Statement of the Worldwide Lawyers Association (WOLAS) on United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025)
On 17 November 2025, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2803, advancing the United States’ plan for the administration of Gaza. The resolution passed with thirteen votes in favour and two abstentions (China and Russia), without a single vote against, despite grave and widely expressed concerns regarding its legality, its consequences for the Palestinian people, and its implications for the integrity of the international legal system. The decision marks one of the most consequential Security Council interventions in the affairs of an occupied territory in decades, authorising the establishment of a foreign-dominated governance structure and a multinational force under terms that raise profound legal, political, and ethical questions.
Resolution 2803 establishes two central bodies: a civilian Board of Peace (BoP), chaired by the President of the United States and empowered to direct governance, security, reconstruction, and humanitarian coordination in Gaza; and an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), authorised to use all necessary measures and required to operate in close coordination with the Israeli military. In parallel, the resolution installs a Palestinian technocratic committee, appointed by foreign powers, whose authority remains subordinate to the Board of Peace. It fragments Gaza from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, conditions any prospect of Palestinian sovereignty on undefined and externally determined criteria, and vests control over borders, airspace, movement, and aid in foreign actors. These institutional designs, taken together, represent a radical reordering of governance in Gaza under external custodianship. They echo earlier episodes in which the language of international administration was used to legitimise unlawful domination, including in Iraq. These elements reproduce the structures of occupation, entrench foreign hegemony, and negate the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.
The resolution’s most serious flaw is its fundamental inconsistency with the binding determinations of the International Court of Justice. The ICJ has held, in both its 2024 and 2025 advisory opinions, that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including Gaza, is unlawful, and that withdrawal must occur unconditionally, rapidly, and in a manner that restores, not postpones, Palestinian sovereignty. Yet, Resolution 2803 entrenches the very structures the Court declared illegitimate. It makes Israeli withdrawal contingent on standards jointly defined by Israel, the United States, and selected guarantors; it authorises an indefinite security perimeter under Israeli control; and it explicitly divorces Gaza from the territorial unity of the occupied territory, thereby subverting the principle of self-determination as a peremptory norm. This arrangement amounts to replacing one form of unlawful occupation with another, in which the United States and its allies-actors, directly involved in or complicit with the violence inflicted upon Palestinians, exercise decisive authority over their political future. The structure established by the resolution replaces occupation not with liberation, but with an updated form of colonial administration.
Moreover, the humanitarian and governance components of the resolution introduce a highly politicised and coercive framework. Humanitarian relief is conditioned on coordination with the Board of Peace, which functions as a gatekeeping authority in direct violation of the ICJ’s holding that an occupying power must unconditionally facilitate humanitarian assistance (such as through UNRWA, other UN and international organisations). The resolution’s approach to reconstruction entrenches a model of donor-dependent governance while excluding meaningful Palestinian participation; it creates mechanisms that risk indebting Palestinians to foreign financial institutions while shielding Israel from its obligation to provide reparations for decades of unlawful occupation and for the genocidal destruction inflicted since October 2023. This design risks replicating the failures of the post-2003 Iraq model, where foreign control over aid and economic policy facilitated dispossession and privatisation, entrenched dependency, and eroded public institutions under the veneer of reconstruction.
The security architecture created by Resolution 2803 is equally troubling and incompatible with international law. The International Stabilisation Force is mandated to disarm Palestinian resistance groups while operating in close consultation and cooperation with the Israeli military, one of the perpetrators of the very violations the ICJ has ordered states to prevent. This mandate strips the force of neutrality and effectively transforms it into an auxiliary arm of the occupying power. Demilitarisation of the occupied population without ending occupation, while allowing the occupying power to retain overwhelming military advantage, violates the right to resist colonial domination and foreign occupation. Even internal U.S. planning documents, revealed through independent reporting, indicate that officials privy to the design of the stabilisation force anticipate structural unworkability, severe security vacuums, and the high likelihood of prolonged foreign military entanglement under unclear legal authority.
Finally, the resolution poses a systemic threat to the international legal system: namely, the unrestrained expansion of Security Council authority beyond the limits imposed by the UN Charter and international law. By authorising a foreign-imposed administrative and military regime in occupied territory, contrary to the ICJ, the UN Charter, and the fundamental norms of decolonisation, the Security Council exceeds the limits of its authority under Chapter VII. When the Council adopts measures that deny self-determination, legitimise unlawful occupation, or authorise the administration of territory by actors complicit in atrocity crimes, it acts ultra vires. Such situations highlight the need for judicial review by the International Court of Justice to ensure that the Security Council does not override higher norms or undermine the constitutional foundations of the international legal system. Resolution 2803 exemplifies this need: it demonstrates that political organs may generate decisions that contradict established law, violate peremptory norms, and attempt to normalise illegal situations through procedural legitimacy. The absence of any judicial mechanism capable of invalidating ultra vires acts of the Security Council is thus not merely a theoretical problem; it is a structural threat that risks transforming the Security Council into an instrument of oppression rather than a guardian of peace. The passage of the resolution occurred under conditions of overt political pressure exerted by the United States, most starkly demonstrated when U.S. envoy Mike Waltz, explicitly speaking on behalf of President Trump, Secretary Rubio, Jared Kushner, and Special Envoy Witkoff, warned Member States that a vote against the resolution was ‘a vote to return to war’. This open threat amounts to political duress, further undermining the legitimacy of the Council’s decision and heightening the need for judicial scrutiny of such ultra vires action.
The Way Forward
WOLAS emphasises that Resolution 2803 cannot form the basis of a lawful or sustainable peace. Its model of externally imposed governance, its disregard for the findings of the ICJ, and its coercive humanitarian and security architecture render it incompatible with decolonisation, with the UN Charter, and with the moral and legal imperative to secure justice for the Palestinian people. A legitimate path forward requires an immediate re-centring of international law rather than political expediency. It requires the unconditional end of Israel’s unlawful presence in all parts of the occupied Palestinian territory; the restoration of Palestinian territorial integrity; and the affirmation that governance arrangements must be determined by Palestinians themselves, not assigned to them by foreign powers under the language of reform or stabilisation. Humanitarian aid must flow impartially and independently; reconstruction must be directed by Palestinian institutions and funded through reparations owed by the responsible state; and accountability for atrocity crimes, including genocide, must be pursued systematically. An international protective presence must operate under UN authority, under a limited and clearly defined mandate, and with the consent and leadership of the Palestinians, in order to implement the ICJ’s 2024 and 2025 Advisory Opinions; to establish a law-compliant international protective State presence in Gaza, composed solely of States with no involvement in the conflict or complicity in violations of international law; and mandated to act within international humanitarian law, the ICJ Advisory Opinions, and to adopt collective measures, including arms embargoes.
In light of the resolution’s adoption, the obligations of states do not dissipate; they intensify. Under the erga omnes duties associated with self-determination and the obligation of non-recognition of unlawful situations, states must refuse to lend legal, political, financial, or operational support to governance structures or security mechanisms created by Resolution 2803 that entrench Israel’s unlawful presence or deny Palestinian sovereignty. This includes a positive duty to withhold personnel, funding, logistical cooperation, and diplomatic endorsement from the Board of Peace, the International Stabilisation Force, or any parallel institutions that function as instruments of foreign domination. The fact that the Security Council has adopted the resolution does not and cannot extinguish states’ obligations to refrain from recognising, assisting, or facilitating arrangements that violate peremptory norms.
States must therefore actively pursue lawful alternatives: they must strengthen recourse to the International Court of Justice through advisory or contentious proceedings aimed at clarifying the ultra vires nature of Resolution 2803’s core provisions; they must utilise the General Assembly’s authority, including through the Uniting for Peace mechanism, to counteract the effects of the resolution and to mandate protective measures consistent with international law; and they must support Palestinian-led political, economic, and humanitarian initiatives that restore agency rather than impose conditional custodianship.
WOLAS therefore, calls upon states to operationalise their duties of non-recognition and non-assistance, to uphold their erga omnes obligations to secure the realisation of the right to self-determination, to pursue judicial clarification of the resolution’s legality before the International Court of Justice, and to ensure that no foreign administrative or military structure established under Resolution 2803 is endowed with legitimacy or cooperation inconsistent with international law. Only through adherence to international law, restoration of Palestinian sovereignty, and accountability and reparations for wrongdoings can a just and durable peace be achieved.
1-Politico, ‘Trump Has Promised Peace for Gaza. Private Documents Paint a Grim Picture’ (11 November 2025) https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/11/trump-peace-gaza-documents-00642466 [access date: 20 November 2025]
2-Dapo Akande, The International Court of Justice and the Security Council: Is There Room for Judicial Control of Decisions of the Political Organs of the United Nations? (1997) volume 46 issue 2 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 309–343, available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/760719 to?seq=1
3-An example of that is the Colombia-led draft resolution which is widely supported by Palestinians, as exemplified in the collective support of 133 Palestinian organisations. Colombia-led draft Uniting for Peace resolution calls on the UN General Assembly to implement the ICJ’s 2024 Advisory Opinion, to establish a law-compliant international protective state presence in Gaza, composed solely of States with no involvement in the conflict or complicity in violations of international law and mandated to act within international humanitarian law, the ICJ Advisory Opinion, under the consent and leadership of the Palestinians, and to adopt collective measures, including arms embargoes, under Resolution 377A(V). See: Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO), ‘Statement by the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO) on the Escalating Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza and Emphasis the Importance of President Petro’s Uniting for Peace Resolution to Protect Palestinians from Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing’ (PNGO Portal, 25 September 2025) https://en.pngoportal.org/post/3963/Statement-by-the-Palestinian-NGOs-Network-PNGO-on-the-Escalating-Humanitarian-Catastrophe-in-Gaza-and-emphasis-the-importance-of-President-Petros-Uniting-for-Peace-resolution-to-protect-Palestinians-from-Genocide-and-Ethnic-Cleansing [access date: 20 November 2025]
