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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