In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you’ve heard the other side. Euripides
A judge, replied the Empress, is easy to be had, but to get an impartial judge, is a thing so difficult. Margaret Cavendish
It is not possible to completely eliminate mediation between you as an observer and the history you are trying to understand. Ken Liu
The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize. Stanisław Lem
Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here and now. Sharon Salzberg
[We live] rather in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in fantasies and dreams. Ernst Cassirer
All roads taken lead us only to ourselves. Kilroy Oldster
This was another busy and mostly virtual week at the UN in New York as all six General Assembly committees began their work to craft resolutions corresponding to core UN priorities: disarmament and the rule of law, human rights and financing for sustainable development, special political missions and moving remaining territories towards self-governance. Watching this process over many years, we lament that the relationship between these carefully-crafted global norms and concrete improvements in the lives of constituents is not always apparent and certainly could be made more so, especially to the constituents themselves.
Beyond the committees, two events stood out for me given my own interests and biases. The first was an event organized by our friends and partners FIACAT together with the European Union focused on cementing recent trends towards the abolition of capital punishment, a particularly noxious remnant of a time when we believed more fervently in the “value” of vengeance and retribution, when we acceded to the alleged “right” of the state to take life without recourse to accurate assessments of guilt let alone to the evolving sentiments of the public. A case now in Oklahoma involving one Julius Jones who most assuredly did not commit the crime for which he is being held – often in solitary confinement – and for which he might actually be executed is only one of too-numerous instances demanding a rethink of an irreversible punishment within those dwindling number of states (including my own) that continue to employ it.
The other discussion of note took place in the Arria Formula format of the Security Council, wherein this week Germany, Vietnam, Switzerland and Belgium sponsored a discussion on “Mandating peace: Enhancing the mediation sensitivity and effectiveness of the UN Security Council.” Such mediation is encouraged under Article 33 of the UN Charter as one of the “non-coercive” tools available to the UN and especially to Council members in discharging their duties to maintain international peace and security. This particular discussion was based on a report crafted for this occasion by researchers at Notre Dame University with the same title as the event itself.
This Arria Formula sparked high levels of attention from the entire UN community. As we have noted in the past, UN member states are becoming increasing nervous about a Security Council that is often frozen by its own internal controversies, by the willingness of the permanent members to ignore resolutions they seek to impose on others, and by conflicts that are not addressed at sufficiently early stages and thus require coercive responses when less coercive measures – including mediation – could have put out the fire at a point when it could more easily have been contained.
States have increasingly embraced the language of conflict prevention, and this to our mind has been a welcome development, at least on the surface. So much hunger and displacement, so many disruptions of educational and health access are due to conflicts about which we have collectively dragged our feet. And when we have gotten on top of specific threats, our recourse to the language of “condemnation” and the threat of sanctions – both Council-approved and unilateral – has had a predictably polarizing effect on conflict parties. In an era where trust is at a premium and political interests are highly partisan, states increasingly recognize that coercive responses are likely only deepen the distrust we need to overcome if progress on preventing and resolving conflict is to occur and, indeed, if our entire multilateral apparatus is to achieve more than rhetorical victories over all that now afflicts us. Sadly this “all,” Turkey and other states reminded the rest of us at this Arria meeting, remains headlined by the “scourge” that is armed conflict.
During this session, one state after another enthusiastically advocated for mediation resources and other, early-applied, less coercive measures in response to conflict threats. In so doing, many states such Costa Rica and Italy recognized that the background of mediators is one key to success, advocating for mediation that is both gender-balanced and gender-sensitive. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines took this one step further, noting that where the application of resources such as mediation are concerned, “neighbors know best.” Indeed, calls came throughout this discussion for mediation that prioritizes “what is happening around us in the here and now,” with special attentiveness to, as Finland noted, the increasing “complexities” that characterize conflict contexts. And if the Security Council can fully grasp, as claimed by SRSG Haysom, that “negotiated settlements must take priority over imposed settlements” (though both can unravel), then mediators must be given space for flexible responses to shifting conflict circumstances and Council members who might be overly addicted to coercion must hold in mind the importance of isolating mediators from responsibility for any subsequent imposition of sanctions or other coercive means.
Amidst calls from Portugal and others for regular deliberations on maximizing the value of mediation and other “Chapter VI” responses, it is important that member states be clear with themselves about the often-profound degree of difficulty in maintaining the integrity and independence of mediators given the current avalanche of partisan views and “minds made up” long before all relevant evidence and context have been considered. We are indeed inclined, perhaps more than ever in our recent history, to “jump to conclusions,” to bend facts to suit our personal and political interests, to live in a self-authorized realm of “imaginary emotions,” illusions and fantasies. We have substituted out honest inquiry with conspiracies and rooting interests. We have cashed out insights that could benefit all for the sake of biases that elevate partial truths to universal status. And we are amply suspicious of the motives of others, even when it is our own motives that require closer scrutiny.
I have seen a bit of this tendency myself in years of counseling. At the level of conflicted couples and “neighbors,” suspicion is often palpable. People are quick to assume that mediators who struggle hard to maintain independence are actually giving in to partisan values and outcomes, that once the curtain of “what is best” is pulled, it will surely reveal grave mis-readings of the “history” that mediators allege (and often honestly strive) to understand. Indeed, many of us nowadays spend so little time listening to persons and ideas that threaten or oppose us, so little time exploring self-accountability for festering disputes small and large, that we can barely imagine what non-partisan engagement might look life. Too often, we are simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the mediators or counselors to “show their hand” and commit the errors that reinforce our fears of and reservations regarding discussions mostly shielding biased revelations.
During this Arria Formula, a German minister wondered aloud, as a response to the report under consideration, whether Council mandates on mediation, including in the context of peacekeeping operations, are simply “too political to succeed?” Certainly they are often seen as such by conflict parties, especially those whose biases and rationales for ongoing violence have also been allowed to harden. But this points to an even larger problem, one we at GAPW strive regularly to identify, and that is the hard road that inevitably leads us back to ourselves.
In the end, as important as carefully worded resolutions and carefully crafted mandates might be, we must take time to address the social climate that we have conspired to create, one enabling the growth of hyper-partisan worldviews, a climate conducive to the insistence on unbiased perfection in our mediators that we are unable to guarantee in ourselves. If we want less coercive, more inclusive solutions to conflict, and we certainly should, it will take more than discussions about our policy tools and options; it will also take discussions focused on our capacities to engender trust within a security and political environment that is now giving too many people sufficient reasons to withhold the risk of trust altogether.
Slowly, inexorably, our views and affiliations have calcified as dramatically as our arteries. It is this hardening of hearts, and not a lack of UN Charter guidance on mediation and other non-coercive tools, that constitutes the greatest impediment to the development and implementation of flexible, context-specific, attentive, trustworthy responses to conflict threats. This “other” conversation, the one about our human capacities and barriers to progress we erect ourselves, is one that we would do well not to overlook.
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