Agricultural Reform in our Distant Past
Enlighten yourself and then enlighten the world. Rashid Jorvee
We can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living. Wendell Berry
Reforming ignorantly, will consequence crisis and destruction. Kamaran Ihsan Salih
I’m not good,” he said, piercing me with eyes that absorbed all light but reflected none, “but I was worse.” Becca Fitzpatrick
Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform. Derrick Bell
The best reform is to repent. Lailah Gifty Akita
It is very easy to point, but very difficult to refine and reform. Sarvesh Murthi
We’re nearing the end of these weekly posts and there are so many people to thank, those who (often unknowingly) contributed quotations and images, those whose comments helped us to become something perhaps a bit more than one shrill voice amidst a cacophony of statements and other noises from both diplomats and NGO. We are grateful to all of you, we will write many of you to say so individually over these winter months, and we will be sure to avoid any assumptions of value going forward without checking with you first.
Indeed, many questions loom at this moment, not only what is next for us but more importantly what is next for the institution we have tried our level best to discern over a generation. What is next for a policy center which is itself not particularly adept at discernment, which does not easily own up to its failures, which asks the questions which makes consensus possible but not the harder questions of unintended impact? What do we say about an institution that is constantly calling attention to itself, touting the multilateralism with the UN positioned at the center, promising global constituencies solutions to global problems that remain elusive at best while rebuffing suggestions that the UN was meant to do anything more, could ever anything more than “save us from hell?” What next for a system that has managed to fold unto itself virtually every issue of global importance, but also one that is constantly being forced to cater to the states which fund its programs, the results of which are an endless stream of “what we are doing” and a trickle of “what isn’t working,” with sometimes uncomfortable consequences for both human dignity and planetary healing? What is next for an institution that, at its core, tends to be a bit more smug than enlightened, that maintains the dubious assumption that changes in institutions are both possible and sustainable without simultaneous changes in those who manage those institutions?
To be fair, the UN has engaged in serious reform processes in most all of its Charter bodies. The Economic and Social Council represents a much more formidable setting for discussions on sustainable development –especially on finance – than was the case a decade ago. Pushed hard by small island and other developing states, and in response to the habitual gridlock on peace and security within the Security Council, the General Assembly has taken up the task of “revitalization” in earnest, a task which involves both strengthening the office of the GA president and clearing away the debris of endless resolutions tabled but not implemented, resolutions which maintain a GA “stake” in the large issues of the day but also help guarantee that such stakes will remain stuck in infertile ground until it is time to dust them off and peel away the accumulated rust in one year’s time.
The General Assembly has also been engaged – for what at times seems like an eternity – in prospects for reform of the Security Council, a body defined by its “provisional rules of procedure,” its endless and oft-repetitive speechmaking, the “bully ball” routinely played by the largest three of its five permanent members, and its inabiliy or unwillingness to ensure compliance with its resolutions (with the possible exception of peacekeeping mandates) despite both the coercive tools at its disposal and the erstwhile “binding” nature of such resolutions. Indeed, interest by the General Assembly in exploring its own peace and security bona fides, including in Syria and through the Peacebuilding Commission, is due in part to frustrations about Council inaction and in part due to longstanding concerns that the Council has long since failed to accurately represent the will or security interests of the general UN membership.
And yet, some of those member states go to sometimes extraordinary lengths to campaign for a seat on that very same Council, in some instances because they believe that, together with other elected members, they can force change in a chamber which gives up its privileges with great reluctance; while others seem excited by the expectation of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with global heavyweights and perhaps just as eager for the prestige (and even deference) that comes along with the heavy burdens associated with that two-year tenure.
Where the Council is concerned, much of the reform energy, especially emanating from the Council itself, is focused on working methods – including the system of resolution “pen holders” and levels of consultation required (especially with African states) prior to the crafting of peacekeeping mandates or the application of coercive measures such as sanctions and arms embargoes. And as pushed by a bevy of increasingly bold elected members (now including Kenya, Ireland, Niger and Mexico), the unfolded and sometimes even unwashed “laundry” of the Council is increasingly aired. Such an airing has been duly noted in the General Assembly where Council reform energies largely take the form of membership expansion, veto restrictions for the permanent members and a more regular (and respectful) engagement with the General Assembly and other Charter bodies.
We have long welcomed such efforts as our own view has been (and remains) that the elected Council membership is where the drive for more equitable relations within the Council and more impactful (even enlightened) relations beyond chambers is most likely to emerge. As conflict settings loom – having failed the prevention test and now dragging on year after year (and in the case of Palestine, generation after generation) it has become undeniably clear how the world has changed – in demographics and in global threats — certainly more than the Council’s permanent heavyweights have allowed the chamber they still largely control to change in response.
But it has also long been (and remains) our view that reform must be more than about tinkering with working methods, more than about clearing away the debris of endlessly tabled resolutions, backroom arm twisting and tepid commitments to consultation. Yes, UN bodies are improving accountability to constituents in some aspects. Yes, it has certainly been worse in terms of the hegemonic dispositions of the major powers. Yes it has done legendary work in keeping alive millions impacted by the conflicts we have failed to prevent or resolve. Yes, it has found space for virtually every area of global concern within its conference rooms, even if a number of those concerns – including technology, weapons production and climate change – are evolving much faster than our policies can address or at times even grasp.
We will have more to say about this in the months to come. But for now, a note of caution to those who make policy in the absence of discernment, or who remain unwilling to ask the question of even our most cherished policies, “What can go wrong here?” As hard as many diplomats and NGOs work in and around UN spaces, it might be too much to ask for those same stakeholders to invest a bit more in our own collective enlightenment, our own discernment, our own empathy. But we must. We all must.
Despite the disappointment that the UN, for all its access to expertise and accumulated wisdom, has failed to become a genuine learning community; despite the disappointment as well that we continue to run from our values and psychological resources as though fleeing a crowded room of unmasked, unvaccinated partygoers; it is still the depth of our character, our sustained empathy for the people looking to us for hope, which is key to pushing through our current bureaucratic limitations. Such are the barriers that stifle reflection and repentance, the ones that drown some of our best intentions under waves of protocol and status, the ones that funding and consensus alone cannot resolve, especially so when pledges of organizational or humanitarian support remain unmet and consensus sometimes means something even less than “agreeing to disagree.”
In this often august and intermittently smug and self-important community, the reform we need now goes beyond tinkering with working methods and levels of representation. What is needed is changes in how we choose to live, what we care about both in theory and in practice, the examples we set for others, the promises we insist on keeping no matter how inconvenient with regard to energies or financial resources. A women’s rights advocate speaking in the Security Council debate on Afghanistan this week began by confessing how “exhausted” she and other Afghans are by war and conflict. We must find the means to engage that exhaustion and other feelings lying largely beyond our own privileged experiences if she and many others are finally to find some place of dependable rest.
This is the truth of the reform we, collectively speaking, might continue to dodge or ignore, but make no mistake: we do so at the peril of our multilateral institutions and of our planet as a whole. Despite the failures of Glasgow and on Ethiopia violence, despite a more narrow, pandemic-influenced, state-centrism governing UN conference rooms, it remains true that our success as an institution requires that the people of this planet, the farmers and teachers, the journalists and caregivers, believe in us, believe that our rhetorical and negotiating skills represent tangible hope for their own communities, even believe that we are willing to change our ways, especially our most privileged and unenlighted ways, embracing what Mexico referred to this week as “dimensions of service” in that noble task of making life better for others.
If we cannot make these changes, if we are unwilling to make them, I worry for the future of an institution we still largely revere, but which has also sapped (at least for a season) all of our freely-given, if modest, organizational energies and resources.
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