Archive | June, 2021

Irregular Times: Narrowing the Rhetoric-Delivery Gap, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Jun
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An irregular heart beat

So many distractions, when all she wanted was silence, so she could understand what was going on. Rehan Khan

It seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.  George Eliot

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. C.S. Lewis

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.  Robert A. Heinlein

But can we dispel “unusefulness” as worthless? For some, art and play may be “useless” but yet are fundamental ways and means for survival. Erik Pevernagie

Be beautiful if you can, wise if you want to, but be respected. Anna Gould

The UN was a veritable hive of activity this week, allowing those who logged in on the limited basis to conclude either that the world has either completely lost its mind or that it has found at least some of its ethical and policy bearings.  

Many of the “faithful remnant” who still consult these posts know a fair bit about the “lost mind” part.  The puzzling struggle in the Security Council over cross-border humanitarian access for Syrians; the seemingly endless US blockade of Cuba despite annual global condemnations; the crackdowns on journalists and civil society actors in settings from Turkey to Mynamar; the fresh casualties from our collective failure to stem the spread of new COVID-19 variants in part due to rhetorical support for vaccine access not matched by reliable deliveries; the armed groups, including forces made up entirely of children, taking lives with impunity in Burkina Faso and across the Sahel; the arms trafficking and lax measures on access and acquisition which are turned sections of the US and Latin America into weapons fortresses.

You get the point.  Even in a UN week dedicated in part to Counter-Terrorism it became clear that, despite some welcome progress on border control, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, and airline passenger data collection, terror groups often seem to be one step ahead of efforts to control their movements, restrict extremist rhetoric, and stem the recruitment of youth living in areas that offer little in the way of alternative hope.  That government actions too often feed terrorist narratives, as in the horrific example of Tigray where civilians are raped, tortured and starved and the lives of humanitarian workers are under constant siege, undermines at face value claims by some state and UN authorities that the pandemic – and not our own self-serving political interests and attendant rationalizations, is the underlying cause of our security-related breakdowns.

These are irregular times, but surely not primarily evil ones.   It is true that we have often hidden behind our bureaucracies and national interests, burying endless praise under protocol and seeking to call attention to what we are doing more than what is working, what comes next, what we need (besides money) that we don’t have, what role the rest of us should be playing to complement, and at times challenge, the decisions of states and diplomats.  It is also true that, disregarding regular calls for global and national cease fire arrangements, guns and various explosions continue to claim lives. Despite this, we continue to inadequately funnel our various human security activities, including on health, food and water access, into a more robust peace and security framework and then insist, here and now, that those tasked with such matters, especially the Security Council, do their jobs to maintain the peace or throw their collective weight behind agents and institutions that might have a better go of it.

Yes these are irregular times, but we are actually learning things, perhaps not enough and perhaps not in time, to stem the tide of violence and embrace the complex efforts of so many who are in the best sense of the term “essential workers.”  We have commented previously on the ways in which the UN honors the efforts and sacrifice of peacekeepers and other UN field staff, and has done so in ways beyond mere honoring, including mandates that narrow the gap between what is expected of peacekeepers and the training and capacity support required to do what is asked.  We also applaud that personnel able to engage communities and their most vulnerable members – including child and women protection advisers – are available to build trust and ensure context-specific protection in ways that soldiers with guns themselves cannot always do.  In this time, the honoring of peacekeepers and other field actors has evolved into something more than ceremonial, more than rhetorical, as their demands increase and threats to their safety proliferate.

And what of our front-line health workers, the “essential” professionals of this extended time of pandemic threat, those who found (and still find) themselves at the edge of exhaustion and despair trying to keep loved ones together and families and communities intact? Even more, what of those who perform these services not in modern hospitals but in makeshift clinics in urban and rural settings at times characterized by antiquated equipment, limited provisions for hungry families or vaccines for communities ravaged by the virus, and by the sounds of bombs which often distract from healing thoughts and sometimes even target their very facilities?  

In two events this week, one in the General Assembly and another in the Economic and Social Council, the UN sought to both honor these essential workers and to assess the state of affairs surrounding their grueling and often dangerous work.  We heard this week from many remarkable people, including a Ugandan woman helping to protect and empower persons with disabilities in the remote north of her country along with a bevy of other powerful policy and healing voices, some urging us in essence “to spare a thought” for those victimized by torture, pandemic, famine or sexual violence, but also for those who seek to rehabilitate them, to heal their wounds and restore some measure of the fulness of life after unimaginable ordeals.

But what made these events successful is that underlying the honoring of these workers – and we need to honor more often, more broadly, more sincerely – was the unambiguous recognition that “sparing a thought” was not nearly enough, not enough to change circumstances on the ground, not enough to restore hope in these “irregular times,” not enough to fulfill our responsibilities and ensure that we are better prepared for health and other threats to come; and thus our policy priorities must become as clear, distraction-free, respectful and sustainable as we can make them.

Where essential actions are concerned, there were in fact many urgent calls this week from UN officials and diplomats, calls for greater and more practical solidarity with front-line workers (from Costa Rica and the Caribbean community), for fresh and robust investments in health infrastructure (from the president of the General Assembly), for higher levels of mental health services for traumatized health and humanitarian workers and the victims they seek to serve (from the World Health Organization) and for a swift end to child marriage, child labor, child abuse, school attacks and other child-unfriendly practices which we should be ashamed to tolerate even one day longer (from the ICRC).

And for peace, blessed peace, that elusive commodity which, in its absence, makes every problem we face that much more difficult to solve, the armed violence which as noted this week by Acting USG Rajasingham complicates every aspect of health care and humanitarian access, ratcheting up dangers and demands for front-line workers in the field, and dampening hope and enthusiasm of traumatized community members who wonder amidst the noises of war if there will ever be a peaceful silence which grants them space to figure out other things, space to think great thoughts, make more culture, watch children play, and attend to other pressing needs within and beyond their own families.

Amidst the global carnage and policy partial-truths which punctuated this policy week, there were also some valuable lessons that rose to the surface, lessons grounded in dedicated efforts to heal our irregular hearts in part by narrowing the gaps between our rhetoric and our delivery.  We know that we must spend more time honoring and heeding the people who both care for us and hold up the promise of our world. We know that we must increase the solidarity needed to create more safe spaces for what can hopefully become a less harassed and stressed roster of front-line workers. We know that we must commit to build higher quality health infrastructure and take other measures to ensure that we are better focused and prepared to head off the next health crisis than we were for this one. We know we must increase access to vaccines, to potable water, to safe schools and to other measures which too many communities have been denied for far too long.

And we know that we must determine to make more peace in this world, peace in our communities, our schools and cultural institutions, our national and multi-lateral agencies.  It is a cliché to be sure, but it is hard to see how any of the problems we now face, any of the crises — current and looming — that now scar our planet and too many of its human inhabitants, can be resolved in sustainable fashion unless the guns have finally and fully gone silent.

Of all the rhetoric-delivery gaps which currently define our policy and practice, of all the misplaced promises that continue to stoke “unfavorable conditions” in our irregular world, the seemingly-endless cry for peace remains at the top of our attentions.  It is the cry, almost 18 years on in this current NGO arrangement, which we continue to hear the loudest and which we most encourage others of all ages and backgrounds to hear as well.

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Father Fear: A Fathers Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

20 Jun
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For generations fathers had watched earth and sea.  Pearl S. Buck

Was Father getting sadder, or was she just getting old enough to see it?  S.D. Smith

Perhaps that is what it means to be a father-to teach your child to live without you. Nicole Krauss

One of the biggest things that hold men back from being the fathers, husbands, and leaders they are meant to be is that we are often unfit, unhealthy, or otherwise limping along.   Josh Hatcher

He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they’re substantial, that they’re not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to.  Richard Ford

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.  Fyodor Dostoevsky

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.  George Orwell

“Are you a devil?” “I am a man,” answered Father Brown gravely; “and therefore have all devils in my heart.”  G. K. Chesterton

A couple of weeks ago, a favorite cousin of mine died from a sudden and gruesome bout with cancer.  His life was like many men I know, complex in its core, attempting to blend families and his responsibilities to them, attempting as well to overcome impediments – including to his own sight – that made many of the things he did more of an ordeal than they might have been, including the challenge of landscaping from which he made a living and to which he gave his most grateful soul.

My cousin was in great physical shape which likely prolonged the ordeal of his cancer but also made it possible for him to have the kinds of conversations with loved ones that help the dying to let go of life.  As his daughters occasionally reminded him, in ways subtle and not, he was not always the father of their dreams.  And like myself and many others, my cousin often “limped along,” in a world which disposes benefits and good fortune unevenly, trying to figure things out for himself and others, offering coaching guidance as he was able regarding how to persevere through adversity which is, after all, the lot of most of us in this world.

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, the mask he wore was not particularly thick or meant to deceive.  He was more transparent than he might have needed to be, perhaps more so than his corner of the world was prepared to accept. He also evaded that all-too-frequent demon of ingratitude, the assumption that the world owed him more, owed him differently.  And he avoided that curse of our modern age, the error of exalting judgment at the expense of reflection, the knee-jerk reactions of too many of us to situations that just don’t seem right “to us,” reactions that grant us the arrogance of verdicts without trial, verdicts generally devoid of context. 

I raise up the image of my deceased cousin not because he was unique, but because he was not.  The responsibilities he assumed, the holes in his life that he tried to fill, the matrix of complex relationships he attempted to navigate, the impediments he sought to overcome – including some self-imposed – this constellation of challenges and, if you will, demons, are representative of many of the men in my life. It is perhaps a function of our longer-than-anticipated pandemic bubbles that so many of us now indulge in acting out, including of our ideological predispositions and prejudices.  But it is also true of how many men I know, including my cousin, who are genuinely trying in more controlled ways to figure things out, including figuring out how to support the fixing of racial, gender and social class discriminations that impede our social development and, in some core ways, threaten the very existence of our species.

These men have, at least to some extent, sought to understand their privilege and overcome the cultural conditioning which, in the US at least, simultaneously critiques and reinforces the narrative of men as predators, men as habitually self-absorbed, men as the reinforcers of a manifestly unjust social order that privileges the needs of the few over the needs of the many; men who take more than their share and give less than they claim; men who imagine themselves as some sort of “gold standard” even when others see mostly fools gold.  This is a deep if self-deceptive conditioning, one which is often reinforced across gender and economic lines, one which allows only a few to prosper as privilege leaks inexorably into entitlement.

And as our societies shift, slowly but inexorably like the tides of the sea, there is positive momentum to report, even to celebrate. At the UN we routinely discuss the gendered dimensions of food insecurity and counter-terror operations; we routinely discuss the importance of reproductive rights for the health, well-being and educational and social opportunities of girls; we spend much time and energy, albeit at times beset with numerous frustrations, attempting to end impunity for the commission of sexual violence crimes in and out of conflict zones. During my annual lectures for NATO School I also do my part to hold brass to the commitments made to the UN by NATO both to small arms proliferation and to their Women, Peace and Security responsibilities.  On both counts, there is less and less resistance to changes that they know they need to make, that it is in the best interests of everyone that they make. 

But there is no patting ourselves on the back here on gender (nor or on racial, cultural or religious discrimination) any more than the fathers (and mothers) I know seek to glorify themselves for upholding basic obligations of parenting.  We know full well that change has come too slowly.  And we know that we have not always put the authority and leverage at our disposal to use in making it come more quickly, in balancing the leger sheet and creating horizontal space within and beyond our perpetually vertical structures.  Moreover, we have not been grateful enough for our own circumstances nor sufficiently attentive to the cries for relief from others.

None of this is to our credit, and yet I wonder about the implications of the current narrative that, within the UN to be sure but also outside it, privileges judgment over thoughtfulness, judgment that rightly assumes a gendered dimension to the world’s many problems but which also implies that the value of men is solely a function of their ability to support and sustain others, that the intrinsic value of their activities is up for grabs, and that no matter what their journey or context, they remain directly accountable to the worst of their kind, the worst forms of patriarchal entitlement, the worst forms of violent recourse, the worst forms of inattentive and degrading parenting, the worst forms of predatory economic decisionmaking.

All of these conditions are real and all of them must cease.  However, in certain circles at least, much of this assigned only to the actions and priorities of men.  In addition, much of this is divorced from context, assuming that the demon-load residing in some can be attributed in the same measure to all, thereby justifying judgments that ascribe the worst to mostly all and the best to relatively none.  In too many of our policy settings, we don’t talk about men, we don’t ask probing questions of men, we don’t show much interest in their well-being or growth edges aside from how their lives might negatively impact others.  We tend to assume that we know all we need to know about men when what we actually know is clearly at low tide.

I don’t know entirely what to do about this condition, but on this Fathers Day when it seems safe enough and useful enough to speak of men, it also seems relevant to raise such concerns.  

Because I know so many men who are not lording it over others, who are not trafficking in hostility, who are not venting their patriarchal spleens on a no-longer unsuspecting world; who are instead trying to understand and then off-load their unearned privilege. I know many men who spend more time wondering if they did the right thing coaching their children and investing their own life energy than wondering how they can separate yet another community and its people from their worldly assets.  Whether others want to hear it or not, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, there are glimmers of sadness in the eyes of more than a few of the men I know, a sadness that things have simply not worked out the way they could have, the way they imagined they might – not for the self-sufficiency of their children or the strength of their marriages, not for the impact of their careers nor for prospects to reduce the misery load of a world which is arguably and generally in worse shape than it has been in some time, worse not primarily for men, but surely for many men also.

These are some of the people we have yet to engage in a larger social purpose, a purpose which can level and empower, can inspire and reassure.  This Father’s Day, or any day for that matter, I urge you to reach out to those men for whom sadness is possibly crowding out ambition, those anxious to stop limping and get back to full living, those who need reassurance that they are more than “ringing absences,” that they indeed count for something and can count for more in this broken, screwy, patriarchy-saturated planet given the right assurances and contexts.  For many of the men I have been honored to know, for many of the Fathers I have been honored to watch, most need something different to become their better selves, different than neckties and power equipment.  They need to be asked better questions; they need fair and thoughtful judgments; they need persons around them sensitive to context including the context they have helped men create for themselves and others. Such men may also need help, while they are still on this earth in “calculating their happiness,” in translating sadness and fear into gratitude and thereby finding the energy to create more harmony and justice in this world until their time has passed.

My cousin’s time has passed. He tried as best he knew to create beauty and honor his responsibilities. He would want others to try also.

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AIDS-mémoire: The Plague Last Time, Dr. Robert Zuber

13 Jun

Twas doing nothing was his curse. Is there a vice can plague us worse?” Hannah More

Each day the pair would meet at 2pm at the exact halfway point between the villages and stand a hundred yards apart, staring longingly at each other, yearning for the time when the pestilence would pass.  Tom Cox

Plague germs are notorious for their non-observance of class distinctions. Palagummi Sainath

Before coronapocalypse, people were so distracted by items presenting themselves throughout life; items that really do not matter. Noise for the mind. Ways to distract the heart. Now there are no more distractions, noise evaporated. Everyone must face their truth now: their Demons and their Angels.  C. JoyBell C.

I recalled how cruel the plague had made people to each other, and was obliged to concede that there is no disaster which can befall humanity, that we will not fail to make worse by our own hands, for it is fear that makes us cruel.  Sarah Burton

Thus, whereas plague by its impartial ministrations should have promoted equality among our townsfolk, it now had the opposite effect and, thanks to the habitual conflict of cupidities, exacerbated the sense of injustice rankling in our hearts. Albert Camus

The human race settles on terms with every plague in the end, the doctor told her. Or a stalemate, at the least. Emma Donoghue

It is not news to anyone who even occasionally consults these posts that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted personal and institutional life in ways that were only partially predictable.  At the UN for instance, we are keenly aware of how the pandemic has impacted some of our core, collective commitments, complicating the missions of peacekeepers and humanitarian workers, creating new dangers and levels of urgency for health care workers, exposing inequalities in health care and food access that have only become more difficult to overcome, even intensifying security deficits as movement-related restrictions caused by the pandemic have created fresh opportunities for armed groups and terrorists to expand their physical influence and step up online recruitment. 

Even during a week when an international court rejected an appeal of the convicted Ratko Mladic, the so-called “butcher of Bosnia,” the talk in the Security Council was in large measure about the cases remaining to be tried, the indictments remaining to be honored, and the general difficulty of carrying out the vital work of justice (or conducting investigations of any global importance) in the midst of our current plague.

At a another level, we have a growing sense of the diverse impacts of this pandemic on personal and family life:  the isolation and depression as we struggle to maintain some semblance of sanity and overcome personal distances; the discriminatory acting out of fear and even cruelty on each other; the despair in many places of having to care for loved ones as services further erode and vaccines remain out of reach; the “habitual conflict of cupidities” that has served to inflame a sense of injustice but also dampened the belief that human beings are actually capable of delivering it. For many, thanks in part to COVID-19 and our reactions to its limitations, both our sense of self and our hope for humanity have taken a serious hit.

In this week of genuinely impactful UN events, including a global dialogue on food systems, the selection of a new president for the General Assembly (Maldives) and a farewell message from the extraordinary prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, reflecting on her long pursuit of justice and accountability for the people of Darfur, it was particularly meaningful for me that the General Assembly devoted much of its week to a discussion on HIV/AIDS, a plague from the past for many in the “developed” world, but one which continues to infect people in many global regions, especially those youth whose limited access to antiretroviral therapies and related health care continues to sicken them in ways that we don’t often encounter any longer here in New York. 

The GA event was a stark reminder of the promises the UN community once made together to eliminate the scourge of HIV/AIDS, to end what is for some in the last stages of HIV infection a horrific death from predatory infections to which their bodies become increasingly vulnerable, a death not dissimilar in its grimness to those many millions –old and young, poorer and richer, people who were loved and cherished –who have literally drowned in their own fluids as their own bodies turned against them due to COVID-19.

HIV moves along a somewhat similar path but with some clear differences, most of which were duly noted by the diplomats and other speakers, including Charlize Theron whose presence graced the hall and who advocated passionately for the creation of “enabling environments,” especially for young people, that can both provide help and communicate hope. In addition to her, I was impressed with the statement of Ghana’s health minister who advocated for an “evidence-based and people-centered” approach to HIV/AIDS caregiving as well as the Minister of France who noted that the point here is “not to replace one health care threat with another” but to build strong and reliable health infrastructure and rebut those who deny the virtues of science-based diagnostics and care. Many delegations, including Ecuador and Netherlands, stressed the importance of “harm reduction” measures for young people, including in the form of reproductive services for female youth, to increase the odds that they can avoid HIV infection altogether and receive prompt care — even from health services ravaged by COVID-19 — when prevention fails.

Perhaps the most impressive voice during this high-level event was that of UNAIDS director Winnie Byanyima, who set an urgent and hopeful tone relevant both to the current pandemic and the one to which we still have unmet responsibilities. She underscored the “bold shifts” we still can and must take, including dramatically improving access to the best medical services and countering the discrimination and stigma that continues to accompany HIV infection in several global regions. She also reminded us that, in its application, “science moves at the speed of political will” while insisting that, as much as we seem to deny it, “we are more than inter-connected; we are inseparable.”

In many ways, this meeting represented the best of the UN: reminding us of unfinished business and tying the promises of the past to the urgencies of the present. And reminding us of our personal responsibilities to ensure services and end stigmas, to resist the temptation to “settle” with our pandemics and then seek to sit out their threats and consequences on the sidelines.

To my mind, it is the depth of stigma which separates HIV from the current COVID plague.  I recall our efforts in the 80s and 90s through East Harlem Interfaith and nearby Saint Cecilia’s Catholic Church, efforts to create safe space for persons living and dying with HIV/AIDS (often young and not even near their prime), a space to mourn and grieve, a space to find accompaniment as infection turned into full-on plague: the loss of weight, the ubiquitous sores, the difficulty breathing, the extreme fatigue, the endless fevers.  And on top of all this were the often-profound emotional impacts: the shifts in mood and cognitive capacity, the depression that came from experiencing a body that was literally turning on itself, a body which seemed determined to cast aside all common and once-dependable functions.

We did our best to mitigate some of the impacts of lives set to end without the comfort of familiar faces, faces which in too many instances had already rejected them, had already abandoned them to live out the final chapter of this “gay plague” in utter isolation from all they once knew.   For many, it was the stigma they faced, often at the hands of those who had once pledged to love and protect them, which was the saddest aspect of a multiply painful journey.  There was little for us to say; at times there was little to be done.  This plague was set to take the dozens of men who had accepted what care we were able to provide, to cover their wounds and listen to their tales of abandonment-related grief, to hear their confessions and offer what little comfort we were able. And to ensure that the end of these lives were duly recognized by the community which had committed to gather around them, members of a community who in too many cases were soon to replicate that mortal path. 

Even in this time of COVID-19, even in this time where we are quicker to judge than to think; even now when, in the US at least, mask wearing has been a symbol of some alleged malevolent government intent that is causing record high gun sales with corresponding discharges of weapons (or fists) often directed at unsuspecting objects of hate; even amidst all of this there is compassion in considerable measure to be found, compassion for those lives have holes in them due to pandemic distancing; compassion for those medical workers and other humanitarians who have risked their own lives to save us from ourselves: compassion which we must find a way to cultivate in even greater measure if we are to put current pandemics to rest and survive pandemics to come. Simply put, we must find the means to reinforce the best of our humanity as plagues here now and around the bend threaten to bring out some of the worst.

The message of this week’s GA event was clear.  HIV/AIDS is not over.  COVID-19 is certainly not over.  And there may be new challenges of this sort to come for us, new “stalemates” to achieve with regard to a new round of deadly viruses. But what is most likely to do us in, what threatens us most deeply, is ourselves, our predispositions to stigma and discrimination, our endless talent for making enemies out of neighbors; our willingness to use crisis as an excuse for selfishness, indifference and even violence.  We have not seen the last of HIV/AIDS; neither have we seen the last of the plagues which are sure to visit our fractured human world, the fear of which will unleash new waves of cruelty and indifference unless we have prepared ourselves to choose a different, kinder, less discriminatory path.

Such preparation must begin together and begin in earnest.

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Trust Funds: The UN Steps Towards a Culture of Integrity, Dr. Robert Zuber

6 Jun

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.  Mahatma Gandhi

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. Ayn Rand

It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.  Frank Herbert

Procrastination is also a subtle act of corruption – it corrupts valuable time. Amit Abraham

The aim of the old should be to ensure that the young grow up incorruptible.  Justin K. McFarlane Beau

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.  Clive James

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider.  Ernest Hemingway

I spent an hour last evening on a call organized by LINGAP Canada and featuring an indigenous activist from the Philippines seeking to protect the lands of local people from the onslaughts of both an international mining interest and governments at local and federal levels who enabled this corporate incursion. As is far too common, they offered police protection against the activists pushing back against operations which, in too many instances, have cover in the form of government contracts which are not transparent, which do not incorporate local needs and interests, and which confer large swaths of immunity as mining interests appropriate local water supplies, denude forests and destroy the social cohesion of communities and the biodiversity which once enveloped them.

In the rush to secure the precious metals and other resources that fuel lifestyles in the developed world, corporations are willing to drive hard bargains with government officials as they seek contracts that ensure maximum flexibility and only limited responsibility for the damage done to land and water.  For the governments, mining interests promote both “economic development” and, in the absence of genuine transparency, a reliable source of self-enrichment.   For the activists seeking to hold mining interests to a standard beyond their technically “legal” obligation, they often face both personal danger and the sad realization that the lands they love have likely been disfigured beyond the ability of any human or natural force to restore.  When the mining interests have extracted all there is to extract, the land they leave behind might be little more than a biological shell of its former self, a land now ill-suited to sustain the life it had previously supported for millennia. 

This story frames what was a busy week of intersected UN conversations focused on the multiple, negative impacts of corruption together with our still-uphill struggle to reverse climate change, avert a new round of biodiversity loss, preserve what remains of the health of our oceans, and heal our often-battered local ecosystems. 

The key here is “together.”  What was apparent during a fine UN Special Session (including side events) focused on “measures to prevent and combat corruption” is that corruption is both pervasive and “magnetic,” attracting unscrupulous and self-interested individuals like bees to honey, providing both opportunities and rationalizations for those among us more interested in exploiting fragility than helping it to heal.  What the president of the Economic and Social Council, Ambassador Akram of Pakistan, referred to this week as the “criminal misuse of resources” is an indictment that implicates many of us in our current world, a world in which integrity and transparency are constantly butting heads with that part of our nature which, as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador maintained, remains “purchasable.” 

As several speakers noted this week, including during an excellent side event organized by the president of the General Assembly, our current contexts make combating corruption a particularly formidable challenge.  The global pandemic coupled with the gross inequalities tied to our obsession with “wealth and power” are magnifying opportunities to divert resources from intended to unintended purposes, to maneuver contracts towards personal friends and business partners rather than to those providing the best and most cost-effective services, to deliberately direct vaccines and funds for pandemic response towards political supporters and away from political adversaries, to sign contracts that are full of loopholes enabling abuses and even kickbacks that ultimately rob citizens of development funds, undermine rights and even dampen enthusiasm for change.

But as the week’s events made clear, it is not only about the expanding opportunities for corrupt practices but the range of such practices – and their toxic consequences — that warrants prompt international attention.  Our former notions of corruption – of money in a brown envelope sliding under a table and designed to influence decisions — is still relevant but overly narrow.  We understand more now about the “trade-offs” that we are much too comfortable making, trade-offs that impede our path towards what the Holy See referred to this week as a “culture of integrity.”  We are too quick to rationalize behavior that we should readily challenge instead, thereby “consorting” with the structures of power that we know are often not operating in the public interest.  We know that, as Chile’s Ambassador stated, funds and lives are lost when we allow corrupt practices to flourish, when we accede to cultures of corruption that are within our grasp to shift.  We continue to allow people to “walk through our minds with their dirty feet,” making compromise with what Mexico declared to be a social “evil” more and more palatable, at least for some, just part of the cost of doing business as an “insider” in a sometimes unsavory world. 

And as one speaker after another this week noted, the consequences of corruption are dire, not only for the activists on the ground who must dodge unsubstantiated accusations and at times even bullets, but for the average citizen who still needs to believe that the large governmental and corporate powers that seem to run our lives have at least some of our best interests at heart; indeed that they are able and willing to play by the same rules that they expect the rest of us to play by.  The word that popped up over and over in this UN context is “trust,” a term which is hard to quantify and which diplomats are often fond of claiming for their governments without sufficient evidence; but a word which also continues to resonate deeply for many of us. 

Naively or otherwise, some of us still need to believe that, within the limits of human capacity and habit, that our public structures are trustworthy or can be made so; that mistakes are due to factors other than wanton malevolence; that the people who run the world operate on energies more diverse than riches and power; that leaders are willing and able to set a better example for those who might otherwise be inclined to join the parade of those convinced that the only way to “get ahead” is at the expense of others. And yet as the director of the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime noted with considerable alarm, too many of us have become “cynical” regarding both our responsibility and capacity to end corruption, to address an enemy “that shows little signs of retreating.”  Despite the contention of Latvia’s minister that his public at least seems be losing its “tolerance for corruption,” it still seems as though state and corporate entities are largely talking a better game than they play, thus setting a tone allowing too many of the rest of us to do likewise.

One of the things we might conveniently ignore in this context is the degree to which trust once betrayed is difficult to regain, in some instances more difficult than restoring a once-denuded Philippines mountainside. And this trust-busting incarnates a multitude of implications beyond government procurement and election results.  For instance, how do we as citizens and local communities get on board with healthy oceans, with greenhouse gas reductions, with rehabilitating eco-systems supporting healthier biodiversity if we can’t trust large state and corporate entities to do their part, to honor their promises, to use the resources at hand for public good rather than private interest?  How do we inspire sacrifices in communities when those who command the most money and power are reluctant to sacrifice anything of themselves, or even agree to play fair?

And what of the youth who, as one young contributor this week noted, must anxiously watch as their own futures are jeopardized by the corruption which drains public coffers of the funds that could be used – should be used – to clean up our environmental messes and put our economies on a more solid, greener footing.  Traditional means of fighting corruption, she maintained, are not sufficient to address levels of self-interested illegality which take up too much space in our current political and economic environment, indeed which are putting more and more young people in the unenviable position of needing to “sell their own integrity” to keep any glimmer of personal progress on track.

This week, Kenya’s president urged the UN community to “raise the bar” on integrity, recommending that states support more education for youth on “ethical values” in this effort.  But we must be sure, as the PGA noted, not to “kick this can down the road.”  Young people have much to contribute, especially at local level, to building trust and capacity for a more sustainable world.  But the rest of us need to set a better example, a more honest and transparent example, an example which communicates our resolve to identify and end all manifestations of corruption from our own lives, even to end the procrastination that rationalizes our putting off until tomorrow what we promised to address today.

The open and lifeless pits our mining interests leave behind are only one of the residual craters complements of our many self-interested and self-deceptive personalities. We have only a matter of years to demonstrate that we can rise to a higher standard, that we can return what has been stolen and then commit not to steal again, that we can repair some of what we’ve damaged and then commit not to damage further.  In this way, we might be able to convince other, younger persons that a fairer and more sustainable world is still within our grasp, and that the buying and selling of this world need not include the buying and selling of our souls.

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