Archive | May, 2022

Sight Lines: Beholding the Other in policy and practice, Dr. Robert Zuber

22 May

Self and other is less of a dichotomy than a continuum. James Hamblin

I’m sorry it took me so long to see you, Alina. But I see you now.  Leigh Bardugo

Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day. Martin Heidegger

We reveal most about ourselves when we speak about others. Kamand Kojouri

We are the other of the other. Marco Aurelio

Our biases against the other are empowered less by our assumptions of their otherness and more by our assumptions about our own normality. Jamie Arpin-Ricci

They think they are sweet reasonableness, and it’s you that’s in the wrong, just by being, and not being like them, or looking like them, or wanting their kind of life. Margaret Laurence

One of the joys of life is to have friends who know you well enough suggest things for you to read that both confirm and stretch your deepest assumptions.  Such happened to me in Georgia a few days ago complements of Dr. Robert Thomas, a friend and Board member of Global Action.

The book he suggested  is entitled “The Other” from the prolific, Polish author Ryszard Kapuściński. Quoting philosophers familiar to me in other contexts, including Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Lévinas, Kapuściński urges us to embrace diversity and otherness as a “constituent feature” of the human condition.  Moreover, he accepts the view (as I do as well) that our contemporary predispositions to conquest, to master, to create both abstractions and dependencies are all contrary to some core human aspirations, specifically to see others clearly and compassionately and to be seen by others similarly; to practice a curiosity about the world and each other which is more than meeting, conversing and accepting but which also involves “taking responsibility” for the other, for his/her dignity and well-being as a contribution both to them but also to ourselves. 

Kapuściński warns that much in our current cultural configuration is focused on establishing dichotomies than in affirming the continuum on which all our humanity rests.  Despite our western access to education and technology, we are much too willing to embrace groupthink which can, as he reflects, turn the friendliest of humans into “devils.”  We have demonstrated, over the over, our preference for owning a neighbor’s farm rather than having neighbors.  We defer to anonymous stereotyping even when it is directly contradicted by our own experience.  We continue to assess our own “normalcy” too highly and the “normalcy” of others too dismissively.  We maintain “unfortunate balances” with the Other when a more mutually dignified balance lies well within reach. We have misplaced our “will to become acquainted” and thus undermined the genuine dialogue he posits as the “main goal of encounter.”

Ironically, I was devouring this short text as the UN, our primary and sometimes  frustrating cover, was in the midst of some important policy deliberations, one of which was the first formal review of the Global Compact on Migration adopted in Marrakesh four years ago.

Together with Economic and Social Council deliberations on “operational activities” for sustainable development and Security Council discussions on the relationship between conflict and food insecurity, this review of migration policy in the General Assembly was timely and for the most part hopeful as it alternately recognized and enabled the wide range of persons and professions with a valid stake in both the drivers of displacement and in the care and reintegration of migrants and other displaced persons.  Speaker after speaker reminded the audience of the many contributions that migrants can and do make to recipient communities, but also the many impediments – from racism and barbed wire to trafficking and the denial of vaccines and access to provisions – which mark so many treacherous migrant journeys.  Some of the civil society speakers highlighted the remaining gaps between the aspirations of the Global Compact and our current, collective practices.  As I understood it, this was less about scolding diplomats than about a reminder that the essentials of migrants’ lives, including the basic recognition of their dignity and humanity, remain painfully elusive.  The President of the General Assembly echoed this theme, lamenting the “lost dreams” of children and families which occur when we fail our responsibilities to the Compact, including the responsibility to see with eyes of humanity as much as of policy.

I was in Marrakesh for that GCM adoption though mostly hanging out on the margins with NGOs whose first-hand testimony of migrant’s needs was mostly deemed marginal itself.  However, as it turns out, I was able to spend some good time speaking with a few of the people who were in the city for another reason — to escape some harsh conditions, many of which were conflict related, far to the south across the Atlas Mountains and a vast swath of desert and savannah beyond.  To my surprise, a number of those displaced persons had made their way from the Anglophone region of Cameroon beset by open, ethnic-based conflict over several years. I had previously traveled widely in that region, and it was quite an experience to be able to share stories of life in towns from which they had come and to which I had on more of one occasion made my visits.

I did nothing tangible for these people, of course, nothing at all except to confirm that they came from somewhere; that they had homes and families “back there;” that they missed much about a culture and an ecology far different than the one to which they had temporarily transitioned.  They had come to believe that a future in Europe would offer more stability and opportunity for themselves and their families, and yet the borders of Europe were far from reach.  Indeed, as it was explained to me, the chances of them reaching Europe were more remote than the chances that the local police would apprehend them and drop them on the other side of the Atlas Mountains, leaving them essentially to recalibrate plans and otherwise fend for themselves in the desert heat, surely another blow to both their residual resilience and their confidence in the compassion of others.  

There are so many occasions and interactions in our work which cause us (or should) to question ourselves, our commitment to the well-being of the vulnerable and, even more directly, our connections to those we purport to serve.  Those of us who occupy policy spaces can, if we are not really careful, get away with opinions about ourselves which appear more noble (or as we say at the UN “distinguished) than would likely be confirmed by outsiders.  Indeed, one of the changes we have witnessed at the UN over the years is the presence of more voices from the field – albeit often for short interventions – voices expressly less interested in the “excellence” of our policy community and more concerned with commitments deferred, promises broken, even a failure to see deeply enough to realize that we in the policy community can occasionally enable change but should surely be more careful about directing it. 

This “seeing” which in our case is often more attuned to bureaucratic processes relevant to the Other than to the task of overcoming our reserve, restraint and even mistrust of the Other; such “seeing” must be transformed through what Kapuściński called “the will to become acquainted.”   Simply put, we must not allow the “mass” of media voices or economic ambitions to sideline or even overcome the personal.   If we learned anything during this GCM review week it is that dignity is as important to the Other as provisions.  It is mostly when migrants are invisible to the rest of us, even at times to erstwhile caregivers, that the pain of displacement is felt most acutely.  It needn’t take so long, be so difficult, to see each other in a different, more attentive, more comprehensive way.

For Kapuściński, for us as well, policy which does not promote the dignity of other cultures and languages, which does not intend to exchange barbed wire for welcome signs, which does not encourage lines of sight which are clear and compassionate, is ultimately “a road to nowhere.”  He believes that a rising tide of displacement and our treatment of persons on the move will, indeed, determine the kind of world we are likely to live in going forward. With threats from violence, climate change and the loss of biodiversity and agricultural land; with racist rhetoric, women’s rights rollbacks and violent extremism all on the increase; the challenges associated with overcoming what has become a contemporary cocktail of bias and indifference – in our world and in ourselves — are formidable. 

We need good policy to help mitigate the many disincentives in our world which keep our hearts harder than they need to be and makes mere eye-contact with the Other a largely forsaken act. But more than policy, we need to prepare ourselves at individual and community level for what may turn out to be the greatest of all our contemporary human tests, the recovery of our long-compromised, long-trammeled ability to see each other with clarity, compassion and care.

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Reviving Respect for Nurses and their Caregiving Colleagues, Sarah Sicari

15 May

Editor’s Note: Psychiatric Nurse Sarah Sicari was a former intern in our joint office and was a keen observer of both UN policy and of who and how respect is conveyed for contributions and sacrifices made for others. In this short piece, she calls attention to an important truth about the women and men who continue to serve on the frontlines of medical care, including caring for many thousands still getting COVID-19, still dying alone, in some cases still angry that a disease they might have once dismissed is now calling for their lives. We aren’t banging pots and pans any longer, but the nurses who attend to our fragile health and crumbling sanity still deserve our highest respect. The pandemic may be “over” for some of us, but not for nurses. Their skills and energies are as essential as ever and, in too many instances, continue to be stretched to their breaking point.

This past week was nurse’s week, and there has barely been a whimper of acknowledgement, especially considering the trauma we have faced during the pandemic. Nurses are interesting characters to be sure. I personally have felt a love-hate relationship with the profession since I started, and I started officially on March 2020 as a new graduate nurse. We are either ignored or hailed as angels who are subservient to everyone including our patients; or sometimes we are even seen as fascists who like to have control over our patients (check out any out-of-touch youtuber these days and their opinions on nurses). The thing with nursing is, it is a mixed bag. We are humans who have all experienced immense trauma with COVID 19. It is still hard to say to this day what it was like in March of 2020 and then the following winter wave and then delta and then omicron. It felt like punch after punch after punch with no relief in sight. One article I came across mentioned a nurse who left during the middle of his shift and never came back and was never seen again- perhaps he committed suicide. No one wants to talk about our trauma, and I often wonder why that is? Is it because we are your moms, your sisters, your neighbors, your brothers and fathers? Is it because no one really care what nurses have to say or what we have been through?

During the first wave of COVID the only person who stood with your dying family member was the nurse. Doctors would come in but then were able to quickly leave the room, barking orders at nurses who inevitably stayed at the patient’s bedside for nearly 12 hours straight. As I reflect on nurse’s week, I believe that what I would like to hear and my fellow oddball nurses, would be one of appreciation on a universal and grander scale, from the president to my neighbors. The best way to show appreciation is for all nurse’s student loans to be cancelled. Some of us may have questionable views but that is not all nurses and despite the difference from person and person and the politics, nurses went through an immense trauma that only other nurses can fully appreciate and understand. I stand by my colleagues, and I hope that during this nurse’s week others will stand by them along with me.

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Small Fry: States and Stakeholders on the Front Lines to Save Multilateralism, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 May

You hide to protect yourself.  Charlotte Eriksson

She hadn’t chosen the brave life. She’d chosen the small, fearful one.  Ann Brashares

It started small, as such fates often do. Nancy Springer,

With a great passion, you can do so much with your little talent.  Utibe Samuel Mbom

Welcome to our tribe of misfits and outcasts and rebels and dreamers. We are the story-weavers. And we’re all on this ride through the galaxy together.  L.R. Knost

At an earlier point in the lifecycle of Global Action, we were described by a former UN official who shall remain unnamed as “small but mighty.”  The small part has persevered through staff and office changes and a pandemic that forced us to rethink all that we had been doing.   As we resume some vestige of our place of scrutiny inside the UN, on social media, and as an honest broker between communities of policy and practice, the term “mighty” no longer applies, if it ever did.  Our concern now is to do as much as we are able with our “little talent,” our modest capacity and almost non-existent budget.   We weren’t prepared for the changes and choices that the pandemic would prompt.  We weren’t prepared either for that time when the doors of multilateralism would reopen, confronting diplomats and even groups like ours with challenges and outright crises with existential implications for the UN if not for the entire human race.  No longer mighty in any real or imagined sense of that term, there is still work for us to do, a role to play, a fate to help transform for many beyond our modest blog and twitter audiences.

As you surely recognize, the global community at present is absorbed by a needless war waged by a permanent member of the Security Council against a neighbor previously part of its larger “Union.”  While there are places on earth which suffer even more from armed violence and attendant deprivation, the aggression against Ukraine has hit a raw nerve.  Without digression into the specifics of that impact, it is clear that this conflict has implications beyond Ukraine’s borders, including food insecurity for states within and beyond Africa dependent on Ukrainian wheat, national budgets already strained from a global pandemic dipping frantically into the global weapons market, and states close to the conflict zone scrambling to find reassuring security ties which may or may not ultimately reassure.

In addition to the norm-busting atrocity crimes associated with the Ukraine aggression, it is the UN system itself which seems to be teetering on the brink of yet another stern blow to its credibility.   Despite all of the activity around UN Headquarters (especially in the General Assembly) since the first inklings of invasion – from ocean health and international justice to peacebuilding financing and the strengthening of global prohibitions on torture, slavery and violations against children — there have been few moments devoid of an  undercurrent of dread about the future of an organization (especially given its Security Council) which can muster up brave and competent humanitarian response to conflicts which it, time and again, can neither prevent nor resolve in a timely manner. One or more of the larger powers, once more and with unprecedented bravado, has demonstrated that the rules only apply, if they apply at all, to the smaller states, the ones that can be pushed around, the ones who must “hold their noses” in diplomatic terms due to their security and economic ties with the larger states, ties which UN diplomats are rarely authorized to threaten. 

I’m sure this is true for others as well, but in my own case the volume of “suggestions” from friends and colleagues that this might be the time to get out of the UN rather than double down on at least a couple of core UN-related commitments has grown dramatically.   After all, if small states can be maneuvered into relative submission by the security interests of the major global powers, how much easier is it to push our little NGO into a corner where we are free to fight imaginary windmills of global policy without the slightest chance of altering their movements?

For over 20 years through some very lean and uncertain times, we and others  have never accepted banishment to that corner, have never accepted the notion that our size automatically guarantees policy impotence.   And to its credit, the UN system and many of its smaller member states are pushing back as well, are both insisting and demonstrating that a system which guarantees sovereign equality at its core does not have to fold in the face of this latest (and in some ways most severe) challenge to UN Charter values by one of the states once accorded a special responsibility to uphold those values.

You can see evidence of this small state trend all over the UN system.  Barbados through its extraordinary Prime Minister Mia Mottley has helped keep the UN focus on the particular economic and ecological vulnerabilities of small island states.  Liechtenstein has been a consistent force on international justice and recently shepherded a resolution through the General Assembly triggering a GA meeting every time a permanent Security Council member issues a veto in that chamber.   Costa Rica has been a consistent supporter and enabler on issues from gender justice to disarmament. Kenya has been a strong and principled voice in a UN Security Council desperate for its policy clarity.  Fiji and other Pacific states have sounded the alarm on ocean health including existential threats from warming seas and declining fish stocks.  And the current President of the General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid from the Maldives, has taken care to ensure that the GA is involved in all relevant issues — from development finance to pandemic vaccine access and Security Council reform; and that that the voices of a wide range of small states – beyond regional statements and those by groups such as the Non-aligned Movement and The Group of 77 and China – are encouraged, heard and respected.

And the GA president is not isolated in this effort.  Last week, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Singapore convened an event entitled “Small States, Multilateralism and International Law” which highlighted reasons and resources relevant to why multilateralism and international law mean so much to small states and what such states can do to preserve a flawed but indispensable system from the too-frequent ravages of larger states and their leadership.   As Chair of the  Forum of Small States (FOSS), the MFA underscored a range of ways that small states can positively impact multilateral forums, including their insistence on both promise keeping and in promoting stability in matters of economy, ecology and economy upon which such promises can indeed be met.

During this session, some wise and passionate contributions emerged from small states across the globe, including from Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs who urged all to “push back against isolationism and unilateralism” and to reaffirm International law as our “guard-rail.” Denmark affirmed the role of small states as “true guardians” of the international order and a corrective to a still impactful “might makes right” mentality.   Even China took the floor both to acknowledge that “large states are not particularly popular at present,” and to insist that all must push harder to eliminate the “unfairness and injustice” in the international system. 

But it was the GA president Shahid who provided the main takeaways, for me at least, reminding the audience of his role in upholding the legitimacy of the Assembly in part through assurances that the voices of small and large members in the Hall over which he presides “have the same status,” while insisting that “states can be both small and significant,” empowered and empowering.  Indeed it may turn out that unlocking the full bravery and wisdom of small states will be key to preserving the credibility of a UN which continues to groan under the weight of threats from large states using UN mechanisms in part as a backhanded way to achieve national interests, including those at firm and resolute odds with the values and priorities embedded in the UN Charter.

We know from our own work that the world is filled with “story weavers,” rebels and dreamers who wonder aloud if the structures of global governance we have inherited and done too little to change can be trusted with the immense crises chipping away at our fields and shores, our courts and communities.  Theirs are the stories which we patronize routinely and heed infrequently.  Theirs are the stories emanating from obscure communities and small states, those places which have more to offer to help us restore legitimacy to the institutions which we know we need and which are being undermined, day after day, by one or more of their erstwhile state guarantors. 

We also know from our own experience how easy it is to hide from the responsibility which is ours to discharge, how easy it is to choose the “small and fearful,” thereby burying rather than sharing our assets. We know as well that small is not always beautiful, nor is it always effective.  But in a world dominated by billionaires, predatory economics and weapons merchants – in some instances the very same people – it is the small and determined, the attentive and passionate, who can create conditions for a reset of a global system now teetering in too many instances on the brink of its own invalidity.

During the “Small States” event, several states concluded their remarks with a Star Wars spinoff:  “May the FOSS be with you.”   Indeed, may the FOSS be with all of us, states and peoples willing to share and risk to preserve the full promise of multilateralism from those who seem determined to destroy it.

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