EU’s Kaja Kallas: Without Enforcement, UN Becomes “Law of the Jungle”

The UN Charter needs reform to hold major powers accountable for aggression against smaller states, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said at a security conference in Oslo on February 2, warning that the current system increasingly resembles a “law of the jungle,” according to Censor.net.

Kallas said the principles of the UN Charter remain sound, but lack a crucial enforcement mechanism.

She argued that while most countries rely on a rules-based international order for protection, that order fails when powerful states can violate it without consequences.

“If you think about it, we had the League of Nations, then there was World War II, so it (the League of Nations, ed.) didn’t work. Then the United Nations was created. But now the UN is clearly not working as it should,” Kallas said, Censor.net reported.

“In fact, there are many countries that want a rules-based order because most countries in the world are medium or small. Therefore, for them, the international order is a protection. But if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t give you protection,” she continued.

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Kallas noted that when a permanent member of the UN Security Council attacks another country in clear breach of the Charter, existing mechanisms offer no real response.

“What happens if you violate these rules? So, we now have the Security Council (UN – ed.), but we have seen that if a member of the Security Council attacks another country in complete violation of the UN Charter, there is really nothing you can do,” she explained.

This, she said, fuels the perception that international law is an illusion and that power, rather than rules, determines outcomes.

Previously, Kaja Kallas said the composition of Russia’s delegation at peace talks in Abu Dhabi, which is mostly military representatives, shows that Moscow is not serious about ending the war against Ukraine.

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