on this occasion raised numerous criticisms from the Muslim world, but also from Russia, China and African and Asian countries.

Following a reform in procedures in 2022, the president of the Assembly can call an extraordinary session every time one of the five permanent members of the Security Council – the US, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom – uses its right of veto to prevent a resolution that would otherwise have had the necessary majority (9 of the 15 members).

In this case, and despite it being a Sunday – when UN agencies are usually closed – the president of the Assembly, Dennis Francis, has moved quickly and has just informed the member states that this emergency session will take place on Tuesday, December 12 at 3:00 p.m. local time in New York (7:00 p.m. GMT), as reported by the presidency.

The session was requested on the same Friday – that is, almost immediately after the Council vote vetoed by the US – by the ambassadors of Egypt and Mauritania to the UN, as respective heads of the Arab Group and the Group of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The letter sent to Francis and made public by the Egyptian mission notes that the session is technically a continuation of the previous emergency session on the same topic, but it is convened “in response to the veto of a permanent member of the Council on the serious situation of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and in demand of an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”

The Assembly’s resolutions have no binding character or follow-up mechanisms, so they are merely symbolic and serve to measure the support of each country.

Already on October 27, the Assembly met in an extraordinary manner, also after another US veto, and agreed to request “an immediate, lasting and sustained humanitarian truce leading to the cessation of hostilities.”

That text was supported by 120 countries, including France and Spain, and was rejected by 14 – the US, Israel and 12 other allied countries -, while 45 abstained, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany. and Italy.