They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. Dinos Christianopoulos
It’s senseless to disarm the hands, if the heart remains armed. Bangambiki Habyarimana
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. E.B. White
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller
If things don’t work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again! Sarah Dessen
Art cannot change events. But it can change people. Leonard Bernstein
In some ways, the United Nations represents the epitome of an “if at first you don’t succeed” institution. Important discussions on emerging global issues occur long before resolutions are tabled and adopted. And many adopted UN resolutions appear in similar form, year after year, in the hope that additional states will “get the message,” on matters from capital punishment abolition to ensuring greater protection for journalists, “getting” indicated not only by support for the resolutions themselves but for the policy change at national level that the resolution seeks to promote.
And its not only with respect to UN resolutions, these carefully negotiated documents by diplomats trying to navigate between instructions from capital and the compromises needed to move policy priorities from possible to actual. In the realm of peace and security where we invest much of our attentions, change can be painfully – even deliberately slow, in part because of a lack of consensus regarding the direction that change should take, whose interests are served, how the consequences of change should be managed. This leads to some severe policy bottlenecks, such as with respect to Syria and Yemen as well as some stunning ironies such as this week when officials in the city of Bangui, Central African Republic were forced to declare a state of emergency just one day after the Security Council met to consider how best to confront armed groups determined to undermine and even reverse recent presidential election results.
Within the domain of weapons and weapons systems, there is also ample room for frustration with occasional if welcome, bursts of sanity in the form of resolutions and treaties which promise, albeit with significant caveats, to regulate or even prohibit altogether the weapons that continue to threaten human communities, even human civilization. These include weapons locked in silos or placed on submarines, weapons trafficked across borders or carelessly allowed to leak from government control into a vast illicit market, weapons placed in outer space under “dual use” cover, weapons designed to explode primarily in heavily populated areas; weapons with new “bells and whistles” manufactured at still-staggering rates and shipped off to states with dubious human rights records or without much of a clue regarding what to do with the weapons – still deadly – that are set to be replaced by newer models.
These are not, for the most part, new issues for the UN nor for the many NGOs gathered around headquarters with a keen interest in promoting a disarmed world. Their determination to find ways to end the threat from nuclear weapons has persevered, a threat which has only grown as the weapons themselves display greater precision and payload and as unresolved global tensions have provided ready (if not convincing) excuses for states seeking to hold on to their weapons stockpiles or even develop their own nuclear capabilities. Some of my closest UN colleagues, have invested a professional lifetime of thought and organizing energy in a valiant effort to solidify the relationship between disarmament and non-proliferation obligations, including obligations under international law, as well as to examine political obstacles to “general and complete disarmament,” and to remind governments and citizens of the overwhelming humanitarian imperative to keep these weapons out of harm’s way until they can be eliminated altogether.
I also have a long history with disarmament obligations and issues, which I won’t unpack here, except to say that nuclear weapons issues proved to be a “gateway” concern for me, one which I have never renounced or discarded but one which has made space for other “human security” concerns to which we are now linked by a bevy of excellent institutional partners who focus on torture and climate change, racial discrimination and biodiversity loss, atrocity crimes and incarcerated children, terrorism and corrupt governance, unsustainable cities and food insecurity. While making it clear that we endorse the specific concern of our nuclear weapons partners – that human security priorities must not be reconstituted as security “conditionalities” which excuse neglect for nuclear disarmament obligations – it remains our view that security linkages can lead in the best of circumstances to mutual security investments that can, among its other benefits, strengthen support for the disarmament we all want and need.
While more and more of my older disarmament friends and colleagues have moved towards a more nuanced security framework, especially with regard to gender, race and climate, our younger colleagues have embraced such linkages as a matter of course. This week’s entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) (for the treaty in multiple languages, click here: Ch_XXVI_9.pdf (un.org)) bears the broad policy and preambular concerns of several progressive states (such as Mexico, Austria and Costa Rica) along with youthful leadership from around the world who together brought the treaty into existence While holding on to the hope that the core promise of the TPNW – that nuclear weapons rendered “illegal” by this treaty will lead to concrete disarmament measures – we nevertheless applaud the degree to which the treaty’s prohibitions and positive obligations for ratifying states are certain to “shrink the space” for the influence of nuclear weapons, impeding security cooperation with nuclear-armed states in part through the rejection of longstanding “nuclear umbrellas” and related security arrangements.
The TPNW should perhaps be understood more as a stage than a solution, but it is a hopeful and welcome stage, one which seems to have unleashed some positive and inter-linked initiatives by young advocates who are well-suited to organize online and across barriers of identify and culture in this age of COVID. One initiative close to home is “Reversing the Trend,” which was also launched this week by a diverse group of young advocates with support from the diplomatic missions of Costa Rica, Kazakhstan and Kiribati. In a virtually seamless manner, the leaders of this initiative, including our office-mates Christian Ciobanu and Danielle Samler, have fashioned a format for discussion and advocacy that brings together youth from diverse cultural backgrounds but also links the nuclear weapons issue to other powerful impediments to their future (climate change and racial discrimination among them). They have also opened a space for creative contributions (fashion design and visual art so far) that not only help to contextualize nuclear weapons threats but allow young people to blend policy leadership and artistic expression as they navigate the personal, structural and ideological minefields that older folks like me have not done enough to clear.
These youthful advocates are skillful, articulate and determined. They know that their very future is on the line as pandemic variants continue to spread, as ice caps continue to melt, and as weapons continue to modernize and find new hiding places. They also know that tinkering with the existing frameworks is not likely to be good enough; they recognize that they must locate a healthier balance between “changing the world and enjoying the world;” and they are determined that efforts to “bury” their ideas and influences are destined to fail as these young people represent, indeed, the seeds of future well-being for themselves and so many others.
And the diplomats are paying attention. For instance, Ambassador Maritza Chan of Costa Rica, a longtime champion of the TPNW and advocate for “human security” lenses on contemporary threats, was one of those welcoming the Reverse the Trend launch. She reminded the largely youthful audience that security is ultimately “not based on military competition but on human cooperation,” that multilateralism is key to progress on peace, and that diverse voices worldwide, including a new generation of experts on human security and the rule of law, remain dedicated to ending what she described as a “perverse” arms race. For his part, the Kiribati Ambassador was more cautious, noting the longstanding and stubborn resistance to disarmament by the nuclear possessing states but also reassuring the audience that, in part due to the TPNW, nuclear weapons threats can still be overcome under UN auspices.
My own hope for initiatives like Reverse the Trend is that they can help examine and assess, together with the rest of us, which models of governance can be fixed and which need to be replaced; which skills and voices must get closer to the center of discussions about the “world we want” and not just the world that seems most likely ; which threats most impact their future and how can such threats be robustly identified and then addressed in tandem; which “seeds” these young people are keen to plant, may already have planted, and how we can all do more to help nurture a successful crop; which global problems are most likely to resist resolution and how can we best inspire perseverance across generations until they are finally sorted.
And perhaps we could add to that a bit of youthful guidance regarding a task that, certainly for my generation, has proven even more daunting, even more elusive than forging resolutions or negotiating limits on weapons and weapons systems: the task of disarming our own hearts as we seek to disarm the world.
gapwblog 