Archive | September, 2025

10,000 Steps: The Security Council searches out a health regimen, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Sep

Are we being good ancestors?  Jonas Salk

The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.  Ray Bradbury

Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. Shannon Alder

It’s the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones: The history of how you felt. Simon Van Booy

The songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children. Philip Carr-Gomm

This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance. Victor Hugo

The marks humans leave are too often scars. John Green

The planting of a tree is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble. George Orwell

They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit. Abraham Verghese

What you create today might not go viral. It might not even be noticed. But years from now, it may be the seed someone else needed to survive. Lawrence Nault

Lead in a way worth remembering. Farshad Asl

The real currency of life isn’t money—it’s meaning. And meaning compounds.  Narendra Tomar

On Thursday, the Security Council under the presidency of the Republic of Korea, held its 10,000th meeting in the Council chamber. The theme for this meeting was the situation in the Occupied Territories, a fitting item given how long it has been on the Council agenda, and how little sustainable policy success it has enjoyed over that history.

This 10,000th event itself was highlighted by several delegations including elected members Korea, Guyana and Pakistan, part of the contingent of 10 elected members frustrated by a US veto of a resolution it deemed “slanderous” on the situation in Gaza backed by all E10 members and 4 of the 5 permanent members.  Such frustration emanating from the E10 continues to build as resolutions from the Council are blocked by veto, unimplemented due to a lack of political will, or watered down by policy disagreement to such a degree that their implementation potency remains in serious doubt. 

As one of a handful of groups which have prioritized Council monitoring, we have watched these sessions for over a generation, muffling our share of gasps as the Council failed again and again to embrace,  what Denmark called this week the “decency to act,” or when the Council acts in a manner already compromised and virtually certain to inadequately addressing global threats with the determination and foresight required.

The Council Chamber, of course, is not always given to policy inadequacy, nor is it the only forum in which Council activity occurs. Even the best resolutions require careful and often protracted coordination from penholders and other diplomats assigned to the Council.  Moreover, the Council has mandated subsidiary organs – including sanctions regimes and more thematic considerations such as Children and Armed Conflict – which rightly consume Council attention though largely via the efforts of elected members.

But the Chamber remains the place where peace and security crises and potential resolutions have some transparency, and what is shown to the world which still bothers to care is not always hopeful.  Such was in good measure the case on Thursday as the will of a single permanent member defiantly nullified the desire of Council colleagues for a cease fire, humanitarian access and hostage release for Gaza.  But it was also a rare moment of emotional transparency for many Council members used to more often than not showing off their policy chops mostly by repeating, sometimes word for word, the briefings carefully provided by SRSGs and other Secretariat officials. 

This time there was no briefing to copy, nothing to help convince colleagues and viewers that they know what they were talking about.  But they all knew – about the carnage that they failed to either prevent or end, about the numerous violations of international law which continue with impunity, about the sullied reputation of a Council which cannot or will not uphold its core Charter principles, a Council that will not do what is needed to preserve its own reputation but, much more important, to bring an end to the traumas inflicted on children from Gaza to Sudan, children multiply displaced and deliberately starved, children who may survive the immediate carnage but who will bear scars for life and who will surely will be future candidates for resistance to a world which now abandons them in multiple ways.

Amidst all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Council, the endless honoring of diplomats and governments, the predictable reading of statements often written by officials not actually present in the Chamber, it is the lack of growth and maturity that is so puzzling, so frustrating, so indicative in these dark times of a failure to heed a “heal thyself” dictum.  As much as we acknowledge the potential still present in Council spaces and the efforts of diplomats, we must also share the concern of a body increasingly in its own way and, more to the point too often in the way of positive change for constituents as well.  Whether we like to admit it or not, when a resolution is passed there are perhaps millions of global constituents who want to believe – need to believe – that something materially is about to change for the better in their circumstances, their communities.  When this does not follow, it is not clear that any amount of calling attention to vetoes and other “constraints” highlighted by Pakistan and others on Thursday will appease these constituents.  How could it possibly?

Most delegations including Pakistan clearly understand this.  Indeed, among the moving statements on Thursday, Algeria seemed to capture the moment best (and arouse the ire of Israel most directly).  The Ambassador didn’t pretend to have answers that the Council given its current limitations would be willing to accept.  Instead, in an all-too-rare moment, he simply asked for forgiveness, forgiveness for not being able to defend Gazan doctors, journalists, aid workers, entire extended families. Forgiveness for the famine which spreads as we write and which the Council has done little to stop.

As moving as this was for us and surely for some others, we must remind ourselves that forgiveness is part of a two-step process, the latter of which is amendment of life — that determination to pay attention to patterns of inadequacy and dysfunction followed by the resolve to break those patterns.  At this moment  it is unclear whether this Council can overcome its current constraints or whether the Ambassadors gathered around the oval would even be authorized to jettison the limitations which undermine both the Council’s legacy and a meaningful chance at a peaceful and prosperous life for the children of the world.

There are ongoing, some would say “endless” efforts within the UN to “reform” the Council mostly focused on the veto and the Council member “makeup,” searching over and over for consensus on how to make the Council more representative of the modern world. But this protracted process runs the danger of largely reinforcing the Council’s current culture, configurations and state interests. The “culture” of the Council, the culture which must be healed so that is can better effect the healing of others, remains largely off the radar. Perhaps this concern would be considered an “insult” to states. However, to fail to heal the culture of this divided and acrimonious Council could well be seen — and we would wish to do so — as an insult to global constituents bearing burdens which none should bear alone.

There is a belief among some medical authorities that walking 10,000 steps is key to preserving and restoring human health.  It is unclear at this moment that 10,000 meetings have resulted in a healthier Council, one which is committed to “carving its name on hearts and not tombstones,” one which understands the abiding need to touch the lives of people with pressing needs which transcend national interests, one which grants honor and attention to others which it seems endlessly to demand for itself, one which incarnates the understanding that we are merely caretakers in the transition from what we inherited to what we bequeath to others.

The Council, needless to say, is not required to listen to me or any other NGO voice, and it is not clear that it is equipped to do much more than patronize those who do speak out, even if requested by the Council to do so. But I’m pretty confident about at least one thing; if the Council fails to grow into its responsibilities, to fix what needs to be fixed and heal what needs to be healed, it will have lost for good the attention and trust of states and constituents long before its next 10,000 meeting milestone.

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Workday, Every Day: A Labor Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

1 Sep

Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us. Maya Angelou

All happiness depends on courage and work.  Honoré de Balzac

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.  Leo Tolstoy

Work without love is slavery. Mother Teresa

The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity. George Carlin

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.  Alan Turing

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. Frederick Douglass

I’ve written on many Labor Days about our growing labor pains, the consolidation of economic power and the alienation of too many people from labor itself but also from the laborers who, in some real sense, both define and sustain their lives.

In reviewing quotations for this piece, I found many more sentimental than relevant – quotes rightly extolling the dignity of work while attempting to convince the reader to find and pursue passions, or locate better work-life balances, whatever that might mean. A bit of that sentiment is reflected in this post.

I have no particular axe to grind regarding these aforementioned bits of labor advice, except to remind ourselves of a few things – that we often don’t honor labor or even seek to understand the connections between those who sweat and grind out a living and the lifestyles those people make possible.  Nor are we entirely mindful of the degree to which “following passions” is literally not on the radar of so many of our fellow citizens, domestically and globally.  Many people simply need jobs.  They have mouths to feed.  And the jobs they find are too often conveyor belts to uncertainty and on-the-edge living.  Passion is an indulgence, important for those who are privileged enough to pursue it let alone attain it, but it is also a pursuit which does not always lend itself to more general solidarity with those who preserve the social and physical infrastructure which makes our individual pursuits possible.

And then there is this matter of balance.  We are all familiar with the “live to work, work to live” dichotomy, but perhaps are less conscious of the social and economic requirements of whatever balance is to be achieved.

One key ingredient would seem to be time.  Time to do something special with your family.  Time to give your aching back some relief.  Time to cultivate a hobby that doesn’t involve television or twitter.  Time to plant a tree, or paint a fence, or share a bit of neighborliness.  Time to be what most people’s jobs do not allow them to be, a human in a broader and more satisfying sense, with time to look around and behold all the things people have missed while they’re serving up Happy Meals or cleaning out other people’s gutters.

I am overly blessed with the wherewithal and even more the time to “cease my work and look around me.”  I am sitting in a Manhattan apartment (such as it is), eating an apple, drinking my sorry excuse for coffee, and contemplating labor-related issues on a federal holiday.  But my privilege is shared by relatively few others.  Today, the shopping malls and most local stores are open.  Police and First Responders are on call.  Public transportation is operating and will shortly gear up even more as fortunate folks return to their homes from mountains and beaches. Teachers are frantically finalizing lesson plans as school is set to resume tomorrow, if it hasn’t already.  Immigrants remain on the harvest while dodging the masked bounty hunters seeking to further decimate agricultural workers and their families.   

Labor Day weekend is a chance for some to “withdraw from the cares of the world.”  For others, it’s merely another day of living on the edge.

Our US president, on whom skeptical eyes are and will remain locked, sent out a Labor Day message which says so much – about him of course, but also about our diminishing responsibilities to each other’s well-being.  “Too many non-working holidays in America,” he rants. “Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to make America great again.”

What “must change” in my humble view is our relationship to labor and to those who perform the tasks that the rest of us cannot – and apparently don’t wish to – live without.  How can we ignore that people need a livable return from their labor which would allow their families at least a modicum of economic security.  People need dependable, accessible health care.  People need protection from ICE and other government entities which have swapped out “the worst of the worst” with indiscriminate and cruel quotas.  On this Labor Day, too many workers have none of this. Yet again.  

All people need a break in their routine, a break to take their children on an outing, restore their eyes and muscles, throw a fishing line into a lake, fix their leaky faucet, see a doctor.  In this country and others, there is so much work to be done if we are to spread prosperity and honor our creeds.  There is so much work to be done if we are to take care of our soldiers, farmers and teachers, or care for those elderly and disabled cast aside by self-satisfied, compromised politicians.  Especially now.  Especially in these conditions.

But people also need more unencumbered time and likely more respect as well. The problem here is not our number of holidays of which, if anything, we probably have too few.  The problem is more that we have willfully segregated ourselves and especially our consumption patterns from many of the people whose labor makes those patterns possible, people particularly in need of healing and rest with their loved ones but for whom Labor Day is just another day. 

This is a problem which it is within our competence to fix and today would be an appropriate time to head in that direction.

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