A new year, a new chance to end the injustices that bedevilled 2024
Is it possible to look forward to a new year when we cannot look away from the violations that have taken place every day in 2024?
It feels more difficult than ever to compose my thoughts to mark the end of this year. As people, we are all made of our own contradictions, capable of both humour and seriousness, of great strength and great vulnerability, for demonstrating our wisdom and foolishness. So I suppose that there is no surprise that we apprehend the world around us with so many contradictions.
When faced with such a block, it is so helpful when great writing opens up for us the mental space to see more clearly.
has written with fierce clarity on the callousness of wishing a happy new year after an unbroken 12 months of genocide against the Palestinian people in 2024, and she is right to frame it so.It is impossible to end this year with anything but the deepest fury at the continued inaction of the international community to put an end to this genocide, and to ensure accountability.
That anger is only enhanced by the repeated dismissal by influential powers to show basic compassion, as though our demands were unfair.
It is not too much to ask that civilians are not starved of water and food. It is not unreasonable to expect that hospitals are not subjected to assault and bombardment. It is not excessive to believe that entire families, aid workers, peacekeepers, and journalists should not be targeted. The world has said before that “never again” will the crime of genocide be permitted to happen. There are reams of international law against which perpetrators can be held accountable.
And yet here we are, after 366 days and more of international law, international humanitarian law, International Criminal Court arrest warrants, International Court of Justice opinions all disregarded by permanent members of the UN Security Council. The system of international diplomacy, justice, and security is failing for yet another year. There are no red lines anymore, no atrocity is considered too far when it is carried out against the wrong type of people.
This is a situation that can only be judged sustainable by those who are insulated from the system’s failure - the very same countries that have led in its design and operation.
It is because we are activists that it feels particularly offensive to us that anyone can look away from the cruelty and horrors visited on the people of Gaza. We are who we are and we have chosen our paths because we refuse to accept the injustice we see around us, because we believe it is both possible and necessary to build a world that is better.
We cannot accept the discrimination that we see in our own societies any more than we can accept the cruelties and indifference faced by the Palestinian people.
The Sudanese journalist Nesrine Malik wrote movingly of the central place that the Palestinian cause has in the hearts of people across the Arab world. It says so much that even for those people facing their own personal and societal disasters, the concern for justice for Palestinians remains such a common cause in our region and the world. It shows too just how long the world has failed to resolve this great injustice, a failure as old as the United Nations itself. The horrors of Gaza did not start in October 2023, the genocide has been an unnatural progression of constant and sustained attacks on the basic rights of the Palestinian people, and the total impunity enjoyed by the occupation.
A state of such injustice cannot endure indefinitely, and the hypocrisy of nations that continue to support or tolerate the genocide will continue to pull at the fraying threads of the multilateral system, overburdened by its failures and contradictions.
Such a collapse comes gradually then suddenly, as we have seen so recently in Syria. After more than a decade of ruinous civil war, Syria finds itself at critical moment. A revolution is never as simple as the removal of a dictator.
There is much to be wary of in the new Syrian context—there are great security concerns for the different ethnic and religious groups, for Syrian women, and for the difficulties of mapping a route through transition to democracy. Despite the various dangers faced now by the people of Syria, it was impossible not to be moved by the sight of people liberated from Sednaya prison. This building was a watchword for the cruelty and impunity of the Assad regime, the most prominent and potent symbol of a national system of brutality and oppression. It was into such a place as Sednaya that Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb, a boy of just 13 years old, was taken back in April 2011. Hamza’s broken and mutilated body was returned to his family a few weeks later. The photos and video of Hamza shared by his family sparked national outrage that further galvanised the opposition to the regime and accelerated the country’s descent into civil war.
Across the world there still remain too many Sednayas, too many Hamzas, and such injustice stirs discontent, protest and activism to challenge it. As solidarity with Palestinians demonstrated by people across the world - if not their governments - shows, there is great power in the recognition of our common humanity. Justice for women in Sudan, Palestine, Yemen, Iraq is as much our cause as is justice for Gisèle Pelicot.
The marking of a new year—our advance into 2025—is a day like any other. But that does not make it any less special for it. It is another opportunity to achieve our goals, another chance to strike against the injustice we experience, another chance to build the world as we wish it to be.
Our aspirations are not wild and unrealistic dreams, we simply demand that our rights and safety be protected under the law, that we are able to participate fully in the political processes that affect us, that we are not subject to acts of aggression, whether they be within the home, within our community, or from international actors.
The past year has yet again proven that multilateralism can not just mean multi-militarism.
I hope that you enter 2025 with energy, determination, and compassion, with the ambition to end the injustices we see, to address urgent needs, to hold leaders responsible for their commitments and perpetrators accountable for their crimes, to face the global challenges that threaten us all.
The new day, the new year, is always our chance, and I wish for you and for us all the very best for 2025.
 | A guest post by
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Thank you 💜✊🏽❤️ love and solidarity