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Stuffing the ICC’s Christmas Stocking, Dr. Robert Zuber

23 Dec

The recently concluded Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the ICC gave rise to an array of hope and concern from States, considerable expressions of support by NGOs and the community of legal educators, and some election campaigning for judgeships that made horse trading in Texas or Oklahoma look perfectly rational by comparison.

For some, the controversies surrounding the ICC were the latest in a series of setbacks that have some wondering about the commitment of the international community to end impunity for the most abusive of crimes.  Events surrounding ICC engagements with Sudan, Kenya and Libya have not inspired much optimism.  State presentations to the ASP by China and others underlined trust deficits with varying degrees of relevance, leading some participants to despair — mostly unwarranted we feel — that a fair, effective and transparent system of international justice will perpetually elude our collective grasp.

It is not only the ICC, of course, that generates such concerns.  Discussions in the UN Security Council over means to ‘sunset’ the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia contributed to the 2013 International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.   However, even while agreeing recently to extend the work of the ICTY, some Council members could be heard urging the ICTY president and prosecutor to clean up remaining business as soon as possible. With due regard for budgetary concerns, these members know full well that successful legal proceedings at this level are rarely driven by time constraints and that, indeed, a failure to provide full access to relevant evidence and cross examination is as likely to lead to appeals, if not outright dismissals, than to firm convictions.  And, needless to say, given the severity of the crimes for which people like Karadžić and Mladić have been accused, ‘firm’ is to be highly preferred.

In the case of the ICC, the only point at which ‘hurry up’ seems even remotely applicable is in the issuing of Council referrals which can certainly be ill-timed and occasionally seem designed more to push away difficult security challenges than to deal with them in a truly systemic, complementary fashion.  In this and other aspects, the ICC is too often caught up in conundrums more political than legal, and largely not of the ICC’s own making.

Chief Prosecutor Bensouda’s frequent briefings to the Council this year, most notably on Libya and Darfur, have for the most part been painfully frustrating to behold.  The work of her office has clearly been compromised by, among other things, inadequate budgets, even less adequate security contexts, the reticence by states to apprehend indicted suspects, a lack of follow up on referrals by the Council, and in some cases signatory states leveling public charges of bias with much greater force than other states issue concrete commitments of support.  (It is difficult to see how a now-contemplated Council referral on the DPRK would be able to avoid one or more of the above pitfalls.)

This ASP brought to the surface most of the key issues affecting the current performance and longer-term credibility of the Court:  the need for greater complementarity between national and international legal mechanisms, the need for referrals that are tied to clear budgetary commitments, the willingness of the Council to discipline states that shelter or otherwise protect indicted criminals,  the need to counter the perception of ‘Africa bias’ in the Court as part of a larger ‘bias’ in a system that has little stomach for employing the same remedies against larger states that it routinely imposes on smaller ones. Clearly, the ICCs agenda is replete with matters not directly related to evidence gathering and the conduct of criminal trials.

There were some interesting moments in this ASP not tied directly to the endless trolling of votes for ICC judgeships.  One highlight was surely the speech of Ambassador Mansour of Palestine, who rebuffed Israel’s contention that its presence at the ASP was not warranted and then claimed that a growing number of policymakers in Palestine were convinced that membership in the ICC would greatly benefit their evolving state interests.   The question, of course, is the degree to which Palestine’s participation is likely to help reverse the trend of more politicized engagements with the Court.

In the end, even after its finding of non-cooperation on Sudan and the dismissal of charges against Kenyan President Kenyatta, the Court is resolved to fight another day.   Its Christmas stocking is hardly bulging this year, but the issues it is likely to contend with in 2015 have been clearly laid out. And even critical states seem cautiously optimistic that the Court can weather its political and procedural storms, make changes where appropriate, and continue to serve the compelling and broadly-accepted interests of ending impunity for the worst criminal offences.

In the view of many onlookers, what the ICC needs in its Christmas stocking this year is fewer modulated expressions of support and more concrete commitments by states.   As Madame Bensouda has made clear on many occasions, it is up to states to ensure that alleged perpetrators, once indicted, are made available for trial.  Moreover, it is up to states to ensure that, once convicted, perpetrators can be incarcerated in facilities that meet international standards.  It is up to states to ensure that witnesses are protected from retribution and that victims are offered reparations that go beyond cash disbursements.  It is up to states to ensure that adequate resources are available to conduct fair trials that lead to unimpeachable judgments.   These ‘stocking suffers’ are not endless, but they are essential.

As with other meetings of this sort, the ASP merely confirmed the limitations of any trial court – even one with the deserved prestige of the ICC — and outlined essential, practical commitments by both the Security Council and other UN member states, without which the ICC cannot possibly sustain an effective and trustworthy mechanism of international justice.  Moving forward, we simply cannot allow our commitment to ‘never again’ to be sidetracked by ‘never enough.’

The Fabulous Five:  Non-Permanent Council Members Leave a Permanent Mark

15 Dec

As 2014 draws to a close, the Security Council bids farewell to five states which, as a group, significantly elevated the role of non-permanent members at a time when the Council has seemed by many to be simply overwhelmed by a torrent of global crises.

Argentina, Australia, Luxembourg, the Republic of Korea and Rwanda all performed with various levels of distinction, taking on important and complex committee assignments but more importantly calling the Council as a whole to higher standards of performance.  Only occasionally over the past two years did any of these members seem to forget where they came from – the General Assembly – or where they are soon destined to return.  The Council can be a ‘heady’ place, especially for smaller states infrequently selected to take a seat around the oval.   But the Council also has problems of focus, follow-through and other working methods-related issues that impact the rest of the UN system, producing tensions with member states that this group helped take steps to resolve.

One failing of the current, uneasy consensus on working methods, as we have noted previously, is that the so-called ‘public’ events seem a bit too scripted, attempts to ‘brand’ policy rather than allow glimpses into the rationales for and limitations of Council efficacy. In our own global travels, it quickly becomes clear that what people would prefer to ‘see’ from Council members is a measured and thoughtful assessment of the many global crises on their agenda, the implications of these crises for international peace and security, and any changes Council members are willing to contemplate in order to more effectively fulfill the ‘primary’ Charter responsibility to which some of the members constantly call attention.

Having sat through hundreds of hours of these Council events over the past two years, there are things we wish we could have seen more often from these five skillful members.   We would have liked to see the ROK take more risks in their policy statements. We would have liked to see more independence by Australia from the influence of some permanent members.  We would have liked to see Luxembourg and Argentina get up to speed more quickly (no small task) so that other Council members could have taken greater advantage of their often-wise counsel.   We would have liked to see stronger guidance from Rwanda in support of still-fledgling AU efforts to maintain peace and security, especially given that Rwanda understands better than almost anyone the degree to which many Council responses to African conflict are late to evolve, capacity challenged, and lacking in cultural nuance.

Of the non-permanent members that are now vacating the Council, our ‘hat’ tips especially towards Argentina.  While the other ‘fabulous five’ states were certainly thoughtful in their policy statements – Luxembourg and Australia especially come to mind from this group – it was Argentina that attempted to take seriously the role of Council sage.  It was Argentina whose statements most often raised the question of why the Council bothers to convene to then share views that have no collective policy impact.  It was Argentina that insisted most strongly that the Council honor its obligations to peacekeepers, to the ICC, to other parts of the UN system that have (legitimate if unfulfilled) expectations of Council performance.  It was also Argentina that, more than the others, seemed to understand the mood of the audience behind the web cast, an audience uneasy about the state of the world and increasingly concerned that the Council might not have what it takes to bring wide-ranging chaos and abuse under effective international control.

As we have already alluded to in past statements, what policymakers and the global public need to glimpse from the Council is a body whose statements meaningfully reflect the full- spectrum burdens that it faces, the policy compromises that its working methods sometimes impose, the inability (or unwillingness) to seize on potential crises at their earliest moments, the commitment to play by the rules that it expects other states to play by, even the willingness to acknowledgement of policy blunders (Libya comes immediately to mind) that have wrecked many lives in states seemingly ‘permitted’; to fail.

In our view, this general vetting is the primary (albeit difficult) job of non-permanent members: using this temporary platform to revitalize Council methods, build stronger and more trust-worthy bonds with the rest of the UN system, and give voice to otherwise muted policy concerns.  Given the vast power disparities within the Council itself and the often unruly political machinations that sometimes proceed from this imbalance, we can only honor the contributions of this fabulous five.  They have set a high and inviting bar for their successors.

Dr. Robert Zuber

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Ending Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: Posing the Next Set of Questions

12 Dec

Editor’s Note:  Dr. Megan Daigle came to us this fall from the University of Gothenburg at the suggestion of longtime GAPW colleague and friend Dr. Maria Stern. During her time here, Megan reinforced many of our core policy interests, including African and Latin American politics.   More specifically, her work on feminist theory and violence against women is both relevant and inspiring to us, and we hope to maintain a collaborative research and policy relationship with her for a long time to come. 

As a research fellow at the Gothenburg Centre for Globalization and Development in Gothenburg, Sweden, I travel frequently to conduct archival research and interviews.  For much of October and November, I was in New York interviewing UN officials, NGO staff, and other activists — and, of course, haunting the Global Action offices as my base of operations.  Arriving in New York as an independent researcher, it’s easy to feel a bit at sea.  The myriad headquarters and offices of UN bodies are all but impenetrable to outsiders, but given that my research focuses on the mobilization of resources, interventions, and political will to end sexual violence in conflict zones, this was where I needed to be.

Sexual violence in armed conflict (SVAC) is now a high-priority agenda item for the Security Council, following a string of resolutions beginning with UNSCR 1325 in October of 2000 and culminating most recently with UNSCR 2122 last year.  SVAC is also at the top of programming and advocacy dossiers at a variety of UN agencies including UNFPA, UN Women, UNICEF, and UNHCR, amongst others, and gave rise to the creation of UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, an interagency effort at improving coordination and accountability in work on SVAC.  This mobilization can be dated to the international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, which first tried SVAC as war crimes, but it really began to gain momentum with 1325 and the issuing of the first major NGO reports on the issue.  Funding for women, peace and security issues is always scarce, but it is now commonly said that, anecdotally, SVAC is receiving a disproportionate share of that limited pie.  In June, the United Kingdom held a massive summit hosting thousands of activists, experts, survivors, and government ministers.

Given this remarkable rise in interest and action, there are some questions that we need to ask, which are forming the basis of my research:

Why this issue, and why now?  This isn’t meant to suggest that the international community shouldn’t be doing something about the horrific scale of sexual violence that has accompanied so many modern wars.  Rather, the severity and persistence of SVAC is all the more reason why we should ask why we are so committed now — what interests is it serving, who have been the major players, and how has it come about?  That may sound cynical, but this question has important implications for how the issue is approached and how sustainable the effort is likely to be moving forward, especially if the political winds start to blow in a different direction.

Why are we taking SVAC as an issue on its own?  It’s hard enough — if not impossible and perhaps inadvisable — to try to draw a clear line between conflict and post- (or pre-) conflict periods.  We know that SVAC is strongly related to rates of gender-based violence and gender inequality that already exist in a given society before the outbreak of conflict.  We also know that incidences of domestic violence increase markedly in conflict settings, so discerning what gender-based violence is “related” to conflict is also difficult and a blurry line at best.  So why are we trying to address it as a separate issue — from gender-based violence in and out of conflict on one hand, and from the other harms and vulnerabilities faced by people living with conflict on the other?  One explanation seems to be that SVAC is seen as an “easy win,” not in the sense of being easy to fix, but rather that it’s easy to get on board.  Nobody is going to say they’re in favour of SVAC, certainly, so it’s a relatively easy issue to champion, even in as slow-moving and disinterested a diplomatic system as the UN tends to be.  Taking it out of its context allows this to happen, without requiring us to dig into the thornier issues of structural gender inequality, domestic violence, girls’ education, pay gaps, and women’s representation in politics — which many governments refuse to broach, but which might help us to make a far greater impact on rates of SVAC.

What effects is this mobilization having?  SVAC, like any kind of sexual violence, is notoriously hard to measure.  Survivors are reluctant to come forward, communities are often slow to act until evidence is long gone, and courts have been reticent not only to try cases, but also to provide the necessary considerations for survivors and witnesses.  There are undoubtedly many good things happening as a result of the recent surge in interest, many of which are supported by the UN and its various branches: social outreach and education, security sector reform, transitional justice processes, and medical and social service provision, to name just a few.  We also need to examine where we may be going wrong.  There have been criticisms of interventions and advocacy on the issue of SVAC from a number of directions that merit serious consideration.  First, some argue that male survivors are erased in the current discourse surrounding SVAC, even as many in the NGO community feel that organizations dealing with male survivors receive a disproportionate share of funding.  It has also been argued that decontextualizing SVAC, as I discussed above, seriously reduces our capacity to make real change as an international community.  What is more, many critics argue that this recent wave of activism — on the part of governments, NGOs, and UN bodies — reduces women to this, this issue, this role as victims of violation, and that it treats SVAC as the emblematic female experience in war.  When we think of women in war, we think of rape, and that’s problematic because it erases the many other roles that women play as diplomats, soldiers, peace builders, aid workers, or militia members.  I have a lot of sympathy for these more nuanced perspectives.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to ask ourselves, what more can and should we be doing?  In conversations that I had with UN staff from a few different offices, I asked them about prevention, and I heard the same story a few times: when we hear that women are being attacked in certain places — while collecting firewood or water, on routes between towns, or while working in fields — we send peacekeeping patrols to escort them.  This brings out an important distinction between protective and prohibitive forms of prevention; the first merely inserts some kind of impediment (peacekeepers, walls or fences, well-lit streets) between a would-be attacker and victim, while the second prevents assault from happening in the first place.  This focus on protective prevention is in part a function of short-term, output-focused funding models, where agencies are under pressure to produce quantifiable results by the end of a project, taking emphasis and funding away from long-view work on changing attitudes and standards.  But it does shape our approach and what our “solutions” look like.  This is just one example, but there are more: it’s imperative that we see more survivor-led initiatives, responses that don’t just consult with women and men who have experienced violence, but employ survivors to work on locally-appropriate solutions. It is simply not enough to deploy ‘experts’ and their tendency to uncritically export models across contexts.

The bottom line is that it’s not enough to move forward under the assumption that our good intentions mean we are, in fact, doing good — we have to be self-critical and willing to ask ourselves, is our ‘help’ helping?  I’m only at the beginning of this project, so I can’t begin to answer many of my own questions, but these are the thoughts I’m left with after weeks of interviews with UN and NGO staffers, and that will guide my work moving forward.

Ms. Megan Daigle  (megan.daigle@gmail.com)

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Elite Benefits, Dr. Robert Zuber

10 Dec

Those of us who try to stay current with multi-lateral, diplomatic affairs are acutely and sometimes painfully aware of the benefits that ascribe to being a large power at the United Nations, especially a permanent Security Council member.

Governments at the UN have become accustomed to playing by two sets of rules.   The permanent members routinely create narratives for their own behavior that, by any relevant international standard, should be heavily scrutinized rather than brushed aside.  Scrutiny, too often, is reserved for the smaller and often ‘outlier’ states that have fewer resources and less occasion to ‘spin’ bad behavior to positive political ends.

The release of the US Senate’s report on CIA interrogation methods is welcome, despite the political wrangling that delayed its release, citing ‘damage’ to US interests that might occur once at least a portion of the ‘truth’ is out.  And despite efforts by some to use the report’s release as a kind of moral ‘disinfectant’ to the deep psychic sickness which the report partially highlights and to which this nation has willfully descended.

There are of course lessons here that the US (and many other nations) would be wise to learn but probably will not.  The first lesson is that controversial behavior must account for that time when the full truth about the controversy is known.  People don’t much care about the day to day activities of most of us, but in the case of high government officials there will always be interest.    And in this celebrity driven age with personal gadgets at the ready, the chances of keeping ‘secrets’ secret in the long-term are quite low.

Second, we need to lose this idea, and especially its practical application, that some states stand above the laws they seek to hold others accountable to.   I’m not sure what happened to ‘modeling’ as a change strategy, but clearly the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ maxim that is so dysfunctional within family life has somehow found a leading role in international polity, and not to its benefit.

And finally, the noxious effort by some in the government and media so see the release of the report as a symbol of our collective moral virtue must cease immediately.   My country did not ‘own up to’ our mistakes until, in some instances, years after those ‘mistakes’ were made, and then only under pressure from the press and human rights advocates, and then again only after intensive political wrangling.   Moral virtue, indeed.  If ever there was a time to climb down from the bully pulpit and eat some humble pie, this is it.

The ability of elite powers to ‘spin’ their own bad behavior while pointing fingers at others is itself a moral travesty and one of the reasons why the status of the UN is not higher globally than it is.  I will likely pay more of a penalty for late payments of my office bills than lying CIA officials (and their defenders in the executive branch of government) will pay for sapping the very life out of persons who were, for the most part, only ‘alleged’ to have committed serious crimes.

Needless to say, this is not quite the ‘gift’ on Human Rights Day that we might otherwise have hoped for.

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Clear Channel Communications:  Saying What we Need and How we Need it

25 Nov

While spending this past week ‘in the field,’ I was able to follow a bit of the Security Council’s discussion on countering terrorism as well as the 25th anniversary celebration of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of the most ratified of all UN conventions and one of the organization’s  signature achievements. The Convention’s language is filled with caveats related to children’s limitations and vulnerabilities, but this really is about rights of children as much as about the obligations of adults.   In a world which for many of us would be borderline intolerable without the presence of children in it, the Convention reminds us that while we have not done nearly enough to ensure developmentally appropriate protection and education of children, let alone secure their future, the obligations to children contained in this Convention are, in some significant sense, the very least we can do.

Children were also on the menu at the Budapest Human Rights Forum, now in its 7th year, and more especially in the side event organized by György Tatar and his colleagues with the Budapest Centre for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities.  The latter event was on education for mass atrocity prevention, a topic similar to one covered during this fall’s opening of the GA hosted by the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Adama Dieng, along with ministers from Belgium and Ghana.   The Budapest Centre event, however, was a bit less about the control and potential of the internet (the focus of both the UN event and the Forum), and more about learning skills and materials needed to help stimulate understanding and involvement of young people in the struggle against mass atrocity violence.

Consistent with their reputation, the Budapest Centre brought together a wide array of stakeholders, from United Nations officials to the leadership of educational programs in Bosnia- Herzegovina.  Speakers were engaging though they tended to mostly highlight the activities and accomplishments of their own organizations.  There were few attempts to step back from immediate needs and activities to address larger governance and development concerns.

And this is the point at which some significant questions became relevant, two in particular.  The first was related to an issue that we have taken up previously in this space, the relationship between activity and impact.  How do we determine that we in our various venues are doing more than building up ‘our numbers,’ more than creating busywork for the cause of peace and justice?  This question was posed to panelists with mostly muted response.   Only a few even acknowledged the problem of transformational language that becomes incarnate in activities that are more likely to fulfill the expectations of funders and governments than change the core dynamics of schools and communities.

And the other interesting question, also largely posed without response, referred to the ways in which we seek (or don’t ) the clarification of what it is that we want from others, in this instance ‘others’ referring primarily to that elusive “international community.”   This particular question had two components, what we want bound together with how we want it.

You would think that this combination question would be easy for activists and policymakers to address, but this is rarely seems to be the case.   For the Bosnian representatives, as for many others, telling the story of wants and needs comes in the form of lots of complaining about conditions and an equal measure of pleas to the aforementioned (and also not particularly well understood) international community to ‘do something’ regarding the sources of our collective misery.

The obvious follow up to this combination of discouraging words and pleas for change is, well, what do you want?  What in your view would be the best way for the international community or any other interested party to assist?  And how would it be best to provide that assistance so that we, for instance, avoid dependencies, ensure local control, help guarantee complementary of policy responses, take a longer remedial view instead of just addressing the most current needs?

As someone who has spent much of his life counseling the problems of others, I remain surprised at the inability of people to really come to terms with what they want from others and provide some guidance as to the form that this assistance should take.  Many personal relationships are undone by this lack of clarity.  Remembering birthdays and anniversaries, of course  but with gifts that are thoughtful rather than perfunctory, putting care into selection rather than simply  buying the first thing that seems ‘good enough.’  People have desires, but few want things ‘thrown at them’ in a take-it-or-leave-it manner.  Faced with such a choice, many would choose the ‘leave it’ option.

It is much the same with international assistance.   Activists working in places like Bosnia face considerable challenges including often chronic resource deficits.  They need a hand from time to time, as we all do, if we are to reconcile an often unjust world.  But that ‘hand’ requires guidance of sorts if it is to find the most appropriate and effective end use.   For those seeking to assist, there is simply more they need to know beyond the fact that there are problems needing to be addressed. Needs and wants can be prioritized.  They are often linked to each other.  They have contexts. And there are times when inappropriate assistance is worse than no assistance at all.

In my view, a healthy collaborative exchange requires more clarity from potential recipients, more discernment about needs and expectations, more insistence that any assistance be about more than crunching numbers to fill funder expectations.  This successful matching of needs and resources, whether in development, education, illicit arms or any other areas of policy concern takes more sensitivity from those who claim to assist.  But it also requires more clarity from the assisted.

A common refrain in counseling personal relationships is the belief that he/she should already know what “I” want and need.   This is an understandable but altogether elusive claim that presumes more clarity on the needs side and less sensitivity on the assistance side.   The good human rights discussions held in Hungary  served as reminders that proper assistance requires sensitive assessment, but that clarity of needs and wants is equally an indispensable, if often overlooked, part of the assistance equation.   If we are not willing (or able) to explain clearly what types and forms of assistance would be most helpful to us and our constituent communities, the odds of getting what we want greatly diminish.

Dr. Robert Zuber

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Culture Clashes: Is a UN ‘culture of peace’ possible?

17 Nov

Editor’s note:  This is the second post from our human rights associate, Karin Perro.  Karin has been firmly planted in either the UNGA 3rd Committee (Human Rights) or the Security Council for the past few weeks and this post is a reflection based in part on what she has seen and heard. 

Since the beginning of September 2014, I have had the enormous pleasure and privilege of working with GAPW and witnessing first-hand the diverse workings of the UN system. Recently, the opinion I shared with a colleague regarding the UNGA’s Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace elicited a strong and unexpected reaction. Noting that a culture of war has pervaded civilization for so many generations, the notion of a ‘culture of peace’ was dismissed as a conceptually futile endeavor.  As a former anthropologist, I had to asked myself if such an argument had merit – is a culture of peace an illusory goal? Is the assumption valid that all of us (or at least a critical mass) want global peace?

In spite of some assertions that peace is a universal imperative, we’re now experiencing an increase in regional conflicts that threaten global security, with some actors justifying the use of force in promoting the global peace mandate, metaphorically ‘fighting fire with fire’.  Many UN member states may claim aspirations to a utopian ideal, but those states often seem to take their cues from dystopian playbooks. Historically, we have witnessed a global culture predicated on war, violence, and force. In light of our collective past, the question to consider is this: are we consigned to Hobbesian notions that our ‘natural state’ is a state of war?  I think not, particularly in light of the considerable headway made by the international community in promoting security and human rights – the rights of women, children, indigenous societies, and persons with disabilities, just to name a few. Changes in normative behavior occur at a seemingly glacial pace, but changes are evidenced by slow but steady progress in the development and implementation of myriad peace, security, and human rights mechanisms, certainly including those mechanisms housed at the UN.

Of course, organizations have their own cultures as well. In spite of the urging of UN mandates, culturally reinforced perspectives on rights and peace have the potential to impede consensual agreement on collective goals. While the essence of the ubiquitous ‘other’ has been subjugated by political correctness and diplomatic restraint, an ‘us versus them’ attitude at times still percolates beneath the collaborative veneer of UN discourse.  Too often acrimonious exchanges, exposing the ugliness of entrenched hatreds, bigotries, or distrust, constrain constructive progress in UN fora, whether in GA committee meetings, SC debates, or side events hosted and attended by NGO representatives.

If we are to promote a global ‘culture of peace’ it seems only fitting that a proper  ‘peace culture’ paradigm should exist within the UN structure itself. Yet there remain troubling issues surrounding culture, ethnicity and religion that are stubbornly embedded within global governance, and perpetuated, however unwittingly, across sectors.  While all stakeholders are seemingly invited to an egalitarian governance banquet, not everyone drinks from the same gilded cup. There is always a danger that hegemonic powers will impose their own vision of justice, however well intentioned, upon the less empowered. It is too easy to suppress or marginalize nontraditional voices that fail to mimic our own particular worldviews.

It’s worth remembering that culture is inherently dynamic and subject to change through societal forces, whether those forces are initiated by international bodies, imposed by national governments, sprung from incipient grassroots movements, or engendered by powerful but singular voices. One may opt to attenuate or accelerate the forces at play – but either way it is a choice to be exercised.

To foster a global ‘culture of peace’ there are several skills worth cultivating more robustly, including the ability to see (and even appreciate) the world through the “lenses” of others as well as our own.  But first we must do all that we can to ensure an open and impartial global governance environment where the expressions of divergent opinions are embraced rather than muted or even suppressed.

Karin Perro

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A New Source of Skills for Crisis Prevention and Management

14 Nov

Editor’s note:  The following is from Gord Breedyk, currently in residence at GAPW where he is exploring ways that the UN can connect with his own work at Civilian Peace Service Canada. GAPW has long been supportive of this civilian-based initiative and plans to stay connected longer term. We need more of the skills and competencies that Gord and his team help to assess. 

I have recently been given the privilege of working with Global Action to Prevent War and Armed Conflict (GAPW) including observing and learning from UN meetings.  These meetings have ranged from Security Council briefings on Gaza, Mali, Syria and Ukraine to committee deliberations on: Human Rights; Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control; Interstate Arbitration and Enforcement of Decisions; Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support; International Law and Asymmetric Warfare; Women Redefining the Terms of Peace Negotiations; the Peacebuilding Commission’s response to Ebola; the Power of Entrepreneurship; and a Report on the Economic and Social Repercussions of the Israeli Occupation. And this is but a tiny sample of all the meetings taking place in a relatively typical fall week at the UN.

Hugely impressive to an outside observer is the breadth and depth of subject matter deliberated by UN delegates; also the overall dedication, civility and mutual respect  practised by most of them,  often despite deeply held and contradictory views, and often despite  significant frustration at the apparent inability of the UN as an institution to a) prevent what often seem to be relatively predictable catastrophes and b) adequately deal with them once they do materialize financially, operationally and, yes,  politically.

For example (paraphrased), “Why bother rebuilding Palestine …it may be destroyed again in months or years?,” two delegates recently asked the Commissioner General for UNRWA. The Commissioner answered, “It is a human imperative to rebuild – we must.”

Rebuilding is one thing. Prevention, even transformation of conflict-related threats that can minimize destruction is quite another. But where is the capacity and skill needed to prevent and mediate conflict going to come from?  We feel that the UN would be well-served by engaging Accredited Peace Professionals as a supplement to the UN’s own recent commitments to involve more civilians in its operations.

Like well-trained doctors, lawyers, engineers, soldiers, etc., Accredited Peace Professionals are practitioners in the field of international negotiation, mediation, arbitration and diplomacy. These practitioners are held to high professional standards through rigorous assessment of values and competencies in the peace field and, once qualified, formally accredited as meeting the required standards.

To quote Cameron Chisholm of the International Peace & Security Institute (IPSI): “Doctors are educated in both theory and practice before they ever enter the operating room. Why should peacebuilding be any less professional?”  And he goes on to say “It shouldn’t be!”

How would Accredited Peace Professionals supplement Peacekeepers and other UN capacity?  Whereas  UN Peacekeepers are primarily military professionals providing (increasingly complex) mandated peacekeeping services in areas of conflict, Peace Professionals are accredited for competencies and values in preventing, mitigating and transforming conflict in all aspects. As with any other profession (including the military) these professionals will have met the standards relevant for their peace/mediation vocation.  In other words, Peace Professionals have demonstrated skills in areas that Peacekeepers struggle to address as part of their increasingly complex mandates.

What difference could this additional assessed capacity make?  The UN and its agencies could benefit from the skills and energies of hundreds, ultimately thousands of highly trained, thoroughly assessed Accredited Peace Professionals, persons focused on reducing the number of violent conflicts and the levels of conflict (where they still occur) and, significantly, minimizing the impact on civilians including damage to their infrastructure.  Such professionals would also ease demands on UN and member state resources.  A reduction in civilian lives lost and/or in the numbers of IDPs and refugees would more than offset the cost of deploying Accredited Peace Professionals.

Civilian Peace Service Canada (CPSC) has developed and piloted an assessment and accreditation methodology that has withstood academic and professional scrutiny. Its rigour ensures dedicated and competent professionals ready for service in peace and mediation related fields. We are now looking to significantly grow the number of Accredited Peace Professionals to meet the growing capacity gaps at the UN and elsewhere. (More on this at: www.civilianpeaceservice.ca).

We are aware and supportive of the need expressed in different UN settings for more gender balance in areas of mediation and other peace processes.  But there is a broader need as well.  We simply don’t have enough capacity to handle all of the crises (and threats of crises) that are the focus of so many UN briefings and discussions.   Accredited Peace Professionals can help fill this gap.

Gordon Breedyk, Civilian Peace Service Canada

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An Open Letter to our Readers — Dr. Robert Zuber

12 Nov

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

For the past two years or more, we have provided you with real time (and through the blog) analysis of major events, discussions, resolutions and decisions that make up the work of today’s United Nations.

From ECOSOC and the Security Council to Treaty Bodies and GA Committees, we have attempted to communicate — within the limits of Twitter — key ideas and developments from UNHQ that continue to shape the world, often for good, sometimes for outcomes more ambiguous than that.

Soon parts of GAPW will go on a short hiatus, traveling to Hungary and Central Africa to participate in the Budapest Human Rights Forum as well as a series of workshops and events organized by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation in Cameroon.  Karin Perro (@KarinPerro) and others will remain in New York and we will all reach out when and where we can, but likely not at our normal levels of coverage until December 4.

It is vitally important to our work that we make these trips to consult with partners on issues and organizational matters, to be inspired by the important work occurring in places far removed from New York, even to have our own mission assessed and refreshed.   As many of you already know, it is hard to make honest assessments of our value — and our limitations – in places like this.  We ‘get away’ much less often than we used to, making those times when we can connect with diverse communities that much more precious.

In the interim, we would like to communicate three things to all of you.  First, to let you know how much we value your policy engagement.   Twitter is not to be confused with brain surgery, to be sure, but there is a skill to communicating important things in limited spaces, and we are enormously grateful that you value our communication and are so generous with your own.

Second, as some of you know we have welcomed many interns and fellows over the years, people who come to us to learn about the UN, conduct research, complete books, interview diplomats and much more.  As we move forward as an office, we welcome communication from others interested in sharing our hospitable and connected space.

Finally, as with your own work, ours doesn’t happen for free.   For the past 10 years, we have more or less lived on the edge, with modest budgets of $200,000 or less and uncertain cash flows.  Of course, this is how most of the world lives, and we didn’t get into this to occupy the high rises that now surround UNHQ.  Still, we have basic salaries to provide, office infrastructure to maintain, occasional trips to take, publications and policy analysis to complete, fellows and interns to support, and more.

If you can help us in any way, we would be grateful.   The easiest way to contribute would be to use the Just Donate button found on our homepage:   www.globalactionpw.org.

Donate Now

You can also send a check to GAPW, 866 UN Plaza, Suite 4050, New York, NY 10017.  Please feel free to pass on this message to others who might be able to help out or who would be interested in joining our policy discussions.

Thank you as always for staying in communication with us.  We promise never to abuse the privilege of your most welcome policy collaboration.

Warm regards to you,

Bob

Dr. Robert Zuber

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Ratifying a Torture-Free World, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 Nov

Of the many insight-filled side events this month at UN Headquarters, we were especially pleased to be present for a discussion on the Convention against Torture Initiative (CTI) launched in March by the governments of Chile, Denmark, Ghana, Indonesia and Morocco.

This eclectic group of governments, supported by the Association for the Prevention of Torture, has committed over a 10 year period to attain universal ratification of the UN Convention against Torture. Their commitment includes “identifying challenges and barriers to ratification” and “building a global platform” of diverse stakeholders.

This CTI event dovetailed effectively with other torture-related events taking place at UN Headquarters – focusing on issues such as medical forensics, solitary confinement, treatment of prisoners, and coerced ‘confessions’ — many of which included the presence of Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment and his colleagues with the Anti-Torture Initiative at Washington (DC) College of Law.

Along with colleagues worldwide, including and especially Paris-based FIACAT, Global Action sees significant promise in CTI.   Protection from torture is a ‘first generation’ rights issue in part because of its corrosive impact on the promotion and protection of other rights.   Torture undermines the fabric of community life, sowing suspicion of neighbors and their government officials, impeding free speech, and severely dampening enthusiasm for participation in political and cultural life.   Indeed, torture has the power to significantly unravel the social contract between citizens and governments, a ‘contract’ already fragile enough in an age of terror, climate upheavals, unchecked trafficking in weapons and persons, official corruption, mass atrocity violence and grave economic uncertainty.

With all due respect to the early stages of CTI development, we would like to offer a couple of reminders, hopefully helpful.

First, we note that the last laps of any long race are generally the most challenging.  In this regard, it is important to note that those states which have, to date, resisted ratification of the CAT (see https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?mtdsg_no=IV-9&chapter=4&lang=en) have significant (if not often legitimate) reasons for resistance.  Ratification did not just ‘slip the mind’ of recalcitrant states.  Moving these states to full engagement with the CAT will take much conversation, negotiation, perhaps even a bit of horse trading and coercive prodding.   Achieving universal ratification of the CAT is no small matter under the best of global circumstances.  And these times are certainly not the best.

Second, it is imperative that we involve in this work as many willing and skillful hands as we can locate. The proposed ‘global platform’ must stage as large and diverse a group of stakeholders as it can handle. This of course includes many stakeholders without specific branding in the human rights area or access to centers of policy influence.  Torture is an issue that impacts development priorities, educational opportunities, the policy participation of women and marginalized groups, even fair access to water and other resources.   People who work on these related issues – or are directly impacted by their challenges – must also receive an invitation.

The key here is to ensure as much as possible that participation in this drive toward universal ratification is governed less by who has a professional interest and more by who has a personal stake.   From this perspective it is clear that the stakes are high for all of us, well beyond the domain of human rights experts and issue-specific advocates.  If CTI is to achieve its goal, and we all need for this to happen, the circle drawn to help identify and energize relevant stakeholders must be large and welcoming.

 

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Blame and Its Consequences, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Oct

Over many years, I have been literally captivated by hundreds of Security Council meetings.   Even as more and more are available via webcast, the chamber itself remains endlessly interesting.   The body language of presenters; the degree to which diplomats are (or are not) actually paying attention to each other; the odd protocols such as inviting diplomats of states on the Council agenda to sit through votes or statements without allowing them to utter a word in support (or protest) of Council decisions; the ‘personalities’ of Council members, from the stoic pragmatism of the Chinese and mandate-fundamentalism of the Russian Federation to the thoughtfulness of current members such as Argentina and Rwanda, and the ‘moral’ stances so often enumerated by the P-3.

No one who sits in these meetings, day after day, can be confused about at least one facet of their underlying purpose.    Though the audience may be meager, these meetings represent opportunities for states to lobby their peers and the court of public opinion.  Given the branding opportunity for states (as in much of the UN as a whole), there are things you almost never hear: regrets over failed actions and/or policies; apologies to those victimized by bad decisions or for not living up to obligations to the International Criminal Court, Troop Contributing Countries, or other sectors of the organization; acknowledgment of valid points raised by political adversaries; and clear and humble explanations of why policies that seemed to some to be so right at the time (ie. Libya bombings, the re-hatting of CAR peacekeepers) have fallen far short of expectations and may have even triggered more of the violence they were designed to prevent.

The point of this post is not to bash the Council which already gets plenty of criticism from many quarters; none of which, so far as I can tell, has much potential to meaningfully divert Council energies or make members take on tasks they are reluctant to accept.

The point is rather that, in some ironic sense, the branding efforts by these powerful Council members also does not seem to have much power to persuade.  People and states that follow Council meetings on a regular basis remain skeptical of motives and strategies as much as convinced.   With all due respect to the multiple challenges on the Council’s agenda, it is apparent that there is precious little ‘maintaining of peace and security’ at present.  Instead, the Council bounces from one crisis to the next, usually too late in the game to maintain much of anything, and certainly to prevent the crises that are both ruining millions of lives and cluttering up its agenda.  I know this is frustrating to at least some of the Council members.  It is frustrating to watch as well.

It seems as though Council members’ often clumsy efforts to garner public support, whether for Russia’s Crimean adventure, the US’s ISIS bombing campaign, or other policy decisions of Council members are falling more and more on deaf ears.   One primary reason for this seems obvious.  What the global public longs to see (and is frankly losing hope in seeing) is Council members displaying less national branding and more introspection; less political posturing and more sober reflection on how we got to the point of so many insurgencies and refugees worldwide; more about the ways in which the UN is still relevant to the resolution of these crises; and much more regarding changes that need to be (and hopefully will be) made to ensure that the Council can live up to its Charter mandate and not simply reaffirm its privilege to cope with security challenges at its own discretion.

One of the ironies of the recent Council discussions on Ukraine and especially on the Middle East was the number of states urging an end to ‘finger pointing’ and then immediately setting out to point fingers.  At no point in these ‘analyses’ of current situations did any state admit to any responsibility for any part of the dangerous tensions on the Council’s agenda.   The crisis in Syria is solely about ISIS and Assad.   The crisis in Gaza is all about the actions of terrorists (with perhaps a bit of Israeli overstretch). The crisis in Ukraine is all about Russians pouring across still—insufficiently monitored borders.  And on it goes.  Localizing the blame more than sharing the responsibility.

Are these causal factors at all relevant?  Of course they are.  Is the list comprehensive?  Of course it isn’t.   Why is this deliberate limitation of causality not, at least once in a while, part of the conversation? It should not be such a rare and remarkable occurrence for a Council member to acknowledge that they, individually and collectively, had misread the policy ‘tea leaves,’ and thus had compromised one or more member states, either through politicized policymaking or through an unwillingness to engage a crisis at an earlier, more manageable stage.

It dismays many onlookers that a Council which jealously guards its prerogatives in the peace and security area is so very reluctant to accept public responsibility for the many situations in which their actions fail to deliver peace.   The unwillingness to publicly acknowledge these shortcomings actually constitutes a disservice to the most responsible Council members, threatens the credibility of the UN system, and insults both analysts and victims who know that things rarely are as they are described in these meetings.

The Council still rightly maintains the respect of UN members and much of the global public.   But this cannot be taken for granted.  The finger pointing and political blaming that seem by default to fill in gaps in what are often well-crafted and even well-meaning policy statements must give way to a more thoughtful engagement with both the origins and consequences of crisis.

We fully acknowledge the immense degrees of difficulty that accompany the pursuit of consensus policy to address a myriad of ugly challenges around the world.   We also understand that many of these challenges – Libya, Mali, Syria, Central African Republic — are barely, if at all, under any effective control at present.  What we need to see from Council members (what we should also require of ourselves in our own policy contexts) is more thoughtfulness about strengths and limitations, less pointing of fingers at others,  more candid admissions of the ways in which Council members (and the rest of us as well) have contributed to the states and structures burning around us.

The great US theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once remarked that ‘the evils against which we contend are the fruits of illusions similar to our own.’  At a moment of agony for millions, illusions are indulgences we just cannot afford.  A more publicly thoughtful Council, a Council defined by pragmatic, cooperative problem solving, a Council willing to “hold the mirror” inwardly as well as outwardly, would do much to maintain public confidence along the now-epic, arduous path towards a sustainable peace.

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