‘Members only’ reconstruction: How the Board of Peace is undermining international law

The draft Charter of the so-called “Board of Peace,” reportedly circulating among a growing group of invited governments and scheduled for a signing ceremony in Davos this week, presents itself as a pragmatic response to multilateral fatigue. Among its claims is the promise of a “more nimble and effective international peace-building body,” unburdened by the procedural inertia of the United Nations.

On November 17, 2025, the UN Security Council welcomed a Board of Peace as a Gaza-specific transitional administration, endowed with international legal personality to set the framework and coordinate funding for redevelopment under a “Comprehensive Plan.” It did not constitute the Board as a UN organ or grant it a global mandate. The draft charter now circulating widens its authority far beyond the transitional, Gaza-only scope granted by the Security Council, recasting the Board of Peace as a standing peace body with sweeping discretionary powers.

The managerial language in the Charter is not accidental. It echoes a broader transformation in humanitarian and reconstruction governance, one that recasts political and legal failures as management problems and advances privatization as their cure. However, what the Board of Peace proposes is not merely an alternative institutional forum, but a fundamental reshaping of international public law into a members-only system of governance.

From multilateralism to managerialism

Few would dispute that the UN system is imperfect. In conflict and post-conflict settings, frustration with vetoes, mandates, and coordination frameworks is widespread. The Board of Peace channels this frustration into a distinctly managerial and capitalist logic: streamline decision-making, concentrate authority, reduce transaction costs, and reward financial contribution.

“Nimble” and “effective” are not legal concepts. They are market metrics. In this vision, peace building is no longer anchored in law, rights, or collective obligation, but in performance, speed, and control.

This logic mirrors developments already painfully experienced in Gaza’s humanitarian space, where privatized delivery mechanisms such as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation were advanced as solutions to the alleged “inefficiency” of the UN and the broader humanitarian system. In both cases, the problem is defined not as political obstruction or violations of international law, but as poor management.

In a previous op-ed on Gaza’s humanitarian architecture, I described the emergence of a militarized neoliberal relief architecture, in which initiatives like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation bypass multilateral coordination, align with military control, and recast aid as a market-driven service rather than a rights-based obligation under international law. That analysis, published last May, preceded the subsequent killings and grave incidents at aid distribution sites, which have since underscored the lethal consequences of replacing law-based humanitarian governance with privatized, security-driven models. The Board of Peace extends this logic from humanitarian aid to peace itself.

Reconstruction, governance, and post-conflict authority are treated as premium services, available to those who are invited, funded by those who can pay, and overseen by a narrow circle of decision-makers. Permanent membership, according to the draft Charter, is explicitly monetized: states contributing more than USD 1 billion are granted permanent status, while others remain contingent participants subject to invitation and removal. Authority, in other words, follows capital.

This is not peace as a public good. It is peace as a club benefit.

Legal theater

Legally, the Charter is remarkable not for what it contains, but for what it lacks. It is not a treaty negotiated and ratified by states. It is not created by the United Nations or any recognized international organization. It does not derive authority from customary international law or collective state practice. Instead, it is self-constituting.

The Charter names its own Chairman, who alone invites members, interprets the Charter, removes participants, and dissolves the body. Authority flows in a closed loop: from the Charter to the Chairman, from the Chairman to selected members, and back again.

The result is a document that performs legality, complete with chapters, articles, and institutional language, while bypassing the legal acts that give such instruments meaning. It is legal theatre without legal substance.

Proponents may insist that the Board of Peace is limited to states. But given the extensive discretionary powers of the Chairman, opening membership to financial actors could well happen in the future. Its architecture, invitation-based participation, capital thresholds, and discretionary authority are structurally compatible with corporate actors.

Indeed, if permanent status is tied to financial contribution, why not corporations? If governance is managerial rather than sovereign, why not private equity funds, infrastructure conglomerates, or security contractors? If peace is framed as a delivery problem, why confine decision-making to heads of state?

This is not speculation. It is the logical extension of a model already governing large segments of humanitarian aid, reconstruction finance, and development practice. Gaza has shown how quickly public mandates can be displaced by private coordination platforms. The Board of Peace simply scales this logic up, from aid delivery to international governance itself.

Bypassing the UN

The Board of Peace does not seek to reform the UN system; it routes around it. It offers no legal substitute for collective security, no framework for self-determination, no safeguards against occupation, and no accountability mechanisms grounded in international humanitarian or human rights law. What it offers instead is efficiency without legitimacy and responsibility. Nimbleness may win headlines. Legitimacy is what endures.

In Gaza, the consequences of privatized humanitarian governance are no longer theoretical. The operational footprint of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, marketed less than a year ago as an agile alternative to UN coordination, coincided with the perpetration of grave crimes and violations, including the killing of at least 1,373 Palestinians while seeking food, coercive practices, and conduct that may amount to criminal acts under international humanitarian law. These outcomes are not aberrations. They are the predictable results of governance structures designed to bypass law rather than uphold it.

Exporting this model to peace building and reconstruction does not resolve the failures of multilateralism. It reproduces them in more dangerous form.

To date, France, Norway and Sweden have declined. The willingness of many among the approximately 60 invitees to engage with this Charter is cause for serious concern for defenders of international law. If invitation-only clubs begin to function as substitutes for treaty-based institutions, we are witnessing not innovation, but exit from multilateralism, from universality, and from legally grounded moral constraint.

International law was never intended to be nimble. It exists to advance justice. Once peace becomes a premium service, governed by club rules and capital thresholds, law itself risks becoming optional.

Gaza has already shown what happens when humanitarian governance is privatized in the name of efficiency: civilians are killed, responsibility is diffused, and accountability evaporates. Extending this model to the settlement of other conflicts through a Board of Peace risks normalizing peace processes governed by capital and discretion rather than law and consent, producing transactional settlements, fragile stability, and a deeper unraveling of international public law.

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Maria del Mar Logroño Narbona is Vice-Chair of the Euro-MENA Initiative.