Geneva, (Unib Rashid) – A landmark seminar on Kashmir and the right to self-determination concluded today with urgent calls for the international community to address the “systemic failure” of the United Nations to enforce its own binding resolutions. Moderated and presided over by Altaf Hussain Wani, Permanent Representative of the World Muslim Congress (WMC), the event brought together leading jurists and scholars to examine the 77 year gap between international legal obligations and the political paralysis surrounding the disputed territory.

The distinguished panel featured Ms. Amelie d’Hasusen, PhD Scholar at Geneva University; Robert Fitina, Canadian writer and international affairs analyst; Ronald Barnes; Dr. Sajjad Latief; and Naila Altaf Kani, PhD Scholar at NUML. Collectively, they dissected the status of seventeen binding UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir—adopted between 1948 and 1971—including Resolution 47’s mandate for a plebiscite that remains unimplemented.

International Law Experts Declare Kashmir “Test Case” for UN Integrity, Urge Action on Decades of Legal Paralysis. pic.twitter.com/MO03XgL2p5

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“The international legal order possesses the hammer of self-determination as a jus cogens norm, yet states continue to control the nails,” noted Altaf Hussain Wani in his opening remarks. Panelists emphasized that the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution represented not merely a domestic constitutional alteration but a “fundamental challenge” to the international legal framework governing the dispute.

Ms. d’Hasusen analyzed the erga omnes nature of self-determination obligations under Common Article 1 of the 1966 Human Rights Covenants, while Dr. Latief examined the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to occupying powers in the region. Robert Fitina and Ronald Barnes explored the geopolitical vetoes that have rendered the Security Council “effectively defunct” on Kashmir, leaving legally operative decisions to “gather dust in UN archives.” Ms. Kani presented pathways forward, including potential reference to the International Court of Justice and renewed multilateral pressure through the Human Rights Council.

The seminar concluded that the UN’s failure in Kashmir represents not a failure of the law itself, but of the political will to enforce it. Referencing the late Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali’s description of his homeland as a “country without a post office,” participants warned that without immediate remedial action, the silence on Kashmir portends grave consequences for other self-determination movements worldwide, from Palestine to Western Sahara.