A little over a dozen countries signed the charter of the Board of Peace (BoP) in Davos this Thursday, January 22, 2026. On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, they appointed Donald Trump as the chairman of the new body, whose founding document states that it is intended for pragmatic mediation in international conflicts and the establishment of lasting peace. Among the signatories is Trump himself, in his capacity as US President.
Concerns about the "shadow UN"
While some countries have quickly accepted Trump's invitation to the Peace Council, others are hesitant - including several NATO partners such as Germany and Italy. Others, including France, the UK and Denmark, have already rejected it.
One of the main reasons for the widespread rejection is that the body’s self-imposed mandate is too broad. The United Nations originally tasked Trump with establishing a Gaza Peace Committee. However, there is no longer any mention of its scope being limited to the Middle East conflict. With this move, the current US president is not only unilaterally expanding the UN’s narrowly defined mandate, but is also taking steps to undermine the UN and the international order based on the UN Charter in the long term. This is what worries many of the states that rejected the proposal.
In Davos, Trump sought to allay such concerns: “When this body is fully formed, we can do almost anything we want to do. And we will do it in cooperation with the United Nations.” Two days earlier, in Washington, he had admitted – almost regretfully – to reporters that the Peace Council could potentially replace the UN at some point. He described this, however, more as an outcome than a goal: “I’m a big fan of the potential of the UN, but it has never reached its full potential.”
Could the Peace Committee succeed?
When choosing who to invite, Donald Trump considered a wide range: long-standing US allies, including all NATO partners, as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia, but also global competitors such as China, Russia and India. The accusation that he is surrounding himself only with political “friends”, such as Argentine President Javier Miquel, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is unfounded. Left-leaning countries such as Brazil, Vietnam and Cambodia were also invited, as were Islamic conservative countries with no particular ties to Trump or the US, such as Indonesia and Pakistan.
However, international law experts see a fundamental problem with the legitimacy of the Peace Council due to its strong focus on Donald Trump himself. As US President, he represents the United States in the body, but according to the Peace Council Charter, he chairs it personally – regardless of his democratically legitimized function. And the power of the Peace Council chairman is comprehensive: no one can be admitted or expelled from the Council without his approval, no decisions are made without him, and he even appoints his successor.
"Other countries might see this as problematic, because they might still want some degree of legal legitimacy through the UN, for example when it comes to decisions on troop deployment," says Filippo Boni, a political scientist at the British Open University.
His colleague Thomas Jaeger from the University of Cologne also sees Trump's role as "completely unacceptable." He therefore does not believe that the Peace Council can represent serious competition to the UN, Jaeger told German TV channel n-tv: "The United Nations is what we currently manage to achieve in the world - if the big countries want to do something together, it can be implemented there."
Is China also working on a "shadow UN"?
However, this is precisely one of the problems of the United Nations. Large states in particular are too often in conflict. Wars and conflicts in countries such as Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Yemen are just a few examples from recent years.
The Chinese government has already refused to be a member of Trump's Peace Council. The official reason given is that multilateralism and international law, with the United Nations as the central authority, remain fundamental principles of Beijing's foreign policy.
Political scientist Wang Wen of Renmin University of China sees Trump’s Peace Committee much like many Western analysts — less as a conflict resolution body and more as an agency to enforce U.S. interests. “The goal will not be to protect Gaza’s interests, and Trump certainly will not consider the interests of other countries,” Wang told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency. That’s why Beijing’s decision, he believes, is the right one: “Ignoring Trump’s proposals is the best choice.”
Political scientist Boni was not surprised by China's rejection. First, Beijing would have much less influence in the Peace Council than as a veto-wielding power in the UN Security Council. Second, with its Global Governance Initiative (GGI), China itself has ambitions to reform the world order according to its own vision. "China's understanding of multilateralism differs from the West. It relies more on bilateral 'joint consultations' and rejects universally binding rules for relations between states," Boni told DW. In this regard, Beijing's decision on the Peace Council is more a rejection of Trump's global leadership role than a move towards the United Nations.
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