For the Collective Withdrawal of Member States from the United Nations on Grounds of Institutional Complicity in Aggressive War
Preamble
This appeal is addressed to the governments and peoples of the member nations of the United Nations General Assembly. It is made by a private citizen exercising the lawful right of advocacy. It rests on a chain of legal and logical reasoning, each element of which is independently verifiable. It asks that member states consider whether continued membership of the United Nations constitutes complicity in the very harms the organisation was established to prevent.
I. The Stated Purpose of the United Nations
The United Nations was founded in 1945 with the primary purpose of maintaining international peace and security and, to that end, taking effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression (Article 1(1), Charter of the United Nations).
The Charter established specific legal tests governing the use of force between states. These are not advisory principles. They are binding obligations upon all member states.
II. The Legal Tests for the Legitimate Use of Force
The Charter of the United Nations restricts the lawful use of force to two conditions:
1. Self-defence under Article 51. A member state has the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs. This right is contingent upon an armed attack having occurred or being operationally imminent. It does not extend to speculative future threats, ideological disagreements, hypothesised potential outcomes, or the military capabilities of another state absent their use.
2. Authorisation by the Security Council under Chapter VII. The Security Council may authorise the use of force where it determines the existence of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.
No other basis for the use of force between states exists in international law as codified by the Charter.
III. The Current Situation
On or about 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel initiated a major military attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This attack was conducted without:
- Any armed attack by Iran against the United States or Israel preceding it;
- Any authorisation by the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII;
- Any demonstration of an operationally imminent threat meeting the Article 51 threshold;
- Any exhaustion of peaceful means as required by the principle of last resort.
Under the same legal framework, Iran's retaliatory strikes constitute the textbook case for which Article 51 was written: self-defence by a state under armed attack on its own territory.
The party with legal standing to use force under the rules of the United Nations is Iran. The parties in violation of those rules are the United States and Israel.
IV. The Structural Failure of Enforcement
The enforcement mechanism for the rules described above is the United Nations Security Council. The United States holds a permanent seat on the Security Council and an unrestricted veto over its resolutions.
The state violating the rules governing the use of force is therefore able to veto any enforcement of those rules against itself. This is not an aberration or an unforeseen consequence. The veto structure was established at the founding of the institution and has operated in this manner consistently. States waging aggressive war in violation of the Charter have used their veto power to shield themselves from the consequences the Charter prescribes.
The result is that the legal tests for the use of force exist, are clear, are demonstrably violated, and cannot be applied to the violators. The enforcement mechanism is structurally captured by those it is designed to constrain.
V. The Consequence for Member States
The General Assembly may pass resolutions condemning acts of aggression. It has done so on numerous occasions. These resolutions carry no enforcement power. The vote is absorbed by the institution and neutralised. The appearance of process substitutes for actual accountability.
Member states participating in this process lend their sovereignty and legitimacy to an institution that:
- Claims to govern the use of force between states but cannot do so;
- Provides institutional cover for aggressive war by states holding vetoes;
- Absorbs and neutralises protest through mechanisms that produce no material consequence;
- Presents the appearance of a rules-based international order while operating, in its primary function, as a shield for impunity.
That appearance is what enables the status quo. The status quo is killing people.
VI. The Moral Position
Continued membership of an institution whose primary function has been captured by aggressors, and whose enforcement mechanisms are structurally incapable of constraining them, constitutes complicity through participation. The humanitarian programmes of the United Nations - however valuable in themselves - do not offset this complicity. They operate under the umbrella of an institution that simultaneously enables aggressive war. The claim that these programmes require the current institutional structure is false; humanitarian cooperation between states existed before the United Nations and does not depend upon the Security Council veto structure.
The bundling of genuine humanitarian goods with an indefensible security architecture is itself a mechanism of complicity. It ensures that rejection of the indefensible is framed as rejection of the good. This framing must be refused.
VII. The Appeal
This appeal calls upon the member nations of the United Nations General Assembly to:
1. Recognise that the United Nations, in its primary function of maintaining international peace and constraining the use of force between states, has been structurally captured by the permanent members of the Security Council and is incapable of fulfilling its stated purpose.
2. Recognise that continued membership lends sovereign legitimacy to an institution that provides cover for aggressive war in violation of its own Charter.
3. Withdraw collectively from the United Nations, stating publicly that the grounds for withdrawal are the institution's structural inability to fulfil its primary purpose and the complicity that continued membership entails.
4. Reconstitute international cooperation for humanitarian purposes, disarmament, climate action, and the peaceful resolution of disputes through new frameworks that do not incorporate a veto structure enabling aggressors to shield themselves from accountability.
VIII. On Practicality
The objection will be raised that this appeal is impractical, that collective withdrawal will not occur, and that the proposal therefore has no value. This objection is irrelevant.
The duty to make a lawful appeal does not derive from the probability of its success. It derives from the moral position itself. If the analysis is correct and the advocacy is lawful, then silence is complicity. The obligation to act exists independent of the prospect of outcome. The asymmetry between the scale of the harm and the reach of this appeal creates no asymmetry of duty.
Every element of the reasoning in this appeal is independently verifiable. No element requires acceptance on authority. Any government, any institution, any individual may follow the chain of reasoning and arrive at their own conclusion.
IX. Conclusion
The United Nations was built to prevent aggressive war. It has become the institutional framework within which aggressive war is conducted with impunity. The member states whose participation sustains this framework have both the right and the moral obligation to withdraw from it.
The alternative is to remain, and by remaining, to enable. There is no neutral position within a structure that launders impunity. Membership is endorsement. Silence is complicity. The lawful remedy is withdrawal.