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President Trump Launches the Board of Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2026

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Type
Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law: Edited by Jacob Katz Cogan
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 120 , Issue 3 , July 2026 , pp. 564 - 569
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of International Law

At a January ceremony in Davos, President Donald J. Trump launched the Board of Peace (Board).Footnote 1 When the Board was first conceived months before in the Security Council-endorsed Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, known as the 20-Point Plan, it was tasked with overseeing Gaza’s governance and redevelopment as the territory’s interim authority.Footnote 2 There was no suggestion at the time that the Board’s role would extend or continue beyond that temporary assignment and limited geographic area; it was assumed that the Board was a Gaza-specific provisional entity. But the Board’s Charter, which was revealed a couple of months later, concurrent with the launch, eschews these constraints. Instead, it establishes the Board of Peace broadly as “an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict” by “undertak[ing] such peace-building functions … as may be approved in accordance with [its] Charter.”Footnote 3 The Board’s mandate is remarkable for its rivalrous global governance aspirations—it explicitly seeks “to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed” and “[e]mphasiz[es] the need for a more nimble and effective international peace-building body”—and also for its novel institutional design—installing Donald J. Trump as its personalist ruler, a move without precedent in contemporary international law.Footnote 4

The Board initially appeared in the president’s 20-Point Plan, where it was described as “a new international transitional body.”Footnote 5 It was given responsibility for the “oversight and supervision” of an “apolitical Palestinian committee” that would “deliver[] the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.”Footnote 6 The Board would also “set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment” of the territory until the Palestinian Authority was sufficiently “reform[ed]” such that it could “securely and effectively” control Gaza.Footnote 7

In its endorsement of the 20-Point Plan, the Security Council “[w]elcome[d] the establishment” of the Board as a “transitional administration” for Gaza.Footnote 8 It stipulated that the Board would have international legal personality, and it empowered the Board to enter into “arrangements” and establish “operational entities” for the purpose of governance, reconstruction, the delivery of public services and humanitarian assistance, and the movement of persons.Footnote 9 It authorized the Board to create a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) that could employ “all necessary measures” to carry out its mandate, including securing border areas, demilitarizing Gaza, protecting civilians, training a Palestinian police force, and monitoring the ceasefire.Footnote 10 The Council authorized the Board and the ISF through 2027, subject to renewal.Footnote 11

The 20-Point Plan and the Council’s resolution backing it were particular to Gaza and anticipated a standard institutional apparatus for the Board’s work, so it is no wonder that, when details of the Board’s Charter began to emerge in the days before its launch, its ambition and organizational structure came as a surprise. Though it was clear from both the resolution and the plan that the president would be the titular leader of the Board, the extent of his control (as will be described) was unexpected. The scope of the Board’s mission, as defined in its Charter, was unanticipated too, as it went beyond the Gaza-focused framework that the Council voted on, aspiring to achieve an international reach and openly seeking to supplant the roles of established institutions such as the United Nations. Indeed, Gaza is not mentioned in the Charter. The Board’s formalization as an international organization (IO) (as also will be described) did not follow either from the Council’s grant of international legal personality or its authorization of activities in Gaza. The Charter (intentionally so named) seeks to make permanent and global what was previously considered transitory and geographically limited.

For the United States, the Charter’s drafter, Security Council endorsement of the Board presented an opportunity to pursue a more ambitious project. It reconceived Gaza as the first in a series of peacebuilding initiatives, not the last. And it designed the Board to provide the United States with a multilateral-looking vehicle, answerable only to its president, that would operate outside the normal channels and constraints of the United Nations, which the administration views as sclerotic and pervaded with the wrong values. The Board is the organizational manifestation of Trumpian governance, in which loyalty and obedience to the leader are the touchstones.

On the surface, the Board’s Charter is drafted much like a standard IO constituent instrument. It establishes the Board explicitly as an IO.Footnote 12 It creates a plenary body, also called the Board of Peace, that approves budgets, establishes subsidiary entities, appoints senior officers, and makes “major policy determinations.”Footnote 13 It establishes an Executive Board, led by a “chief executive,” that will “[e]xercise powers necessary and appropriate to implement the Board of Peace’s mission.”Footnote 14 It authorizes the hiring of staff.Footnote 15 It provides a method for funding the organization (voluntary contributions) and for the keeping of financial accounts.Footnote 16 It bestows on the organization and its subsidiary entities international legal personality.Footnote 17 It anticipates that the organization will enter into agreements regarding privileges and immunities.Footnote 18 It provides authority to establish a headquarters and to negotiate a headquarters agreement.Footnote 19 And it includes familiar treaty provisions for entry into force,Footnote 20 amendments,Footnote 21 and a depositary.Footnote 22

The Charter differs, though, from standard IO constituent instruments in two critical ways. First, it gives “the Chairman” personal control over the entirety of the organization. HeFootnote 23 is empowered to make membership decisions (described below),Footnote 24 select the Executive Board,Footnote 25 and nominate the chief executive.Footnote 26 He has “exclusive authority to create, modify, or dissolve subsidiary entities.”Footnote 27 He approves the agendas of the Board of Peace, and the decisions of the Board are “subject to [his] approval.”Footnote 28 He can veto decisions of the executive board.Footnote 29 He can “adopt resolutions or other directives … to implement the Board of Peace’s mission.”Footnote 30 He “is the final authority regarding the meaning, interpretation, and application” of the Charter,Footnote 31 and any amendments to the Charter require his “confirmation.”Footnote 32 He—and only he—can dissolve the organization or decide not to renew it at the end of every other year.Footnote 33 The chairman—the Charter names Donald J. Trump as the Board’s inaugural chairman—serves in his personal capacity and until he decides to resign; there is no term of years and no age limit for the position.Footnote 34 Chairman Trump can thus continue in office long after President Trump’s term expires. The chairman also designates his own successor.Footnote 35 No IO gives a single person the boundless power conferred on the Board’s chairman, providing him with authority superior to that of the organization’s member states. No other constituent instrument creates a life term for officials or appoints officials by name. Leaders of IOs are instead provided with limited authorities; they are chosen by the organization’s members; they are appointed for set terms; and they are subject to, and are bound to carry out, the decisions of the organization’s state-led bodies, the decisions of which they cannot override.

Second, state membership in the Board is contingent and finite. The chairman has complete control over a state’s entry and exit. He decides which states can join the Board. And he can decide (subject only to a veto by a two-thirds majority of member states) to kick a state out—effectively, to fire them.Footnote 36 Once a state joins the organization, its term is limited to three years, unless its membership is renewed by the chairman or unless a member has contributed $1 billion in cash to the Board within a year of the Charter’s entry into force.Footnote 37 If a state’s membership is terminated for any reason (including non-renewal after three years), the state ceases to be a party to the Charter.Footnote 38 Though not all IOs are open to all states,Footnote 39 and there are often mechanisms for terminating a state’s membership in an organization,Footnote 40 membership rules pertaining to entry and exit are always substantive. Moreover, no IO grants membership decisions to an official of the organization (they are always made by the members), and no IO limits a state’s membership to a term of years.

These two sets of divergences are fundamental and raise questions about the Charter’s characterization of the Board as an international organization even if the formal requirements of international institutional law are met.Footnote 41 States not only establish IOs; they maintain continuous overall control over IOs, their policies and operations, throughout the organization’s existence.Footnote 42 States can delegate roles and tasks to individuals (such as secretaries general) or groups of people (such as the International Law Commission), but it is not clear that they can cede their authority over an organization to a private person, making them subservient to that individual, even by treaty. This background requirement of continuous state control, which has not previously been called into question or needed to be articulated, reflects the state-centered nature of international law and the purpose of international organizations. IOs are, in the first instance, mechanisms for states to achieve their collective goals, not the goals of an individual. The Board of Peace, in contrast, is entirely under the control, and subject to the whims, of one person, the chairman. An organization that superficially looks like an IO but in fact empowers an individual, putting that person in a position of power over and above that of states, is not self-evidently an international organization. IOs are not personalist institutions. The Board of Peace, as the term “chairman” suggests, is akin to a private body, the fiefdom of an individual, a permanent chairman with a subservient board, a Trump wholly-owned subsidiary in international clothing. Though the White House proclaimed (perhaps protesting too much) that the Board is “an official international organization,”Footnote 43 the Charter is a bad faith effort by an administration that is withdrawing from and seeking to undermine many international organizations.

Twenty-eight states are listed as members of the Board of Peace, about half the number reportedly invited.Footnote 44 Others that have received invitations (including China and Russia) have yet to reply; some (most notably the United States’ European allies) have declined, citing the Board’s undermining of the United Nations and the chairman’s broad powers; and Canada’s invitation was rescinded subsequent to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech that noted the contemporary “rupture” with the U.S.-backed international order and the need for “middle powers” to collectively chart their own course.Footnote 45 The chairman has named a nine-member Executive Board that includes World Bank President Ajay Banga, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and multiple members and business associates of the Trump administration.Footnote 46 The White House also announced the appointment of other officials, including a high representative for Gaza, the Gaza Executive Board, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, two senior advisers who are “charged with leading day-to-day strategy,” and the commander of the ISF.Footnote 47 Plans for the reconstruction of Gaza were announced at the Board’s launch and at its first meeting a month later.Footnote 48 Promises by members to contribute funds and troops were made at those meetings as well, including a $10 billion pledge from the United States.Footnote 49

Beyond Gaza, it is not apparent what the Board of Peace’s peace-building mandate entails, how the Board will achieve its chosen goals, how those goals will be funded, and how committed the Board’s members will be to the organization, especially when President Trump’s second term ends. Practical impediments will also need to be overcome. Operations will require permission from the state where the programs are located, the financing of those programs, privileges and immunities agreements, and the capacity and expertise to accomplish necessary tasks. A headquarters agreement will need to be negotiated.Footnote 50

It is also not apparent under what legal authority the United States provided its consent to be bound by the Board’s Charter. Typically, congressional approval—either by a resolution of advice and consent of the Senate (for a treaty) or by statute enacted by both houses (for a congressional-executive agreement)—is necessary for U.S. membership in an IO. Approval was neither sought from, nor provided by, Congress. The United States has, though, on occasion, joined international organizations through a decision of the executive branch, particularly when membership does not entail U.S. legal obligations. Membership in the Board of Peace does not require the United States to “participate in … particular peace-building mission[s]” or pay dues.Footnote 51 The State Department’s Treaty Office indicates that the United States signed the Charter on January 16 and “accepted” it on January 21, with entry into force the following day, which was the day of the Board’s launch in Davos.Footnote 52

References

1 See White House Press Release, President Trump Ratifies Board of Peace in Historic Ceremony, Opening Path to Hope and Dignity for Gazans (Jan. 22, 2026), at https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/01/president-trump-ratifies-board-of-peace-in-historic-ceremony-opening-path-to-hope-and-dignity-for-gazans [https://perma.cc/NWB4-YUPG] [hereinafter White House Press Release]. It appears that the word “ratifies” in the White House press release was not used in the technical sense but rather to mean that the Charter had entered into force. For discussion of the status of the Board’s Charter, see note 44 infra.

2 See SC Res. 2803 (2025) [hereinafter Resolution 2803]. The 20-Point Plan is attached as an annex to the Resolution 2803. See id., Annex 1 [hereinafter 20-Point Plan]. For discussion of Security Council Resolution 2803 and the 20-Point Plan, see Jacob Katz Cogan, Contemporary Practice of the United States, 120 AJIL 386, 387 (2026).

3 Charter of the Board of Peace, Art. 1 (Jan. 16, 2026), at https://boardofpeace.org/charter [https://perma.cc/R9RT-B9C8] [hereinafter Charter].

4 Id., preambular paras. 1, 5.

5 20-Point Plan, supra note 2, para. 9.

6 Id.

7 Id.

8 Resolution 2803, supra note 2, para. 2.

9 See id., para. 4.

10 See id., para. 7.

11 See id., para. 8.

12 See Charter, supra note 3, Art. 1.

13 Id. Art. 3.1.

14 Id. Arts. 4.1, 4.2.

15 See id. Art. 6(a).

16 See id. Arts. 5.1, 5.2, 6(a).

17 See id. Art. 6(a).

18 See id. Art. 6(b).

19 See id. Art. 13.2.

20 See id. Art. 11.1.

21 See id. Art. 8.

22 See id. Art. 11.2.

23 The pronouns employed reflect the person named as inaugural chairman.

24 See Charter, supra note 3, Art. 2.1.

25 See id. Arts. 2.1, 4.1(a).

26 See id. Art. 4.1(c).

27 See id. Art. 3.2(b).

28 See id. Art. 3.1(c), (e).

29 See id. Art. 4.1(e).

30 Id. Art. 9.

31 Id. Art. 7.

32 Id. Art. 8.

33 See id. Art. 10.2.

34 See id. Arts. 3.2(a), 3.3. “[S]eparate” from his appointment as chairman, President Trump is also named the inaugural representative of the United States. Id. The chairman may only be removed from office by the unanimous vote of the Executive Board that declares his incapacity. See id. Art. 3.3.

35 See id. Art. 3.3.

36 See id. Art. 2.3.

37 See id. Arts. 2.2(c), 2.3. It appears that the membership of a state that paid $1 billion can be terminated.

38 See id. Art. 2.3.

39 See, e.g., Statute of the Council of Europe, Art. 4, Aug. 3, 1949, 87 UNTS 103.

40 See, e.g., UN Charter, Art. 6.

41 See Henry G. Schermers & Niels M. Blokker, International Institutional Law §§ 32–45 (7th rev. ed. 2025).

42 Though states typically create IOs, international organization can also create other international organizations.

43 White House Press Release, supra note 1.

44 See Board of Peace, Members, at https://boardofpeace.org/heads-of-state [https://perma.cc/S488-AHQD]; Chiara Bachels, Trump’s Board of Peace Set for Inaugural Meeting on Gaza, DW (Feb. 19, 2026), at https://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-board-of-peace-first-meeting-israel-gaza-strip-what-you-need-to-know/a-76018492. Membership does not require an expression of an intent to be bound. The Charter provides that states agree to provisionally apply the agreement unless they inform the chairman that their domestic law prevent them from doing so. See Charter, supra note 3, Art. 11(1)(b). States that do not provisionally apply the Charter may still participate as non-voting members. See id. Thus, states that have been invited to participate are considered members if they have accepted the invitation. According to the State Department’s Office of Treaty Affairs, which serves as depositary, the Charter is in force for ten states. See Charter of the Board of Peace Status List, at https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Charter-of-the-Board-of-Peace.pdf [https://perma.cc/U8CZ-28VA] [hereinafter Charter Status List] (date of most recent action: March 20, 2026). Of the remaining eighteen states listed as participants, all but one have signed the Charter. That one (Egypt) has submitted a notification that it is applying the Charter provisionally pending ratification. Three states (Argentina, Bulgaria, and Türkiye) that have signed the Charter, but which have not yet submitted their consent to be bound, have indicated that they are unable to apply the Charter provisionally. See id.

45 See Aaron Boxerman, Isabel Kershner & Natan Odenheimer, What to Know About Trump’s “Board of Peace,” N.Y. Times (Jan. 19, 2026), at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/world/middleeast/trump-board-of-peace-gaza.html; Matina Stevis-Gridneff & Ian Austen, Canada Flexes on Global Stage with an Eye to Its Own Survival, N.Y. Times (Jan. 20, 2026), at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/world/canada/carney-speech-davos-trump.html; World Economic Forum Press Release, Davos 2026: Special Address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada (Jan. 20, 2026), at https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada; Chris Cameron & Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Trump Rescinds Canada’s Invitation to Join His “Board of Peace,” N.Y. Times (Jan. 23, 2026), at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/us/politics/trump-carney-canada-board-peace.html.

46 See Board of Peace, Executive Board, at https://boardofpeace.org/members [https://perma.cc/E548-63F9].

47 See White House Press Release, Statement on President Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict (Jan. 16, 2026), at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/01/statement-on-president-trumps-comprehensive-plan-to-end-the-gaza-conflict [https://perma.cc/7P56-UK9N]; Board of Peace, Gaza OHR, at https://boardofpeace.org/ohr [https://perma.cc/RR8M-9EZB]; Board of Peace, Gaza Executive Board, at https://boardofpeace.org/gaza-executive-board [https://perma.cc/547L-CHC5].

48 See Board of Peace, Davos Presentation (Jan. 22, 2026), at https://boardofpeace.org/documents/Board_of_Peace_Davos_Presentation.pdf; Board of Peace, Inaugural Board Meeting (Feb. 19, 2026), at https://boardofpeace.org/documents/Board_of_Peace_Inaugural_Meeting_Presentation.pdf; see also Aaron Boxerman, U.S. Lays Out a Glittering Plan for Gaza, Including Skyscrapers, N.Y. Times (Jan. 22, 2026), at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/world/middleeast/us-gaza-peace-trump-kushner-davos.html; Michael Crowley, Trump’s Board of Peace Promises Billions for Gaza, with Few Details, N.Y. Times (Feb. 19, 2026), at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/us/politics/trump-board-of-peace.html.

49 See Board of Peace, Declaration of the Founding Donors to the Board of Peace (Feb. 19, 2026), at https://boardofpeace.org/gaza-pledges [https://perma.cc/GW4T-BV2V]; Board of Peace, Declaration of the Founding Contributors to the International Stabilization Force (Feb. 19, 2026), at https://boardofpeace.org/gaza-pledges [https://perma.cc/GW4T-BV2V].

50 The president has designated the Board of Peace a “public international organization in which the United States participates within the meaning of the International Organizations Immunities Act” (IOIA). See Designating the Board of Peace as a Public International Organization Entitled to Enjoy Certain Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities, Exec. Order 14375, 91 Fed. Reg. 2837 (Jan. 16, 2026). The IOIA, however, only permits such designation when U.S. participation in an IO is authorized “pursuant to any treaty or under the authority of any Act of Congress.” 22 U.S.C. § 288. The United States does not participate in the Board pursuant to a treaty or an act of Congress. It is, thus, unclear whether the president had authority to make the designation and, consequently, it is not certain that the Board can assert privileges and immunities in the United States, notwithstanding the president’s action.

51 See Charter, supra note 3, Arts. 2.2(b), 5.1.

52 Charter Status List, supra note 44. After this essay was sent to press, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated, without explanation, that “[t]he Board of Peace is now built out as an international non-governmental organization.” Review of the FY27 State Department Budget Request (June 2, 2026), at https://www.rev.com/transcripts/state-department-budget-hearing [https://perma.cc/RQ8V-YQM7].