If the veto is the United Nations’ original sin, Gaza is its crucifixion. After the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 Israelis and saw hundreds taken hostage, Israel launched a campaign that many international observers have described as genocide—tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, the overwhelming majority women and children, hospitals, schools and homes reduced to rubble, and an entire population besieged without food, water, medicine or fuel. The United Nations was powerless to stop it.
The Secretary-General, António Guterres, invoked Article 99 of the Charter—unused for decades—to warn the Council of impending catastrophe. Resolutions demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the release of all hostages and unimpeded aid were tabled, and the United States vetoed them, granting Israel diplomatic cover while the death toll climbed. When a resolution finally passed calling for a ceasefire, Israel simply ignored it. The International Court of Justice issued provisional measures ordering Israel to prevent acts of genocide and allow aid in; those measures were ignored too. The message to every small nation on earth was unmistakable: international law applies to some, but not to those protected by a permanent member of the Security Council.
Why should any nation, and least of all any African nation, respect the authority of an institution whose most powerful members treat its decisions as suggestions? Africa watched the Council fail in Rwanda and has watched it fail in the Sahel. It has seen the illegal embargo on Cuba condemned annually for 30 years and continue regardless. When resolutions are ignored, the entire edifice of international law is undermined. When the Council is paralysed, the world grows more dangerous. When the powerful are never held accountable, the weak arm themselves, and an arms race follows that makes everyone less safe. Gaza is not only a Palestinian tragedy; it is proof that the machinery built to prevent such tragedies is broken. The only remedy is accountability for all—including the most powerful. The veto must be reformed, the Council expanded, and the law applied equally. Washington must answer for its illegal sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba and for its complicity in Gaza. Every nation, however mighty, must abide by the Council’s decisions and the Court’s rulings. This is not utopianism; it is survival.
And then there was Trump, standing at the same podium where Mottley had stood, demonstrating in a single speech everything this series has argued about the arrogance of power. His address was not a statement of American policy; it was a confession of American impunity. He boasted of the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro—seized in a military raid on Caracas on January 3, 2026, flown to New York in chains—and declared, without a trace of irony, “to the victor belong the spoils.” He announced that the United States would “run” Venezuela until a “proper transition” could take place, and that American oil companies would “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country.” This is not diplomacy. This is pillage dressed in the language of liberation. He then turned to Cuba, calling it “an absolutely failed state” that “will fall,” and the Cuban delegation walked out in protest. He spoke of Greenland not as a sovereign territory of the Danish kingdom but as a strategic asset to be acquired, announcing military bases on the island. And on Iran, he stood before the world and asked whether he should “annihilate the Islamic Republic” or make a deal. This is the language of empire, spoken without shame, in the very chamber built to prevent it. Yet the desperation beneath the bravado is unmistakable. A nation that must abduct presidents, threaten invasions, and boast of controlling the world’s oil is not a confident hegemon; it is a power whose grip is slipping, and it knows it.
But there is a deeper mirror that Africa must be brave enough to look into, and it concerns not the arrogance of Washington but the choices of African capitals themselves. Two nations, Nigeria and Niger, have taken opposite paths in the struggle for resource sovereignty, and the contrast is instructive. Nigeria, through its Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, signed a framework agreement with the United States on the sidelines of this very General Assembly, opening American access to an estimated $700 billion in mineral resources .
The minister insisted that Nigeria is not “here to remain a source of raw material for the values that others create,” and that the goal is local processing and value addition . Nigeria has signed similar frameworks with France and Australia, focused on geological data mapping, training and technology . The approach is one of “opening up while seeking dominance”—using foreign capital, but insisting on retaining control. Yet the fine print remains shrouded, and civil society has warned that without enforceable safeguards, the agreement risks reproducing the extractive model that devastated the Niger Delta, replacing oil with lithium while sacrificing lives, lands and ecosystems . Foreign capital is regarded as a tool. But a tool can become a master if the hand that wields it is weak.
Niger chose the opposite path. Prime Minister Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine declared from the UN podium: “Our resources belong to our peoples. Our future will no longer be decided elsewhere.” He accused France of coveting Niger’s uranium, Mali and Burkina Faso’s gold, lithium, gas and oil, describing terrorism in the Sahel as “the cynical machinery of recolonisation dressed in the trappings of extremism” . Niger nationalised the French-owned SOMAÏR uranium mine in June 2025, transferring its permit to a state-owned entity, and announced that the stockpiled uranium belongs exclusively to Niger . Production restarted entirely with Nigerien workers and experts. The approach is “first recover, then discuss”—pushing foreign capital out and taking full control. But sovereignty has its costs. International arbitration orders, the loss of traditional buyers, and regional border closures have left Niger with a stockpile of yellowcake and fewer customers than it hoped . The uranium may belong to Niger, but selling it is another matter. Foreign capital is regarded as a threat. But a threat can also be a lifeline if the terms are right.
The lesson for Africa is not that one path is righteous and the other craven. It is that both are experiments in the same laboratory, conducted under the watchful eyes of former colonial powers whose interest in African resources has not diminished. Nigeria’s framework agreements and Niger’s nationalisation are two answers to the same question: how does a resource-rich nation escape the curse of extraction without surrender? The answer will not be found in Washington or Paris. It will be found in the quality of African leadership—in whether the continent can produce leaders of the calibre of Mia Amor Mottley, who stood before the assembly without notes and held it spellbound, not because she commanded armies but because she commanded facts, law and moral clarity. Her brilliance was the product of a small nation with a strong democratic tradition, a vibrant civil society and a genuine commitment to the rule of law. That is the dividend of democracy: it elevates the competent and the courageous instead of rewarding mediocrity, corruption and nepotism. Africa has produced Mandela, Nkrumah and Nyerere.
It holds today immense reservoirs of intellect and vision. What it needs is a system that lets them rise. And yes, we need more men like her in the leadership of the South—men who possess her intellect, her moral courage, her mastery of detail, and her capacity to command a room without raising her voice. The irony is not lost on those who have watched the procession of male leaders across the podiums of the Global South, many of whom have held power for decades while their people remained in darkness, while she—a woman from a small island—illuminated the path forward with nothing more than the power of her ideas.
The 81st General Assembly was a moment of reckoning—Lula, Ruto, Mahama, Shettima, Zeine, Mottley, Erdoğan and Ramaphosa demanding a new order in one chorus, while Trump demonstrated in a single speech why that order is so desperately needed. Their demands are just and their moment is now. The South must unite, build a wider coalition, bring solutions rather than grievances, hold the powerful accountable through every instrument available, and never give up. The founders of the United Nations knew this fight was worth making, and so did every leader who spoke in New York. They spoke not for themselves but for billions who long for peace, justice and dignity. The world is watching; the people are waiting; let us not disappoint them.
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