March 28, 2024 (EIRNS)—Article 25 of the UN Charter states: “The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.” The statement constitutes the full article; there are no qualifiers, no ifs, ands, or buts added.
That did not stop State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on March 27, like White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby on March 25, from declaring about UNSC Resolution 2728, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, “We believe it’s nonbinding, that it doesn’t impose any new legal obligations on any of the parties….” He then demurred that “we do believe it should be implemented.”
Questions were raised. First, you say it should be implemented. Could you please “explain how this resolution will be implemented while you are calling it nonbinding?” Another journalist asked him if “calling a UN Security Council resolution `nonbinding’ contradicts your commitment to rules-based order?” Another asked if the U.S. believes all UNSC resolutions are nonbinding, and therefore should North Korea feel comfortable ignoring sanctions imposed on it under UNSC resolutions?
Ah, no, not that. “There are different types of UN Security Council resolutions,” Miller invented. “There are some UN Security Council resolutions that impose direct, binding obligations on the parties,” like the sanctions resolutions with respect to North Korea. “Those impose direct obligations on the parties. And then there are different kinds of resolutions, like the one yesterday, which do not impose direct obligations but we very much believe should be implemented.”
Craig Mokhiber, the American international human rights lawyer who headed the UN Human Rights Office in New York for decades until November 2023, commented on this flagrant lying: “The U.S. has shown itself willing to burn down the house—to tear down the entire international legal framework to defend one genocidal, apartheid state, distorting humanitarian law, abrogating the genocide convention, and declaring Security Council resolutions ‘non-binding.’”
