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Chain Gang:  Tightening the Screws on our Global Labor Force, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 Sep

The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn’t do the work they do for free. Naomi Wolf

What you’ve got is a huge number of idle hands, a vast amount of work that ought to be done, and an economic system that is incapable of putting those two things together.  Noam Chomsky

Labor history was pornography of a sort in those days, and even more so in these days. In public schools and in the homes of nice people it was and remains pretty much taboo to tell tales of labor’s sufferings. Kurt Vonnegut

When capital has more freedom than people, serious democratic deficits are guaranteed.  Patrick Iber

This is Labor Day weekend in the US, a time when we “celebrate” workers by giving those who punch a clock for a living or provide “services” within our dangerously unbalanced economy a few hours of relief from their relative monotony and powerlessness.  For the UN community in New York, this might be another occasion to contemplate the many challenges that affect global labor, including new threats to remittances, the “unwelcome mats” laid out for more and more economic migrants, the physical and emotional abuses faced by domestic workers, and the employment crunch that could gravely impact this current, largest-ever generation of young people.

We have only begun to wake up to these and related challenges. Indeed, we are living through a time of vast and logistically-complex consumer options coupled with limited consumer regard for the sometimes cruel and unjust origins of the products we use, the toll inflicted on so many of the people who have little options other than to fuel our lifestyles.  Too many of us in the “developed” world have sanctified the relationship between our wallets and the objects of our desire.  Too many of us have given in to the notion that we are consumers first and foremost;  and we un-apologetically employ the tools of our privilege, including elite connections and educational institutions, to enhance our “competitive advantage” in the marketplace — thereby ensuring that the growing inequalities that marginalize many millions of working people worldwide won’t take a bite out of our own pre- and post-retirement options.

Like many others of my advancing age, I grew up in a family where people made a living by performing tasks such as climbing telephone poles and selling ball bearings once their military service had concluded. Our neighbors didn’t necessarily want to do those jobs themselves, but they wanted their phone lines to survive wind storms and they wanted the products they used around their homes to be functionally effective and dependable.   And, for better or worse, they knew at a personal level many of the people who were making those contributions.  They knew more than we generally know now about the skills and values of their neighbors, the ones they liked and the ones they didn’t.  Folks knew who to call when the milk deliveries were late or the sink was clogged.  There might have been a minimum of consumer “bling” in those times, but economic activity maintained a decidedly human face.

One of the reasons why the labor of my more immediate forebears maintained dimensions of dignity is the scale at which such labor was offered.   As most politics is local, to cite the cliché, most economics was “municipal.”   Even as large (and sometimes exploitative) corporate entities were consolidating and streamlining their authority, people could still work out their “service” problems and interests face to face.   Moreover, people could still bargain to maintain and even enhance their collective interests.  Most folks who I grew up with still found their corporate employers dependable and fair enough, partners more than “masters.” This was due in part to the ability of government at that time to facilitate discussions that often resulted in reasonable levels of both corporate profit and labor loyalty.  Such loyalty might not result in affluence, but it generally guaranteed that children could be clothed, fed and educated and maybe, just maybe, able to find a different destiny.  It wasn’t always pleasant, of course, but neither was it the relentless dead-end that characterizes so many of our modern employment options at many points on the production and consumption chain.

The municipal model had its limitations, many of which became apparent as people embraced consumerist identities that privileged standardization and predictability of the consumer experience.   Such “expectations” went hand in hand with an increasing number of top-down corporate regulations that communicated to workers that their only job is to enact company policy, not enrich or critique it.   And while enacting policy about which the “experiences” of workers were of less and less practical relevance, the stability and organizing power of labor was completely undercut. There was little protection to be found at local level once this assault was fully under way.

Indeed, as capital flees its corporate homelands in greater and greater amounts for new and often unregulated adventures, the ability of governments of all sizes to regulate flows and impacts, even in the largest economies, has long been compromised.  And in an age when corporate money fuels so much political opportunity, there seems to be less and less state interest – all rhetoric to the contrary  — in controlling and then balancing fiscal excesses.

And so we have this Labor Day which, in the US at least, takes on the character of a Columbus Day or even Memorial Day – ceremonies that few attend, reflection in short supply, a time that some can use to their advantage – for errands or leisure – largely on the backs of workers for whom even this holiday is often denied to them.  We who do so little for ourselves that doesn’t involve credit cards or phone apps, we are free to dismiss and ignore the many people who must work on this day so that we have to “endure” only a minimum of material inconvenience.  In cities like New York, as in much of the rest of the world, every day now is a day for labor, even if some of us have found a way to exempt ourselves from those demands.

This is no rant in support of “socialism,” a term that has lost its flavor as it has been reduced to one piece of a largely vapid argument about whether corporate board rooms or government agencies are most likely to operate in our collective best interest. Nor is this an advocacy piece for a return to a municipal economic framework that is unmindful of some of its own limitations, especially its oft-tepid embrace of cultural, religious or gendered diversity.   Moreover, given how distracted and even obsessed most of us are by our personal technology and enveloping video streams, it isn’t clear any longer that we are paying that much more attention to each other in smaller communities than in mega-cities.

But what is clear is that the burdens of our recent economic inheritance are rendering more and more of us ill-equipped either to care for the  material needs of our families or to participate in the large issues and decisions that affect family futures – the climate sickness that isn’t responding to our prescriptions; the out-of-control weapons production seemingly focused on the next school or hospital to bomb; the employment “opportunities” offered to most of this largest-generation-in-history that ask too little of our minds and souls, and pay even less; the rank competitiveness of the “educated classes” that seem to think that they have enough “earned” privilege to weather a gathering storm to which they mostly give furtive but uncommitted glances.

We have said this on many occasions and will say it on many more: that the growing inequalities which characterize New York and other centers of insufficiently restrained capital mobility are fueling anger and frustration, political cynicism and an increasing susceptibility to suspicion even of those in the next apartment or work cubicle.  As owners continue to own more, our reaction is more fealty than fight, hoping to grab enough of the crumbs dropping from the table that we can keep our own automobiles serviced and our cable bills paid – and that if we are fortunate enough to have such.

Here is news that shouldn’t be news at all: Even if we find the money and work out the data needed for our sustainable development (SDG) commitments, we will not fulfill our promises without the skills, participation and encouragement of many millions of people at local level.  Thus, we must find ways to involve more of the people whose hands are temporarily “idle” but also those who now tend our farms and green spaces, educate our children, provide our municipal services, drive our trucks and vans, and maintain our roads and bridges.  These are the workers – once at least locally respected and now just mostly taken for granted – who make the lives of the rest of us possible. If the SDGs are to succeed, we must focus more than normal of our practical and policy attention on those who haul away our trash, bag our groceries or make our daily cappuccinos.

Through the UN and especially the International Labor Organization, we have made some progress on labor-related issues such as the ethics of supply chains; on codifying and ensuring the rights of economic migrants; on identifying and addressing child labor, forced labor and other “chain gang”-like abuses; and on eliminating gender imbalances in pay and appointments.   But we have miles yet to travel, and the road seems to get rockier at every turn.

On this Labor Day weekend, let us please take at least a few moments to reflect on our unmet personal and policy responsibilities to the workers on whom we depend and whose plight in our overly scripted, technologically-dense, top-heavy economies is becoming more and more perilous.

Only the Lonely:  A Call to Revitalize Tactics and Connections, Dr. Robert Zuber

26 Aug

(With gratitude once again to Goodreads which, week in and week out, provides me with both content and helpful leads to insightful quotations from thoughtful people.)

Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager.  Susan Sontag

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.  Brene Brown

Whatever is rejected from the self appears in the world as an event. C. G. Jung

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep. William James

This was another relatively slow week at the UN, punctuate by a Security Council review of counter-terror collaborations, a Working Group of the General Assembly devoted to preparations for the 2nd Global Ocean Assessment, and a two-day event focused on the work of the many non-governmental organizations (such as our own) that made their way to UN Headquarters this week in larger than usual numbers. And of course the tributes kept coming in for the late Kofi Annan as well as remembrances for the UN staff in Iraq killed in a 2003 truck bombing.

Both ocean health and counter-terror measures are regular “covers” for us, both with major peace and security implications and both with obligations (sufficient urgency of action on the one hand, sufficient regard for human rights protections on the other) that need scrutiny, including some of it from ourselves. But the NGO event, coupled with other conversations that we have had around UN Headquarters about the state of civil society in UN settings, make this a topic of significant, if not urgent concern.

The theme for this event, organized by the UN’s Department of Public Information, was Together Finding Global Solutions for Global Problems. Numerous side events complemented what were occasional bursts of insight and enthusiasm by plenary speakers, including UN officials. In addition to attending a bit of the plenary and a few side events (the ones on poverty reduction were of particular interest to us), we spent quite a bit of time in the UN cafes this week talking to folks we knew and listening to those we didn’t, taking in (albeit often at some distance) the mostly friendly banter and determined NGO sales pitches.

There was nothing wrong with the event, but also little new.  Many sessions seemed to be sparsely attended and yet still often cleaved to the UN format of choice – podium driven presentations that made some time for questions (and rants) from the audience, but little in the way of what we would characterize as genuine dialogue leading to commitments more likely to survive this event once the demands of home and office take over.

Amidst all the valid concern expressed this week for our sustainable development goals obligations – from smart cities and universal educational opportunity to poverty reduction and good governance – the one item that continues to cry out for sustained attention is related to our collective working methods.   We and others have spent much (hopefully productive) time exploring how our sector can adjust its methods and temperament to conform to a new generation of challenges, including the challenge of ensuring that the widest range of civil society voices – often more isolated than we might realize in their difficult and even “lonely” work –finds viable pathways to policy influence.

But beyond the voices is the need for attention to how we seek to make change in the first instance, how we utilize increasingly scarce assets and more formalized “work relationships” in an attempt to influence some admittedly weighty trends, from economic inequalities and declining oceans to rampant xenophobia and a new generation of weapons-related threats.

In our own investigations into some (for us) obvious limitations and deficiencies in our sector, we have relied heavily on others, including Lester Ruiz and Paul Okumu.  Both do their own important work in the world and, apropos to this discussion, both are generous in sharing a critical and inspirational eye with our communities of practice, posing hard questions to both our tactics and our character. Okumu has chimed in more recently in response to the quite-legitimate concern over the recent apprehension of South Sudanese activist Peter Biar, noting that his is merely a high-profile tip of the proverbial iceberg as activists, religious leaders, journalists and others face abuse and “legal” charges that are often anything but.

Okumu goes on to question whether our tactics of choice are actually relevant to the power dynamics that characterize the modern world – one characterized by massive, often unaccountable fiscal flows and states more and more willing to turn their backs on the normative arrangements which their own delegations have painstakingly negotiated. Is there evidence to suggest that what Okumu refers to as “our online campaigns or the mobilization of solidarity groups” is actually able to shift anything?  Is there any reason to believe that those of us who remain attentive to these global “arrangements” are able to provide anything more than familiar patterns of resistance?

The major political and economic powers that influence our multi-lateral institutions have, as Okumu suggests, largely stopped listening to us, largely stopped worrying about any power that we might once have had to reign in their excesses; in part because they don’t need to, and in part because they more or less know what we are going to say and how we will go about doing our “business.” They have come to understand that we are no threat to their ambitions and narratives; that we can scream about “what we’re doing” from the sidelines of conversations that are increasingly cut off from our scrutiny; that the gaps separating their seemingly-supportive rhetoric from effective civil society engagement are growing, not shrinking.

We are not their adversaries; indeed there are diplomats, civil servants and social investors here in New York who represent some of the kindest and most genuinely committed people I know anywhere in the world. But diplomats, secretariat officials and their growing array of high-end “partnerships” here in New York have to navigate their own limitations of bureaucracy, competition and authority, and thus we cannot in good faith accept the notion that they are the definers of our work, nor do we accept that our value lies solely in our willingness to promote what they have handed out for us to promote, as though only “cheerleaders” are now worthy of a place in this multi-lateral game, and not also the referees, analysts and commentators.

And yet the things we choose to promote must be defined by more than a habituated defiance, more than snarky retorts to diplomats, UN officials or “business leaders” who surely already recognize that they are sometimes misrepresenting the story that lies behind the text they are reading, misrepresenting somewhat through what they say but (mostly) through those things about which they have chosen to remain eerily silent.

Indeed, we have work to do here in filling out the unfinished sentences, in providing a fuller accounting of policy progress than those which are routinely authorized to be spoken in this place.  But as Okumu suggests we also need to fix our own working methods, to address the heavily-worn tactics that have too-little impact on journalists who still can’t escape unjust prison sentences, refugees still treated as political fodder rather than as sisters and brothers, sustainable development goals that are still too slow on the uptake, peace and security policies that still serve too many political interests and too few human ones. And, of course, there are the activists like Peter Biar who join with so many others in suffering beyond the reach of well-meaning responses that are often more appropriate to power structures gone-bye.

We sometimes damaged and lonely people who are drawn to this work for reasons known best to our mothers and therapists; we retain an obligation to ensure that this work makes more durable connections, takes more risks, sees beyond the horizons of our own limitations, commits to the eagerness born of attention, and takes the time to analyze what we, sometimes thoughtlessly, project into the world as a substitute for the healing with is our primary charge.

So long as we continue to occupy places of privilege and influence, no matter how modest they might seem to us, we have a clear responsibility to global constituencies beyond the words in our mission statements, beyond our tactical habits of choice and our often-shallow “networks” and “partners.” There is an attentiveness that is also required, a willingness to discern the times and align our tactics and energies with both our deepest values and the world’s deepest needs, to correct “the record” but also interrogate the ways in which our own invitation to healing is compromised both by the things we failed to correct in our societies, and by those things we are insufficiently “eager” to fix in ourselves.

Our values and tactics must be aligned in the world – the world that exists in real time and not simply in our institutional memories – such that injuries inflicted (including on ourselves) are “acknowledged, healed and rare.”

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Construction Zone:  The SG Report’s Overlooked Obstacles and Inspirations, Dr. Robert Zuber

19 Aug

Under Construction

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision. Helen Keller

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.  Victor Hugo

We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. Isaac Bashevis Singer

The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope. Leonora Carrington

If you need a reason to get involved in world politics, all you need to do is watch a playground of children.  Laurance Kitts

This has been one of the slower weeks at the UN in recent memory.  Aside from an excellent, first-time event to honor victims of terrorism, the highlight of the week was probably the release of the Report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization, the latest in an annual exercise that gives those who take time to read it a sense of how the UN system – seen almost exclusively through the lens of UN secretariat leadership – is adjusting its processes and priorities in an attempt to address the too-frequent, darkening clouds which daily permeate our news feeds.

The report promises a “frank and realistic” appraisal of UN and global challenges. As is the case with many prior SG reports, I would exercise caution in using such terms to describe this document.   As I will allude to below, such an appraisal would require the SG to talk less about his own “launchings” and more about the efforts of the complex system of which he is a part – including work already done to lay the groundwork for his own tenure; the many stakeholders inside and outside the UN system that create complementary and essential frameworks for change; even the unsung heroes “in the field” who help restore faith in the “work” of the UN.  That faith, we fear, is routinely compromised by several un-named factors, including the political maneuvering of powerful states and officials inside UN Headquarters, certainly within in the Security Council, maneuverings currently as likely to maintain the “stasis” of deadly conflicts (and their many implications for the other UN “pillars”) as to resolve them.

Indeed, these reports increasingly are neither particularly generous of spirit nor “frank” in terms of naming political, fiscal and institutional impediments to achieving the “world we want,” the world as noted several times in this report is promised by the Sustainable Development Goals.  Indeed, at points, these “reports” reminded me a bit of funding proposals that small NGOs like mine might submit – long on “what we’re doing,” and reminders of “what more remains to be done” (with additional funding of course) and short on assessments of what barriers lie in the way of achieving our desired ends, including of course the sometimes unhelpful ways in which we, ourselves, conduct our own business.   Indeed, this SG report (as with others) seems deliberately “pitched” to funders, in this instance to the member states who must “sell” the value of the UN to national capitals; also to the many “partners” of the UN characterized increasingly by multilateral lenders, multi-national corporations and large NGOs who already exercise an outsized influence on current UN policies.  The world may seem to be quite a mess in the eyes of many constituents, but the message to funders and key partners is that we at the UN have the goods to clean it up or, at the very least, are developing the tools and protocols (at the direct urging of the SG and with proper support) to clean better.

In fairness to this report, its release could hardly have been timed more awkwardly – having to compete with the death of former SG Kofi Annan, a man much beloved and of great wisdom and stature who, increasingly over the course of his two terms, found his inspirational voice and helped the UN system increase its global credibility while recovering from a series of scandals and reckless policies related to abuses by UN personnel, “oil for food,” the invasion of Iraq and, surely the most significant failure of his era, the inability to prevent the Rwanda genocide. It is imprudent at best to compare SGs when one has reached the end of his life and the other is in the midst of adjusting to often-grave political and institutional challenges, but it is perhaps noteworthy that our widely-utilized Global Action twitter feed towards the end of this week was filled with hundreds of diplomatic and civil society tributes to Annan while the SG report was referenced less often than the number of fingers on one hand.

Again in fairness to the report, there is much of value in it to the UN and, hopefully, the global community, work that has already taken place “on the watches” of SG Guterres and DSG Mohammed (the latter of whom is noted only in a photo).  The report makes clear that there has been some UN-led progress on countering terrorism,  on improving the safety of peacekeepers, on promoting “free trade” among corruption-free African states, on ensuring participation and leadership by women and youth,  on reform of the UN development system (including the UN’s resident coordinators), on ending abuses perpetrated against women and children, on ocean health, on providing services for victims of terror, and on increasing the “footprint” of a revamped UN Peacebuilding Commission and Peacebuilding Fund, offices for which the SG is thankfully seeking a “quantum leap” in funding support in acknowledgement of the PBC’s growing role in promoting the SG’s desired linkage between “prevention and protection” on the road towards sustainable peace.

The SG also highlighted the more-looming existential threats of climate and nuclear weapons as well as the vast numbers of “people on the move,” in part driven by climate and conflict impacts. But again, there is little to be found regarding “what is in the way” of urgent progress on such matters, nor is there sufficient “frankness” regarding how another “climate summit” and a barely-functional disarmament architecture (including barely-binding treaty obligations) are likely to get us close to anything like the “promised land” as more scientists predict that we are likely to miss our climate targets and more observers note (with great regret) the degree to which weapons spending and production continue to expand despite our hard-fought resolutions and treaties. There is also little assessment regarding how (or if) the well-crafted, soon-to-be-endorsed and purely voluntary Global Compact on Migration can help counter the growing nationalism, xenophobia and intolerance that jeopardize the welfare of migrants and undermine the credibility of our rule-based system.  Again, and especially for an institution that sits at the very center of global governance, “what is in the way” of life-affirming progress is as important to communicate as “what we are now doing.”

One other item of note before closing pertains to the “mood” of the UN building,  Our own take on this after many years of watching and reflecting is that the “culture shift” inside the UN rightly advocated for by the SG must go beyond breaking up the “silos” of secretariat offices to enable and embrace a new appreciation for all UN stasff and stakeholders.   One manifestation of this “culture” would be the ability of the UN system and its leadership to honor the “whistleblowers” within its walls that this SG report seeks to honor outside of them.   Those who expose “shady dealings” are enablers of a healthier UN and not its enemies.  Those who report on the limitations of the UN system and not merely regurgitate its pre-prepared and highly-branded news releases are doing their part to make the UN truly “fit for purpose” in a world of frightening conflict and climate risks.  Those who commit themselves to pay close attention to the UN and member states – not only what they say but what they do – and who read lessons-learned back to its talented decisionmakers — are helping in their own small way to cleanse the system of its inconsistencies, its excesses, its occasional confusions regarding the difference between “construction and completion.”  It is thus with regret that this SG report paid so little attention to the health and welfare of civil society and journalists, those operating in the increasingly tightly-managed spaces within UN headquarters, but especially those who have “watched children on the playground,” and subsequently chosen to risk their lives in otherwise forgotten places to fortify the food-insecure, defend the defenseless, share stories and warning signs we would otherwise overlook, and uphold the values of the UN Charter to which we at headquarters too-often seem to give lip-service.

SG Guterres is correct to stress in his report the importance of multilateral engagement to “solve problems together than we cannot solve alone.”  He is also right to attempt to enhance the UN’s “capacity to operate as a convener of people, a proponent of ideas, a catalyst for action and a driver of solutions.”  But for this to continue, we need several things from our UN leadership, including more frequent demonstrations of inspiration and generosity of spirit, fresh levels of “frankness” regarding internal and external barriers to fulfilling our multilateral obligations, and increased attention to those on the margins of our increasingly high-end “partnerships” who need the UN to be better at anticipating the challenges of the future while addressing what the SG called “remaining gaps” and honoring the SDGs and our other, pending, policy promises.  We must together do a better job of “keeping one eye on the telescope and the other on the microscope.”

Long before the release of his next annual report, we encourage the SG and other senior staff to take some long walks through the building they ostensibly manage, to listen to those who fill up seats in UN conference rooms and cafes, or provide security and other assistance to the many UN visitors who still – justifiably I think – look to this institution to define a path out of collective despair.  Beyond the influences of powerful states, multilateral lenders and NGOs with the fiscal structure of small nations, beyond the many hopeful initiatives both honored and misplaced within this SG report, there is a growing sense – even within this UN building — that we are simply not doing enough to give life a chance.  Clearly, there is more to say, more to do, more to inspire than appears in these SG pages.  Let those missing dimensions permeate our words and actions leading up to the next report’s release.

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Moving Day:  Protecting the Rights of Indigenous Migrants, Dr. Robert Zuber

12 Aug

We’ve got to think now, in real terms, for that seventh generation . . . We’ve got to get back to spiritual law if we are to survive. Oren Lyons

The purpose of any ceremony is to build stronger relationship or bridge the distance between our cosmos and us.  Shawn Wilson

Something happens to Aboriginal people who work in hierarchies, whether bureaucracy or academic… You get to the top and find it bereft, bereft of passion, bereft of intuition, of emotion.  Amanda Sinclair

From a human rights standpoint, this was a less than stellar week for the UN.  We welcome a new High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Chile president Michelle Bachelet, someone of considerable gravitas and well known throughout the UN community.  The departure of her predecessor Prince Zeid was a blow to many of us who have witnessed the suppression of many outspoken voices, the domestication of what should otherwise be a forceful and candid human rights concern, the politicizing of rights guarantees for citizens that should no longer be subject to debate.  The human rights community faces new threats, opportunities and discouragements, and we hope that Ms. Bachelet will be successful both in resisting large-state pressures and in insisting on the importance of the human rights pillar for any sustainable successes the UN is likely to achieve on the peace and development fronts.

Among the current disappointments this week has to be news reports on Saudi Arabia, both for a spat with Canada over rights guarantees for Saudi women and for the horror of a bus full of children bombed by Saudi jets with military hardware supplied by more than one UN Security Council member.   Last week’s tepid Council meeting on Yemen –with its welcome announcement of upcoming political negotiations – nevertheless kept the door ajar for fresh recrimination and violence for which the bus bombing will likely remain as a particularly galling symbol of our conflict resolution failures.

Less disappointing from a rights standpoint was an event this week on “Indigenous Peoples’ Migration and Movement” (on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples).  With the signing of the Global Compact on Migration scheduled for December in Morocco, this event had considerable relevance not only as a “test” of the ability of the Compact to address challenges relevant to indigenous peoples, but also as a reminder of state practices that undermine the rights of indigenous peoples to move themselves – but also their cultural ceremonies and languages – back and forth across state lines.

The event itself was rightly described as a bit “tired” by a couple of the participants we spoke with who stayed for the entire event.  Nevertheless some good insight was conveyed both applicable to the Global Compact and consistent with discussions held at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.  The always thoughtful Miriam Wallet Aboubakrine, current Chair of the Permanent Forum, highlighted the non-binding nature of state and multi-lateral commitments to indigenous peoples and urged states to do more to combat host-state “fear” while “enhancing the skills” of indigenous migrants such that their migratory pathways can be safer and also more productive for themselves and those back home relying on their success.

Part of the reason why the event seemed flat at points is related to the difficulty in getting the full richness of indigenous cultures on policy display.  The discourse, especially from the indigenous activists in the room, tends to focus — at times obsess — on North American indigenous concerns.   There was certainly some effort to paint a broader picture, including from a representative from Thailand who cited the “traditional symbiotic relationships” that people in his region have with forests that were amply supplying local needs long before they were largely appropriated by state and corporate interests.  He also criticized government policy advocating state forms of education for indigenous children, bureaucracies that neglect indigenous languages, cultural expressions and often-passionate relationships with the natural order.

But much of the anguish was from sources geographically more proximate to New York. Indeed, perhaps the most compelling testimony of the afternoon came from Ms. Amy Juan whoseTohono O’odham community occupies the border regions between Arizona and Mexico.   Ms. Juan, a self-described activist without “academic credentials,” spoke eloquently about the struggles of indigenous communities living in the frontiers between sovereign, modern states.  Juan referenced the “restrictions on freedom of movement” that have intensified in this age of border walls and unwelcoming rhetoric emanating from our political leadership.   She even described pressures her community experienced from the US Border Patrol to refrain from providing water to persons traversing the harsh US desert “illegally.”  Juan noted that, beyond solidarity and humanitarian concerns, a “right to water” must take precedence over national politics and host-country inhibitions.

Beyond the sometimes compelling testimony there were two key takeaways for the Global Action folks in the room.  The first was related to the issue of the day – the impact of climate change on indigenous migration patterns.   As more than one speaker noted, but which was most clearly articulated by the representative from the International Organization on Migration, indigenous communities uniquely “attached to the land” have the most to lose from negative climate impacts, but are also under considerable pressure to abandon their ancestral lands once those lands can no longer sustain families and livelihoods.  Our current, collective efforts on behalf of climate health may still be enough to save our species, and we will know we have done our best work when communities – including indigenous ones – are no longer driven from lands made unproductive from drought, flooding and the violence that so often follows.

The other takeaway is more spiritual, if you will, more about continuing to bring together the extraordinary diversity and what Panama referred to as “dynamism” of indigenous communities to forge a new policy path and ensure that international agreements such as the Global Compact and 2030 Development Agenda take full account of diverse indigenous needs and circumstances.  Indeed, speakers were calling for a revitalized “brotherhood/sisterhood” to more effectively link indigenous communities on the move, one which prioritizes the need of women and children indigenous migrants, but one which more broadly commits to alleviating what the El Salvador Ambassador described as the “toxic” dissolution of identity experienced by so many indigenous migrants, persons struggling (often unsuccessfully) to avoid what Ecuador described as the “double discrimination” of being both “foreign and indigenous.”

I have been blessed over the years to have interactions with many indigenous communities from Canada to the Philippines and from Guatemala to the Western United States. I have seen first-hand the commercially-appropriated cultural symbols, the “reservations” characterized by lands largely unfit for agriculture or other sustainable livelihoods, the schools that make children fit only to abandon the cultures of their birth, the suspicion communicated from so many sources beyond the borders of ancestral lands. I have also been extremely fortunate to be connected to the late Terry Whitcomb, a family tie who spent much of her extraordinary life exploring – mostly through art and architecture — the often treacherous interplay in what is now California between indigenous communities and the Catholic friars who sometimes assisted, sometimes encouraged, sometimes humiliated, sometimes subjugated them.

As our climate continues its decline and our distance from fulfilling our sustainable development goals remains daunting, we can afford no more delays in ensuring the rights, dignity and freedom of movement of our indigenous migrants. Indeed so many indigenous persons can still claim that the “heavy handed treatment” they too often receive — born of fear, anxiety and ignorance—serves only to rob indigenous migrants of security and confidence,and the rest of us of their many life-affirming contributions.

 

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Exit Memo: The UN’s Struggle to Inspire Next Generations, Dr. Robert Zuber

5 Aug

Rising Plant

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. Barbara Kingsolver

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming. Pablo Neruda

It’s the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it. Frank Warren

At what point do you give up – decide enough is enough? There is only one answer really. Never. Tabitha Suzuma

A great hope fell; You heard no noise; The ruin was within. Emily Dickinson

Global Action has had another group of wonderful interns this summer – smart, engaged, funny, diverse.   Thanks to all of you who have provided support or hospitality to make it possible for them to experience all of the potential and contrariness that is the contemporary UN.

One of the questions that gets posed to them before they commence their wanderings around the building is the same one that greets them at the end – has your time at the UN made you more or less hopeful about your future?

It is not a frivolous charge.  Our interns are not here to participate in “youth events” where older people talk about younger ones as though they are the “saviors” of something or other beyond the capacity of the people who raised, educated and subsidized them.   Ours are not here to “save” but to discern, to find their place and even their passion by studying up close the institution that is still largely synonymous with multilateral progress, an institution that holds global policy conversations that could hardly be held beyond Turtle Bay, but an institution that also promises more than it often can deliver and even, at times, impedes the hopefulness that can sustain a commitment to a safer, healthier world.

My groups of interns can at times be a suspicious bunch, investing energy in self-protection and promotion that could be spent taking risks – connecting and exploring beyond comfort zones.   The world that barely bothers to welcome their adulthood, presenting issues and threats that they attempt to discern for many hours a week at UN headquarters, certainly reinforces a protective posture.   Between vicious attacks on journalists and plastics filling our oceans to unresolved violence in Yemen and Central African Republic and climate-induced drought, food insecurity and forced migration, there is plenty to suggest that the future of this generation and those to follow is likely to be a bit of a rough ride, surely rougher than it needs to be.

And so these young people who come to survey the UN policy premises with passions to identify and hope to live out “under its roof,” these young people need to know that this system is committed to more than “involving youth” in its discussions but that the governments which are the UN’s priority understand that they are holding levers to a future that they, themselves, will likely not be around to experience.   They need tangible reminders that the UN and its member states can do more – will do more – than simply kick problems down the road where solutions will only  become more elusive.

One of the venues that alternate excites and frustrates our young people the most is the Security Council, what we have described elsewhere as the most political space within a highly political building.   The issues that draw the interns to the Council chamber are often the ones most resistant to resolution, in part because of the way the Council conducts its business. Briefings are carefully composed and often drained of urgency.  Statements by Council members put the best possible face on national interest — which it is not at all clear they are seated on the Council to promote. Such statements often leave out key information, including information regarding the culpability of Council members for some of the very same security violations they are mandated to address.   The statements read in chamber are too-often redundant, more than occasionally toothless, and rarely (if ever) concede the points made by policy challengers, accept national responsibility or offer apologies.

In what is arguably the single most important room in the world, Council members too often choose to “go small,” to treat the chamber as a forum for branding national positions rather than a deliberative body with a mandate to deliver binding (and enforceable) decisions to bring the gravest threats to international peace and security to heel.

For some of the interns, this week’s Council discussion on Yemen, presided over by the UK, was their last attempt to find some reassurance that the powers presiding over this room have a plan and the commitment to “resolve” a conflict such as this one that has already claimed many thousands of victims, ushered in a catastrophic epidemic of disease and food insecurity, and where some of the world’s pre-eminent arms merchants have more than a bit of context-specific blood on their hands.

There was some good news: UN Special Envoy Griffiths, who has been given some credit for diverting a widely-feared, full-scale assault on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, announced the launching of a Geneva-based negotiating process in the hope of ending this long-running conflict.  “We know what can work,” he insisted, noting that “relationship building is key to reaching a permanent political settlement.”

For his part, UNOCHA’s Ging ticked off elements of the ever-growing humanitarian emergency in and beyond Hodeidah while rightly highlighting the extraordinary courage of aid workers seeking to bind the gaping wounds that the international community – and especially this Council – has so far failed to stop.   “Conflict affects every aspect of life in Yemen,” Ging noted, and the impacts from the unresolved political strife, incessant (and often reckless) air attacks, and what Ging described as “harassment” of aid workers have together generated trauma and “threats to dignity” that can and might well last a lifetime.

While the interns seemed to be anticipating high-energy and urgent responses, they were treated to a bevy of subdued and even off-point interventions by Council members. The US Ambassador alleged a “new phase” in the Yemen conflict as though the recent Hodeidah port bombings were the first attacks in Yemen to raise the specter of war crimes.   Kuwait, which in previous meetings, described its national position as standing “shoulder to shoulder” with the Saudis, condemned “material losses” from Houthi missile strikes on Saudi territory while seeming to ignore the vastly larger impacts from coalition air assaults.  Other members lamented the growing humanitarian crisis as well as the extention of the conflict into the Red Sea without offering any firm analysis of its causes or suggetions for relief.

Peru did raise the grave threats to children from coalition air strikes and Kazakhstan noted the urgency of trust-building if negotiations are to have any viable future, trust which will be harder to come by as the Yemeni Ambassador was accusing the Houthis of “genocide” while denying any coalition involvement in the recent Hodeidah bombings.  Under this cloud of acrimony and half-truths, Kazakhstan’s concrete suggestion to form a “de-escalation” zone to help protect water and other civilian infrastructure from further attack seemed akin to a tiny plant emerging from an otherwise parched landscape.

Perhaps the fault here is mine for insisting that a Council meeting on Yemen would be an appropriate exit for young people who have mostly given the UN building their best attentions, who came looking for hope that this often parched policy soil can sprout new life, who came seeking encouragement to help them hold fast to their still-evolving commitments to make a better world.   For all our limitations, we try never to forget on whose behalf we are working, whose “turn” it is to clean up messes and set the world on a more sustainable policy course.  As Council members craft their next iterations of national positions on security matters, we urge greater consideration for the “roof” under which the hopes and aspirations of new generations can find their energy and inspiration.

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A Credible Path Forward for ASEAN on Climate Risks, Dr. Robert Zuber

29 Jul

Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice and predictability.  Malcolm Gladwell

A superior person is modest in speech, but exceeds in action. Confucius

Every action or perceived inaction shapes credibility. Mindy Hall

Claiming that you are what you are not will obscure the strengths you do have while destroying your credibility.  Tom Hayes

Thanks to the excellent organizing work of Dr. Catherine Jones of St. Andrews University, Scotland and colleagues from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, Indonesia, Global Action was pleased to participate in a two-day seminar, “Peacekeeping, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief.”  The seminar specifically looked at the relationship between peacekeeping assets and the growing humanitarian burdens facing Indonesia and its regional neighbors from a variety of natural disasters increasingly attributable to climate change.

The seminar group included Indonesian government officials tasked with national peacekeeping policy and scholars skilled in dissecting regional peacekeeping assets and policy concerns.  Assumptions were made – rightly I think though barely interrogated– that the already great burdens of humanitarian response to either emergency or “slow onset” disasters is only likely to increase across the region.  The questions then become:  How do we better prepare communities to face this growing threat? What role might peacekeeping play in emergency response and resiliency building? What other skills, capacities and “partnerships” (a term that came up often at these meetings) might we need to develop in order to ensure timely, comprehensive, competent and (dare we say) rights-based responses?  And in that light, how do we (to quote one of the participants) “capture” more of the stories of how local communities are responding to these evolving climate threats?

The backdrop for this discussion was ably articulated by several participants in this “Chatham House” format.  As readers of these postings are already familiar, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member Indonesia is set to join the UN Security Council in January to begin its 4th stint as an elected member.  Much has changed in the 10 years since Indonesia was last on the Council, including prickly conflict dynamics regarding Iran nuclear and Syria chemical weapons; peacekeeping mandates which are now generally more coercive, more protection-oriented and (thankfully) tied more closely to political processes; and formal consideration of a wider range of security-related global problems (including those related to climate), thematic obligations which demand attention from the entire international community.

As Indonesia is well aware from its leadership roles in the non-aligned movement, disarmament affairs and the Peacebuilding Commission, the UN system faces daunting challenges both in the world and within its own conference rooms.  Recent pleas for overdue assessed funding from the UN Secretary-General along with public threats to muiltilateralism from heads of some member states underscore the precarious nature of some of the UN’s most important commitments – to ocean and climate health, to the fulfillment of the sustainable development goals, to the maintenance of an effective human rights system, to timely and effective peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and to the resolution of conflicts from Yemen to Central African Republic that continue to drain funds and political will from the international community and compromise (at least for some states) the credibility of the very Security Council that Indonesia is set to join.

Amidst this uncertain policy climate, there appear to be growing calls for collaboration between the states of ASEAN and the UN along the lines of peace and security partnerships already well established with the African Union and European Union.  This is not the space to assess the pitfalls that a too-hastily-engaged alliance might ultimately expose, but seminar participants were right to point out the “long shadows” currently cast by China and the US over virtually all aspects of regional security, UN partnership or no.  What we would wish to see going forward is more analysis of the inter-sectional, climate- security risks facing small regional states as well as some of the current impediments to creating genuinely horizontal, inclusive, credible partnerships between the UN and regional bodies such as ASEAN. As a cautionary tale on partnerships, exhibit A might be the recent Council decision to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan over the objections of African Union and IGAD officials who have been at the center of efforts to broker a sustainable peace in that country.

Indeed, a case could be made that any ASEAN or other regional partnership with the UN should look beyond the alleged prestige from such arrangements to some of the functional limitations that would need to be overcome if such partnerships are to become context appropriate – sensitive both to the threats to be addressed and the most culturally-appropriate tools and methods for addressing them.  Rather than replicating the ambitions of regions that seem to have garnered “insider status” at the UN within and beyond the Security Council, ASEAN states and scholars such as those at this seminar would do us all well to help guide discussions that seek to preserve strategic autonomy, explore benefits and limitations in a more systemic manner, clarify inter-relationships among core regional threats –including climate events, nuclear  perils and super-power posturing and “ad hoc” policymaking– and examine the fitness of existing resources (sometimes presenting in “friendly” military garb) to create stability and integrate more fully than at present the skills and energies of community-based stakeholders.

Comprehensive peace arrangements sufficient to this vast region must account for many factors. The way forward to credible regional agreements and partnerships with the UN and other international organizations characterized by reliability, transparency, trust-building and attentiveness to political and cultural context lies still beyond the horizon.  Indeed, one valuable next step to bring the horizon closer might be a thorough examination of the “Plan of Action” to implement the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Partnership between ASEAN and the United Nations (2016-2020).  This “plan” is under-developed and under-utilized to be sure, but it also contains elements that intentionally link peacekeeping, civil-military coordination and disaster management/response. Properly handled, this document could help ASEAN states “practice” forms of cooperation that both effectively address climate impacts and lay the groundwork for developing or deepening other forms of bilateral and multilateral security cooperation. Such “practice” is, from our standpoint at least, time well spent.

Our consistent view has been and remains that we have reached a dangerous tipping point on climate that is sure to result in an increased number of “events” – more and more of them catastrophic — that will test virtually all current response capacities and security arrangements.  From this point, we must do more to ensure that the right tools and capacities are available to stave off slow-onset crises and stabilize communities in the face of those less predictable, rapid-onset emergencies.   If the collective security will of ASEAN states affirms the need for deeper UN security and climate partnerships, these states should at least ensure that such partnerships focus on (as one participant noted) their credibility and effectiveness in addressing threats such as those from climate more than on establishing their “legitimacy” in the eyes of the international community.  ASEAN, to our eyes at least, already seems quite legitimate enough.

Indonesia is sure to deal with its share of Security Council headaches over the next two years. But along with its new Council colleagues, especially Germany and South Africa, Indonesia has the capacity to provide strong and (when needed) contrary policy guidance for a Council that is too often bogged down in its own security duties and disconnected from the duties of its UN colleagues. Helping to develop, test and implement a robust regional capacity for disaster response and stabilization – a capacity that fully utilizes all relevant peacekeeping assets but is not constrained by them — would pave the way for more reliable and trust-worthy security-related collaborations within and across the region.

During our seminar, Indonesia affirmed its commitment to the full integration of gender, conflict prevention and civilian peacekeeping capacities, all towards what one official referred to as a “global ecosystem for peace.”  For all who yearn for an end to armed conflict, and perhaps especially for those within the ASEAN region, it should be clear that sustained attention to the implications of our damaged eco-system must accompany, if not precede, any successful and sustainable peace.

 

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Just Desserts:  The UN Celebrates an International Justice Milestone, Dr. Robert Zuber

22 Jul

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. Elie Wiesel

When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

To sin by silence…makes cowards of us all.  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. Wendell Berry

What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid?  Rachel Corrie

This has been another exhausting week at the UN.   From government ministers gathered to assess progress on sustainable development goals at the High Level Political Forum to the (now) annual meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council with both the UN Security Council and the increasingly visible and relevant UN Peacebuilding Commission, diplomats, civil society and UN staff were sprinting from one room to another, hoping to catch hopeful glimpses of a future whose contours, as of this writing, are still very much in doubt

For our cohort of interns, it was hard to make decisions about how to invest their time.  One or more seized the opportunity to meet with the over-stretched Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons, to participate in the launch of a report on promoting inclusion through social protection, to attend a humanitarian briefing on the DPRK (including discussion on the impact of sanctions) and another event focused on “resilient women,” and to listen to Kenyan Minister Kamau discuss the “blue economy” in the very same UN conference room that he once deftly steered the UN community to adopt what were to become the Sustainable Development Goals.  For the interns and despite all of the redundancies and clichés that punctuate many UN discussions, this week’s blur will likely help define their “possible,” the range of viable options for their growth, prosperity and service.

For us at Global Action who strive to blend these conversations into some semblance of policy coherence, this was a period where it was literally impossible to be in anything close to all the rooms where progress on core UN pillars of peace, development and human rights might be discovered.   We and others we spoke with over this long week were left pensive and often frustrated from a long week of listening and scrambling from room to crowded room seeking conversations that can get us beyond policy inertia and funding scarcity, conversations that can invigorate forward momentum and remind us of the stable of obligations essential to building that world of “sustainable peace” that our UN leadership is now so fond to speak about.

One such conversation occurred early this week as Liechtenstein and other states hosted an event to celebrate and inspire deeper commitments to international justice, specifically in the form of our obligations to the health and integrity of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Such events take place every year on July 17, but this one felt different, more important, even more relevant than most other years.

For starters, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the Rome Statute that called the ICC into existence and provided it with its marching orders – its jurisdictional scope, relationship to the UN Security Council, and much more.  The ICC by most accounts – even by those states that refuse to become parties or that fail to uphold key obligations under the Statute – has been in some critical ways a game-changer.  Though the ICC (as Australia and others reminded participants) is a “court of last resort” in instances where states are unable or unwilling to prosecute those of “their own” who commit the gravest of crimes, the ICC has also been an incubator for high-level discussions that are “shaping perceptions of justice” as well as underscoring our responsibility to uphold international law at a time when such responsibility has been wantonly ignored by state and non-state actors alike. At the same time, the Court has motivated states to strengthen their national legal frameworks to combat and prosecute the most serious violations of international law and has contributed in ways small and large to the development of special criminal courts – such as the one now taking shape in the Central African Republic – that will hopefully become essential to national justice and reconciliation, key conditions for ensuring that states which have emerged from violence have every opportunity to remain violence-free.

There was plenty to celebrate and ponder at this July 17 event, but even more this time given that this was the day when the jurisdiction of the court was extended to include the crime of aggression, a most welcome development to those committed to conflict prevention and perhaps especially for smaller states (as Andorra noted) that must rely on international mechanisms and the pressure they can exert to prevent external threats to their territorial integrity.  For its part, Brazil lamented our “long history” of legitimizing violence between and among states, legitimacy it noted which has now been called into serious question and with full legal force.

Those things which the Court still needs to work out as it moves past its 20th year are widely known.  Funding and staffing are less than adequate to the broadening scope of the Court’s work and the many horrific crimes still being committed in our world and for which ICC investigative and prosecutorial scrutiny is requested.  Despite a recent Arria Formula and other frank and conciliatory discussions, relations with some Security Council members, both permanent and elected, remain tense as the briefings by Prosecutor Bensouda on the Darfur and Libya referrals consistently make clear.  During her last brief to the Council on Darfur, Ethiopia went so far as to urge the withdrawal of the referral that resulted in an arrest warrant for Sudan president al-Bashir – a warrant which as we know has largely been ignored even by those African states which are parties to the Rome Statute.

Indeed, this has become a classic instance where security and development “progress” in Darfur –which has been recognized by the Council to the extent that a draw-down of the UNAMID peacekeeping force is well past the initial planning phase – is in danger of obscuring the massive crimes that came before.  Apparently, so long as leaders make a decent effort to clean up their messes – and there has indeed been progress in Darfur — they are no longer responsible for the grave impacts of those messes in the first instance.   This is a slippery slope, one noted by the outgoing Ambassador of Italy, who intoned that, more often than we might wish to believe, impunity “plants the seeds” of new conflict.

There is of course the additional headache that those permanent Security Council members whose footprint on ICC referrals looms large are themselves unlikely to ever face ICC scrutiny themselves.   There will surely be no referral on Eastern Ukraine or on the indiscriminate bombing that reduced places like Raqqa and Sanaa to rubble.  There will be no extension of the existing referral on Libya to include those who authorized the bombs in 2011 and who –inadvertently or otherwise – set off a frightening arms migration throughout Africa that makes mass animal movements across the Serengeti seem downright tidy.  Time and again, major power “guardians” of international law have rationalized away the damage from their own international law transgressions, often doing so in front of states and courts which have no power to prevent them from doing otherwise.

But much of the conversation this day was not about gaps to fill and inconsistencies to expose, but about the immense progress demonstrated by a Court that, as noted by the president of the General Assembly and others, has barely escaped its teenage years.  The pursuit of justice remains an often “onerous task,” as explained by Iceland, but it is a task that we can and must pursue together alongside the ICC if we are to fulfill the expectations that others have of us for justice but ultimately also for reconciliation, sustainable development and peace.

During this ICC session, the Palestinian Ambassador pointedly urged us all ”to embrace a higher calling.”  This is, of course, sage advice in all areas of multilateral policy, but surely so within the realm of international justice as a guarantor of a dependable and sustainable peace. As Argentina rightly insisted, we must continue to build the “solid ground” of justice, to renounce the “sin of silence” and bring hope and tangible relief to those victimized by both the high crimes of too many of their rulers and the relative indifference of too many of the rest of us.

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Missing Ingredients:  Consolidating a Consequential UN Week, Dr. Robert Zuber

15 Jul

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Peter was, simply, what a person would look like if you boiled down the most raw emotions and filtered them of any social contract. If you hurt, cry. If you rage, strike out. If you hope, get ready for a disappointment.  Jodi Picoult

While prosperity does not trickle down from the most powerful to the rest of us, all too often indifference and even intolerance do.  Hillary Clinton

I am not surprised that the people who want to unravel the social contract start with young adults. Those who are urged to feel afraid, very afraid, have both the greatest sense of independence and the most finely honed skepticism about government.  Ellen Goodman

We may demand that the citizens of each sovereign state view citizens of other states (or even stateless people) with compassion, respect and sympathy, satisfying some requirements of “minimal humanitarianism.” Amartya Sen

This was in several ways one of the more remarkable weeks in recent UN memory, capped off by the historic agreement on the text of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration which will be formerly adopted in Morocco in December.  The document was negotiated under the able stewardship of the co-facilitators (Mexico and Switzerland) and was rightly hailed by Deputy Secretary-General Mohammed, President of the General Assembly Lajčák and Special Representative Arbour as a triumph of multilateralism, a way forward for governments to address and honor the challenges of migration but also the many contributions that the 258 million or so migrants in our world today can make (many already making) to our sustainable development priorities.

In other conference rooms, the UN was alive with delegations and discussions assessing progress (or its lack) on fulfilling our 2030 Development Agenda promises.   From sustainable cities and financing “partnerships,” to the right and access to fresh water, sanitation and sustainable energy, the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) held important discussions that explored gaps and celebrated successes, but also aired frustrations about the lack of progress in implementing several development goals and about the lack of transparency regarding the “partnerships” currently being proposed (few of which involve reductions in military spending) to pay for our 2030 development ambitions.

As a small office with diverse policy interests, we could cover only a few of the HLPF events (most reflecting the current interns’ interests in the right to water, African affairs, environmental care and sustainable cities).  But as is our want we remained intrigued by the “cross-over” events that remind us of the systemic nature of our development promises, the degree to which sustainable development must be pursued at multiple levels and must integrate as fully as possible both the human rights and peace and security pillars of the UN’s policy mandate.  Indeed, presentations by the resplendent UN Climate Envoy Mary Robinson as well as by Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmore and the ocean-focused, former president of the General Assembly Peter Thomson helped give sustainable development a wider lens if not always an optimistic one.

True to form, Gilmore and Thomson were particularly blunt.  Gilmore in fact went so far as to call trickle-down economics a “staggering oxymoron,” noting that the forces in the economy  exacerbating inequalities are not as “inevitable”  as we sometimes make them out to be.   For his part, Thomson underscored the urgent need to “re-establish and respect planetary boundaries.”  No categorical critic of profit (nor are we), Thomson yet wondered aloud about the value of short-and medium-term pursuit of such profit when our longer-term sustainability is under continuous assault, when our “plastic plague” shows too few signs of abating, and when we have been too slow to usher in a “new generation of stewardship” represented by our young people, stewardship that can help our markets and governments respond more urgently to growing inequalities while inspiring our consumer appetites to become less voracious and wasteful.

And as has been the case for the last couple of summers, we eagerly welcomed the release this week of Spotlight on Sustainable Development, a compendium of viewpoints assessing our sustainable development responsibilities, progress and failings produced by the “Civil Society Reflection Group” on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.   The 2018 version of the report contains a diverse array of data and commentary including and beyond the SDGs tagged for assessment at this HLPF.  What the authors (many of whom also presented during the HLPF) seemed most to have in common was a commitment to narrowing what have become almost grotesque social and economic inequalities in many regions of the world, in part through important calls to reverse our recent “privatizing” obsessions and restore more accountable municipal control over water and other essential services.

The Security Council, which at times seems a bit “tone deaf” to developments and achievements elsewhere in the UN system, also had a good week.  Despite some considerable controversy resulting in a razor-thin vote to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan (over the objections of South Sudan itself and the African organizations currently seeking to broker SS peace), Sweden’s presidency was off to a positive and collaborative start with high level discussions on children in armed conflict, on women, peace and security in African states, and on climate as a peace and security issue.

All are worthy of sustained attention by this Council, not so much to control these narratives (a persistent concern of non-Council members and many Council watchers)  but to support efforts taking place elsewhere in the UN system, and indeed in communities around the world.  Regarding climate, while some members remain a tad suspicious (the US never actually uttered the term during its Wednesday remarks) and others (such as Russia) maintain that there is sufficient policy robustness on climate in other UN settings, most agreed with the Netherlands, represented at this meeting by the Prime Minister of Curaçao, that “we are all in the same canoe, and need to collectively paddle faster than the threats that are now overtaking us.”  Such “paddling,” he insisted, must involve greater responsibility for ensuring that all UN agencies with a mandate and/or determination to mitigate climate threats, including the Security Council itself, be about those tasks as though the future of the planet depended on it.

The grandest moment for us of ths particular Council session, perhaps of the entire week, was when indigenous representative Hindou Ibrahim addressed Council members.  For Hindou and the often-vulnerable people with whom she lives and works, climate change is no abstraction.  Its impacts dominate every aspect of their lives, forcing people into adaptations that strain resources, security arrangements and community bonds. “We don’t have a choice,” she noted (raising her finger), “but you do.”  “You choose to sit on this Council.”  You must, she intoned, do more to “give the people hope.”

I caught up with Hindou later in the day and congratulated her for her courageous words, noting how much better balanced the UN system could be if there were more people like her wandering its halls and fewer people like me.  She replied that “everyone has a role to play.”  Everyone, including people with uneven skill sets and financially challenged offices; everyone, including people who have been battered by climate events that have destroyed their homes and ruined their farms; everyone, including those who have never once been invited to make a better world for others; everyone, including those who have already spent too much energy trying to convince themselves that things cannot be so very different from what they have now become.

In a week as momentous as this one at the UN was, in a building that was filled to the brim with talented and creative people, some of the most important takeaways appear to be pretty straightforward:  that those who choose to occupy seats of authority must set a hopeful bar for themselves and others that renounces both indifference to our ever-more unequal world and intolerance to our ever-greater human diversity; that our national and multilateral institutions don’t quite have the precise blend of human ingredients needed to bake some variety of the bread of life to offer to our children and those who come after; and that a mixture of “compassion, respect and sympathy” is a prerequisite for hopeful and sustainable policy, not an afterthought.

We’re getting there.

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Reflections on a Summer UN Sojourn, Ruth Tekleab Mekbib

11 Jul

Editor’s Note:  Ruth came to us from the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program as a somewhat last-minute but most welcome member of our summer cohort.  An Ethiopian by birth, she has shown great interest in the African issues that often punctuate the UN’s agenda, especially in the Security Council.  Ruth’s perspective on the UN has proven highly valuable to us.  Indeed, seeing the UN through a fresh lens of those who will inherit the successes and failures of this system gives purpose and energy to our work. 

This past month, I’ve had the opportunity of attending high level meetings at the U.N. covering a wide range of topics including peace and security, human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to name a few. These meetings gave me a new insight and deeper understanding of the U.N. system and how it functions as an organization made up of more than 190 countries. On my first day, I witnessed a historical moment as the next president of the General Assembly, the current foreign minister of Ecuador, was elected. She becomes the fourth woman to hold this position since the creation of the United Nations and it was indeed a cause for celebration. I was surprised to see that the U.N. uses a paper ballot system for general elections but with all the technological advancements, they should be using an electronic voting system because it would be time efficient and environmentally friendly. Despite the archaic way of conducting votes, it was interesting to see how the vote of each member state proved crucial in determining who the next president should be.

During my time at the UN, I have been especially interested in attending meetings addressing concerns on the African continent in part because of my family connection to Ethiopia. I attended numerous Security Council meetings concerning the continent including countries such as South Sudan, Mali, Rwanda and Central African Republic (CAR) to mention a few. In my opinion, the Security Council is the most interesting place at the U.N. because you can see how the diplomats interact with one another closely. Before meetings starts, you can see diplomats hugging each other and conversing amicably even though that they may have opposing views. Once the meeting starts, each representative reads out a prepared statement that argues for one cause or another. However, after the meeting ends you can see the diplomats go back to being friendly to one another and maintaining close ties with not just their allies but also their “enemies”. This showed me the importance of diplomacy in maintaining peace and security and how it is important to foster friendly relations even with those who may not agree with your position. It is a great lesson to learn and I only hope that more people would choose to act similarly.

There were also interesting side events to participate in on a diverse range of topics including a recent meeting on the reintegration of child soldiers. One of the panelists in this meeting was from Sierra Leone who himself was a child soldier and discussed the difficulties of reintegration into society due to stigma and discrimination. I learned a lot about the efforts by U.N. agencies such as UNICEF in creating programs to help children reintegrate into society despite the permanent psychological trauma they may face. Another panelist highlighted how girls are particularly disadvantaged because of sexual abuse and other gender-based violence. In this meeting, there were conversations in the impact of race, gender and socio-economic background, all of which are important topics to discuss in an organization such as the U.N.

I also attended a meeting on financing the SDGs where several private sector companies were invited to speak about how their resources could help achieve the SDGs by 2030. What intrigued me in this meeting was the fact that some representatives were claiming that there was no lack of money for sustainable development while others refuted this, arguing that governments alone cannot achieve the SDGs and that they need the help of the private sector and multi-lateral lenders. Interestingly, most of the panelists in this meeting were from Europe with a clear lack of representation of speakers from regions such as Africa or Latin America who might have been better able to demonstrate the current disparities in wealth that must be overcome. One member from the audience voiced this concern with inequalities, posing the question “Why are we not redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor?” to which none of the panelists were able to fully answer his question. In my opinion, his question was valid and shows how, at the U.N., these issues are often overlooked and not prioritized, which only threatens to weaken the credibility of the institution among the world’s peoples.

All in all, through my experience I was able to see that despite the lack of inclusivity in some policy discussions, the U.N. still tries to be an organization responsive to the needs and concerns of all. It is actively working towards closing the gender gap, which was demonstrated by the election of the female PGA, and it gives sustained and priority attention to some of the most critical challenges facing our planet. There is still a long way to go to achieve balanced representation in U.N. policy discussions, but I am encouraged by current efforts to achieve equality. If such efforts continue, I might see a female Secretary General in the fairly near future which will inspire many young people around the world to achieve their full potential.

 

 

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Health Bar:  Ensuring Vitality for Sustainable Development, Dr. Robert Zuber

8 Jul

dayoffriendship

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.  Kurt Vonnegut

Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Wendell Berry

A sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us. Pema Chödrön

What drains your spirit drains your body. What fuels your spirit fuels your body. Caroline Myss

One of the things that we have noticed (with gratitude) over this past year about the UN policy agenda is the emphasis on health—not only on leveling access to health care but on indicators and implications of health for both our sustainable development and peace and security responsibilities.

As the ECOSOC High Level Political Forum prepares to convene on Monday, governments and NGOs will convene in large numbers from all directions to review progress on some of the most important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – from clean water access and sustainable energy to reversing desertification and biodiversity loss, and sustainable production and consumption.  Through plenary reviews of national SDG progress and a remarkable series of policy-focused side events, the HLPF will provide the opportunity for all of us to assess the degree to which what is arguably the most comprehensive and urgent promise the UN has ever made to future generations is being properly honored.

Recent weeks have seen UN discussions on a range of health-implicated policies, from efforts to end tuberculosis to the expanding global crisis of access to safe drinking water in an era characterized by both diminishing supply and growing privatization. In the past few days alone, the UN has seen interesting events and negotiations focused on universalized health care, the role of “cooperatives” in increasing healthy food security, and an “interactive hearing” on Thursday in preparation for the third High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Non-Communicable Diseases.

At first glance the “non-communicable” disease focus might seem a bit trivial stacked up against Ebola, tuberculosis and a host of other pandemics – potential and actual – made more frightening by the increasing inefficacy of our antibiotics.  But we know that there are numerous and deadly health threats that we don’t “catch” from others but which we routinely impose on ourselves and our neighbors – the diabetes tied in large measure to our processed diets and immobility; the toxic substances that collect in women’s mammary glands and create breast cancer emergencies; the impediments to clean water access in our “privatizing planet” that sicken and suppress children and their caregivers; the substance addictions that ruin relationships and drain the spirit of resolve.  The environmental burdens we impose in the name of “progress,” the “lifestyle” choices we make in what are often futile efforts to overcome fear, anxiety and isolation – this and more has led increasingly to the ironic circumstance of longer lives characterized by only episodic vitality and enthusiasm for living.

Indeed, one of the takeaways from the interactive hearing was the degree to which “health” in our time is largely a matter of overcoming our battered spirit, our psyches filled with anxiety and remorse, our political climates of recrimination and repression, our propensity for inflicting violence that solves few problems but ensures lasting distress.  We are living through a moment where our already besieged spirits are under fresh assault.  And few medical professionals are now prepared to deny the impact that our collectively impaired mental health is having on our physical vigor.  Those seemingly growing numbers (including of our children) who suffer from depression or trauma are less likely to practically cherish their physical well-being.  Where the web of health is damaged, all aspects of vitality seem to be called into question.

Another of the many take-aways from the hearing had to do with the role of health professionals and private sector entities tasked with providing what we ostensibly require to overcome health threats – the doctors and nurses who bind wounds and diagnose deeper sickness, and the pharmaceuticals that provide us with the chemicals we need to overcome (but not necessarily prevent) health impediments.  As one might predict, there was considerable and sometimes heated discussion about the imprecise and shifting lines connecting regulation and innovation, connecting the need for companies to turn a profit and the needs of communities for life-saving generics, connecting  investments in high-tech therapies with (more human-effective) investments in prevention.   And of course the lines connecting the need for “evidence-based” health commitments with the fact that, as more than one expert noted, the available evidence in some instances is pointing in diverse directions.

There are clearly some trust issues to overcome amidst all of this uncertain balancing.  In one of the sessions, a professor from Rwanda challenged the sometimes facile articulation within and beyond the UN of the “public-private partnership model,” noting that while better “quality control” over agricultural and pharmaceutical production is important, the current preoccupation in some quarters with diets and other “lifestyle” issues is likely an over-reach. Such a preoccupation, she noted, tends to just “put the blame on the people.”  What she called for in addition was a greater commitment to transparency and broad public participation regarding government health policy, to lift the veil on the mostly off-camera “public-private” dealings that can saddle communities with medicines they don’t particularly need at prices they can’t afford.

If “leaving no one behind” is to be something more than the tag line for this HLPF, we must consider what keeps us vital in these challenging times, what make us not only able to benefit from sustainable development but allows us to participate fully and energetically in building a more sustainable world.  In this second and critical dimension of SDG implementation, the role of good health cannot be over-stated.  It is truly one of the blessings of life to be able to early rise from sleep and feel healthy enough to help take on some of the world’s problems, perhaps even ease a few burdens for others.  If the SDGs are to achieve their full promise (and there is really no planetary alternative to doing so), the vitality of the world’s peoples – our personal connectivity, “humane ideas,” uncontaminated environments and other indicators of well-being — must be better assured.

Health is a core dimension of sustainable development that the UN seems well-suited to address, and we strongly encourage its continued focus.  In its absence, woes of body and mind will continue to sideline too many of the skills, passions, ideas and connections needed to ensure a more peaceful and sustainable future.

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