SEE. FEEL. ACT.

To whom this manifesto is addressed

This manifesto is written for two categories of people whom dominant public discourse tends to artificially oppose, but who in fact share the same moral wager: that the law applies to everyone, without geopolitical exceptions.

It is addressed, first and foremost, to all those — of any nationality, culture or religious affiliation — who are not morally prepared to accept the abuses committed by the State of Israel against civilian populations in Gaza and Lebanon. To those who have seen images of white phosphorus falling on houses and have decided that silence is no longer a tenable position. To those who recognise that systematic and unanswered oppression generates violence — and that attributing that violence exclusively to the oppressed, ignoring the structural conditions that produce it, is an act of moral blindness before it is a political one.

It is addressed, in equal measure and with equal force, to every Israeli citizen and every Jew of the diaspora who is today discriminated against, ostracised or blamed for the actions of a government they did not choose, contest, or have openly fought against. They are not responsible for the military and political choices of their State. Identifying them with those choices is an error this manifesto rejects with the same clarity with which it rejects the conduct of the Israeli State. Their dissenting voice is not a marginal exception: it is proof that there exists, within Israeli society, a critical conscience that deserves respect and solidarity, not stigma.

These two groups are not in contradiction. They are two faces of a single question: is it possible for international law to be respected, and for no human being to pay for the wrongs they have not committed? This manifesto's answer is yes — and the condition for making it true is calling things by their name.

I. Preamble

This manifesto arises from an act of rational conscience, not from emotional impulse. Those who sign this document have observed, with growing intellectual dismay, the evolution of a pattern of State conduct that can no longer be explained within the ordinary categories of the use of force in armed conflict. The point of no return was the systematic and documented use of white phosphorus over densely populated civilian areas — a weapon whose indiscriminate and incendiary nature is unequivocally prohibited under customary and conventional international humanitarian law.

This declaration is not an act of antisemitism, nor a denial of the Jewish people's right to existence and security. It is an act of fidelity to international law — the same legal order the world built upon the ruins of the Second World War with the promise of "never again". A promise that signatory States have a legal and moral obligation to honour, even when that means withdrawing recognition from those who have repeatedly and structurally violated it.

II. The triggering event: the use of white phosphorus

2.1 Nature of the weapon

White phosphorus (WP) is a chemical substance that ignites spontaneously on contact with oxygen, burning at temperatures above 800°C. Once ignited, it continues to burn until it exhausts available oxygen or is completely consumed. When it comes into contact with human tissue, it penetrates deeply and continues to burn internally, causing extremely serious injuries — often lethal, and in any case permanent.

2.2 Documentation of use

Human Rights Watch documented, with photographic evidence, videos and direct testimonies, the use of white phosphorus munitions by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon from October 2023. In both contexts, its use occurred in civilian urban areas, in violation of the principle of distinction and the prohibition of weapons with indiscriminate effects.

"Israeli forces have used white phosphorus in military operations in Lebanon and Gaza, putting civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries." — Human Rights Watch, 12 October 2023

Similar findings were made by the Airwaves organisation and investigative units of major international media (The New York Times Visual Investigations, BBC Verify). The use was implicitly acknowledged by Israeli military sources who defended its legality by invoking an alleged compliance with international law — a claim that the signatories of this manifesto consider legally unfounded.

2.3 Legal characterisation

The use of white phosphorus in civilian urban areas constitutes a violation of Protocol III to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW, Geneva 1980), which governs incendiary weapons. In particular, this Protocol expressly prohibits the use of air-delivered or artillery-launched incendiary weapons against concentrations of civilians, regardless of the stated military intent.

Although white phosphorus is not formally classified as a chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC, 1993) when used as a smoke screen or marker, its deliberate use as an incendiary agent against civilian populations constitutes a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

III. International normative framework violated

3.1 Customary International Humanitarian Law

Customary international humanitarian law, codified in the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), establishes binding principles erga omnes regardless of the ratification of specific conventions. Among them:

• Principle of distinction (ICRC Rule 1): parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives.
• Principle of proportionality (ICRC Rule 14): it is prohibited to launch an attack which may be expected to cause incidental civilian losses excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
• Principle of precaution (ICRC Rule 15): all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid or minimise civilian casualties.
• Prohibition of indiscriminate weapons (ICRC Rule 71): weapons that by nature are incapable of distinguishing between civilians and combatants are prohibited.

The body of documentation produced by international organisations, independent observers and UN bodies attests to the structural and systematic violation of each of these principles in the context of Israeli military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

3.2 Genocide Convention (1948)

The Republic of South Africa filed, on 29 December 2023, a case against the State of Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The ICJ, by order of 26 January 2024, found the allegations plausible and issued provisional measures, ordering Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent acts that could fall within the scope of the Genocide Convention.

"The Court considers that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible." — ICJ, Order of 26 January 2024, § 54

The fact that the highest international judicial authority did not dismiss the South African application, but instead found the genocide allegations plausible, represents a legally relevant datum of extraordinary gravity that no State can ignore.

3.3 Rome Statute and International Criminal Court

The ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested on 21 May 2024 the issuance of arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC issued those warrants on 21 November 2024. This is the first case in the Court's history in which arrest warrants have been issued against the leadership of a Western government or its strategic ally.

3.4 UN Resolutions

The United Nations General Assembly adopted, on 18 October 2023, Resolution ES-10/21 with 120 votes in favour, calling for an immediate humanitarian truce and respect for international law. The Security Council has been systematically paralysed by the United States' exercise of its veto power, blocking every binding ceasefire resolution.

This structural paralysis of the Security Council does not exempt Member States from their obligations under the UN Charter and customary international law. On the contrary, it requires States committed to upholding the international order to act through the legal instruments at their disposal — including sanctions, arms embargoes, suspensions from international bodies, and the refusal to recognise the violating conduct as lawful.

IV. Legal basis: clarity on categories

4.1 What "non-recognition" means in this manifesto

Precision is required, because precision is the condition of credibility. Positive international law draws a sharp distinction between two categories that public discourse tends to conflate: the existence of a State as a legal entity and the legitimacy of its conduct. Israel has existed as a State since 1948 and has been a member of the United Nations since 1949. No rule of current international law provides for the cancellation of a UN member State on account of violations committed by its organs. Those who sign this manifesto are aware of this, and do not intend to argue otherwise.

The "non-recognition" invoked in this document has a precise and legally grounded object: the refusal to recognise as lawful, as conforming to international law, the conduct of the State of Israel in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. This is precisely what the Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA, ILC/UN 2001) require of other States in the face of serious violations of peremptory norms:

• Article 40: serious breaches of obligations arising under peremptory norms of general international law (jus cogens) — including the prohibition of genocide, international humanitarian law, and the prohibition of crimes against humanity.
• Article 41: obligation of other States not to recognise as lawful the situation created by the serious breach, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining it.

The title of this manifesto — "non-recognition of the State of Israel" — is to be read in this light: not as an ontological denial of statehood, but as a political and moral refusal to confer legitimacy on conduct that systematically violates peremptory law. It is a deliberately sharp formula, chosen for its opening force and the clarity of the political signal it sends. The concrete legal content is that described in Section V.

4.2 The South Africa precedent: what holds and what does not

The South African precedent is often cited imprecisely. It must be clarified: the international community never "did not recognise" the State of South Africa as a legal entity. South Africa remained a UN member even during apartheid. What the international community did — and this is the relevant precedent — was to declare the regime's conduct illegitimate, suspend South Africa from specialised agencies, impose a mandatory arms embargo (Resolution 418, 1977) and progressively isolate the government until the apartheid system collapsed in 1990. This is precisely the model this manifesto proposes to apply.

4.3 The question of selectivity

A legitimate criticism the signatories do not intend to evade: if the criterion were the use of incendiary weapons in urban areas or violations of international humanitarian law, the catalogue of States to which analogous measures should apply would be long — the United States in Vietnam, Iraq and Yemen; Russia in Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine; France in Algeria; Turkey against the Kurdish population. The signatories acknowledge this asymmetry and declare it explicitly: it is not proof of antisemitism, but it is certainly proof of the selectivity with which international law is applied. The correct response to this asymmetry is not paralysis or silence: it is the affirmation that the same standard must apply to all, and that beginning to apply it — even in one case — is more honest than never applying it at all.

V. Concrete measures

If the "non-recognition of conduct" is the moral and political framework of this manifesto, the measures listed here are its concrete legal content. They are not symbolic proposals: they are instruments already provided for in international law, already applied in historical precedents, and already called for by UN experts, special rapporteurs and human rights organisations.

5.1 United Nations

The UN Charter, Article 6, provides for the expulsion of a member that has persistently violated the principles contained therein. Where the permanent veto makes that procedure impossible, Article 5 — suspension of rights and privileges — is to be applied through the General Assembly acting under the "Uniting for Peace" resolution (Resolution 377, 1950).

5.2 Specialised agencies and international bodies

Suspension of Israel's membership in UN specialised agencies (UNESCO, WHO, FAO, UNHRC) and bodies such as the OECD and the Council of Europe is demanded, until the cessation of operations in violation of international humanitarian law and full cooperation with the ICC.

5.3 Economic sanctions and arms embargo

A mandatory embargo on arms supplies, ammunition and dual-use military technologies to the State of Israel is demanded, analogous to that adopted against South Africa in 1977. Targeted economic sanctions are also demanded, with international verification mechanisms for their effective implementation.

VI. A necessary distinction: State, government, people

The signatories wish to reaffirm forcefully a distinction they consider essential both legally and morally: this manifesto is not directed against the Israeli people, against Jewish citizens of Israel or the diaspora, nor against Jewish culture, history or tradition.

It is directed against the governmental choices and military conduct of a State that, through its organs, has repeatedly violated international law. The distinction between State and people is not a rhetorical nicety: it is a fundamental category of international law, enshrined in State responsibility as an entity distinct from the individual criminal responsibility of its rulers.

We recognise and support the voices of those Israeli citizens — that dissenting minority — who take to the streets, document and denounce their government's violations. Non-recognition of the State is not their silencing: it is, paradoxically, one of the strongest acts of support for their cause.

VII. Final Declaration

We, the undersigned, by virtue of our commitment to the principles of international law, the UN Charter, the 1948 Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute, declare:

1. We do not recognise the legitimacy of the current conduct of the State of Israel as conforming to the rules of international humanitarian law and the fundamental principles of the international order.
2. We demand the immediate suspension of military operations in violation of international law, full cooperation with the International Criminal Court, and full implementation of the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
3. We call upon States and international organisations to adopt the measures of suspension, exclusion and sanction described in this manifesto, until the restoration of State conduct in conformity with international law.
4. We affirm that respect for international law is non-negotiable, admits no geopolitical exceptions, and that any distinction between States that violate it based on their strategic positioning itself constitutes a violation of the principle of sovereign equality of States.

The white phosphorus burning over Gaza and Lebanon also burns the legitimacy of an international system that looks away. We do not look away.

Legal references

• Protocol III CCW — Geneva 1980 | Genocide Convention — 1948
• Rome Statute Art. 8 — 1998 | ARSIWA Arts. 40-41 — ILC/UN 2001
• ICJ — South Africa v. Israel — 26 January 2024 | ICC — Netanyahu & Gallant — 21 November 2024
• HRW — White Phosphorus — 12 October 2023 | UNGA ES-10/21 — 27 October 2023
• ICRC — Customary IHL Study (Henckaerts & Doswald-Beck, 2005)
• UNSC Resolution 418 (1977) — South Africa Arms Embargo | UNGA 377(V) — Uniting for Peace — 1950

Manifesto for the Non-Recognition of the Conduct of the Russian Federation

Legal, ethical and political grounds for a necessary consistency

To whom it is addressed

To the governments of the Member States of the European Union and to all States party to the Geneva Conventions. To international institutions. To every citizen who believes that the law applies to all or applies to none. And to those who, reading the first manifesto of this platform, wondered whether its author applied the same standard to all violators of international law. This document is the answer.

I. Premise

On 24 February 2022 the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. Not a "special military operation": an armed aggression against a sovereign State, in violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter — the founding norm of the international order built on the ruins of the Second World War.

Since then: cities razed to the ground, civilian infrastructure systematically targeted, summary executions documented in Bucha and Irpin, mass deportations. On 16 March 2022 the International Court of Justice ordered Russia to immediately suspend military operations. Russia ignored the order. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against President Putin. Russia responded by indicting the Court's judges.

This manifesto is not born of allegiance to any side. It is born of the same principle that founds the first manifesto of this platform: no State is above international law. None.

II. The deported children

Among all documented crimes, one defines the nature of this war more than any other.

Ukraine has documented in detail — with place of origin and current location — over 19,500 minors deported to Russia or the occupied territories. Estimates by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab exceed 35,000. Researchers have identified 210 detention and re-education facilities, spread across 5,600 kilometres from the Black Sea to the Pacific: summer camps, cadet schools, orphanages, a military base, a monastery.

These children receive new names, false documents, Russian citizenship. They are placed in forced adoptions. They are punished for speaking Ukrainian. They are enrolled in paramilitary programmes where they learn to handle weapons and swear loyalty to the State that tore them from their families. Some are trained to fight — potentially against their own country.

Only about 1,300 have returned home.

The forcible transfer of children from one group to another is one of the constitutive acts of genocide under Article II(e) of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Not by analogy. Not by extensive interpretation. By the literal text of the norm.

III. Legal framework violated

• Article 2(4) of the UN Charter — prohibition of the use of force against the territorial integrity of another State
• Article II(e) of the Genocide Convention — forcible transfer of minors
• Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention — prohibition of deportation of civilians from occupied territory
• Article 8 of the Rome Statute — war crimes, including unlawful deportation
• Order of the International Court of Justice of 16 March 2022 (Ukraine v. Russian Federation), still unexecuted

On 17 March 2023 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, and Maria Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, for the deportation and unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children. It is the first time in history that a head of State of a permanent member of the Security Council has been the subject of an international arrest warrant.

IV. Legal basis for non-recognition

The Articles on State Responsibility (ARSIWA, ILC/UN 2001), Articles 40 and 41, establish that in the face of serious breaches of peremptory norms of international law, other States are obliged to: not recognise as lawful the situation created by the breach; not render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation; cooperate to bring the breach to an end through lawful means.

The prohibition of aggression and the prohibition of genocide are peremptory norms (jus cogens). The obligation of non-recognition is not a political option: it is a legal obligation.

V. The test of consistency — double standards

Here this manifesto diverges from every similar document. Because the European Union, faced with Russia, has already done what the law requires.

It adopted unprecedented sanctions packages. It froze the Russian central bank's reserves. It publicly supported the warrants of the International Criminal Court. It welcomed millions of refugees. It declared, through concrete acts, that the conduct of an aggressor State would not be recognised as lawful.

And then, faced with violations of the same peremptory norms committed by the State of Israel, it chose silence, equivocation, uninterrupted cooperation.

This double standard is not a diplomatic detail. It is a self-inflicted wound on Western legal civilisation.

Israel is called "the only Western democracy in the Middle East". Very well: whoever claims membership of the West also claims its foundations — the primacy of law over force, the accountability of power, equality before the law. These principles were not born yesterday: they were refined through centuries of philosophy, revolutions, constitutions, courts. They are the most precious thing the West has to offer the world.

To exempt from the law precisely the State that proclaims itself part of this tradition is to overturn its meaning. A Western democracy is not judged by a lower standard: it is judged by the highest standard, because that is the one it itself proclaims. Belonging to the West is not an immunity — it is an assumption of responsibility.

When Europe sanctions Russia for the deportation of children and stays silent about those who use white phosphorus over civilian areas, it does not protect Israel: it discredits itself. It declares to the entire world that international law is a weapon against enemies, not a principle. And in that moment every autocrat on earth obtains the argument he was looking for: your rules are hypocrisy.

International law applied selectively is not law: it is power disguised as principle. And every selective application weakens all applications — including the just ones, including those against Russia. Whoever stays silent about a crime for reasons of alliance makes the condemnation of all other crimes less credible.

VI. Concrete measures

1. The maintenance of non-recognition of every Russian territorial annexation in Ukraine, including Crimea
2. Full cooperation with the ICC for the execution of the warrants against Putin and Lvova-Belova
3. Targeted sanctions against all entities involved in the deportation of minors — including the companies documented in the Yale report of March 2026
4. Active support for programmes to identify and repatriate deported children
5. The application of these same standards to every State whose conduct violates the same peremptory norms — without geopolitical exceptions

VII. Fundamental distinction

This manifesto is not against Russia as a nation, nor against the Russian people. Thousands of Russian citizens have protested against this war, paying with prison, exile, their lives. Russian journalists have documented the crimes of their own government. Russian mothers have searched for their sons sent to die in a war they did not choose.

The distinction between State, government and people is not a rhetorical concession: it is the foundation of all serious legal and moral reasoning. It applies to Russia exactly as it applies to Israel. It is the same distinction, because it is the same principle.

Final declaration

I do not recognise as lawful the conduct of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. I do not recognise the deportation of 19,500 children as "humanitarian evacuation". I do not recognise the annexation of territories as "referendums". I do not recognise aggression as a "special operation". And I demand that the law Europe has proven able to apply to Russia be applied to all — beginning with those who proclaim themselves part of the West and its values. Because the law applies to all, or it applies to none.

Legal references

• Charter of the United Nations, Art. 2(4)
• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), Art. II(e)
• Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), Art. 49
• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Art. 8
• ICJ, Order of 16 March 2022, Ukraine v. Russian Federation
• ICC, Arrest warrants of 17 March 2023 (Putin, Lvova-Belova)
• ARSIWA (ILC/UN 2001), Arts. 40-41
• Yale HRL, Willing Accomplices (March 2026); report on the 210 facilities (September 2025)

Manifesto for Sudan — The Genocide the World Looks Away From

Legal, ethical and political grounds for an attention that is owed

To whom it is addressed

To the governments of the States party to the Genocide Convention. To the European Union and its Member States. To the States that maintain commercial and military relations with those who arm the perpetrators. To the Western media, whose silence carries weight. And to every citizen who wonders why some victims fill the front pages and others do not even exist.

This manifesto is the third of a series. The first concerns the conduct of the State of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon; the second, that of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. All three apply the same identical legal framework — the non-recognition obligations under ARSIWA Articles 40-41 — to different violators, from different alignments, with different allies. Readers encountering this document for the first time are invited to read the other two, available at iwillnotlookaway.org: the principle that founds them is one, and it is measured precisely by its application without exceptions.

I. Premise

Since April 2023 Sudan has been devastated by a war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), heir to the Janjaweed who bloodied Darfur twenty years ago. The toll: over 150,000 estimated dead, 12 million displaced — the largest displacement crisis in the world — and the gravest famine of the 21st century.

In January 2025 the US State Department formally determined that the RSF have committed genocide against the non-Arab populations of Darfur. In February 2026 the United Nations International Fact-Finding Mission reached the same conclusion regarding the events of El Fasher.

Two formal determinations of genocide. And the world looks elsewhere.

This platform bears the name of a commitment: I will not look away. No case in the world makes this commitment more necessary than Sudan — the genocide without cameras, without demonstrations, without outrage. The genocide that does not divide public opinion for the most atrocious of reasons: public opinion does not know it exists.

II. El Fasher

On 26 October 2025, after eighteen months of siege in which the population was deliberately starved, the RSF took El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, home to a million and a half people before the war.

The UN Human Rights Office, based on over 140 testimonies, documented more than 6,000 killings in the first three days: at least 4,400 inside the city, over 1,600 along the escape routes, where fleeing civilians were systematically intercepted and executed. The real toll is certainly higher; some estimates speak of tens of thousands.

Survivors report the words of RSF fighters: "Is there any Zaghawa among you? If we find a Zaghawa, we kill you all." And: "We want to eliminate everything black from Darfur."

The UN Mission concluded: prolonged siege, deliberately inflicted starvation, denial of humanitarian aid, then mass killings, systematic rape, torture, enforced disappearances — "a planned and organised operation bearing the hallmarks of genocide", conducted "with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Zaghawa and Fur communities".

El Fasher is not an episode. It is the replica of El Geneina and Ardamata (2023, against the Masalit), of the Zamzam refugee camp (April 2025, two thousand dead, four hundred thousand in flight). It is a method.

III. Legal framework violated

• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948): Arts. I (obligation to prevent, not only punish), II (constitutive acts), III (punishability of complicity and incitement)
• Fourth Geneva Convention and Common Article 3: protection of civilians, prohibition of starvation as a weapon
• Rome Statute, Arts. 6 (genocide), 7 (crimes against humanity), 8 (war crimes)
• UN Security Council Resolution 1593 (2005): referral of Darfur to the International Criminal Court — jurisdiction still open over current crimes

The ICC has already shown it can act: in October 2025 it sentenced a Janjaweed leader to twenty years for the crimes of 2003-2004. Twenty years after the facts. Today's victims cannot wait until 2045.

IV. Who arms, who pays, who profits

The RSF are not a State. But no armed group commits a genocide alone. Behind every El Fasher massacre lies a documented chain of suppliers, financiers and beneficiaries.

The United Arab Emirates are the principal documented backer of the RSF. Amnesty International (May 2025) identified in RSF hands Chinese GB50A guided bombs — manufactured in 2024, never before documented in any conflict in the world — and AH-4 155mm howitzers: according to SIPRI, the Emirates are the only country in the world to have imported that weapons system from China. The Wing Loong II and FeiHong-95 drones that launch them are used in Sudan exclusively by the RSF. The UN Panel of Experts on Sudan found the same pattern. The Emirates deny — but bombs manufactured in 2024 exploding in Darfur in 2025 do not explain themselves.

The motive is not ideological: it is economic and geopolitical. Sudanese gold — whose main mines are controlled by General Hemedti's RSF — flows largely to Dubai, as documented by Global Witness and The Sentry. Add to this Emirati interests in Red Sea ports and Sudanese farmland.

China manufactures the weapons through Norinco, a state-owned defence conglomerate, and sells them to the Emirates without any re-export control mechanism being applied — in violation of the spirit of the Arms Trade Treaty which the Emirates themselves signed.

Russia played both tables: the Wagner group, through the companies Meroe Gold and M-Invest sanctioned by the US and EU, for years exchanged weapons and training for gold concessions in RSF-controlled areas, before Moscow's repositioning towards the regular army in exchange for the prospect of a naval base at Port Sudan.

And Europe? Europe did not sell weapons to the RSF. It did something subtler: through the Khartoum Process and migration-control funds, it for years treated as a border-management partner an apparatus of which the RSF proclaimed themselves the operational arm — outsourcing migrant containment to those now formally accused of genocide. And today, faced with the evidence gathered by the UN and Amnesty, it has not imposed a single significant sanction on the Emirates: too important as commercial, energy and financial partners.

The law is clear. Article 16 ARSIWA establishes that a State which renders aid or assistance in the commission of an internationally wrongful act is responsible for it. Article I of the Genocide Convention imposes on every signatory the obligation to prevent — an obligation the International Court of Justice (Bosnia v. Serbia, 2007) declared operative from the moment the State learns of the serious risk. Everyone knows. For years. The knowledge is on record at the UN. What is missing is not the evidence: it is the will.

V. The hierarchy of victims

For Ukraine, the West mobilised sanctions, weapons, refuge, permanent media attention. For Gaza, at least, the world divided, debated, filled the squares. For Sudan: nothing. No significant sanctions against those arming the RSF. No extraordinary summits. No front pages. One hundred and fifty thousand dead and twelve million displaced are worth less media space than a single week of any other crisis.

The Sudanese victims are not guilty of being on the wrong side. They bear a worse guilt: being on no side that interests anyone. No geopolitical leverage, no lobby, no spotlight. They are the definitive proof that the world's attention follows not the gravity of crimes but the convenience of the onlooker.

A legal civilisation is measured exactly here: by how it treats the victims who are of use to no one.

There is more. The same West that stays silent about the Emirates and forgets Sudan continues to present itself to the world as a teacher of civilisation. It presumes to export democracy to peoples who built empires, wrote poetry and codified law when Europe did not yet exist — to the Persia of the Cyrus Cylinder, which two and a half thousand years ago proclaimed the freedom of worship of subjected peoples. With what authority? Moral authority is not inherited from history books: it is earned through consistency, and lost through hypocrisy.

A West that sanctions selectively, that arms whoever suits it, that calibrates its outrage on the price of oil and on commercial contracts, is not exporting democracy: it is exporting the proof that its values are negotiable. And every people in the world sees it. The abandoned Sudanese see it, the Palestinians under the bombs see it, the Iranians fighting for their rights see it — and they need no lessons from those who betray at home the principles they preach.

The author of these lines has travelled for work in many countries, and has learned something no treaty teaches: today a Western citizen, before an interlocutor of any other civilisation, no longer starts from a position of moral superiority. He starts from a position of debt. He must first answer — at least within himself — for the double standard of his institutions, the silence of his governments, the selectivity of his outrage. This manifesto is also an attempt to honour that debt: to show that at least the citizens, if not the governments, still know how to apply a principle without regard for convenience.

VI. Concrete measures

1. Targeted sanctions against the RSF chain of command and against every entity — state or private — involved in their supply, according to the findings of the UN Panel of Experts
2. Targeted sanctions against the United Arab Emirates — state and private entities — until the arms transfers to the RSF documented by the UN and Amnesty verifiably cease; and the extension of the arms embargo from the current Darfur perimeter to the whole of Sudan
3. Binding re-export controls on every arms sale to States violating UN embargoes — starting with Chinese (Norinco) and Western supplies to the Emirates
4. Full support — financial and political — for the International Criminal Court's proceedings on present-day Darfur; guaranteed humanitarian corridors and funding of the famine response
5. The formal activation of the obligation of prevention under Art. I of the Genocide Convention, with a Human Rights Council monitoring mechanism endowed with a strengthened mandate

VII. Fundamental distinction

This manifesto is not against the Sudanese people, nor against the Arab communities of Darfur — themselves victims, in many cases, of a war that overwhelms them. Nor is it an absolution of the Sudanese Armed Forces, whose crimes are also documented and deserve justice.

It is against a genocidal method, against those who arm it, and against the indifference that makes it possible.

Final declaration

I do not look away from El Fasher. I do not accept that a hierarchy of victims exists. I do not recognise as normal the world's silence before two formal determinations of genocide. And I do not accept that the West preaches to others the democracy it betrays at home. Sudan is the test of sincerity for anyone — myself included — who invokes international law for the crises that make the news. If the principle holds, it holds also when no one is watching. Especially when no one is watching. Because the law applies to all, or it applies to none.

Legal references

• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), Arts. I, II, III
• Fourth Geneva Convention (1949); Common Article 3
• Rome Statute, Arts. 6, 7, 8
• UN SC Resolution 1593 (2005) — Darfur referral to the ICC
• ICJ, Bosnia v. Serbia (2007) — obligation of prevention
• ARSIWA (ILC/UN 2001), Arts. 16, 40-41
• Genocide determination, US State Department, January 2025
• UN International Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan, findings of 19 February 2026; OHCHR, El Fasher report, February 2026
• Amnesty International, Sudan: Advanced Chinese weaponry provided by UAE, May 2025; SIPRI, AH-4 transfer registry
• Global Witness; The Sentry — reports on Sudanese gold; US/EU sanctions on Meroe Gold and M-Invest

Manifesto for the Non-Recognition of the Conduct of the United States of America

Legal, ethical and political grounds for a principle that admits no exceptions — not even at the top

To whom it is addressed

To the governments of the Member States of the European Union and to all States party to the Charter of the United Nations. To international institutions. To every citizen who believes that the law applies to all or applies to none. And to those who think that defending international legality when the victim of the violation is an autocrat means defending the autocrat. It does not. It is the only moment in which the defence of legality proves itself sincere.

This manifesto is the fourth of a series. The first concerns the conduct of the State of Israel; the second, that of the Russian Federation; the third, the genocide in Sudan and those who arm it. All apply the same legal framework — the non-recognition obligations under ARSIWA Articles 40-41 — to different violators, from different alignments. This fourth document closes the circle in the only coherent way possible: by applying the principle to the very top of the system. The other manifestos are available at iwillnotlookaway.org.

I. Premise

In the night of 3 January 2026 the United States of America attacked Venezuela. Air raids on Caracas and three states of the country, air defences dismantled, communications cut, civilian and military casualties. At 2:01 a.m. special forces reached the residence of President Nicolás Maduro and took him from his bedroom, together with his wife, while they slept. Transferred to a military vessel, then to a New York prison, to be tried by an American federal court on drug-trafficking charges.

No international warrant. No Security Council authorisation. No Venezuelan armed attack to respond to. Not even the authorisation of the American Congress. An operation named, with involuntary precision, "Absolute Resolve": absolute — that is, by definition, unbound from any constraint.

The American president then declared that the United States would "govern the country until the transition". The de facto administration of a sovereign State, announced at a press conference from a private resort.

This manifesto is not born of sympathy for the Venezuelan regime — which deserves none. It is born of the principle that founds the other three documents of this platform: no State is above international law. And if the principle does not hold for the most powerful, it never was a principle: it was merely the rule that the most powerful imposed on others.

II. The precedent that demolishes the castle

Among all the violations of that night, one has structural consequences that exceed the Venezuelan case.

International law grants sitting heads of State absolute personal immunity from the jurisdiction of other States. It is not a privilege of the powerful: it is the keystone that prevents every State from "arresting" other countries' leaders on the basis of its own domestic laws and its own charges. The International Court of Justice established this unambiguously in the Arrest Warrant case (Congo v. Belgium, 2002): a sitting head of State may be tried only by an international court — as the ICC for Putin or Netanyahu — never by the domestic justice of another country.

The United States did exactly this: they applied their own criminal code to a foreign head of State, removed him by force from his territory while bombing its capital, and will try him before one of their own district courts.

The consequences do not concern Maduro. They concern everyone. If the precedent stands, every power can do the same: China can "arrest" a president its laws qualify as a terrorist; Russia can "arrest" a leader its code qualifies as an extremist. The charge is irrelevant — every domestic legal system can produce one. What was demolished on 3 January was not a regime: it was the barrier separating international law from the law of the strongest.

Add the context: since September 2025, more than thirty military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific, over one hundred and ten people killed without trial, without formal charges, without a single court ever having verified their guilt. Extrajudicial executions in international waters, normalised as the "war on drug trafficking".

III. Legal framework violated

• Article 2(4) of the UN Charter — prohibition of the use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of another State. Article 51 (self-defence) is inapplicable: Venezuela had neither attacked nor threatened the United States
• Personal immunity of sitting heads of State — customary international law; ICJ, Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Congo v. Belgium, 2002)
• Principle of non-intervention — ICJ, Nicaragua v. United States (1986): the judgment that condemned the United States precisely for the unlawful use of force against a Latin American State, and which Washington ignored then as now
• Prohibition of extrajudicial executions — International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Art. 6; the right to life and to a trial
• Prohibition of administering another's territory without title — the announcement of "governing the country until the transition" amounts to a de facto occupation devoid of any legal basis

IV. Legal basis for non-recognition

The Articles on State Responsibility (ARSIWA, ILC/UN 2001), Articles 40 and 41, oblige all States, in the face of serious breaches of peremptory norms: not to recognise as lawful the situation created by the breach; not to render aid or assistance in maintaining it; to cooperate to bring it to an end through lawful means.

The prohibition of aggression is a peremptory norm (jus cogens). It was when Russia violated it. It is when the United States violate it. The obligation of non-recognition does not distinguish between likeable and unlikeable aggressors, between allies and adversaries: this indistinction is precisely what makes it law.

A precise consequence follows: no State may recognise as legitimate a Venezuelan government installed under foreign military administration, nor the jurisdiction of an American domestic court over a head of State captured through an act of aggression.

V. The test of consistency — the loudest silence

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the European Union reacted within hours: unanimous condemnation, sanctions, frozen reserves, extraordinary summits.

When the United States bombed Caracas and abducted a head of State, the European Union reacted thus: the High Representative commented that Maduro "lacks legitimacy". The Commission President spoke of a "peaceful transition" without naming the operation — as if Maduro had been carried away by the wind. One European foreign minister quipped: "couldn't have happened to a better person". No condemnation. No sanctions. No extraordinary summit. A single European head of government invoked international law with clarity — and the formal condemnation of the aggression came from Lula, Petro, Boric, from Mexico: from the Global South, not from the Europe that proclaims itself the mother of law.

That Maduro was an autocrat is true, and it is irrelevant. International law does not protect leaders because they are good: it protects them because the alternative is that every power becomes judge, policeman and executioner of the others. The Europe that stays silent on Caracas after sanctioning Moscow certifies before the entire world that its compass is not the law: it is the identity of the aggressor.

And here the damage reaches the bottom. Because the United States are not just any State: they are the architect of the 1945 order, the power that wrote the San Francisco Charter, established the Nuremberg tribunals, preached the "rules-based order" for eighty years to every corner of the planet. When the guarantor of the system violates it with impunity — and its allies applaud or stay silent — it is not a government in Caracas that falls: it is the very argument with which the West justified its moral leadership. Every future Western condemnation of someone else's aggression will be born dead, with Caracas as the ready answer. The West's presumed ideological supremacy no longer holds: not because its principles were wrong, but because it has shown it does not believe in them.

VI. Concrete measures

1. The formal condemnation of the aggression of 3 January 2026 as a violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, in the same forms used for the Russian aggression against Ukraine
2. The non-recognition of any Venezuelan government installed under foreign military administration or tutelage, until the Venezuelan people can express themselves in free elections without occupiers
3. The non-recognition of the jurisdiction of US domestic courts over a head of State captured through an act of aggression, and the demand for his transfer to an international jurisdiction for the crimes he must answer for — which exist, and deserve a legitimate trial
4. An independent international inquiry into the extrajudicial executions at sea and the civilian victims of the raids
5. The application of these same standards to every State, whatever its geopolitical weight — because a law that stops before the strongest never existed

VII. Fundamental distinction

This manifesto is not a defence of Nicolás Maduro. His regime repressed dissent, hollowed out institutions, stole an election: the opposition's victory in 2024 is documented, and the repression that followed is a disgrace for which Chavismo answers before history and — hopefully — before a legitimate court. Nor is it a manifesto against the American people, whose own press called the operation illegal, and whose Congress was not even consulted.

It is against a method. Defending the immunity of an indefensible head of State is the supreme test of the sincerity of those who believe in the law: anyone can defend legality when it protects the innocent. The principle proves itself when it also protects those we despise — because that is the moment it stops being convenience and becomes civilisation.

Final declaration

I do not recognise as lawful the aggression of 3 January 2026 against Venezuela. I do not recognise the abduction of a sitting head of State as a "police operation". I do not recognise the foreign administration of a sovereign State as a "transition". I do not grant the most powerful the right to do what it condemns in others. And I note: those who built the castle of international justice are demolishing it from within, while Europe looks elsewhere. This manifesto exists so that someone puts on record that not everyone looked elsewhere. Because the law applies to all, or it applies to none.

Legal references

• Charter of the United Nations, Arts. 2(4), 51
• ICJ, Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (DR Congo v. Belgium), 2002 — immunity of sitting heads of State
• ICJ, Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States), 1986
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), Art. 6
• ARSIWA (ILC/UN 2001), Arts. 40-41
• Statement of the UN Secretary-General, 3 January 2026 ("dangerous precedent")
• Joint declaration of the governments of Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain, January 2026

Manifesto for the Freedom of the Seas — The Seizure of the Flotilla

Legal, ethical and political grounds for the right not to look away

To whom it is addressed

To the governments of the flag States of the seized vessels and to all States party to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. To the European institutions, which found their voice only when the victims held European passports. To those who believe that civic solidarity is a right and not a crime. And to those who think the political wisdom of a mission can be debated: it is legitimate — but political wisdom is not a legal category, and the free sea also protects those who engage in politics.

This manifesto is the fifth of a series. The first four concern the conduct of the State of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, of those responsible for and complicit in the genocide in Sudan, and of the United States of America in Venezuela. All apply the same legal framework to different violators. This document applies it to an episode that sums them all up: what happens when a State treats international law as an obstacle, and the citizens who invoke it as enemies. The other manifestos are at iwillnotlookaway.org.

I. Premise

Between 1 and 3 October 2025, the Israeli navy intercepted in international waters all the vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla — over forty civilian boats, departed from European and North African ports with participants from 44 countries and a cargo of humanitarian aid for Gaza. Between 28 and 30 April and 18 and 19 May 2026, the operation was repeated on a larger scale: 54 vessels, around 430 people, boarded again in international waters — the first wave off Cyprus, the last ship 118 nautical miles from the coast.

None of these people had committed a crime. Not under international law, which on the high seas recognises the exclusive jurisdiction of the flag State. Not under the national laws of their countries of origin. Not even under Israeli law — which does not apply in international waters. They carried declared aid, on declared routes, with declared identities.

They were boarded by soldiers, taken by force to an Israeli port, and there charged with having entered Israel illegally.

II. The Ashdod paradox

It is worth fixing this point, because everything is concentrated in it: people who did not want to enter Israel, who were sailing elsewhere, were brought into Israel against their will by Israeli soldiers — and charged with the entry. The kidnapper reporting the kidnapped for trespassing. This is not rhetorical hyperbole: it is the formal legal qualification used to detain them.

Then comes the detention: the maximum-security prison of Ketziot, in the Negev desert, built for terrorism detainees. Eighty-seven people on hunger strike. Converging testimonies — now on file with the Rome prosecutor's office — of punches, kicks, physical and psychological abuse, deprivation of sleep, water and medication.

And then the scene that went around the world: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir going to the port of Ashdod, making the activists kneel handcuffed with their hands behind their backs, and publishing the video on his own social channels, mocking them. Not the excess of a soldier: a sitting minister turning detention into a spectacle of humiliation. The President of the Italian Republic called it an act of the "lowest level", inflicted on "people stopped illegally in international waters". On 8 June 2026 the Rome prosecutor's office placed Ben Gvir under investigation for torture and kidnapping: it is the second proceeding by an ordinary European jurisdiction against him.

One detail measures the gravity of the Ashdod scene: even Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Sa'ar distanced themselves from their colleague's video. When the humiliation of prisoners embarrasses even the government that made it possible, it is no longer a matter of opinion: it is a fact that no one, at any latitude, can defend.

The historical precedent weighs on everything: in 2010 the boarding of the Mavi Marmara cost the lives of ten civilians. The UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission concluded that the blockade was illegal and the use of force unjustified. Fifteen years later, the method has not changed: it has become routine.

III. Legal framework violated

• UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1982): Art. 87 (freedom of the high seas), Art. 92 (exclusive jurisdiction of the flag State), Art. 110 (the right of visit on a foreign ship is admitted only for piracy, slave trading, unauthorised broadcasting, ships without nationality — none applicable)
• The law of naval blockade (San Remo Manual, §§ 93-104): a blockade is unlawful if its purpose or effect is to starve the civilian population or deny it humanitarian aid. The ICJ, with its 2024 provisional measures, ordered Israel to ensure the entry of aid into Gaza: a blockade that intercepts humanitarian aid bound for a population on the brink of famine cannot found any right of boarding
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Art. 7 (prohibition of degrading treatment), Art. 9 (prohibition of arbitrary detention), Art. 10 (dignity of detainees)
• Convention against Torture (1984): Arts. 1, 16; Arts. 5-7 (universal jurisdiction — the basis of the Italian investigation)
• Report of the UN fact-finding mission on the Mavi Marmara incident (2010): illegality of the blockade and of boarding in international waters

IV. Legal basis — the freedom of the seas as the first stone

Modern international law has a date and place of birth: 1609, when Hugo Grotius published Mare Liberum. The principle that the sea belongs to no State and that no power may close it to others is not one norm among many: it is the first norm, the one from which the entire edifice of the law of nations grew. For four centuries, every naval power — including the most aggressive — had an interest in preserving it.

Seizing civilian ships in international waters, outside the exhaustive cases the law admits, has a precise legal name when a private actor does it: piracy. When a State does it, the conventions use more cautious formulas — but the substance this manifesto records is identical: the exercise of force on the free sea against those who have committed no crime.

And it holds for anyone. If Israel can board a British-flagged vessel 118 miles from the coast, every State can. China in the Taiwan Strait, Russia in the Baltic, Iran at Hormuz now have a tolerated Western precedent to invoke. The European States whose flags flew on those boats had not only the right but the duty to protest formally: flag jurisdiction is not a technicality — it is the protection every State owes to its ships and to those aboard them.

V. The laboratory experiment — statements and deeds

This affair has produced, involuntarily, something precious: the experimental proof of what the other manifestos of this platform argue. And it produced it on a world scale.

Condemnation came from every continent. The President of the Italian Republic spoke of "uncivilised treatment inflicted on people stopped illegally in international waters" and of a gesture of the "lowest level by a minister". South African President Ramaphosa called the interception "contrary to international law" and in violation of the International Court of Justice's injunction on aid. Colombian President Petro spoke of a "new international crime". Bolivian President Arce of a "flagrant violation of international law". The Turkish foreign ministry of an "act of terrorism". UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese posed the question this manifesto makes its own: how is it possible that a State is allowed to seize ships in international waters off the coast of Europe?

But words are the half that counts less. Here are the deeds, as of this writing.

Who acted: Colombia expelled the entire Israeli diplomatic delegation and denounced the free trade agreement. Turkey opened a criminal investigation in Istanbul. Spain filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court. Italy placed Ben Gvir under investigation for torture and kidnapping. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway had already sanctioned him individually in June 2025 — proof that sanctioning him is not a diplomatic utopia: it is a decision already taken by five Western democracies.

And the European Union? It approved sanctions against a group of violent settlers. For the minister who made European citizens kneel before a camera: no sanction. The Italian proposal, supported by France, Spain and the Netherlands, is blocked by the veto of Bulgaria and the Czech Republic — because restrictive measures require the unanimity of the Twenty-Seven, and unanimity is the place where European decisions go to die. The decision has been postponed to the Foreign Affairs Council of 15 June 2026.

The picture that emerges is merciless and must be stated plainly: the deeds came from Bogotá, Istanbul, Madrid, Rome — and from the Anglosphere. The Union as such, two years after Gaza and two mass interceptions later, has yet to produce a single binding act against a man whom five of its allies have already sanctioned. Same State, same minister, same norms violated: the difference is made by the victims' passports and the courage of governments. This manifesto records both variables.

VI. Concrete measures

1. The adoption, at the Foreign Affairs Council of 15 June 2026, of the individual sanctions against Minister Ben Gvir already proposed by Italy and supported by several Member States — and, should the veto of individual countries prevent it, the adoption of coordinated national sanctions by willing Member States, on the model already implemented by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway in 2025
2. Full political support for the proceedings of national jurisdictions — starting with the Rome prosecutor's investigation — based on universal jurisdiction for torture
3. A joint formal protest by the flag States for the violation of Arts. 87, 92 and 110 UNCLOS, with a demand for reparation and the return of the vessels
4. The establishment of a humanitarian maritime corridor to Gaza under UN or European aegis, with civilian or naval escort by Member States, making structural what citizens attempted with sailing boats
5. The formal recognition that international civic solidarity is an exercise of protected freedoms — of navigation, of association, of rescue — and not a crime to be repressed

VII. Fundamental distinction

This manifesto does not ask for the Flotilla to be sanctified. Its missions are political acts as well as humanitarian ones; their effectiveness is debatable and debated; the opinions of its participants are most varied. All of this is legitimate material for debate — and it is legally irrelevant. The free sea does not protect only the neutral, and rights do not hold only for those who cause no disturbance. One can think those boats would have solved nothing, and at the same time recognise that boarding them was illegal and humiliating their crews was unworthy: the two things stand together effortlessly, in any mind not yet bent to partisanship.

And as always: this manifesto does not concern the Israeli people, but the conduct of its government — the same distinction, because it is the same principle.

Final declaration

I do not recognise as lawful the seizure of civilian ships in international waters. I do not recognise the charge of "illegal entry" levelled at those who were brought inside a border by force. I do not recognise the humiliation of defenceless prisoners as an act of government. And I do not accept that civic solidarity be treated as a crime by those who treat crimes as policy. The free sea was the first conquest of international law. Defending it is not nostalgia: it is defending the foundations while someone dismantles the roof. Because the law applies to all, or it applies to none.

Legal references

• UNCLOS (1982), Arts. 87, 92, 110
• Hugo Grotius, Mare Liberum (1609)
• San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea (1994), §§ 93-104
• ICJ, provisional measures 2024 (South Africa v. Israel) — obligation to ensure humanitarian aid
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), Arts. 7, 9, 10
• Convention against Torture (1984), Arts. 1, 5-7, 16
• Report of the UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission on the 31 May 2010 flotilla incident (Mavi Marmara)
• Individual sanctions against I. Ben Gvir and B. Smotrich: United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway (June 2025)
• Complaint of the Kingdom of Spain to the ICC; investigation of the Istanbul prosecutor's office (October 2025)
• Expulsion of the Israeli diplomatic delegation and denunciation of the FTA, Colombia (October 2025)
• Rome prosecutor's office, Ben Gvir placed under investigation for torture and kidnapping (June 2026); EU Foreign Affairs Council, sanctions dossier, 15 June 2026

Manifesto for the Right to Asylum — Against the Externalisation of the European Border

Legal, ethical and political foundation of a coherence Europe owes itself

To whom it is addressed

This manifesto addresses two groups that public debate pretends are opposed. Those who refuse to let Europe outsource the pushing-back of human beings to third States. And those who hold real, legitimate concerns about migration management: of them this document asks not to ignore those concerns, but not to let them be stolen by those who turn them into hatred. To criticise a government's method is not to despise those who voted for it in good faith. It is to demand that a border be governed without extinguishing the law on which European legal civilisation rests.

I. Premise — Suffering as political capital

No subject is exploited like migration. The most vulnerable person — fleeing war, hunger, persecution — is turned into a threat, a number, an enemy useful for winning an election. Fear makes voters docile and victims invisible. Others' suffering becomes, literally, political capital: the louder the tone, the more consensus gathered, and the less one is held to account for what happens beyond the border. This manifesto is born of the refusal of that mechanism. The question is not whether Europe has the right to regulate its borders — it does. The question is whether it may do so by delegating to others what at home would be illegal.

II. The fact: Europe outsourcing the border

1. EU–Turkey (2016). The agreement of 18 March 2016 provides for the return to Turkey of irregularly arriving migrants. The Commission states it has allocated almost €12.4 billion to refugees and host communities in Turkey since 2011. On its tenth anniversary, human-rights organisations argue the deal fuelled suffering and weakened legal safeguards. Erdoğan has repeatedly used migrants as diplomatic bargaining chips.

2. EU–Lebanon (2024). On 2 May 2024 the Commission announced €1 billion for Lebanon (2024–2027), largely to block the flow toward Cyprus: around €736 million for Syrian refugees, €200 million to strengthen Lebanese security forces in border control. Days after the announcement, Lebanon introduced new rules making legal residence almost impossible, followed by deportations to Syria — which the Union itself does not consider safe. Europe turned a blind eye.

3. Italy–Albania (2023). The Meloni–Rama protocol of November 2023 provides for processing up to 36,000 asylum seekers a year in two Italian-run centres in Albania (Shëngjin and Gjadër). Operational since October 2024, they sat largely empty for months because of repeated judicial halts; one was later repurposed as a "return hub" by decree-law. A report found their construction cost roughly seven times more than an equivalent centre in Italy.

4. The new EU Pact (in force since 12 June 2026). The European Asylum Procedure Regulation, in force in these days, accelerates expulsions, provides for offshore "return hubs" and allows transfers to "safe third countries", shifting to EU level the definition of what is "safe". Amnesty International summed up the objection: "labelling a country safe does not make it safe."

III. The norms at risk

Externalisation does not operate in a legal void: it operates against a precise body of norms. The principle of non-refoulement (Art. 33 of the 1951 Geneva Convention) prohibits returning a person to a place where they risk persecution or inhuman treatment — directly or through a proxy State. The right to asylum and protection in case of removal are enshrined in Articles 18 and 19 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The prohibition of collective expulsions is set by Article 4 of Protocol 4 to the ECHR. And the European Court of Human Rights, in Hirsi Jamaa v. Italy (2012), already condemned Italy for pushbacks to Libya: jurisdiction, and therefore responsibility, follows the State even beyond its borders. Externalising does not cancel the obligation. It merely moves it where it is harder to enforce.

IV. The legal crux: Albania and "safe countries"

Here precision is required, because precision is our credibility. The position is sharp and documented: the Albanian centres are built to detain people outside national territory, effectively removing them from the ordinary scrutiny of judges and the guarantees that would apply in Italy. Italian courts have repeatedly blocked transfers; in 2024 Amnesty International found that those detained were unlawfully deprived of liberty. For its critics the scheme violates the right to asylum and creates an accountability void; and entrusting another State with the exercise of coercive power raises a problem of sovereignty and constitutional integrity. The due caution: the status is contested, not yet settled. On 1 August 2025 the EU Court of Justice (joined cases C-758/24 and C-759/24) struck a blow to the "safe countries" scheme. The Advocates General's opinions are divided: in April 2026 an opinion supported the legitimacy of locating the centres; on 11 June 2026 a second opinion confirmed that States remain free to locate them in Albania, but added that compliance with the minimum standards of treatment inside them remains unproven. The binding judgment is expected in the coming months. Note the irony: it is the government invoking "national sovereignty" against the European Court — the same sovereignty the Albanian scheme, in fact, delegates to a third State.

V. The paradox of coherence

It is the same Europe. The one that invokes international law against Moscow and modulates its indignation over Gaza. The one that prosecutes others' crimes and funds the forces that deport Syrians toward a country it itself does not recognise as safe. To externalise the border is to externalise the violation: to move it beyond the line, where the cameras do not reach and European judges struggle to. This is not management of flows: it is the deliberate construction of a place where the law is dimmed. A continent that pays others to look away on its behalf is looking away from itself.

VI. A necessary distinction

It must be said plainly, because it is the point demagogues do not want to hear: having concerns about the management of flows is not racism. Those who fear for public services, for safety, for the fabric of working-class neighbourhoods — often those who live precisely where integration is left without means — deserve serious answers, not slogans. The target of this manifesto is not those citizens: it is whoever takes their legitimate concerns and turns them into hatred to harvest votes, leaving the real problems untouched. Migrants are not bargaining chips, and citizens are not propaganda fodder. Defending the right to asylum and demanding competent management of flows are not opposite positions: they are the same demand for seriousness.

VII. Concrete measures

1. Real conditionality. No European funds to third-State security forces that deport toward unsafe countries or block legal residence.
2. Effective judicial oversight of every centre funded or managed by a Member State, wherever located: jurisdiction follows the State, and with it the right to an effective remedy.
3. Ban on transfers to "safe third countries" without individual examination, access to a lawyer and an effective suspensive remedy.
4. Legal and resettlement routes that are proportionate and funded: the only credible alternative to smugglers, not a concession.
5. Full transparency on agreements and figures — Turkey (~€12.4bn since 2011), Lebanon (€1bn), Albanian centres (costing about seven times an Italian equivalent) — because what is paid in citizens' name, citizens have the right to know.

VIII. Final declaration

The civilisation of a continent is measured not by how many it manages to keep out, but by how many rights it manages not to betray while doing so. A border can be governed without outsourcing one's conscience. Numbers can be debated without dehumanising those who make them up. The Europe that pays others to look away on its behalf is looking away from itself. We will not.

Legal references

Geneva Convention 1951, Art. 33 (non-refoulement) · EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Arts. 18–19 · ECHR, Arts. 3, 5, 13 and Protocol 4, Art. 4 · Hirsi Jamaa v. Italy, ECtHR 2012 · CJEU 1 August 2025, joined cases C-758/24 and C-759/24 · EU Asylum Procedure Regulation, in force since 12 June 2026.