The UN General Assembly this week unanimously passed a Pakistan-sponsored resolution reaffirming the right of all peoples to self-determination. That it also urges countries to immediately halt foreign military interventions and occupations ought to be sufficient to ward of any possible charges of opportunism by neighbouring India. Of course, such resolutions are simply recommendatory in nature; not binding. That being said, timely symbolism is not without merit. For a start it offers insight into prevailing international norms on particular issues as well as possible resistance to these. In this case, the plight of the people of Kashmir and Palestine are interlinked. Not least because both have been robbed of the fundamental right to self-determination for some 70 years. At the hands of states that are held up by the world community as paragons of democracy. Yet it is the inclusion foreign interventions that will likely irk the major powers. After all, NATO has long traded on this ethos: out of area, or out of business. For bluntly put, war remains a profit-chasing enterprise. Either in terms of control of resources, territorial gains or, indeed, geo-strategic presence. But with the war on Yemen now firmly in the spotlight nearly three years on from the breakout of the conflict — Pakistan has capitalised on public sentiment. And rightly so. Not least because regions such as Fortress Europe exercise wilful myopia when it comes to linkages between influxes of refugees and military campaigns. This is something that no amount of semantics will alter. For the bottom line is that those fleeing bombs and bullets across international borders are never migrants. Thus the UN Security Council should long ago have made greenlighting war incumbent upon preparations to accommodate those whose societies would be verily decimated; with respective governments providing for this in national budgets. Instead of the current scenario that sees the victims of war recast as veritable threats to the peace and security of others. Thereby conveniently deflecting the spotlight from aggressor nations. The world stands at a crossroads. Between war and peace. And with this resolution Pakistan has shown that it remains on the side of the march against empire. * Published in Daily Times, December 20th2018.