Long Form Podcast Episode 5
International Law, The UN, and System Failure
Featuring:
Craig Mokhiber
Hosts:
Bassam Haddad
Mouin Rabbani
Thursday, 10 April, 2025 | 2:00PM EST
In this episode, former UN human rights specialist on international law Craig Mokhiber reflects on how Israel's genocidal military campaign has produced an unprecedented crisis for the international order, and how it might represent an opportunity make it more equitable. He also discusses the role, achievements, and failing of the United Nations and the policies that led him to leave the organisation.
Long Form consists of a series of lengthy discussions and conversations with leading thinkers, scholars, and activists that explores the most pressing issues of our day, sheds light on their context and dynamics, and in so doing seeks to explore the broader theme of challenges to the global order and how these might affect it.
Featuring
Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the international response and called for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on equality, human rights and international law. He has spent four decades in the international human rights movement, including more than thirty years at the United Nations. He is the former Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, held senior UN positions in Geneva, New York and in the field, and undertook human rights missions to dozens of countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America. He has served as the UN’s Senior Human Rights Advisor in Palestine, and in Afghanistan, led the team of human rights specialists attached to the High Level Mission on Darfur, headed the Rule of Law and Democracy Unit, and served as Chief of the Economic and Social Issues Section, and Chief of the Development and Economic and Social Issues Branch at OHCHR Headquarters. He was for five years the Chairman of the UN Task Force for Action Two (a global initiative to advance national human rights protection systems), and later Chaired the UN Democracy Fund consultative group, the UN Working Group on Leadership, and the UN Consultative Group on Inequalities, and the Steering Committee of the UN Human Rights Mainstreaming Fund.
Bassam Haddad (Host) is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding the Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Mouin Rabbani (Host) is a researcher, analyst, and commentator specialising in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He has among other positions previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with the Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation, and Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, where he also hosts the Connections podcast and edits its Quick Thoughts feature, Managing Editor and Associate Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, and a Contributing Editor of Middle East Report. He is Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS) and at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), Rabbani has published, presented and commented widely on Middle East issues, including for most major print, television and digital media.
Gaza in Context Collaborative Project
Co-Organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Birzeit University Museum, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies, University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Theory, Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Georgetown University-Qatar, American University of Cairo’s Alternative Policy Studies, Middle East Studies Association’s Global Academy, University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY’s Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, University of Illinois Chicago’s Arab american cultural Center, George Mason University’s AbuSulayman’s Center for Global Islamic Studies, University of Illinois Chicago’s Critical Middle East Studies Working Group, George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” – Antonio Gramsci
\\ LONG FORM CONVERSATIONS //
There can be little doubt we are living in a time of monsters. But is the global order that emerged after the horrors of the Second World War dying in a paroxysm of conflict and violence that are tearing its foundations apart? Or are as we experiencing yet another period of upheaval that will be absorbed and leave the world as we know it fundamentally intact?
Long Form consists of a series of lengthy discussions and conversations with leading thinkers, scholars, and activists that explores the most pressing issues of our day, sheds light on their context and dynamics, and in so doing seeks to explore the broader theme of challenges to the global order and how these might affect it.
