NICOLE FRITZ: SA’s foreign policy needs reboot after Ukraine misstep

With all eyes focused on momentous events at home, perhaps understandably SA’s role on the international stage has escaped real scrutiny of late. It shouldn’t.

As the government of national unity’s (GNU’s) statement of intent came into effect, committing the new government, among other priorities, to a “foreign policy based on human rights, constitutionalism, the national interest, solidarity, peaceful resolution of conflicts, to achieve the African Agenda 2063, South-South, North-South and African co-operation, multilateralism and a just, peaceful and equitable world”, a high-level summit on peace for Ukraine was convening in Switzerland.

SA’s representative, Sydney Mufamadi, explained that SA, like all those gathered, had “responded positively to the invitation to act as Ukraine’s sounding board as it develops its peace formula” and that there had been several preparatory meetings. However, SA, along with India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, ultimately decided not to sign the resulting communiqué, endorsed by more than 80 other countries and international organisations.

It is hard to understand how the communiqué could inspire any real objection from SA, especially given the stated GNU principles for foreign policy formulation. It reiterates key tenets of the UN Charter, upholding the sanctity of territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence, and the prohibition of the threat or use of force. It also warns that the use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable, urges that food security not be weaponised (a cause SA has particularly championed) and that all prisoners of war be released, especially children.

As SA well knows, peacemaking is not simply a matter of trying to accommodate the demands of the warring parties

But SA’s objections don’t appear to be directed so much at the content of the communiqué; Mufamadi protested that “efforts should be on engaging in dialogue, fostering it and promoting steps to end the war — not to manage the war”. He also explained that Israel’s presence and participation at the summit contradicted the “assertion that this process is grounded in the principles of the charter, human rights and international law”.

In addition, Mufamadi said “the failure to uniformly and fairly implement international law in all conflict situations globally weakens the normative framework of international accountability and makes the world less safe for all”.

SA is not wrong to want to have this conversation — principally with Western states — to ask why their conscience is so stricken and their impetus to act so propelled in a case like Ukraine, but not for a situation like Gaza. Nor can issue really be taken with SA’s objectives of pushing the warring parties to dialogue.

But the tactics deployed — to essentially subordinate recognition of the suffering of Ukraine’s people to our frustration at global disparities and double standards — is to put at risk the very outcomes we seek.

As SA well knows, peacemaking is not simply a matter of trying to accommodate the demands of the warring parties. That places the process at the mercy of the most extreme and aggressive of the actors. Only a day before the peace summit Russian President Vladimir Putin had issued an outrageous ultimatum for ending the war — that Ukraine cede territories, even regions not within Russian military control, and that these be declared Russian territory by international agreement.

Preparations and planning for peacemaking require in major part narrowing the space within which aggressors may make outlandish, obnoxious demands. SA must appreciate this acutely. Its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), pressing a claim of genocidal acts by Israel in Gaza, cannot realistically be predicated on any expectation that the ICJ’s adjudication itself will end the horrific civilian suffering happening right now in Gaza. Rather, in helping frame and settle expectations as to what Israel may insist is legitimate and within its rights, the application helps configure the terrain for what will ultimately be acceptable and plausible in securing redress, resolution and peace.

So too the high-level Ukrainian peace summit. The communiqué is in essence a restatement of spectacularly uncontroversial first principles of international law, as contrasted with Russia’s ultimatum, which would represent the most flagrant violation thereof. In looking to secure as extensive global support as is possible, the initiative must hope to frame the bounds within which any subsequent peace is pressed.

While Israel’s participation in any peace summit, as it engages in an unimaginably cruel war and commits atrocity crimes, is certainly to be deplored, that hardly seems reason enough to be seen to shrug off the suffering in present-day Ukraine. After all, if the “clean hands” principle were required of participants in multilateral peace and human rights-promoting initiatives, none would see the light of day.

The fact is that SA could have signed the communiqué — its elements ones the country in any event presumably upholds — and still have issued an accompanying statement making the same points it gives as reason for non-signature — that the peace summit must ultimately result in a process of dialogue between Ukraine and Russia and that Israel’s participation in a summit aimed at cleaving to the UN Charter rings discordantly.

By acting as the “spoiler”, or even “conscientious objector”, SA isn’t more likely to induce other spoilers to play constructively when it comes to situations like Gaza. But by endorsing the Ukraine peace initiative, even if it made plain that it was doing with strong reservations, SA would retain far stronger powers of moral suasion. Moreover, initiatives such as the ICJ application are then far more difficult to discredit as simply an expression of hostility rather than principle.

As with so much of the GNU’s work, if it is to have any chance of success the foreign policy of a new SA era will need to be not this or that but this and that.

• Fritz is a human rights lawyer.