The international system has entered an age of permanent crisis, where disputes escalate quickly into armed confrontation, and wars are no longer resolved but merely managed. Nowhere has this reality been more brutally exposed than in Gaza. Since 7 October 2023, Israel’s genocidal campaign, conducted under an increasingly strained claim of self-defence, has not only reshaped regional dynamics. It has revealed something deeper: a profound crisis of legitimacy and functionality at the heart of the global governance system.
Central to this reckoning is the perceived paralysis of the institutions that claim a monopoly over the maintenance of international peace and security, foremost among them the United Nations. Designed precisely to prevent the recurrence of large-scale war, the UN today appears trapped in institutional stasis. Security Council vetoes, the geopolitical calculations of its permanent members, and the widening gap between normative rhetoric and realities on the ground have rendered criticisms of its effectiveness more visible—and more difficult to dismiss. The genocide in Gaza has thus become not only a humanitarian catastrophe but also a stress test for the liberal international order.
A Peculiar Proposition
Amid institutional fatigue and disillusionment, the Trump administration advanced what it termed a “radical” alternative: the Board of Peace. Launched on 19 February 2026 in Washington at the US Institute of Peace, the initiative was anchored in the ninth provision of the 20-point “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” and later endorsed by the UN Security Council via Resolution 2803. The Board was created with the specific intent to serve as a technical mechanism for overseeing the Gaza ceasefire and reconstruction, but was quickly described in broader terms. Official discourse portrayed it as an “agile” “results-oriented ” tool to restore peace and aid Gaza’s reconstruction. In practice, it quickly became a platform for a more ambitious project: an alternative diplomatic architecture.
From the start, the initiative raised serious questions. The Board’s Charter did not explicitly mention Gaza or the Palestinian people; an omission that fuelled doubts about whether it was truly designed for Gaza’s peace or if Gaza was being used as a pretext for wider geopolitical aims. This gap between concrete design and rhetorical vision suggested the Board could become a structure to replace existing multilateral frameworks.
President Trump made his ambition clear, using Davos to criticise the UN’s failure in Gaza. Secretary Rubio reinforced this critique, framing the Board not merely as a Gaza mechanism, but as a corrective to the “institutionalised dependency” plaguing the current multilateral order.
For observers familiar with Trump’s political style, this initiative is hardly surprising; it combines systemic critique with a personalised leadership claim, declares the existing order “failed,” and proposes a faster, more pragmatic, and less rule-bound alternative. Yet international law and multilateral diplomacy operate within far more rigid parameters than political rhetoric suggests. The governance of global peace and security rests not solely on political will, but on legitimacy, representation, normative acceptance, functional capacity, and, crucially, the consent of states.
The key question is whether the Board of Peace is the core of a new peace architecture that could replace a dysfunctional United Nations. Or is it simply a politically charged project that takes advantage of the system’s shortcomings without having the structure needed to replace it? Frustration with UN paralysis may prompt visions of a “new UN.” However, the legal, institutional, and historical complexity of the existing order makes such ideas highly contestable.
Structural Deficits and the Limits of Replacement
At first glance, the Board of Peace appears to be a more agile alternative to the United Nations, which suffers from bureaucracy and veto paralysis. However, it will likely face a legitimacy crisis due to its limited representational capacity. The UN is founded on the principle of the sovereign equality of 193 member states and serves as a universal diplomatic platform. In contrast, the Board of Peace is built around a narrow, selectively assembled membership. This makes it look more like an exclusive coalition than a global arbiter. The lack of broad Global South participation, the absence of diverse geopolitical blocs, and the refusal of several European states to join collectively weaken any claim that its decisions represent the “common will” of the international community. These representational deficits undermine its aspiration to be the core of a new global peace architecture.
Beyond representation, the Board’s institutional design reflects Trump’s personal leadership style rather than established multilateral norms. The Board’s Charter, which allows Trump to retain the chairmanship for as long as he deems appropriate —even beyond his tenure in public office —and subjects decisions to the Chairman’s approval, departs markedly from established principles of international institutional law. The Chairman’s authority to determine meeting agendas, shape the composition of the executive body, establish or dissolve subsidiary organs, and exercise final interpretative authority over the Charter effectively concentrates power in a single office. Such personalisation of authority erodes the checks and balances indispensable to institutional autonomy and raises serious doubts about the Board’s capacity to operate as an independent and impartial global actor.
This personalisation extends to the Executive Board’s makeup, which includes top US officials alongside Trump’s family and business associates—blurring the line between statecraft and private interests. Instead of reflecting the pluralism typical in diplomacy, the structure appears as a tight political network. Mixing public authority and private ties threatens transparency, accountability, and neutrality. Without clear safeguards between public decisions and personal or financial interest, scepticism about the Board’s universality and ethics will only grow.
The Board’s profit-oriented model further complicates its normative standing. Monetising permanent membership makes participation transactional, raising questions about financial governance, oversight, and accountability. Without transparent auditing and public reporting, the Board risks appearing not merely transactional but opaque, structuring bias into its funding model and compromising its capacity for neutral adjudication. A body funded by those who have secured privileged status through payment may find it institutionally difficult to adjudicate disputes involving its principal financial contributors with genuine neutrality. In this sense, the issue is not solely corruption in a narrow sense, but systemic bias embedded within the funding model itself.
The track records of the Board’s members likewise raise significant ethical concerns. The inclusion of Israel, the principal culprit in the Gaza genocide, as a “peace actor” further complicates claims to neutrality, embedding the tension between justice and power politics into the institution’s very design. When a central protagonist in a deeply contested conflict assumes a role in shaping the direction of a putative peace mechanism, the institution’s claim to impartiality becomes difficult to sustain.
Taken together, these structural, normative, and institutional shortcomings render it highly improbable that the Board of Peace, in its current configuration, could supplant the United Nations as the central pillar of global peace governance. The UN’s paralysis and dysfunction induced by vetoes undeniably call for meaningful reform. Yet dissatisfaction with existing multilateral mechanisms does not, in itself, confer viability upon alternative structures lacking universal representation, legal depth, institutional autonomy, and broad-based legitimacy. The Board of Peace may derive political momentum from frustration with the current order, but it does not appear to possess the structural capacity or normative grounding necessary to bear the weight of a comprehensive global peace architecture. The more plausible path forward, therefore, lies not in replacing the United Nations but in confronting its deficiencies through substantive and inclusive reform.
‘Bored of Peace’: Early Tests Failed
Despite its ambitious promises, the Board of Peace has already confronted a defining test: the durability of the Gaza ceasefire it claimed to facilitate. For a body presented as an agile and effective alternative to the United Nations, the enforcement of a ceasefire in Gaza constituted the most immediate measure of its credibility. Yet, even in this foundational moment, the Board has struggled to translate diplomatic declarations into tangible stability.
Although a ceasefire framework formally entered into force with the United Nations Security Council’s endorsement, military operations did not fully cease. Israel continued strikes in Gaza following the agreement’s activation, resulting in further civilian deaths and injuries. The persistence of violence after the announcement of a ceasefire not only undermines the agreement itself but also exposes the Board’s limited capacity to guarantee compliance or exercise meaningful restraint over key actors.
The humanitarian dimension reinforces this assessment. Access to food, medical supplies, and essential relief into Gaza has remained severely restricted, despite the Board’s stated commitment to reconstruction and stabilisation. In a context marked by displacement and infrastructural collapse, the inability to secure sustained humanitarian corridors reflects more than operational weakness—it signals a structural deficiency in authority and enforcement.
Moreover, the recent escalation of tensions in the region further complicates the Board’s claim to function as a stabilising force. The latest military strikes carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran—and the serious allegations that these operations failed to observe the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets, including the reported deliberate targeting of a school that resulted in the deaths of more than 150 children and teachers—have significantly deepened regional instability. Rather than demonstrating an ability to contain the conflict or to de-escalate mounting hostilities, the Board appears either sidelined or structurally constrained by the strategic calculations of its most influential members.
Consequently, these developments demonstrate that the Board of Peace has failed its most serious tests to date. The ceasefire, which has been unable to halt the fighting, the ineffective humanitarian aid mechanisms, and the escalating regional dynamics cast doubt on the ability of this alternative multilateral structure to function as a reliable replacement for the existing order.
