As the humanitarian crisis and the hostage ordeal in Gaza worsens in the seven months of war, questions are being raised about accountability and compensation for the loss of life and damage suffered by the civilians caught up in both sides of the conflict.
Kuwait went through a devastating war when it was occupied by Iraq for seven months in 1990 on the orders of the authoritarian leader Saddam Hussein. Tiny, oil-rich Kuwait survived the United States-led Operation Desert Storm, the massive offensive against Iraq that was authorized by the United Nations Security Council. Less than a decade later, Kuwait became an elected member of the Security Council, from 2018 to 2019.
Despite its small population of 4.2 million, the country led two important Council resolutions during that time to successfully process 2.7 million claims worth $352 billion against Iraq. Kuwait was also instrumental in creating a crucial blueprint aimed at postwar reconciliation and future prevention of atrocities worldwide, such as using hunger and denial of humanitarian access as tactics of war (Resolution 2417), and addressing the issue of missing people (Resolution 2474).
The latter text is the first of its kind, and both resolutions sound eerily similar to the situation in the current Israel-Hamas war, given the humanitarian results of Israel’s current war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 massacre and hostage-taking by Hamas. Kuwait says that approximately 11,000 people went missing and captured as prisoners of war during Iraq’s short-lived occupation of its neighbor.
“It seems like everything was designed for the catastrophe that we see today,” said Tareq Albanai, Kuwait’s permanent representative to the UN, in an interview with PassBlue on May 7. “The law exists and the Security Council resolutions exist; it’s no accountability for breaking them that festers this impunity going forward.”
Before he became Kuwait’s permanent representative to the UN in 2022, Ambassador Tareq Albanai was the political coordinator for the Kuwait mission during its stint in the Council. Currently, Kuwait is co-chair with Austria of the UN intergovernmental negotiations on Security Council reform to enhance multilateralism and equitable representation of Council membership.
In our interview with Albanai, he explains his country’s experience in the Council five years ago and deliberates on its future as well as the prognosis for UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which Israelis are aiming to dismantle amid the Gaza war.
The interview was held in the ambassador’s office at the Kuwait mission to the UN and is part of our small states series on how these countries can optimize the UN multilateral system to prosper. The conversation has been condensed and edited to ensure clarity and a natural flow. — ILGIN YORULMAZ
PassBlue: I want to ask you about your country’s time in the Security Council. We know that Kuwait was able to pass a resolution unanimously in 2019 on a mechanism to recover Kuwaiti remains and compensate for losses and damages suffered by Kuwait as a result of Iraq’s occupation in 1990. This resolution is an example of Council members cooperating with each other, of multilateralism at its best, which is now a rare occurrence. Could you tell us how Kuwait achieved such a feat?
Albanai: The issue of Kuwaiti prisoners of war and missing persons, including the national archives and property, started with a follow-up to Security Council Resolution 686, authorized in 1990, and it continues until today. In Resolution 2107, approved in 2013, the Council mandated the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq [Unami] to follow up on the issue of the missing persons and properties and national archives as it had not been completed. It is, of course, the sad experience that we went through during the invasion and occupation of Kuwait and having approximately 11,000 people go missing and captured as prisoners of war in the beginning of the fighting that led us to pursue the passing of Resolution 2474, the first of its kind in the Council.
There is not a single house in Kuwait that was not affected by having a martyr during the occupation, a prisoner of war or a missing person until today. It is considered an open wound in Kuwaiti society, because you have, if not a direct family member, a brother or father or an uncle, you have a neighbor a colleague from school, university, work. Every household is affected by this issue and having gone through the terrible calamity of war, you get to understand and empathize with certain things. You understand firsthand what a foreign occupation means . . . what it means to be a refugee . . . to be denied food and to be denied access to medicine and health care and other issues. And you understand firsthand what it means when somebody deliberately tries to erase your identity, your culture, your existence.
PassBlue: Please elaborate more on your two-year stint in the Security Council and the process of achieving the two resolutions that you ushered through successfully?
Albanai: Being a member of the Council is a once-in-a-generation matter for Kuwait. The last time we were members was in 1978-79 and 2018-19. So it’s 40 years in between, and the next time we are eligible to run again is 2050. So we decided from the get-go that not only do we want to live up to the responsibility given to us by member states by electing us as a nonpermanent member, but also that we will use our membership to make sure that our lessons learned can be implemented at a larger scale.
The first year we decided that we will build up both resolutions, 2417 and 2474. Unfortunately, starvation is a tactic of war and used in almost all warfare today, and missing persons happen with every conflict. So we decided to work it through by having several dedicated meetings bringing the subject matter to the forefront of the Council’s agenda. When we held our second monthly rotating presidency of the Council, in June 2019, we put the [prisoners of war and missing peoples] resolution forward. We worked very closely with the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and the Global Alliance for the Missing and other entities that have dealt with this, including countries who have had those experiences. We wanted to try to synthesize [the draft text] with the best practices used internationally and put them all in one package.
The idea is that if this subject is handled from Day 1, when a conflict arises, the tried-and-tested mechanisms that have worked in the past are initiated immediately. It makes the suffering of the people of missing persons and their families a lot less [so]. People get the opportunity to contact the missing, to have exchanges of letters, to know their news, to be able to get them news. Unfortunately, in captivity, sometimes mothers and fathers and children [die], and it’s important news that you need to get as a human before anything else. Also, should the person have gone dead, there are ways to safeguard the sanctity of the bodies and the gravesites and ways of handling the remains so that forensically they remain intact. At some point in the future, we are able to determine forensically whether these people are who we think they are.
We have also found that dealing with this issue from the get-go also helps the reconciliation process after a war or a conflict ends, because there’s good will when things like that happen, things that are purely humanitarian in nature. Missing persons have never been political. It’s sometimes used unfortunately for political purposes by foes and entities involved in the conflict. But for Kuwait, this has never been about politics; this has always been a humanitarian issue. That is why we’ve always insisted that this is an international issue. Thankfully, [the resolution] got a very good reception from member states; many countries from outside the Council also co-sponsored it. Since 2019, it has been brought up in conversations when conflicts arise, which is exactly what we wanted it to do.
PassBlue: So let me ask you more about these two humanitarian resolutions, that hunger should not be used as a tactic of war and that addressing the missing persons crisis helps postwar reconciliation. Do you think such resolutions would be approved today by the Security Council specifically for the Gaza war? Because that is exactly what’s going on, and the Kuwaiti resolutions could be applied to the humanitarian aspects of this conflict.
Albanai: The problem is that everything that’s happening in Gaza is prohibited by international law before it is prohibited by the Security Council resolutions: the protection of civilians in general is guaranteed by international law, so are access to humanitarian personnel and goods and services; protection of reporters; protection of cultural sites, mosques and the like. Medical facilities and medical personnel are guaranteed by international law and Security Council resolutions. Starvation as a method of war [is banned] in Security Council resolutions. It seems like everything was designed for the catastrophe that we see today. The law exists and Security Council resolutions exist; it’s no accountability for breaking them that festers this impunity going forward.
PassBlue: The Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza has been closed in the last week or so by the Israelis, who have begun invading Rafah. (The other main crossing, Kerem Shalom, from Israel into Gaza, has been intermittently shut.) “Gaza is being choked off from aid,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said on May 7. What is your country’s response and what can Kuwait do at this critical point?
Albanai: From Day 1, my country has instituted an air bridge where two planes a day filled with humanitarian goods, medical supplies, necessary items, ambulances, generators, water purification systems . . . have been flown daily into Egypt for use in Gaza. We have had medical teams fly several times into Gaza, performing thousands of operations on people under devastating circumstances. The interviews of the doctors that came back from Gaza are heartbreaking to see on national television in Kuwait. The doctors break down and cannot stop sobbing because of the terrible state of affairs in Gaza. The problem is that it is seen on live television and covered by social media and we are unable to do anything about it.
PassBlue: I want to ask you about UNRWA. Obviously, there are allegations by Israel that approximately 16 staffers from the agency participated in the Oct. 7 attack, and the US and numerous other national funders paused their donations to UNRWA, although many — but not the US and UK — have reinstated the funds. What will happen to UNRWA in the long term?
Albanai: The allegations that Israel brought are only allegations. There have been two separate investigations. The Colonna report [led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna] has come out. We have seen that both Secretary-General António Guterres and [UNRWA Commissioner-General] Philippe Lazzarini have indicated that they will implement all of the recommendations of the Colonna report. It said clearly that UNRWA is indispensable and irreplaceable. There is nobody that can do what UNRWA does and it’s not a secret. The Israelis have said so in the past and continue to say so today.
Their goal is to destroy UNRWA. It’s not about these allegations or what several people have allegedly done, which is also under investigation [by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services]. Honestly, UNRWA remains operating at a standard higher than any other United Nations entity. The problem is if you’re going to hold UNRWA to this kind of standard, then the rest of the UN system must be held to that same gold standard. We have always supported UNRWA . . . and will continue to support it. We have just pledged $30 million additional assistance this year.
PassBlue: Secretary-General Guterres said recently about the ongoing negotiations led by the US, Qatar and Egypt with Israel and Hamas that this is a decisive moment for the fate of the entire region “to stop the bloodshed and free the hostages.” Yet there is, as we speak, a military operation by Israel to take over Rafah in its aim to kill Hamas militants amid the UN’s warning of more civilian deaths and excessive collateral damage. What does it take for both Israel and Hamas to agree on a truce? What will they have to concede?
Albanai: I don’t think it’s a matter of concessions anymore. Hamas has declared that it has agreed to the offer that Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been working on, and it’s the Israelis that have not agreed on the parameters. I don’t think that a permanent ceasefire is something that is unacceptable. All member states have been calling [from the beginning] for a ceasefire, no forced displacement and unhindered access to the humanitarian goods. All of us — the Arab group, the Islamic group, the Non-Aligned Movement. And we’re talking about 130-plus countries that have said so from the beginning: ceasefire, no forced displacement, humanitarian access. That’s what it takes to have a [ceasefire] agreement. [We’re] expecting Israel to respond to this.
PassBlue: As to the Kuwaiti compensation commission, which worked well in 2019. Do you think one day Palestinians can also seek and successfully get compensation for damage and losses they suffered?
Albanai: They should. First of all, the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait that began on Aug. 2, 1990, saw the Security Council work as it was intended by the Charter of the UN. Given its primary responsibility for peace and security around the world, [the Council] has tools. Every single tool was used during the invasion of Kuwait and the interim period until our liberation. . . . There have been resolutions passed asking immediately for a withdrawal; envoys that went through using Chapter 8 of the Security Council that went to try to defuse the situation. Regional organizations were asked to do the same also on Chapter 8. Sanctions were placed against Iraq under Chapter 7. Finally, the use of force was authorized by the Security Council to liberate. So it used all the tools under its dispensation. It had success stories like no other conflict we’ve ever seen.
It also had a peacekeeping mission in Unikom [UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission] that was opened and closed successfully at the border of Kuwait. It had the compensation commission that successfully opened, looked at claims, assessed them, allotted compensation and paid it in full, successfully closing two years ago. It demarcated a border between two countries with Resolution 833 and it continues to this day, following the issue of missing persons in accordance with Resolution 2474. [As to compensation], what happened between Iraq and Kuwait and the mechanism that was put there is a blueprint for future aggression and it must be implemented.
And yes, the Palestinians have a right to claim for compensation.
PassBlue: But could the US be held accountable that day [at the compensation commission] for its part? And what happens then?
Albanai: I don’t know if the United States can be held responsible for any of that. It is the Israelis that have caused this havoc and destruction, and as such, they should be held accountable and they should compensate the Palestinians suffering from this devastating war.
PassBlue: I’m asking theoretically: If there were also a claim against the US, because it is one of the staunch allies of Israel in this war, could the US, having provided the weapons and other support, be also held responsible? But such a decision would have to come to the Security Council, where [the US] has veto power. So that was more a theoretical question.
Albanai: It is obvious if a veto-wielding member, whoever they may be, is more than likely to use their privilege to stop such a thing.
PassBlue: Do you support reforming the Security Council?
Albanai: Everybody, including the permanent members of the Security Council, have expressed the need for Council reform to be more representative of today’s world and more inclusive, efficient, more democratic. Like it or not, we have to admit that [the UN] is the one institution that we have and we’ve all agreed to the way it works when we decided to become members of the international body. However, it doesn’t mean that we can’t try to fix what we believe is wrong. And I think that is what member states are earnestly trying to do now. They recognize that there is a problem and that the problem needs to be addressed and that there needs to be more accountability for what’s going on around the world.
PassBlue: Is there something you would like to say as your final comments?
Albanai: The United Nations is not the Security Council . . . it is much bigger than that. [It] affects millions of people’s lives every day on the ground. [It] is visible and active and doing good. And we need to understand that protecting it and protecting the people that work for it and protecting the ideals that it stands for is to the benefit of humanity . . . to all of us collectively. And this is the message that we need to teach our children . . . and that everybody around the world needs to understand.
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on Kuwait's achievements in the Security Council?
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Ilgin Yorulmaz has reported from Turkey, India, Nepal, Philippines, China and Japan for BBC World Service, Huffington Post, Vice, The Guardian, PassBlue, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveller UK, Voices and Maison Française. She has an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In addition, she has an M.A. in international relations and economics from the International University of Japan in Niigata and a B.A. in business administration from Bogazici University in Istanbul. Yorulmaz speaks Turkish, Japanese, French and English.
Thank you so much for having this interview and shedding light in one of our darkest chapters and the resemblance to the ongoing war in Gaza.
Thank you, Kuwait’s UN Envoy, for the very important conclusion on the UN values and actions. However, we believe that the UN will be better and more effective, juste, equitable and democratic without the UN Security Council because of the veto and penholder power of the P5. Maybe the Security Council was useful in 1947 but today it is showing every day its very serious limitations in handling issues facing the world peace and security and Gaza and the Palestinian statehood are very recent examples.