Why Germany's Baerbock is unfit to be the new UN general assembly president

The United Nations has elected a genocide-enabler, Germany’s former foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, as the next president of the General Assembly.

Unless the UN changes course on Gaza before she takes office, and unless countries show solidarity by seeking the unprecedented step of removing her from the presidency, this may be the moment the United Nations buries itself too deep to be saved.

Last Monday (2 June), Baerbock was elected to preside over the General Assembly’s 80th session, which begins in September 2025 and lasts one year.

While this role is mostly ceremonial, it carries the power to shape negotiations on global crises and influence public discourse. More than this, the president of the General Assembly symbolizes what the United Nations stands for, and what direction it is heading towards.

That direction is a disgrace.

Many now believe the UN has lost its purpose and should be abolished. This moment confirms it for even more. I have witnessed it myself. Running a global political movement - Atlas - that challenges unfair and undemocratic UN processes, I used to hear from people that the UN was broken, but still necessary and in need of reform.

Now I regularly hear a different message: burn it down.

Given its failure to protect peace when powerful states are involved, that anger makes sense. Still, I believe the UN can matter. Beyond the Security Council, it delivers food, medicine, education. It helped reduce nuclear arsenals, nearly eradicate polio, and ban weapons from space.

But its contradictions are undeniable.

Paralysed, compromised, and unable to act in Ukraine or Palestine, the UN lets a few states block action. The United States has repeatedly used its veto to shield Israel from accountability, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of war crimes, with the latest instance happening last week, as it vetoed an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. 

But this election  damages the UN’s reputation further. In choosing a known cheerleader for Israel as its next figurehead, the United Nations sent a message that complicity in mass atrocity is no barrier to high office. Out of 193 countries, Baerbock received 167 votes in a secret ballot. Fourteen delegations abstained. 

Baerbock is not just any diplomat. As Germany’s foreign minister from 2021 to 2025, she tried to justify over and over again Israel’s war crimes as “self-defence”, rejected ceasefires, and her country continued to provide Israel with hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons, making it its second biggest arms supplier. She de facto became one of Israel’s strongest defenders alongside United States officials, while bombs were falling on hospitals, refugee camps, and schools.

Feminist? Or merely female?

Many Western Media have pointed to the fact that  Baerbock is only the fifth woman to preside over the UN General Assembly in its 80-year history. In an institution where gender equality remains a distant goal, her election should have been a celebration.

But feminism is not about advancing individuals who perpetuate violence and ignore injustice. Feminism means solidarity with all people, especially those facing occupation, displacement, and slaughter. She is not a symbol of progress. She is a political actor who used her power to enable mass atrocities. And she does not belong at the helm of the United Nations.

Too many have excused Germany’s actions by pointing to its historical guilt.

But having committed genocides in the past — from the holocaust to Namibia's —  does not justify supporting one today. On the same day Baerbock was elected, Germany’s current foreign minister declared publicly, “Germany will continue to support the state of Israel, including with arms deliveries.”

That statement should disqualify any country from leading a body that claims to uphold international law.

Under the UN's own Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Article I and III), states are not only prohibited from committing genocide, but from being complicit.

This is not just a legal argument.

Israel has murdered over 54,607 Palestinians, displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza, destroyed most civilian infrastructures, and is using starvation as a weapon of war while escalating violence in the West Bank.

UN experts and committees as well as most human rights organisations and the people of the world have recognised this for what it is: genocide.

And instead of ending all military, economic, and political ties, Germany has increased them.

How can the UN survive this crisis of legitimacy, especially after decades of US vetoes that protected Israel from scrutiny? I am not sure it can.

Germany must either change its foreign policy, which seems extremely unlikely given its constitutional pro-Israel stance, or Baerbock must be removed from office.

While there is no formal mechanism for removing a president of the General Assembly, it is not impossible. The General Assembly could pass a resolution calling for her resignation. Member states could refuse to cooperate with her presidency. Public mobilisation could render her position untenable.

But this is only a short-term fix. The real issue is deeper. It is unconscionable that states can materially support genocide and still rise to leadership positions within the UN.

If the UN is to survive this crisis, it must be fundamentally reformed. That means ending the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council. It means creating accountability mechanisms to ensure that states with military ties to genocidal regimes face scrutiny. And it means banning governments involved in war crimes from holding leadership positions in the first place.

The UN must act without double standards. It must oppose war and repression, regardless of who is responsible. If it cannot do that, then people will not just lose faith in it. They will bring it down.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.