The UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy has spoken eloquently about the need for a new relationship with the Global South, one based on genuine equality. This would mark the end of the postcolonial age and the beginning of something approaching global democracy.
These days everyone wants to talk about the Global South, the best sign that things are indeed changing. India, Africa and Latin America have more influence, both political and economic. When Western democracies tried to isolate Russia economically after the invasion of Ukraine, they soon realised the world had changed. Many other regions were unwilling to cut off economic links with Moscow and their markets were sufficiently large to keep Russian energy exports booming.
Unfortunately, when Western capitals say they want to talk with the Global South, their approach is often to speak louder and more slowly about Ukraine, rather than, say, being firm on protecting children in Gaza. When it comes to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, many in the Global South were dismissed when they complained about the West’s double standards, but they were of course vindicated by events in recent months when Western democracies, with very few exceptions, went out of their way to flaunt those double standards.
In March 2023, then foreign secretary James Cleverly hailed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine; when the ICC applied for arrest warrants for government ministers in Israel, British officials mobilised against the court. When Russia bombed a hospital in Ukraine, there was righteous and rightful indignation; Israel has continually bombed hospitals in Gaza, arguably without any visible reaction from Britain or other Western democracies.
The challenge for Lammy and the new Labour government won’t be speaking with the Global South. Everyone does that and has done so for a long time. The challenge won’t even be listening to opinions in Africa or Asia. The challenge will be whether they are able to sacrifice part of our interests and our opinions in search of a more principled and a more universal politics. By refusing to apply the same principles to Gaza that it wants applied to the war in Ukraine, much of the West has so far failed the test.
For the Global South, the question is existential. For all the talk of a more democratic world, the relationship between the West and the Global South has only deteriorated in recent months. As the renowned US-based NGO the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has put it, “Humanity has a choice: Either we decide that our children can all be killed whenever a superior force alleges that ‘terrorists’ are among us, or we decide that under no circumstances will we allow these superior forces to lay waste to our world any longer.”
Lammy has a very easy way to begin proving his new approach to the Global South is a serious one. In May the former Conservative government gained court approval to submit arguments over whether or not the ICC had jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant. During this process, UK government lawyers argued that the ICC has no jurisdiction in Israel. However, the ICC had decided in 2021 that it does have jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestinian territories, as Palestine is a member state. The UK’s challenge seems to be a mere dilatory measure and, what is worse, one that the former British government adopted under pressure from Washington. As the human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson put it in a recent piece: “The US is not a member of the ICC, and expects the UK to look after its interests there.”
The issue was almost certainly discussed in the meeting between Lammy and Tony Blinken in Washington during the Nato summit. Lammy has a simple choice to make: does he want to tell the world that Britain is no more than a subsidiary of American power, or does he want to move beyond eloquent words about the Global South and demonstrate that Labour takes its global responsibilities seriously? If it truly wants a new relationship with the Global South, the Labour government must withdraw the legal challenge.
[See also: Can Kamala Harris save America?]
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