Can international law be enforced on Israel? Forty states met in The Hague to try
The Hague Group logo
Zeynep Conkar reports in TRT World on 9 March 2026:
For more than a year, the International Court of Justice has issued provisional rulings, the United Nations General Assembly has passed resolutions, and legal experts have submitted briefs accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
Yet the gap between these legal processes and any real-world consequences remains vast and glaring.
Last week, forty countries gathered in The Hague for the largest meeting yet of the Hague Group, a coalition formed in January 2025 with a clear purpose: to close the gap between international law and its enforcement.
“What we are seeing through The Hague Group is a willingness by states from different regions to move beyond statements and to coordinate practical steps to uphold international law,” Alvin Botes, South Africa’s Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, tells TRT World. “The participation of new states reflects a growing recognition that the genocide in Gaza and ongoing occupation of Palestine is a test of the international legal order itself.”
The meeting, co-chaired by South Africa and Colombia, brought together a geographically wide coalition from across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, including Brazil, China, Mexico, Qatar, Spain, Switzerland and Türkiye.
It convened, participants said, amid an “unprecedented acceleration” of illegal Israeli settlement policy, including the approval of the E1 project in the occupied West Bank and the de facto annexation of occupied territory.