The US attack on Venezuela on January 3 this year exposed and secured the tomb in which international law now lies. The attack on Gaza since 2023 was the moment when the grave was dug to bury it. Afghanistan was its firing squad.
There used to be a difference between international human rights law and international humanitarian law, which was that international humanitarian law was aimed at acts committed in wars and distinguished between civilians and combatants. This changed radically when we began to suffer the effects of global war, which the Zapatistas called World War IV at the time and which has now spread, with no end in sight. It manifests itself in a sequence of violent events that are increasing in intensity and making it almost impossible to recognize the beginning and end of a war that targets all of humanity. Populations that could previously be considered civilians are now treated as combatants by powerful criminal forces. Thus, the distinction between international humanitarian law and human rights law is becoming blurred.
In international humanitarian law, there was a fundamental distinction between civilians and combatants and between military targets and civilian property. Combatants could be targeted, but civilians could not, unless they were directly participating in hostilities and only during that time. In theory, they were protected by the principles of proportionality and precaution against the effects of attacks. That changed dramatically because the distinction between civilians and military personnel ceased to exist, as was evident in Afghanistan, Gaza, and Venezuela, and as we now see even within states, as we have recently seen in the United States, Iran, Kurdistan, and many others.
The issue of the territory to which war extends has also changed, that is, the notion that one state attacks another has been broken. Now, there is a state attacking multiple territories and treating people who show solidarity with the peoples directly affected by war as combatants on a global level, as demonstrated by the arrests of people who have raised their voices and put their bodies on the line in solidarity with the Palestinian people from their various locations – in England, Germany, France, and Italy, to name a few. The participation of states in conflicts is becoming increasingly informal, covert, and illegal.
The agreement made by the states that adopted the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and implied acceptance of the jurisdiction of a permanent International Criminal Court for the prosecution of those responsible for the most serious crimes, was no longer acceptable.
In theory, the ICC could take action against Trump even though he has withdrawn the United States from the Rome Statute, as the Court’s main objective is to end the impunity of the perpetrators of the most serious crimes against the international community as a whole. Regardless of whether this is feasible, the need to press for Trump to be tried before this court is necessary as a minimum step to highlight and personify the absurdity that is intensifying the nightmare on a global level.
Trump believes that by withdrawing from all treaties, he is free of blame. The question is whether we as humanity can allow this. Unlike other moments in US history, while Trump openly and brazenly attacks the world, he also attacks his own people. The attempt to invoke the Insurrection Act to send active-duty military personnel to Minnesota to attack the population is an example of this dynamic of war. At least 20 people died in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) custody last year, and this year the speed with which this list of atrocities is growing is deeply troubling.
Trump is trying to exploit the ruins of the United Nations system by operating openly and brazenly as a corporate criminal—now also a war criminal—who offers countries as if they were bargaining chips, occupying territories and making absurd profits, demonstrating that international law has been deeply dependent on the United States.
Trump’s presentation of the “Board of Peace” in Davos, which is based on the construction of military infrastructure built by Israel, cutting Gaza in half through systematic destruction, will push apartheid to the limit, as they will attempt to build hyper-luxurious cities that seem to have been taken from a post-apocalyptic dystopia, next to refugee camps. It is a monstrous symbol of genocide as a business, an aberrant exercise in profiting from mass death. What the Zapatistas have insisted on time and again, destruction/depopulation/reconstruction and reorganization taken to deeply delusional dimensions is what this “peace plan” represents. Trump’s criminal appetite, which has many countries simultaneously in his plans and objectives, materializes not only accumulation by dispossession but also by genocide.
The world is being “ordered” from above and the few remaining limits on power, atrocity, and crimes against humanity are being broken. But we cannot mourn at the grave of international law; we must take the tools that are still useful and use them with greater force from below, breaking the rules that legalize the global atrocity crudely exercised from above. If the big problem and flaw with these instruments has been that the power to prosecute and denounce criminal state actors lies with the states themselves, then what we have left is to take that prerogative away from them in order to increase pressure from below, to make them answer for their actions without going through the states.
The widespread response in the city of Minneapolis, United States, which defies the low temperatures and Trump’s Gestapo, the seas of people who are standing up and fighting against the most authoritarian regimes in Kurdistan and Iran, the solidarity movements, which are increasingly moving from solidarity to becoming part of the damage, will not stop; they are the horizon for ending wars.
Geopolitics sharpens its criminal character, intensified by capitalism. The strength of the underclass, whose anger is growing, indicates that agreements to pursue and stop atrocities require non-state instruments that do not distinguish between borders. Subcomandante Moisés said in the Semillero “De historias, pirámides, amores y desamores” (Of stories, pyramids, loves and heartbreaks) last December that the common saves people/it is possible to defend ourselves together, words that are not only wise but profound, that we have to walk and put into practice in our corners, with our own steps, pains, and hopes. To also echo the words of Captain Marcos in the same seminar, exporting subversion and pursuing the Hydra wherever it may be found are clues on a path that lies hidden beneath the earth, among shades of gray. The seeds for the day after are sown decades and decades before that day.
Original text by Tamara San Miguel at Desinformémonos published on January 28th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.