UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has been selected by the Security Council for another term to lead the institution. Guterres, under who the catchphrase “There is no Plan B” garnered momentum for Israel’s colonial expansion, will now await formal approval by the UN General Assembly to resume his role.

Guterres’s vision statement – a generic overview of what the UN’s role should be in the next five years – illustrates how the institution exists to serve itself, rather than addressing the entrenched global injustices. The coronavirus pandemic, which is one of Guterres’s main arguments in his statement, is one example of how the UN latches on to the most visible issues, while normalising decades of other situations which are swept out of sight with plans such as the Sustainable Development Goals for example – a set of aims and objectives which fail to take different political scenarios and consequences into consideration.

Palestine is one example. Throughout Guterres’s term, Israel’s colonial expansion has usurped more Palestinian territory, aided by the Trump Administration’s concessions. Rather than oppose the U.S. at a time when it was seemingly diverting away from the established consensus, Guterres upped his rhetoric against possible alternatives to the two-state compromise, knowing full well that the internationally-established paradigms contributed to the de-facto annexation of Palestinian territory.

The Abraham Accords also showcased Guterres’s pro-Israel diplomacy, hypocritically commending the move as creating “an opportunity for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to re-engage in meaningful negotiations that will realise a two-state solution in line with relevant UN resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements.”

In the same manner that the UN has diverted attention away from colonialism, Guterres is not planning on sparing efforts on the possibilities of decolonisation. At an international level, Palestine is no longer perceived as colonised territory and the humanitarian paradigm, which served the UN’s intentions, has become another means of encroachment upon the Palestinian people’s freedom.

Under Guterres, the UN exhibited no support for the International Criminal Court’s investigations into war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory. The ensuing discord between two entities – one allegedly rights-based and the other concerned with criminal accountability – resulted in a situation where the UN is still promoting Israel’s security narrative and downplaying proof of war crimes, despite ample evidence that Israel has acted against international law in ways which constitute war crimes. Settlement expansion is one example which the ICC will be investigating. The ICC, with all its flaws and bureaucratic delays, has managed to topple the illusion that Israel is acting out of security concerns, by stipulating that war crimes have indeed been committed.

What can Palestinians expect out of another Guterres tenure? In terms of Covid19, Guterres has warned against “business as usual,” envisaging “a dystopian future in which rights and values are further eroded while the likelihood mounts of catastrophic risks.” Yet Palestinians have been coerced into a business as usual attitude that favours Israeli colonial expansion, and they have been living catastrophes for decades, to the point that the UN had already declared Gaza unliveable by 2020, while it refrained from holding Israel accountable for the recent destruction following the bombing of the enclave in May this year.

While Guterres relied on his “there is no Plan B” to silence Palestinian demands, Israel’s de-facto annexation of Palestinian territory encountered no international resistance, despite the war crimes implication. For Guterres, who will most probably lead the corrupt institution for another five years, the two-state compromise remains the only avenue, albeit one that caters for Palestinian loss resulting in Israel’s territorial appropriation. In the immediate future, the only trajectory which seems certain for Palestine is that Guterres will retain the legacy of abandoning Palestinians, and it will be done in the name of human rights and humanitarianism.

Although the old-school name plates continue to be used in the 15-member Security Council and other specialized agencies of the world body, for example, the World Health Assembly in Geneva and UNESCO in Paris, a few keystrokes can now eliminate a member of the General Assembly. Of course, such an action takes the agreement of the Security Council but considering the number of UN member states that have disappeared entirely or have undergone name changes since 1945, the process has been made much easier by digitization.

Somewhere in a dimly-lit storage room at the UN lies the discarded name plates of Yugoslavia, Tanganyika, the Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, Czechoslovakia, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Arab Republic, Ceylon, German Democratic Republic, Zaire, Upper Volta, Democratic Yemen, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Federation of Malaya, Ivory Coast, Central African Empire, Dahomey, Laos, Malagasy Republic, Democratic Kampuchea, Union of South Africa, and Zanzibar. More recently added to the dusty collection of name plates were Swaziland and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M).

According to informed sources in Sikkim, invaded by and absorbed into India in the early 1970s, there was a name plate crafted for the country at the UN before the Indian invasion. It was believed Sikkim would soon be joining, with the support of neighboring Nepal and Bhutan, as either a full member or observer state. The public may never no how many other aspirant but still-born nations were ready to be accepted into the UN as members. On June 26, 1960, the colony of British Somaliland briefly became the independent “State of Somaliland” and was recognized by 35 nations, many of them UN members. On July 1, 1960, Somaliland merged with the newly independent former Trust Territory of Somalia to form the Somali Republic. In 1991, Somaliland re-declared its independence, but it received no recognition from any other state and its request to join the UN was rejected. In 1963, the UN was also prepared to accept Sarawak and Sabah as member states had a UN-sponsored survey determined that the two former British colonies did not want to join the Federation of Malaysia.

The UN currently has 193 member states. However, when the drastic effects of climate change are taken into consideration, several of these states, threatened by rising sea levels and total desertification may end up as discarded members of the UN, not because of political changes but due to the rapidly altering environment, turning them into “failed” or “extinct” states.

Four UN member states, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Maldives, face inundation by the sea of current global temperature increases remain unabated. How will international law deal with countries that no longer qualify under international law – codified by the Montevideo Convention – as states? The Montevideo Convention defines the following minimum requirements for statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with the other states. If Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Maldives sink below the ocean, do they remain qualified to be members of the UNJ and other international bodies? According to the Montevideo Convention, without territory and a permanent population, these nations would be “key-stroked” from the United Nations. Possibly, they could only remain as member states if their populations were moved to another defined parcel of land having well-defined independence from whatever country ceded to them governable territory.

One example of a sovereign entity lacking territory and population is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic religious order that occupies a palace and villa in Rome. In 1798, the order was expelled by the French from its home in Malta. The order has diplomatic relations with 108 states and issues its own passports, license plates, stamps, and coins. Although the order lost its territory in Malta in 1798, a requirement for statehood under the Montevideo Convention, it enjoys official observer status at the United Nations and it participates in the annual plenary session of the UN General Assembly.

The entire Tuvalu chain in the Pacific Ocean rises to no more than 15 feet above sea level. Rising sea levels, disastrous tides, and storms have inundated arable land and threatened natural supplies of fresh water. There have been proposals to move the nation’s 10,000 people to another more environmentally secure location. Tuvalu is definitely in extremis. If the airstrip of Funafuti International Airport is washed away, Tuvalu will lose an important commercial lifeline to the rest of the world. One small island, in the atoll of Nukufetau, has already disappeared under the waves and others are in imminent peril. Some 2000 Tuvaluans have migrated to New Zealand, where there have been some proposals to carve out a Tuvaluan enclave that cold accept the remainder of Tuvalu’s population as climate refugees. However, as in other countries, New Zealand has an anti-immigration political grouping, composed of both white Europeans and native Maoris, that oppose any welcoming mat for displaced islanders from Tuvalu, Kiribati, and other endangered island states in the Pacific.

In May 2019, UN Secretary General António Guterres, standing alongside Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga at a press conference in Funafuti, called for international action to save Tuvalu. In the face of outright climate science denial from Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bosolaro, and other antediluvian policy makers, Guterres and Tuvalu have an uphill climb. With total ignorance of the current climate change crisis by the Trump administration, Guterres might do better to amend international law and the UN Charter to mitigate the effects of climate change for Tuvalu and other endangered member states. One solution might be to eliminate the territorial requirements required for statehood and, thus, UN membership, which would permit countries like Tuvalu to survive as “virtual” states even if its territory is inundated by rising sea levels.

Other endangered nations have higher populations to consider if they become submerged. Plans for virtual continuation of statehood would have consider the 100,000 people of Kiribati. As with Tuvalu, arable farming land in Kiribati is being affected by the inundation of sea water, particularly on islands like Abaiang and Anterea. Some Australian right-wing politicians have actually made jokes about water lapping at the doors of citizens of South Pacific island nations. Island political leaders find no humor in their jokes as their very survival as nations and peoples hangs in the balance.

The construction of sea walls and reclamation of land from the sea, which has been practiced in the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, may be too little and too late in the Marshall Islands. In any event, there are proposals to consolidate the 55,000 Marshallese into a few protected islands and abandon others to the sea. This, of course, will tear many Marshallese from their ancestral islands, some of which were previously ravaged by US nuclear weapons testing after World War II.

In the Indian Ocean, the 1,192 islands of the Maldives lie, for the most part, at no more than 3.3 feet above seal level. That makes Maldives the absolute flattest nation on the planet. Only 358 islands in the Maldives are populated, with most living in the capital city of Malé on North Malé Atoll. In 2008, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed suggested the establishment of a Maldives sovereign wealth fund, enriched by tourism taxes, to purchase a new homeland for the 380,000 people of the vast island chain. Nasheed’s suggestion was one of relatively few advanced by the leaders of endangered island states. The creation of new homelands for entire countries due to climate change cannot be adequately addressed by current international law. But action is urgently required to deal with this scenario on both the environmental and legal fronts.

And now, since Guterres took office in January 2017 and made a song and dance about resolving the organization’s sexual harassment problem, we are seeing that not only is he not doing anything about the plague of cases – but that also he appears to be doing the only thing that a UN chief with his opaque links to the graft itself could do: carry out a cover up.

You don’t have to look too far for sex scandals at the UN. And you don’t have to look too far for many examples of Guterres really doing what a guilty man would do in his position. Take the case of journalist Matt R . Lee who runs a news website which uncovers graft and exposes UN officials who are caught with their hand in the till. The journalist, who has covered the travails of the UN for well over a decade, just had his press pass cancelled so he is unable to enter the UN HQ in Manhattan. Lee has exposed the UN chief for appearing to not do the right thing over a number of cases which are popping up, but have a strange habit of fizzling out, with no enquiry and little dust being thrown up by the media. The story of Lee’s treatment is something one would expect from a South American regime, rather than the auspicious UN headquarters in New York.

Recently, Lee’s website accused Guterres of covering up a sex scandal with a Chilean official, who was promptly promoted to being one of the UN chief’s closest advisers. Another case of sexual harassment, alleged to be carried out by a Canadian official who is currently running MINURSO – the UN’s office in the troubled Western Sahara – appears to be heading the same way; this comes despite the number of witnesses both in the UN headquarters who support the allegations and in Adis Ababa (the official’s previous post where the incidents are said to have occurred) and, not to mention, the delicate talks at the moment which aim to give Western Sahara an autonomy of sorts, proposed by Morocco’s UN delegation and up for consideration by the Security Council itself.

How can the present MINURSO chief possibly have his contract extended with these allegations hanging over his head? Given the importance of the mission, the allegations themselves (sexual harassment which Guterres has promised he will resolve in the UN – where recently a third of employees admitted being affected by sexual harassment) or the implications of a senior UN official being vulnerable to blackmail, it should be a no brainer for Guterres to appoint a new chief and investigate the present incumbent who stands accused of the harassment itself.

But the journalist who’s at the heart of the allegations against Guterres claims there’s more to it than meets the eye. He claims that Guterres wants him muffled due to his reporting on a separate matter involving the UN chief and the murky world of a Lisbon-based organization linked to Patrick Ho, the Hong Kong businessman convicted in 2018 of corruption charges of senior officials within the UN itself. Lee claims that the deal to sell an energy utility to a Chinese firm linked to HO – even though it never came off in the end – would have grave implications towards Guterres, who it is alleged did not disclose to the UN when he took the post that he was being paid by the same Lisbon organization.

If Guterres is linked in any way to Ho, who is currently in a US jail, it might mean an investigation into Guterres’s private income and could result in him resigning – or at the very least a lack of confidence in the UN boss by the bigger guns there like the US, Britain, France, China and Russia.

Given the gravity of the link with Ho, many might argue that this is entirely in line with at least two previous UN chiefs, who both left office tarnished by corruption allegations. And yet, in the case of Guterres, the graft seems to be deeper and go further.

And having journalists who write about it thrown out and ostracized only smacks of desperation of a man on the run.

Consequently, we should not expect anything in terms of cracking down on sex scandals and that a recent study, which revealed that a third of those interviewed claimed they were the victims of sexual harassment, is probably only scratching the surface. If the present UN chief of the Western Sahara mission gets his contract extended with no investigation into these allegations, then bigger nations – and certainly France and the UK – should reconsider keeping their current funding allocation and question Guterres’s judgment. Those two countries have leaders who are strongly supportive of the “MEtoo” phenomenon, which appears to have started with a Hollywood producer, but is now permeating huge organizations around the world like the UN.

Recently, we were all shocked when in February 2018, it emerged that Oxfam officials were implicated in a sex abuse scandal of local people in Haiti what was called an established practice of “rape-for-food” which was carried out for years by white aid workers who cravenly operated under a cloak of neo-colonial supremacy.

Two ugly facts emerge in the aftermath of that hideous story. Firstly that most of those who were caught carrying out the abuse found jobs quickly in the aid sector; and secondly, that most probably thought they were immune from prosecution when witnessing the same behavior of UN workers in the field.

The truth is that sex abuse on all levels is out of hand in the aid sector and the UN itself is leading a cavalcade of those who enjoy privilege and protection against their appalling crimes. Guterres needs to make a statement now with the MINURSO chief and show that when it comes to sex crimes within the UN, he should at least put his money where his mouth is and lead by example. He should show his strong words come from a strong stomach and lift the immunity which he and his organization gives to those who practice sexual harassment – and roll out a zero tolerance policy for those who stand accused whilst working in the field – or face investigation, opprobrium himself and a credibility crisis for the UN itself.