Time was a funny and fickle thing. Sometimes there was never enough of it, and other times it stretched out endlessly. J. Lynn
All night you waited for morning, all morning for afternoon, all afternoon for night; and still the longing sings. Ruth Stone
You know, life fractures us all into little pieces. It harms us, but it’s how we glue those fractures back together that make us stronger. Carrie Jones
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. Mahatma Gandhi
The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time. Elie Wiesel
This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Marshall Sahlins
I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something; until I realized the person I was waiting for was myself. Markus Zusak
As the UN prepares for a commemoration of its 75th anniversary this Monday, the mood around the UN community is uneven; honoring its staying power and ample (if often unrecognized) global contributions combined with a sense of urgency, even dread, as threats to institutional legitimacy and sustainability mount. Moreover, the global commons represented in good measure by the UN seems to be unraveling in the face of large-power hostilities, expanding domains of authoritarian governance, a global pandemic with multiple iterations, broad-based economic contraction, and a bevy of sustainable development goals and targets that relevant data suggests are clearly headed in the wrong direction.
The Security Council plays a role in confirming this sobering assessment of the UN’s uneven potential given its unenforced resolutions; its back-room arm twisting especially of elected Council members; its largely tepid acknowledgement, let alone active enabling, of the essential contributions of other UN agencies, justice mechanisms and treaty bodies; even the habits of the permanent members to play by a different set of rules than they expect others to abide by.
And yet, thanks in large measure to the growing determination of its elected membership, the Council has been encouraged to examine the scope and implications of a new generation of challenges affecting its primary mandate to maintain international peace and security. Through a growing roster of “thematic” engagements, it is becoming apparent in ways that even permanent Council members cannot deny that such “maintenance” is more complex and comprehensive than perhaps ever before in UN history.
On Thursday, under Niger’s presidency, the Council spent an entire day examining the consequences of environmental degradation and hunger for conflict and, conversely, the impact of conflict on nutrition and livelihoods, on access to clean water and health facilities, on educational opportunity and mental health for children. As noted by the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Ibrahim Thiaw, links between “humanity and the land” are profound and apply in both directions. We have too-often been derelict, he reminded, in respecting and protecting the land; thus human livelihoods and the communities whose vitality depends on them have been allowed to succumb to fire and drought, to flooding and erosion, and to violence from armed groups which remains as the source of so much global degradation.
During these important Council discussions held in the shadow of upcoming UN 75th year commemorations, one briefer after another laid bare the dire circumstances facing far too many children and other vulnerable persons in this world. Briefers also highlighted the degree to which efforts to address acute needs by UN agencies and other actors are routinely impeded not only by access restrictions by states and attacks by spoilers, but also by a lack of funds, in many instances due to states making pledges of support they have yet to honor.
And so the most desperate people wait, waiting under conditions that most of us in the well-resourced, oft-impatient West cannot fathom, waiting for provisions that will hopefully preserve their lives for another day, waiting for a shifting of environmental conditions that might allow them to stay in their homes and care for themselves and their neighbors, waiting for an end to the violence that engenders fear and impedes local initiatives at many levels. In this context one truly moving statement of this day came from Under Secretary-General Lowcock who quoted a child in hunger, cholera and conflict-ravaged Yemen desperately imploring his father, “Daddy, when will the food come?”
When indeed? As ICRC director Maurer noted on Thursday, people living under severe environmental strain and resource deprivation “do not want a handout,” preferring (as we mostly all do) a future in which they can live in “independence” and dignity. But in some parts of the world basic needs are becoming more acute, not less, and the wait times for relief seem interminable and increasingly consequential. Moreover, the “social contract” that binds us in common interest is clearly “fracturing” all around, as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lamented. It is almost as though we are “losing interest” in each other as challenges multiply in all our lives and viable pathways towards the restoration of dignity and hope seem multiply blocked.
Clearly, we need to urgently raise the bar on the alleviation of human misery and the restoration of human potential, and there were a few clues offered on Thursday as to how this might become more feasible. Belgium ably remarked that too much of our humanitarian response is now akin to a “fire extinguisher” rather than the “fire preventer” we need it to be. And Ibrahim Thiaw wisely noted that, for all the remarkable work done by the humanitarian community, in the end “lives are saved but not changed.”
Such lack of change for people and communities, we might all agree, is simply not good enough, not for ourselves and certainly not for those now sitting more precariously than we will ever find ourselves on the precipice of ruin. It may be the case, as Estonia stated on Thursday, that there is no “quick fix” for the messes we have gotten ourselves into, messes so dire that those most impacted cannot do much more than wait for someone to help attend to them. Estonia also suggested a path forward that includes both increased diligence from policymakers and better access to relevant data to guide the practical renewal of energies and commitments to restore the land, restore livelihoods and restore hope. We need to keep those trucks and convoys moving as World Food Programme executive director Beasley noted. But we must also more thoughtfully and and actively resist what he called a “toxic combination” of factors that threatens to undo all the gains on food security made over the past decade, dramatically decreasing the wait experienced by millions for some respite from what are often externally-imposed deprivations, with little more than empty stomachs and parched fields to mark the slow passage of time.
The untimely death on Friday of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was yet another painful reminder of how much we have all lost this year, but also how much time we have invested waiting for the fog of injustice to lift, the fires to die down, the jobs to come back, the pandemic death toll to abate. We are indeed facing an era of “hunger unprecedented,” for bread and health provisions, but also for the healing of personal and social fractures, for the return of some semblance of our collective sanity, for the restoration of our sense of solidarity, for the silencing of the guns on the streets of our communities.
For some of us, this is a time of considerable angst, even mourning. But for others, including for so many children in conflict settings, this is a time of agonized waiting for some urgent, sensitive and sustainable response from the rest of us. I know that I have not always made the best use of my pandemic-enforced opportunities to rethink our role in security and sustainable development and then play that out more effectively. Thus it is now well past time for me, and surely for others, to get off couches and computers, dust off the social contract, and help glue back together some of the many fractures stemming from this long and painful period.
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