India has been invited to join the newly unveiled Board of Peace for Gaza, which Donald Trump launched with ceremonial flourish during the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. The offer may be framed as recognition of India’s stature as the world’s biggest democracy. However, it looks more like a test of New Delhi’s strategic nerve and moral conviction.
Under the draft charter of the BoP, Trump would serve as its inaugural chairman with overriding veto power over its plans and actions. Asked whether the institution could replace the United Nations, he replied that it “might”. A few hours later, however, he changed tack and said: “We’ll do it in conjunction with the UN.”
Several states have already agreed to join, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Hungary, a roster that reflects transactional calculation more than shared principles. Others, notably the UK, Canada, France, Sweden and Norway have declined. Vladimir Putin said he is consulting Moscow’s strategic partners before taking a decision whether to join and China’s decision is not yet known. No permanent member of the UN Security Council other than the US has yet committed to joining the BoP.
India’s invitation appears carefully chosen as New Delhi’s participation would lend a democratic fig leaf to an enterprise otherwise dominated by US allies and compliant partners. That calculation should set alarm bells ringing in New Delhi.
The invitation comes at a moment of profound global disarray. The “rupture” in the global order that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney captured with unusual clarity at Davos resonates uncomfortably with the logic underpinning Trump’s new enterprise, touted as an ‘international organisation’.
The BoP will sit above a ‘founding executive board’ that includes Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and former British PM Tony Blair, who faces significant accusations for his role in the Iraq war.
Any serious peace mechanism for Gaza must rest on humanitarian law, accountability and multilateral consent. Trump’s proposal offers none of these. Instead, it concentrates authority in the hands of a single leader whose record shows open contempt for international institutions.
Under the board’s charter, decisions would reflect not negotiated norms but the chairman’s discretion. The danger is obvious. What is presented as peace-making risks becoming a platform for unilateralism, shielded from scrutiny by the participation of hand-picked States.
India’s participation would inevitably be read as endorsement, however carefully caveated in diplomatic language. Any such endorsement would come at a price. India’s experience with Trump hardly suggests a relationship built on respect. He has derided India’s economy as “dead” and allowed his senior aides to mock New Delhi’s ties with Moscow by branding the country Russia’s “launderette”. These were part of a broader strategy of public belittlement designed to establish dominance.
Against that backdrop, India is now invited to join a body chaired by the same leader endowed with veto power. The asymmetry is striking and silence becomes complicity.
Although emanating from UN Security Council Resolution 2803 of last November that authorised a BoP to oversee Gaza’s post-war reconstruction, the new Trump-led venture would sit outside the UN framework, free from the constraints of international law. It would weaken, rather than reform, global governance by encouraging parallel structures answerable to power rather than principle. For India, which has long argued for democratising multilateralism, not dismantling it, participation would be a profound contradiction.
The major European countries who have refused to join appear to have grasped this. Their refusal is not anti-American posturing but institutional self-respect. It reflects an understanding, articulated by Carney, that middle powers negotiating bilaterally with a hegemon do so from weakness. The alternative is to combine.
The selective nature of the invitations exposes the board’s real purpose. No country other than Morocco is invited from the entire African continent. South Africa’s exclusion is conspicuous. Including Pakistan complicates India’s strategic calculus while diluting its influence. India’s presence would be used to confer legitimacy on decisions over which New Delhi would have little control.
The optics extend beyond diplomacy. In much of the Global South, India has cultivated an image as an independent actor, neither aligned nor acquiescent. That tradition was never about abstention but about agency, restraint and the belief that legitimacy matters even in a world of power politics. Joining Trump’s Gaza board would erode that hard-earned capital.
The answer to a lawless world is neither submission nor isolation, but a third path rooted in consistency and collective action. India has options. It can work with like-minded States to strengthen humanitarian mechanisms for Gaza within international law. It can press for reform of the UN rather than acquiesce in its hollowing out. It can reduce vulnerability to coercion by diversifying partnerships while holding fast to principle.
Declining Trump’s invitation would not be an act of hostility. It would signal that India will not lend its name to a project designed to entrench unilateral power at a moment when the world is searching for new forms of cooperation. The Gaza Board of Peace offers neither peace nor dignity to Gaza, nor credibility to those who join it. It is no place for India.
E D Mathew | Former UN spokesperson
(Views are personal)
(On X @edmathew)