TWN Info Service on UN Sustainable Development (Jul25/07)
17 July 2025
Third World Network

Coordinated State efforts against Israel pursued by the Hague Group, yet much more still needed

By Kinda Mohamadieh (Bogota, 16 July 2025)

Thirty-one States participated in an emergency meeting convened by the Hague Group and hosted by the Colombian government in Bogota on the 15^th and 16^th of July[1]. The Hague Group of eight developing countries convened in January 2024, supported by the platform Progressive International[2].

The Hague Group is an effort towards coordinated concrete legal and diplomatic action to enforce international law in light of Israel’s persistent and expanding illegalities against the Palestinian people, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The meeting was positioned as a follow-up to the determinations in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion of July 2024, and centered the Court’s determinations as a pillar for engagement and action[3]. The ICJ had confirmed Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory as unlawful, and stressed third States obligations not to render aid and assistance in the maintenance of this illegality and to ensure the end of any impediment resulting from the illegal presence of Israel in the occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) to the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination[4].

The outcome

The conference issued a joint statement supported by 12 States including six of the States that initially took part in the Hague Group inauguration statement (Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Malaysia, Namibia, and South Africa, while Honduras and Senegal did not join), and supported additionally by Indonesia, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Oman, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

The statement refers to six measures that States will adopt based on their domestic legal and legislative frameworks, as “a collective commitment to defend the foundational principles of international law”. These include three inter-related measures on preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment and dual-use items to Israel, preventing the transit, docking, and servicing of vessels at any port within their territorial jurisdiction in all cases where there is a clear risk such material are carried, and preventing the carriage of this material on vessels bearing their flag.

Importantly, the statement provides that the signatory States will commence an urgent review of all public contracts in order to prevent public institutions and public funds from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation, and ensure that their nationals and authorities, and companies and entities under their jurisdiction do not act in a way that would entail recognition or provide aid and assistance in maintaining the illegal situation created by Israel. This is a key commitment that will go a long way towards State’s fulfilling their obligations under international law, if it is to be adequately and effectively implemented.

If read in a comprehensive approach, this would mean that the signatory States have committed to review all public contracts, including those for public procurement purposes as well as investment contracts where the State is party (including public-private partnerships), including those involving State-owned enterprises. The commitment would require ending all such contracts which may entail certain form of “[support to] Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory”. Ensuring that nationals, companies and other entities under their jurisdiction do not contribute to the illegality would require enacting legislation or undertaking executive, administrative or other measures to ensure that the requirements from these entities are clearly established, including monitoring, assessing and reporting on engagements that could raise such risks of aiding and assistance with Israel’s illegality. These requirements should be attached to a clear enforcement mechanism, whether under civil, administrative or criminal regimes of liability.

Additionally, the statement provides that signatory States will undertake robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law which Israel is perpetrating. This important measure, if approached comprehensively, would entail taking necessary measures to investigate and prosecute corporate executives and entities, where possible, for complicity with Israel’s crimes. Related to this is the sixth agreed measure to support universal jurisdiction mandates, as and where applicable in domestic constitutional frameworks and judiciaries.

While twelve States signed up to the statement emerging out of the meeting in Bogota, South Africa’s representative at the closing session noted that more States are expected to join and commit to the adopted measures in the coming months.

Palestinian representatives and other civil society groups call for comprehensive measures

While commitments made in Bogota is a step forward to advance coordinated collective State action, the road seems long before States will step up to meet peoples’ calls for action that would end Israel’s impunity and help deliver liberation and justice for the Palestinian people. Civil society groups participating at the meeting in Bogota called for key measures that are required from States to step up towards fulfilling their obligations under international law and ensuring the end of impediments to the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

Civil society groups stressed that the situation in Palestine is not a humanitarian condition but a struggle for self-determination, and collective action is a necessary way forward to end the genocide and illegal occupation. Genocide is a logical conclusion of the settler colonial regime that was emboldened by impunity and enabled by the support of Western States. The decades of Israeli impunity are an existential threat not only to the Palestinian people but a threat to the whole international legal order. State action should ensure that commitments and obligations under international law are transposed under domestic legal frameworks in a way that is enforceable. Groups called upon States to take proactive steps in anticipation of the conclusion of the period granted to Israel under the General Assembly resolution of September 2024 to bring an end its unlawful presence in the OPT.

For civil society groups participating at the conference, all States including those taking part in the Hague Group are yet to turn their political positions into effective concrete action. Groups called for an immediate and effective arms and energy embargo on Israel, covering four dimensions: the prohibition of direct and indirect exports, as well as transfer, to Israel of military supplies, weapons, components, and dual-use items; the prohibition of imports from Israel’s military industry; as well as the ending of military cooperation, including trainings, cooperation agreements, joint exercises with Israel; and the withdrawal of military attachés.

Groups stressed the necessity of an urgent and effective energy embargo, especially as most of the energy supplies (oil and coal) that Israel benefits from come from the global South, including States participating in the Hague Group. Even States that actively took measures, such as Colombia’s halting of coal exports to Israel (decided in April 2024), remains ineffective due to the role of multinationals exercising deep influence over the supply chain because of contracts they maintain with the concerned States. Colombia remains the largest supplier of coal to Israel, followed by South Africa. Along with oil and coal, groups addressed the critical raw minerals exports (such as Niobium) to Israel, which help in sustaining Israel’s military activity and industry, thus contributing to the tools of genocide and entrenchment of the settler-colonial apartheid regime. 

Groups addressed the importance of immediately putting in place stringent measures to ban access to States’ territorial waters and ports as well as the provision of flags to vessels that are involved in direct or indirect transfer of weapons and supplies to Israel. This requires issuing clear ordinances directed to all relevant authorities including the port authorities, maritime police, and shipping registrar, ensuring due diligence as well as investigations and accountability where these measures are breached.

Groups stressed as well the necessity of ending the normalized economic relations with Israel, without which the effectiveness of measures against Israel’s illegalities would remain incomplete. States have solid legal basis to take comprehensive trade measures against Israel, in the form of suspension of export and import relations, including suspension of the most-favoured nation (MFN) treatment at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and any other preferential treatment under other trade agreements. Furthermore, States are compelled as per their international obligations to act individually and collectively, such as under the umbrella of the WTO, and under other relevant regional and international organizations where they participate as Members.

In this regard, groups stressed that attempts to argue for differentiation between Israel proper and Israel’s illegal settlement regime in the OPT is a mere distortion and distraction from the effective measures that ought to be taken. There is an entrenched intertwined relation between the Israeli economy and the OPT[5], whereby the role of Israel as an occupying power cannot be understood in isolation from the overall operations of the Israeli State and Israeli economy[6]. The illegality maintained by Israel is reliant on a regime of systemic policies and practices by different organs of the State that spans decades, including but not limited to those pertaining to the settlements, their associated regime, and annexation.

These policies and practices systematically discriminate against the Palestinian people, enforce a regime of apartheid against them, and facilitate the exploitation of their resources[7]. UNCTAD estimated that the Israeli economy benefits an average of $30 billion per year from its role as an occupying power and the resources it extracts from the Palestinian people[8].  In this context, trade relations with Israel cannot be effectively delinked from Israel’s illegalities in the OPT.

Another key ask by participating civil society groups concerns needed action by States to prosecute rank and file Israeli soldiers within their borders, whether they be dual nationals or traveling soldiers. Under the  Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention, States have an affirmative obligation to seek  out and prosecute those responsible for grave breaches or the crime of genocide respectively. 

Groups underlined as well the importance that States coordinate action in multilateral fora, including the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Groups argued for the establishment of a reparation mechanism through a UNGA resolution, initiation of work within the UNGA towards the establishment of a Committee against Apartheid as an international accountability mechanism with the mandate to monitor and investigate the apartheid regime imposed by Israel across the entirety of historic Palestine. They also urged the convening of a special session of the UNGA under the Uniting for Peace framework, with the objective of adopting measures including the imposition of targeted sanctions and a comprehensive arms embargo against Israel and initiating the unseating of Israel from the United Nations.

States were called upon to actively intervene in cases brought against Israel in front of the ICJ, including the Nicaragua v. Germany case, a most critical legal action pertaining to third states obligations, as well as the South Africa v. Israel case under the genocide convention.  

Civil society groups also called for support to a diplomatic convoy to break the siege and end the starvation inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the weaponisation of humanitarian aid. 

The framing narrative and aspirations expressed in the opening session  

In her opening speech, Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, said that international law should be reflected in principled action rather than empty rhetoric. She rejected that rights are held hostage to geopolitics, and presented her view of the Hague Group as a network of States that will defend international law and legality even when it bothers others.

Zane Dangor, South Africa’s Secretary-General of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation stressed that the ICJ advisory opinion, followed by the General Assembly resolution voted by an overwhelming majority of Member States, reminded States that they are legally obligated to end the impunity of Israel and the exceptionalism it has benefitted from. He stressed that States should stop trying to rationalize Israel’s actions, as these crimes are not complex but simply unlawful.

Minister Riyad Mansour, participating on behalf of the State of Palestine, stressed that what is needed is not reaffirmation of principles but implementation and action, calling the initiative of the Hague Group an act of political courage at a time when world politics are marked with hypocritic double standards and degradation of our common humanity and the international system of laws and values. He called on States that have not recognized the State of Palestine yet to do so, underlining that this is not a symbolic act but a concrete measure of defense against colonial expansionism.

The convening heard the testimony of Dr. Thaer Ahmed who served in Gaza and Lebanon under the Israeli attacks. Through his powerful words, Dr. Ahmed tried to tell the horrifying agonizing story unfolding in Gaza, which he described as an attack on life itself. He recounted how all mechanisms that could help survival in Gaza have been hindered and obstructed while Israel perpetrates its brutal attack on the past, present and future of the Palestinian people. Those who survive this suffer every day and children face irreversible damage to their growth as a result of the horrifying conditions inflicted on them, including hunger and the deliberate and engineered breaking down of the health care system. He called on everyone to do whatever is necessary to ensure that the efforts to erase Palestinians from the history books is not successful.

Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, called on each state to immediately review all types of ties with Israel, including the political, diplomatic, military, economic, and financial and cut those ties with Israel as whole. She stressed that the idea of cutting ties with parts of Israel, such as its illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, will be like addressing symptoms not the root problem. Israel’s economy is structured to sustain the occupation and now genocide, and it is impossible to disentangle the Israeli economy from its role as occupier. There is no good Israel and bad Israel, she said.

Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, the executive secretary of Progressives International, which supports the convening of the Hague Group, stressed that there is no lack of legal clarity, but what lacks is courage to stand with international law and those that the law should protect, echoing the voices of Palestinian civil society groups participating at the meeting. She said that collective coordinated State action to enforce international law is the antidote to threats of coercive retaliation that States might fear facing when they act for Palestine.

The dominant feeling during the meeting in Bogota was one of hope and aspiration that this initiative, led by developing countries, will prove a turning point towards action and pursuit of the full potential of international law in order to achieve liberation and justice for the Palestinian people. While the meeting was a significant step in an incremental process towards coordinated and collective action among States, it also showed how much more is needed in terms of numbers of States that should stand up to fulfill their obligations under international law, and in terms of the scope of measures that ought to be taken to end Israel’s illegalities. The commitment to defend international law in Palestine is a realization that Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestine, its ongoing genocide, and its continued disregard of its obligations as stated by the highest international Court and by multiple General Assembly and Security Council resolutions is an attack on the international regime of law and institutions, which the international community as a whole has a duty to defend.