Bomb Squad: The UN’s Struggle to Give Disarmament a Chance, Dr. Robert Zuber

7 Apr

Peace Bell

Who needs immortal strength when you’ve got weapons of mass destruction?  J.A. Saare

Before he danced with his weapons, now he danced with me.  Kara Barbieri

The people most reluctant to use weapons are the ones who can best be trusted with them. Christopher Bennett

Let the silence rise from unwatered graves and craters left by bombs.
Let the silence rise from empty bellies and surge from broken hearts. Kamand Kojouri

Can bombs heal our souls or set our spirits free? Aberjhani

During a week in which armed groups ominously marched towards Libya’s capital and the world pondered what has changed and not in the 25 years since the genocide in Rwanda, Tuesday was the day for the UN to take up another of the existential threats that have found their way on to its agenda – weapons in all shapes, sizes and destructive potential that can continue to intimidate populations, enforce discriminatory practices, impede sustainable development, undermine trust in neighbors and governments, and (too) much more.

As some of you recall, Global Action invested much of its early years in disarmament-related activity, helping to provide attentive feed-back to governments on their disarmament responsibilities and sharing office space with colleagues such as the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, with which we continue to commiserate regularly on a range of arms related matters.

That work still matters greatly, though we came to believe some time back that for disarmament to be successful it must find a broader engagement, specifically with policy communities that can make helpful connections between weapons procurement and the “deterrence” with which such weaponry is often associated and justified with other efforts to end racial and gender discrimination, protect our environment, uphold human rights obligations, eliminate the use of child soldiers, promote “DDR” with former combatants, and address terrorist threats.

Not only are these issues linked, but indeed our contention has been that there has been more policy space at the UN and elsewhere for discussions that involve weapons than for discussions that are solely focused on weapons.   Of all the policy architecture on display in the many UN conference rooms to which we are attention, it would be no stretch to conclude that the disarmament architecture is among the least flexible aspects of the current multi-lateral system, the structure most likely to double down on failed resolutions and treaties (or what passes for treaties in the disarmament world), largely squandering the energies and ideas of the often-remarkable diplomats and civil society representatives who choose in good faith to throw themselves into these essential but too-often frustrating processes.

And yet on this past Tuesday diplomats were back at it in the Security Council (which has yet to fulfill its Charter obligation to provide a plan forward on disarmament) as well as in the Disarmament Commission, a process that we followed closely for years but now only engage episodically given its political malfunctions and redundancies, as well as its almost legendary inability to move past hard statements and political maneuverings to embrace the deliberative space that could result in more thoughtful recommendations on disarmament to a UN system that hasn’t yet found them elsewhere.

On Tuesday, the Disarmament Commission could not even get through a single plenary session before politics intervened – in this instance a complaint filed by the Russian Federation against the “host state” for failure to issue visas to Russian delegates to the Commission.  While visa denial is a serious matter, this particular complaint eventually necessitated the shutting down of the day’s session, hardly a crisis in its own right, but surely a “red flag” for states and civil society organizations struggling within multiple venues to address the many challenges related to excessive arms production and deployment in all its aspects, including space weapons, nuclear weapons modernization, non-proliferation threats from the DPRK, “autonomous” weapons systems, alleged chemical weapons uses, “craft” IED production, and the biological weapons which perhaps represent the most covert and devastating of the weapons-of-mass-destruction triumvirate.

This is, at face value, an extraordinary list of threats, surely long enough and grave enough that diplomats and other global constituents could be excused for wanting more – much more — from a Commission that can barely agree on a three-year work plan, let alone transcend its national interests (legitimate and contrived) to enhance prospects for global well-being through meaningful weapons reductions.

As for the Security Council, with the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) soon to convene in New York, Council co-presidents Germany and France smartly put non-proliferation and disarmament at the head of this month’s deliberations.  Implementing the NPT’s “three pillars” (nuclear power being the 3rd) has been a bit of a slog, individually and collectively, though German Foreign Minister Maas claimed (and a Council press statement largely affirmed) that without the NPT “mutual distrust would be much higher” and dangers greater. Indeed, the FM evoked a popular Joni Mitchell song that “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone,” a sentiment in part echoed by High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Nakamitsu, who lauded the NPT’s “staying power” while rightly lamenting recent trends that preference “individual over collective security.”

This “it would be worse for us if the NPT weren’t here” claim can fairly be scrutinized, but the core issue is whether or not, given rising threat levels, the good is still good enough.   During this discussion, many Council members including Poland and Indonesia reflected on these three NPT pillars under stress, noting that the disarmament obligation remains the least implemented of the three. Indonesia’s MFA further reminded Council members that it is precisely tangible progress on this disarmament obligation that lends legitimacy to non-proliferation demands, progress that has been insufficient at best.

For his part, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Amano was forceful in proclaiming the work of his organization, specifically work focused on weapons monitoring and compliance deemed indispensable to the eventual fulfillment of the NPT’s promises. Indeed, that some NPT parties seem to put so little political stock in what Amano rightly deemed “powerful verification tools,” is a bit unsettling.  But more to the point, given that the health of the NPT is tied to its access to “state of the art” verification mechanisms unavailable in other weapons contexts, that key NPT members would then set out to “question” or even undermine the validity of these mechanisms is the sort of disconnect that should be called out in UN contexts more often.  No state should get a pass while voicing support for the NPT as a key component of the “rules based order” and then simultaneously creating distance in any form (including on financial support) from the one agency capable of verifying that the progress we claim on reducing nuclear weapons threats is actually being made.

An important issue for us is the extent to which a piece of our weapons-related monitoring and compliance can segue from states that might be guilty of undermining resolution and treaty obligations to the states and stakeholders that have — in UN and other contexts — turned an existential weapons threat into an occasion for trust-eroding, political posturing.   The question of how much we can trust the proliferators has largely been answered.  The question for this NPT Prep Com and for all subsequent NPT activities is whether or not we can trust the erstwhile disarmers?  If IAEA monitoring and compliance is as reliable as we believe it is, then we should support it.  If it is not as reliable as we believe it is, then we should fix it.  And if the problem is, as this Prep Com approaches, that some states simply don’t think that threats from nuclear (and other mass destruction) weapons warrant their best, “good-faith” diplomatic and technical efforts, then they simply (and quickly) need to think again.

 

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Passion Play: The UN’s Drowsy Acknowledgement of Racist Violence, Dr. Robert Zuber

31 Mar

Old Man

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.  Audre Lourde

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them. Elie Wiesel

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.  Ta-Nehisi Coates

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.  Lydia Maria Child

White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism: an absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.  Reni Eddo-Lodge

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.  Martin Luther King Jr.

This past week at the UN was reminiscent of some of the energy surrounding the opening of the General Assembly in September.  Many heads of state and foreign ministers were in the building weighing in on climate change and sustainable development, on peace prospects for Mali and its Sahel neighbors, on pledges to enhance the UN Secretary-General’s Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative, on collaborative actions to stem the financing of terrorism, on ways that the General Assembly and the Peacebuilding Commission can collaborate on conflict prevention and building “national ownership for sustaining peace,” and on the largely-US-initiated controversy around sovereign jurisdiction over the Golan Heights.  Beyond the rooms where the political dignitaries could be found, the UN also hosted some excellent side events on the preservation of biodiversity in the ocean waters beyond national jurisdiction, one piece of a larger treaty-based effort to promote global ocean governance in the vast, threatened, open ocean.

It was all breathtaking and challenging for us to process while running from one conference room to another to catch and share (@globalactionpw) the most important moments of too-often parallel events .  Much of the energy of the week, especially on peacekeeping and peacebuilding, was positive, though in some instances not always sufficiently urgent.  As was duly noted in several conference rooms, both our climate and our oceans are deteriorating more rapidly than our collective responses are ratcheting up, threatening small island states and regions such as the African Sahel, the latter of which is already groaning under burdens of drought, weak institutions of governance, and unwelcome external interference including in the form of pervasive violence from armed groups operating across multiple borders.

With all that was taking place in the worlds inside and outside the UN, there were three distinct images from this past week that touched a not-particularly-happy chord.  One of these, courtesy of CNN, was of the town hosting the so-called “doomsday vault” (Svalbard Global Seed Vault) that is apparently now warming faster than anywhere else on earth, threatening the integrity of the vault’s precious storage.  Back at the UN, the Security Council discussion on the validity of what Israel called the “just proclamation” by the US on the Golan deteriorated at the end into a bit of a shouting match with the Syrian and Israeli Ambassadors attempting to “shame” one another, as though there isn’t already plenty of unacknowledged and unconfessed shame at the UN to go around, certainly by these two states but also by myself and others who need to do more than the modest part we are playing now to help keep this UN ship steered in the right direction.

The third disturbing image for me was not about melting and shaming, but about absence.  After two weeks of crowded hallways, overflow conference rooms and passionate speeches from UN officials courtesy of the Commission on the Status of Women, the General Assembly held two events on Monday, essentially back to back, ostensibly to reflect with the international community on the scourges of racial discrimination and the slave trade, including its grave contemporary manifestations.

For both events, the GA Hall was largely empty at all seating levels, including the section where we were stationed. Only a half-dozen or so non-diplomats were witness to the first morning conversation in a level of the Hall that can seat hundreds.  One of those was an elderly African-American woman seated in one corner of what was otherwise a vast sea of empty seats. We wondered if all the open space disturbed her.  It disturbed us.

Some salient insights were communicated during this day though the speeches were often uttered without much passion, “whispers” easily swallowed up by vast, empty spaces.   There were exceptions: participating states including Cuba, Kenya, San Marino and Guyana exposed “doctrines of racial superiority” and the “hatred that could lead to genocide” while insisting that the UN take the lead in educating people about what Guatemala called “pernicious” and all-too common racism and discrimination.

The president of the General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés added some important dimensions to this discussion in what, for her, became quite a remarkable week of events and interventions. She underscored that the UN has not kept its “never again” promise; that “stereotypes and micro-aggressions” persist and inflame conditions that lead to racial intolerance.  And she restated the commitment of the General Assembly to the 2030 Development Agenda and its promise to eliminate the gaps that leave space in our world for race-based discrimination and abuse, for the hate crimes, abuses of authority and family-separated children that stain our very souls.

But it was two other insights from the president that particularly piqued our interest:  her lament that “inhumane subjection” continues to take so many ugly forms in our modern world, and her call to honor the (trans-Atlantic) slave women who endured “physical exploitation” but who nevertheless reached beyond their own suffered indignities to “uphold the dignity of others.”

In the aftermath of the CSW (whose side events we regularly attended), the implications of these two comments seemed clear.   First that “inhumane subjection” now casts a broad and nefarious shadow over the entire human condition, affecting too many women to be sure; but a shadow that engulfs and shrouds persons of many racial and religious backgrounds, including indigenous people of course but also persons with disabilities and disabling diseases, the chronically poor and politically marginalized. And second, that if “physically exploited” women can find it within themselves to uphold the dignity of others, then surely the rest of us privileged folks have far fewer excuses for neglecting this fundamental duty towards the building of a world of genuine reconciliation and sustainable peace.

For all the chatter about “intersectionalities” around the UN, we seem to have misplaced a good portion of that (probably now overused) term’s implications.  It is not just about multiple forms of discrimination experienced by such as indigenous women, as pervasive as those forms are. It is also about extending meaningful solidarity to other “sections,” identifying with their diverse humiliating and abusive contexts, supporting their calls for justice and reconciliation and, as with this past Monday, showing up at events where the abuse and discrimination of focus are not focused specifically on “us.”

At the end of a week of so many UN discussions both exhilarating and frustrating, the most hopeful image for me was the one at the top of this post, a 95 year old man who traveled on four buses to make an appearance at a rally to show support for New Zealand’s mourning Muslim community, thereby adding his voice to what must become our common call to take racial, ethnic and religious discrimination – and the multi-layered “crushing” and “trampling” which it now spawns in all parts of our world – with greater seriousness.

We could have used his presence and inspiration in the General Assembly Hall this past Monday.

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Timber Line: The UN Labors to Encourage Reverence for Forests, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Mar

Forests II=

Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours.  Herman Hesse

When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear.  Maya Angelou

When trees burn, they leave the smell of heartbreak in the air.  Jodi Thomas

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. William Blake

To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.  Jiddu Krishnamurti

And see the peaceful trees extend, their myriad leaves in leisured dance— they bear the weight of sky and cloud upon the fountain of their veins.  Kathleen Raine

The UN took up some important issues this week, including the economic and social benefits of Universal Health Care, the need to fulfill our participation promises from the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, and the implementation challenges of “biometrics” technology in securing national borders and positively identifying “foreign terrorist fighters” and other members of terror movements.

The biometrics event, organized by the ever- thoughtful UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, was particularly instructive as expert after expert wrestled with how to balance the technological benefits with the human rights pitfalls.  How do manage the “secret sharing” of this technology with intelligence and law-enforcement officials across borders while ensuring that rights of privacy and freedom from politicized applications are duly protected.  As is so often the case in such matters, we were left with an unfulfilling formula with many more concrete assurances regarding the counter-terror functionality of biometrics than regarding its own potential for rights abuses.

While some in this policy space would diminish its relevance, this is actually a pervasive problem at the UN.  We can prod and cajole, we can institutionalize our normative concerns and “turn up the heat” on serially-offending states.  But at the end of the day, it remains easier to “sell” governments (and other stakeholders to be sure) on the benefits of technology than on the vigilance required to ensure that such technology is not “repurposed” to political or economic goals inconsistent with Charter obligations to uphold human rights let alone the people-centered promises we have made to global constituents on sustainable development and a healthy environment.

Part of this dilemma is courtesy of a modern mind-set that “trusts” technology more than the motives of governments or even other human beings.  We have certainly adjusted our collective policy work to accommodate the language and thought-processes of technology and, on that basis, assumed that technology will more or less “sell itself” to an audience perhaps much too eager to embrace its benefits without bothering to assess, and then recover, what we might otherwise be in danger of losing.

Some of this disconnect was in evidence at this week’s International Day of Forests event, a precursor to May’s Forum on Forests to be held at UN Headquarters.   We eagerly anticipated this event, in part, based on our understanding of the important role that forests play worldwide in absorbing and storing carbon, but also the degree to which the lack of healthy forests (due to disease or deforestation) is itself a significant contributor to climate risks.  Thanks to UN reports and local agents of change, we know that healthy forests have direct implications for water, soil quality and other quality-of-life issues in rural areas.  Thanks to Green Map and others, we also know of the multiple benefits of trees in urban areas, including energy conservation, CO2 reduction, storm-water capture and pollutant removal, as well as traffic calming and crash reduction, healthier walking and cycling, even “an enhanced sense of well-being and conviviality brought by singing birds and shaded sidewalks.”

Some of these topics were mentioned, mostly in passing, at an event that (even with the presence of eco-engaged children) created little “buzz” among the scarce audience in the ECOSOC chamber. From a purely policy level, there were several missed opportunities to drive this discussion further.  Among those “misses” was a focus on the role of forests in maintaining our dangerously shrinking biodiversity, not only as habitats for individual species but in preserving the symbiotic bonds between species, bonds increasingly threatened by our habituated carbon loading and resource exploitation. Moreover, there was no mention of the rights and implications of respecting “land tenure,” even by the representative from the Food and Agriculture Administration (FAO) which is largely credited with placing land tenure issues squarely on the UN’s agenda in the first place.

Tenure issues are critical to healthy forests, as “insecure tenure rights” courtesy of corrupt government or corporate entities creates conditions conducive to “conflict and environmental degradation.”  The arbitrary separation of people (including indigenous peoples) from their forests and other lands also has grave stewardship implications, inasmuch as the persons “closest” to the land, persons who understand best the rhythms and relations that keep forests and other ecosystems healthy are no longer able to render those sustainable services.   As tenure rights are violated, often with impunity and despite official promises to the contrary, natural resources are more likely to be exploited and promises for eco-protection and restoration are more likely to go by the wayside.

As part of the International Day event, a representative from China’s “Shelterbelt” Program shared an ambitious, forest-focused government program (started in 1978) to protect communities and agriculture from “dusty wind, desertification, water erosion and soil loss.”  As technologically impressive as this project has been, more poignant for me was the testimony of young people who have successfully “localized” the protection and expansion of forests and trees, planting and caring for life forms that might well outlive them, recognizing their many benefits — well beyond the commercial and the technical — for the abundance and health that they (and many millions of others) hope to enjoy.

And in the process, perhaps helping us to revive a bit of the “romance” of the forest as well, a romance well-represented in the quotes at the beginning of this post, odes to trees that inspire awe as well as offer protection from flooding and pollution, trees that offer “long thoughts” as well as long shade, trees that “bear the weight of sky and cloud” as well as the weight of the millions of people and countless species under stress relying on them for sustenance and shelter. To be able to touch the trees that themselves touch the sky, trees which hold secrets long–forgotten or ignored by humans more anxious to use modern tools to exploit the “green thing that stands in our way,” this can be a life-changing, even “romantic” experience that can enrich and sustain forest protection commitments over many years.

I have been so fortunate to touch so many threatened “great trees” – the majestic redwoods on both sides of San Francisco, the Cedars of Lebanon that once fostered mighty ships, the tangled web of vegetation in the Panamanian rain forest, the Black Pines of Japan interspersed with bamboo, the brilliant fall Maples of New Hampshire, the Sycamores of sub-Saharan Africa, the Cypress of Robeson County, North Carolina.  These and other trees inspire awe even as more and more of them are isolated both from their own kind and from the deeper forests which were once their incubators.

It has been said that we have done to the forests what we have done to each other – degrading their inherent dignity and disrespecting connections that are crucial to our common existence.  Through greed and indifference, through careless fires and the endless whining of chain saws, we have caused our share of “heartbreak” among the trees. The promises of technology notwithstanding, we will not survive our current climate threats without millions of local commitments to larger and healthier forests, nor will we end poverty and protect the languages and cultures that remain most directly “in touch” with the canopies on which we all depend.

Let us then be about the urgent business of revering, protecting and above all, planting.

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Women’s Wear:  Sharing the Burdens of Those Who Defend and Inform, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Mar

Afghan II

 

To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs. Tom Rob Smith

Every human is fated to have one moment in their lives in which they can change their own destiny. Takayuki Yamaguchi

If I don’t help the women in Afghanistan, they won’t be around to help me. Cheryl Benard

It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women; that the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human.  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The end of this past work week was dominated by images that pointed human potential in vastly opposite directions.  In New Zealand, a mass killing in two mosques grabbed world headlines and caused many institutions – including the UN Security Council – to pause for a moment of silence, a moment that underscored both concern for victims and viceral unease at our collective inability to address — let alone eradicate — this “other terrorism.”  Indeed, the relative indifference evidenced by the government of the UN’s host nation stood only partially in contrast with the mostly muted levels of shock emanating from other states, shock perhaps due more to the startling location of this violence than to its severity.   We are collectively becoming numb to the incessant carnage, it appears, renouncing violence only when it hits too close to home, and often not even then.

On the same day, many thousands of teen-aged young people prepared to leave their classrooms and fill the world’s streets, taking adults like me to task for our negligence on climate threats.  Despite the warnings of insufficient responses, despite the scientific consensus on a threat more immediate and widespread than previously thought, we have mostly gone about our regular business as though our concerns were primarily grounded in rhetoric rather than in survival.  Moreover, we have inflicted this “business” on succeeding generations mostly stuck in classrooms and consumed with admission to next educational levels while the planet melts, millions are on the move, rights are being violated with impunity, and violent tensions are on the rise.

That said, it is especially good for all of us that young people take to the streets to protest some portion of the absurdity of “preparing for life” on a planet that might not be able to sustain life as we know it for that much longer.  Among their contributons, their presence on our avenues and boulevards is a reminder to the rest of us that the greatest gift to climate deniers is the lifestyle indifference of we who claim to accept the “reality” of climate threats, our unwillingness to reduce our ecological footprint, to care for the displaced and discriminated, to hold erstwhile “leadership” accountable for what is coming and not only what is.

The UN of course takes regular notice of threats from terrorism and violence even if it must often wait for states, especially powerful ones, to take up their own portions of global responsibility.  For this week, however, threats to and opportunities for women dominated the UN during the 63rd convening of ECOSOC’s Commission for the Status of Women (CSW), ably chaired by Ireland.  Thousands of women from around the world made the trek to New York, filling virtually every available UN space in plenary sessions and copious side events to discuss the merits of “social protection” and link “women’s empowerment” to sustainable development goals previously promised to the world through the 2030 Development Agenda.

The CSW is both a major branding opportunity and a bit of a “mixed bag” for the UN, which failed once again to secure guarantees from the host state for access by all the women registered, while also largely failing to provide levels of hospitality that women who have traveled long distances to participate surely deserve.  What these CSW delegates found instead is endless lines for coffee and basic sustenance, standing room only side events, and rest room configurations that had not been adjusted in any way to accommodate the thousands of women now in the building.  The security officers tasked with screening and providing direction for these women have often been no less stressed than the visiting women themselves.

Moreover, there is a sense in which delegates seem to have been led to believe that the CSW is breaking new ground for the UN in terms of ending impunity for sexual violence in conflict, ensuring women’s participation in political and peace processes, and guaranteeing educational opportunity and social protection for women and girls.   These matters already constitute a significant portion of our regular discourse here at the UN.  This is as it should be, with the caveats that our gendered jargon (how do we know when someone is “empowered?”) might actually impede a deeper, connected understanding of the many layers of exclusion that infect our collective interests.  For all the barriers faced by women in diverse cultural contexts, theirs is but one ample portion of a number of often-interlocked exclusions associated with race, religion, ethnicity, poverty, disability and social class. These factors contribute to complex and multi-layered patterns of discrimination that impact women to be sure, but hardly women alone.

It is in the CSW side events where the complexities of human lives – women’s lives – are mostly likely to find their voice.  Two such side events stood out for us this past week.  The first, “Current Challenges and Opportunities for Women Human Rights Defenders,” featured women from Syria, Myanmar, Sudan, Nicaragua and elsewhere who literally put their lives on the line to defend rights and public interests in places where most of us – including many who reside in our UN safe spaces – would not be anxious to tread.  The powerful and largely humble testimony of these women did not downplay either the threats they face in the field (including gender-specific threats) or the limited reach of UN protections against reprisals for their activities (duly acknowledged by the UN officials present).  Women defenders are expected to “navigate layers of power” while insisting that their own “layered” and often-traumatic experiences inform what one defender referred to as women’s rights discourse that has become “too predictable,” a “tool for repressive states,” alienating for many women on the front lines of change.

Another side event this week, “Journalism and the empowerment of women,” featured women journalists whose difficult work is both facilitated and imperiled by their deep connection to and reliance on “social media.” Such platforms have become havens for “anonymous” and mean-spirited trolling of the journalists who tell the public things they would rather not know, trolling sometimes accompanied by gendered threats of overt violence that, in some instances, morph into physical attacks against individuals and families.  One of the free-lance panelists who is dedicated to covering right-wing movements cited “staggering” amounts of anti-Semitic, derogatory responses on social media in response to her body of reporting. Another journalist capably extended the discourse on exclusion and abuse, noting that when you examine issues of race, “you put a target on your back,” a target for which there is scant protection, especially from online assaults. Male journalists, it was noted, are also subject to abuse, but are generally regarded as “hated equals,” a courtesy rarely extended to women in the profession.

I was so grateful for the women on both these panels who were generally able to speak clearly about the extraordinary pressures they face without demonizing others or minimizing the generalized impacts of the recrimination and violence that characterize much of our current social climate.  But I also wondered: What keeps them going when their energy and hope have worn thin?  What allows them to do their work, day after day, knowing that they and their families risk being “hung out to dry” by those of us in much safer spaces who can simply redirect our energy to other matters?   Is it pride and determination? Have they simply “stitched their fate” with those serially oppressed?  Do they feel the hurt that can only be healed through intention?   We need to know more about their motivations and feed off their examples.

With an absence of essentialist jargon and with the recognition that too much global policy is like rain that forms in the clouds but never reaches the parched earth, women defenders and journalists are boldly sharing stories and contexts that some want to kill and too many others ignore.  If we want a world where families are safe to worship and children are confident in the health of a planet that will house their adult aspirations, we must all pledge to do whatever it takes to offer mechanisms of protection and solidarity with the eye-opening and often life-saving work of these people of courage.

 

 

 

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Deprivation Nations:  The UN Struggles to Measure a Sustainable Life, Dr. Robert Zuber

10 Mar

species

An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language. Martin Buber

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. Dag Hammarskjold

We’re simply not as different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we used to think. Jane Goodall

You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them. David Attenborough

Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.  Richard Leakey

The UN completed yet another busy and, from the standpoint of effective policy, uneven week.   The Security Council held its collective breath as it contemplated a way forward for peace in South Sudan, but also warmly welcomed back H.E. Miroslav Lajčák, former president of the UN General Assembly, who is now responsible for, among other things, coordinating the work of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) with that of the UN more generally and the Security Council more specifically.  In addition, several Council members sponsored a side event on the protection of health workers and facilities in armed conflict, a core tenet of international humanitarian law literally under assault in recent times.

Earlier in the week, the Peacebuilding Commission struggled with what seems to be an endless dilemma over how to navigate the challenge that is Burundi, specifically how to balance development and human rights commitments within a political and security environment that clearly (as evidenced by the conversations taking place on our twitter feed) alarms many stakeholders in Burundi at much higher levels of urgency than those of us in the policy community here in New York.

The week also witnessed abundant (and mostly welcome) references to International Women’s Day.  Amidst a few awkward “tributes” and near-zero-sum attributions of “exclusion,” the events and testimonies this week served as prelude to this week’s high-profile Commission on the Status of Women and also perhaps a bit of a blueprint for how we might successfully navigate other pervasive exclusions in economics, politics and peace processes that are directly related to ethnicity, race and social class.

Even more than these other concerns, the UN was dominated in recent days by ECOSOC’s Statistical Commission. Commission discussions can appear dry and disconnected at times, but are essential if we are to accurately track our collective responsibilities under the Sustainable Development Goals.  Some Commission side events — specifically one on “Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs,” hosted by the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung and the UN Development Programme and another on “Measuring Child Poverty in Sierra Leone” hosted by UNICEF —  were noteworthy for their acknowledgement of the statistical burdens that accompany fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals, but also of some of the pitfalls that occur when we employ reductionist data modeling, allow our investigations to be tainted by political considerations or access limitations, or fail to innovate data collection to respond to evolving understandings of community needs and expectations.

In this regard, the Sierra Leone event was a special breath of fresh air.   Moving beyond poverty indexed almost exclusively to household income, the speakers in this event spoke instead of “deprivations” that collectively provide a more accurate lens on conditions of poverty than income figures alone.  By attempting to measure a wider range of factors associated with the “quality of life” of children and families – housing, nutrition, education, vaccination rates, clean water access, even “connectivity” to the wider world — statisticians and UN officials together can insist that the data they now collect is much better able to contribute to more comprehensive and sustainable reductions in poverty, especially for children.

The skilled presenters also seemed mindful of the fact that their expansive indexes don’t necessarily capture all of the “deprivations” from which children in diverse urban and rural settings need to be protected.  Indeed, one deprivation that largely eluded “capture” is related to the need for a healthy environment, certainly for clean air and water, but also for healthy forests and the biodiversity they support – from large mammals to the exponentially more numerous (and equally-threatened) insects — essential to maintaining environmental well-being for current and future generations.

While threats to climate and oceans rightly dominate UN conference rooms, “other” environmental issues too-rarely appear on our common agenda.  This changed a bit this week as meetings to examine the role of “corruption” in the illicit wildlife trade and to prepare for the upcoming UN Forum on Forests brought together a number of stakeholders concerned with shrinking biodiversity and the forests (among other ecosystems) that support such life.  The corruption discussion was more elaborate, citing examples of the profligate and illegal wildlife trade made more profitable by virtue of the ability of traffickers to purchase inattentive silence from officials ranging from park rangers to environmental ministers.  Moreover, efforts to arrest and prosecute wildlife trafficking are impeded by funding limitations, themselves a product of an often indifferent public sentiment willing to endorse protection for only the most visible and iconic species – as though such species can possibly thrive independent of numerous “non-iconic” life forms on which their survival ultimately depends.

The original title of this piece was to be “animal crackers,” a form of warning about that time when our relationship to even the most visible parts of the current natural order will be confined to flour-concocted replicas rather than to direct and nurturing experiences.  Our current efforts to “save wildlife,” noble at one level, fail to communicate adequately the degree to which we are only “saving” what we ourselves have brought to the brink of extinction; moreover that we are “saving” mostly the top end of food chains that are literally disintegrating at lower levels, victims of our pesticides, our deforestation, our addiction to plastics, but mostly our collective indifference.

As I look out from the kitchen window of my apartment of many years on to a street that has been gentrified and layered in concrete almost beyond recognition, I can see only a couple of tired-looking pigeons and one solitary tree, and then only if I strain my neck.  While my neighborhood probably has more accessible “green options” than most in this city, the view out my window surely reflects deprivation conditions of a too-common kind, our too-often-unrequited longing to connect with the “great language” of the natural world of which we have so-far proven to be a mostly predatory component.  Thankfully, this “comfortable for some, deprived for many” world we still conspire to create lies in the “cross-hairs” of the 2030 Development Agenda, an agenda which reminds us that we are now well past the point where our planet and the human communities it labors to support can be healed with half-hearted or single-lens measures. Such measures fail on data quality but also fail to promote a vision for a world capable of shifting the “green” that enables our “cravings” into the green that nourishes and sustains our children, indeed our collective soul.

The ability and willingness of these national statistical experts to name and count the world that can nourish and sustain, that can underwrite hopeful policy for children and other living things facing often-unique configurations of deprivation, was among the most encouraging and gratifying aspects of a packed policy week.

 

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Sounds of Silence: The Security Council Endorses Ambitious Disarming, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 Mar

Guns at Rest

Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?  Lawrence Durrell

And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.  Audre Lorde

People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging, leaping from their mouths.  Silence? No. Alison McGhee

Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.  William Faulkner

The UN this week, much like the world at large, was replete with motion and “talk” on a variety of related fronts.  From dueling Security Council resolutions on Venezuela with acrimony to match, to renewed resolve (under the Kimberley Process) to turn remaining pockets of “conflict diamonds” into “peace diamonds” (as Romania and others insisted), the UN and those seeking to cover its many events had our collective hands full.

We of course welcomed all of this week’s interest by diplomats in security in all its diverse manifestations.   From a Norway-sponsored event to honor the 20th anniversary of the highly effective Mine Ban Treaty to a Japan-led event to commemorate the 25th anniversary of “human security” –an integrative concept beyond “hard security” preoccupations with weapons and alliances — we support (as most of you already know) holistic initiatives that seek to impact both over-produced weapons and under-inclusive governance; initiatives that seek to reduce weapons-related threats in part by addressing complementary challenges related to state corruption, climate-induced disasters and the persistent rights abuses and social inequities that provide too-easy rationales for so many to acquire and use weapons in the first place.

We urge states to address, as Poland mentioned this week in the Security Council, the “destabilizing acquisition” of weapons by states which cannot easily control their movements nor guarantee that weapons replaced by such acquisitions will not fall into the hands of non-state actors.  But we also urge action on the “destabilizing production” of weapons, the shiny new toys that are unlikely to provide any more “human security” than the toys states have already grown tired of.  To these ends, we have doubled down on support for efforts such as the Peace Angel’s “USA Weapons Destruction Campaign,” an initiative which seeks to repurpose weapons used to kill into works of art that can both inspire more peaceful communities and help identify ways to address the “triggers” of conflict that lead too many in these unsettled times to believe in the power of weapons more than in the power of the human spirit.

From the standpoint of a more secure world, this week’s main event was Wednesday in the Security Council where many delegations and a few civil society voices addressed the successes and gaps of the “Silencing the Guns in Africa by 2020” initiative.  Under the leadership of the Foreign Minister of Equatorial Guinea, the Council session was noteworthy for its verbal and active support of an aspiration that has proven to be more ambitious and complex than was perhaps originally envisioned, but which has inspired actions likely to accrue lasting benefits for more secure African societies going forward.

As 2019 reaches the “quarter pole” it would be foolish to suggest that gun-related “silence” across this large continent is likely to occur in nine months’ time.   Armed violence in many forms continues to impact African states from Burundi and Cameroon to Libya and Somalia. Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram insurgents are among the non-state actors indulging regularly in armed threats against civilians and government forces, and governments themselves have been responsible for armed attacks in South Sudan and elsewhere.  Moreover, the Security Council has authorized responses to insurgent threats, including the G5 Sahel Force, which have resulted in the importation of yet more weapons into theaters of conflict, albeit weapons lodged in the hands of “legitimate” authorities.  Whatever the merits of such supplemental and robust coercive measures – whether in Mali, South Sudan or DR Congo – at the end of the day these guns must also eventually go silent if the goals of this African initiative are to be fulfilled.

And yet, despite some notable setbacks, we have seen over these past few years an awakening of cross-regional capacity and resolve among Africans and their leadership which, together with UN and other supporters, have shifted at least part of the playing field regarding our responses to threats of armed conflict.  As evidenced by Wednesday’s Security Council meeting, the African Union and regionally-focused organizations such as ECOWAS and IGAD have undertaken a series of important measures to help ensure fair elections, mediate disputes within and between states, promote inclusive sustainable development, uphold the rule of law, and provide incentives for state leaders reluctant to share or relinquish power to rethink their alleged “indispensability.”

In Liberia, Eritrea, Guinea and elsewhere, threats of armed violence and rights abuses have given way to a welcome “silence” of sorts that must be fully utilized to consolidate gains and ensure that such abuses once renounced are not allowed to return.  These and other successes, perhaps even now in the Central African Republic as well, are in part a function of rapidly-evolving security architecture across Africa that will increasingly be able to “flag” emerging conflicts, mediate active conflicts, protect those displaced by conflict, and call attention to the many development and “human security” benefits that could well accrue in societies that have succeeded in finally silencing the guns.

Noteworthy for us in Wednesday’s Council debate were the pointed warnings from ACCORD’s Gounden and even a few diplomats about the need for vigilance in defusing the “time bombs” that tick loudly when guns proliferate in environments characterized by limited employment, governance challenges, unplanned urban growth and criminality.  The Council must, Gounden insisted, remain strongly engaged on the causes of armed violence in Africa.  The danger, he rightly noted, is that the guns will not be silenced but only the active and supportive voices of Council members.

And yet across seven “talkative” hours, it was apparent to most diplomats that “silencing of the guns” must continue and in concert with other “silencings” – of rights abuses and neglect of the rule of law (Belgium); of  discriminatory practices affecting the safety and access of women and cultural minorities (Ireland); of the constant march of development-desperate persons displaced by drought, flooding and conflict threats (Equatorial Guinea); of economic inequalities and illegal efforts to exploit natural resources for criminal gain (European Union); of the failure to include youth in policy decisionmaking, especially on conflict and employment (Botswana and Kenya); of impediments to education and health access (Angola), and much more.   Silencing the guns remains the essential condition that makes these other “silencing” tasks more likely to succeed.  Thus the key, as noted by South Africa, is to ensure that “that countries exiting conflict do not return to conflict conditions,” that guns once silenced are not permitted to roar again.

As the Foreign Minister of Equatorial Guinea noted during his opening remarks, “a conflict-free Africa will likely remain a utopia unless we promote inclusive development and put to use all available conflict prevention and resolution tools.”   This is, of course, sound advice, especially as the year 2020 inches closer.  Through this commitment to “silencing,” African states have sought to move mountains, and in fact have moved a few.  But as Namibia’s Ambassador reminded the Council, “if we want to continue moving mountains” on armed violence in Africa, we must begin by “lifting stones,” by engaging any number of smaller actions that set aside the “stupidity” of too many policy words and set about to build societies that can fulfill more conflict-related promises, end more social inequities, promote more trustworthy governance, and allow the displaced a safe and dignified return home.

As we sit here in March 2019, Africans are unlikely to meet their 2020 “silencing” goals at face value, but they have surely embarked on a path (albeit uneven at times) that offers hope both to their own peoples and to others watching across continental borders.  As this new peace and security architecture for Africa continues its evolution, we must all pledge to stay engaged.  This is simply not the time for the rest of us to withhold our own practical contributions or silence our own supportive voices.

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Speech Therapy: Cultural Expressions and Healthy Communities, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Feb

IMG_0026                                                             photo by H. Hanafin

I feel a sadness on me, Dane. That’s how the Irish people say it. In their language, you can’t say, “I am sad,” or “I am happy”. They understood what we English have long forgot. We’re not our sadness. We’re not our happiness or our pain but our language hypnotizes us and traps us in little labeled boxes.  Grant Morrison

The totality of utterances that can be made in a speech community is the language of that speech community. Leonard Bloomfield

English, unlike Arabic, was not a poetic language. English had been cobbled together by too many unknown parents, too many unsure users. English lacked the single word that differentiated an attacking lion from one at rest.  Aminah Mae Safi

Languages, just like people, are worlds within themselves. They have the incredible ability to provide us with a clearer, more profound and detailed perspective of a culture and its views on life, nature, and death.  Orge Castellano

Yes, the structure of language both expresses and stretches  the culture to which it is joined, and the replacement of one language form by another is more than just an inconvenience, more than a mere strategy for achieving “fluency” in the expressive forms most characteristic of “modern” societies.  Such replacement represents, if we are not careful, the substitution of one worldview by another that is, in the end and in its own isolation, no more adept in guiding us on a more peaceful, sustainable path.

We all know that the UN is full of high-sounding jargon which sometimes allows us the luxury of forgetting how superficial such language can be.  We are all busy “leaving no one behind,” “promoting resilience” and “building back better,” while employing endless acronyms to describe institutional responses to complex challenges that sometimes confuse even regular UN observers. Moreover, we traffic almost exclusively in what are known as the “official” UN languages, mostly “official” in the sense that they appear on UN “letterhead” indicating that UN business will essentially be conducted only in these languages (with occasional accommodation for foreign dignitaries).

Moreover, these official languages are utilized unevenly while reinforcing a certain brand of cultural hegemony.  Only the Chinese delegation speaks Chinese in UN conference rooms.  Only the Russian delegation speaks in Russian.  However, senior Secretariat officials from Russian and Chinese backgrounds speak mostly in English and many delegations have no choice but to forsake their own official tongues in favor of those “favored.” Indeed, the “mostly in English” signs should be hung throughout the building, for this tongue (with all of its mostly unexamined cultural assumptions) has become the “lingua franca” of UN Headquarters to a degree that actually might shock outsiders.

Such linguistic hegemony works out well for people like me who have failed to benefit to any degree from more language courses than I care to count.   Were English not such a dominant mode of expression inside UN headquarters, my own (and my office’s) presence probably wouldn’t add much of any value at all.  I am especially reminded of my own linguistic privilege when finding myself in rooms where important ideas are being discussed in languages other than English and without interpretation, places where my language skills are (far-too- often) simply not up to the challenge.

One such occasion took place this week at a workshop in Mexico City put on by the Humanitarian Encyclopedia, a project co-sponsored by the increasingly prestigious Instituto Mora and represented by Dr. Lucatello Simone. Through workshops conducted in several global regions, this project smartly seeks to “collectively question” how humanitarian concepts evolve over time, geographical contexts, cultures, disciplines, and professions. This particular workshop space was filled with some truly remarkable people, including leadership from Mexico’s highly-regarded civil protection and relief sector, key figures from the UN office in Mexico City and a few highly committed NGOs.

What most attracted me to this event, ironically perhaps, is the contention of this project that “existing narratives and concepts of humanitarian action still largely reflect the values and practices of long-established organizations of high-income countries.”  Moreover, the project fully embraces the important critique that the jargon we toss around within the often-stretched humanitarian sector (and within the rest of the policy community as well) – such as this “resiliency” we now seek to spread – can constitute a stubborn barrier to a “clearer, more profound and detailed perspective” on the local cultures we seek to serve. Such perspective is essential if we are to truly “accompany the localization of humanitarian knowledge” as key to the success of the vital and urgent action undertaken over and over by the broader humanitarian community.

Unfortunately, I was able to grasp only a small portion of what were apparently rich technical and community-contextual discussions in Mexico City.  For I was stuck yet again inside my own “labeled box,” a limitation largely of my own doing; someone functioning in a singular language structure that cannot easily distinguish between “an attacking lion and one at rest,” but also someone reinforcing a system which now expressly privileges his language and both its conceptual contexts and limitations. Such participation leaves me (and many others) trading in concepts that only incompletely explain the world we inhabit while virtually (if inadvertently) demeaning much of the full range of cultural expressions, passions and feelings which continue to breathe life and urgency into our collective human strivings.

The Swiss leadership of the Humanitarian Encyclopedia Project clearly understands better than most the alienating nature of much of our policy jargon, those words we routinely employ in our important humanitarian (or peace and security) spaces as though our short-hand has become something other than the “blurred messages” that we so often extend towards each other and towards communities in need.  Certainly we “experts” in this Mexico City space — groupings similar (I suspect) to other rooms in other global regions — have perhaps also become a bit “hypnotized and trapped” by our own expressive limitations as evidenced by the “heady” language we often use with peers, funders and in polite culture, the nomenclature of policy that impedes as much access at community level as it invites.

As it turns out, this Mexico story had another chapter. At the end of this week in the remarkable Zócalo of Mexico City, a different (unrelated) type of linguistic critique and cultural representation was being staged.  “Lingüística Indígena” brought together thousands of people (its final day is today) largely from the southern regions of Mexico (especially from Chiapas) to speak the language forms of their forebears more than the colonists, to share their food, crafts, poetry and dances, and to place in this very public domain the unique and deep challenges faced by the region’s indigenous peoples.

Some of these challenges are a function of government suspicion regarding the unwillingness of peoples in the indigenous south to abandon the language that expresses their lives and relationships for a language closely allied with colonial occupation and, perhaps more importantly, “fit” for modern economic and bureaucratic life. Amidst the colorful dance, indigenous poetic forms and some unusual (for me) food offerings, there was also a palpable sadness directed towards the memory of those martyred trying to defend the rights of indigenous persons, including their right to linguistic and cultural expression. The crosses demanding attention on the Zócalo, with wilting flowers and palms placed nearby, served as a reminder that language is not only a means of expression but is an embodiment of community values and cultural significance, the struggle for which costs some advocates their very lives.

It was the television personality Trevor Noah (of all people) who noted that if you talk to people in a language they understand, that message goes to their head. But if you talk to them in their own language, “that goes to their heart.”  In the UN “Grand Bargain” of 2016, key donors agreed to expand pooled funding to address seemingly-endless humanitarian crises including from armed violence and climate threats.  Moving forward, we need another “bargain” but this time one that both embraces and transcends the sensitive “accompaniment” advocated by the sponsors of this Mexico City workshop, a “bargain” to protect and honor the “totality of our utterances” and those who dare to express the heart-felt visions and aspirations that remain essential to a healthy and responsive human community.

 

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Future Shocks: Participation-Related Impairments of Conflict-Affected Children, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Feb

Being a child in a war zone is more dangerous than being an armed combatant. Save the Children UK

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. Jimmy Carter

I could taste the fear, and I could see that my mother was frightened, which I had never seen before, and this made me even more frightened.  Alfred Nestor

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. Oscar Wilde

War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view “realistically”; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. Susan Sontag

Children and youth have been on my mind and in the news much this week.  A year after the Parkland (Florida) school massacre, we recall both the horror of that incident and the degree to which the massacre revealed some passionate and quite remarkable leadership skills in the student survivors, students who refused to give in to the fear they obviously experienced and “gave it” instead to older persons, including a few media personalities who dared question their sincerity or their right to an opinion about current social policies that helped to cut short the lives of their peers.

I was also moved by the sight of young people in different parts of the world taking the risks associated with school truancy to voice their displeasure at the pace with which we adults are taking action to reverse the climate change that threatens to interrupt any alleged school-to-career pipeline with drought and flooding, coastal erosion and massive storms, even decisions to embark on dangerous and vulnerable displacements because “home” is no longer hospitable.

Such bold and defiant young people seem to have already grown tired of waiting for what appear to be complacent adults to rescue their future from the destruction of armaments and climate events.   Despite what might be implied in a Guardian report that the Australian Prime Minister was actually urging protesting students to “be less activist,” these are not the youthful voices of social anarchy but of legitimate impatience with political leadership that seems to be taking its sweet time silencing the guns and bringing our planetary health back from the brink of utter dysfunction.

This past Monday at the UN, Belgium hosted an Arria Formula discussion with the UN office on Children and Armed Conflict on how to protect children from the consequences of armed conflicts in settings of “shrinking humanitarian space.” Focusing on the children of the Central African Republic, Security Council members and others wrestled with the many ways in which insurgency and other armed conflict inflict undeserved (and often untreated) misery on children, the “expense and outcome” of armed violence including implications regarding the ability of conflict-affected children to manage the “shocks” of what is likely to be an unstable future in their later years.

Children’s events at the UN, including the recent meeting of the UNICEF Executive Committee, tend to be a mixed bag – generally well attended and enthusiastically engaged while offering only bits of soul-searching on the part of we-sometimes-irresponsible older folks. The trauma in this world to which children are routinely subjected – children as precious as our own and with every bit as much innate potential for leadership and productivity in the global commons — are beyond any excuse or rationale we might wish (or need) to suggest.  By shortchanging these children in the ways we have, we also (if inadvertently) compromise their common future, robbing it of some of its capacity for healing, its creativity for solutions that have not yet crossed the thresholds of our collective mind.

I won’t bore you with facts and figures on children victimized by the world’s violence, most of which you have no doubt heard before.  The diplomats, NGOs and UN officials have heard them also, almost to the point that they cease to sufficiently trouble our consciousness let alone shock us into ratcheting up our collective response.

And yet there is a basic (and often hopeful) consensus evidenced in UN conference rooms where children’s issues are raised that is unlike deliberations in other conference rooms.   There may still be insufficient action at present on child protection, insufficient attention to the disastrous long-term effects of childhood trauma resulting from malnutrition, armed violence, displacement and a host of other ills that must surely cause children to wonder – if they dare – just what kind of world they have been destined for? What kind of planet welcomes these children and then abandons them to circumstances that would drive most of the parents we know to utter despair?

But there is no delegation which would dare to utter indifference to the recruitment of child soldiers or deny the need to improve access to basic educational and health services. Few would question that children must be better protected from the armed violence that claims too many young lives and sends even more on dangerous journeys in search of something safer and better, only to find themselves locked down in holding cells or taken in by criminal gangs.  There is virtual diplomatic consensus on the need to generate new forms of meaningful employment for this large and uneasy generation (a topic also raised this week at the UN by the International Labor Organization); or that we must do more to guarantee better access to educational opportunity and health care, all in the context of a recovering planet that has sufficient bees to pollinate our flowers and crops, birds with something in their stomachs other than plastics, and a climate that stops warming faster than its remaining life forms can possibly adapt.

We also know that time is not on our side, that it will take more skill and energy to solve the problems that threaten futures than we now have at our disposal.   And every child recruited into armed groups or snatched up by traffickers; every child whose growth is stunted by infectious disease or malnutrition; every child whose mind is denied creative engagement in quality schools; every child who must watch the fear in their mother’s eyes and wonder if circumstances are really as vulgar as they sometimes seem;  virtually every one of these children will struggle mightily to take their rightful place among those young people “fighting for their lives,”  fighting for a world of greater health and equity, fighting to silence the guns minus any incentive to carry guns of their own.

In the generally-excellent Arria Formula event mentioned above, a representative from the well-respected Geneva Call  noted that we must do more to ensure that “boys and girls are not forgotten” when we start to talk seriously about peace.  But it seems obvious that any peace that could possibly “forget” – even for a moment — the diverse and negative impacts of war and armed conflict on children is surely less than the peace we need.  For all the life-saving work that the UN is doing on behalf of children, for all who are immunized against disease or provided access to schooling or freed from servitude to traffickers or armed groups, our collective, “adult” response to the world’s children is still and too-often more vulgar than mindful, more tactical than determined.

I suppose it is true, as we often say here, that “children are our future.”  But more than that, they are their own future, a future that promises to be better for some than others, but which is nevertheless threatened for all.  If this generation of children is to pass on a healthier more sustainable planet to those who will follow, if they are to successfully manage the shocks that are sure to come their way, then all capable and responsible hands must be on deck. Those who have survived school shootings and now seek a saner policy on guns; those skipping class to rally for stronger measures on climate health; these and other youthful voices need assurances that their global peers are ready and able to help “save what’s left” and forge a more peaceful, sustainable path.  We older folks can and must try harder to provide those assurances.

Relentless:  The UN Doubles Down on a now-Familiar Foe, Dr. Robert Zuber

10 Feb

Desert

The melody of your ears must not be the cries of the powerless.  Shahla Khan

Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic. Richard Matheson

Many also bear their cross of imagined deprivation, while their fellow human beings remain paralyzed by real poverty.  Anthon St. Maarten

Yet we must choose each step we take with utmost caution, for the footprints we leave behind are as important as the path we will follow. Lori Lopez

In the desert, the only god is a well.  Vera Nazarian

One of the things that our interns notice quickly about life inside the UN is the extent to which issues are often raised but not routinely resolved.   From development financing and ocean health to efforts to restrict the production of small arms and the recruitment tactics of terrorist groups and criminal elements, most key issues on the UN’s agenda are certain to “come around again” before too much time elapses.  This tends to frustrate onlookers, especially the young, who yearn to see greater levels of intentional movement towards more reliable resolutions to today’s multiple threats, some of the “footprints” which we older folks would do better not to leave behind.

However, given the degree of difficult associated with many global problems, this doubling-down is mostly appropriate.  As any good therapist (or parent) knows, naming a problem accurately is only the first stage in a successful outcome, not to be confused with the solution itself.   Many problems we confront in policy, much like problems within ourselves and our families took a long time to evolve into their current forms.  Like a ball of yarn, we wind ourselves and our societies into tight, if destructive habits that cannot untangle overnight, if at all.  If they are indeed to untangle, such will require us to engage over and over in a complex “dance” that includes elements of sometimes-painful honesty, careful assessments, legal accountability, and a continual renewal of our intent to see these processes through to a healthy conclusion.

And yet we in this UN space habitually seem to over-simplify what it takes to sustainably resolve global challenges.  We pass resolutions, year after year, without attaching assessments of why so many of these resolutions have so little impact.   We continue to raise the right issues in diverse conference rooms without also raising the stakes on success – integrating honest and careful analysis of what we’ve learned since the last time such issues came up for consideration and what we now must resolve to do differently.   In essence, we “double down” on our consideration of global challenges without also doubling down on both our reflection and our resolve, as though the solution to our current stable of grave threats requires little beyond ratcheting up a bit of additional political will to do more of what we’ve already committed to doing.

One of these “come around again” threats was examined on Friday during a Security Council “Arria Formula” on how accountability for crimes can serve as a contribution to prevention.  The specific context for this Arria is the often-horrific violence perpetrated mostly against women and girls in situations of armed conflict.  Led by Germany with the endorsement of most current Security Council members, the event was a reflection of a problem to which much energy has properly been devoted, but where progress has been elusive (or even non-existent) as was reinforced by prosecutors of the Special Court established to deal with such abuses in the Central African Republic.  Women especially remain the “currency of conflict” as claimed by Ireland’s Ambassador noting that we must refuse to separate the physical security of women and men abused in conflict zones with what she referred to as “other forms of security” including of the social and economic variety.  In a similar vein, the director of the Global Justice Center reminded delegations that the genesis of much abuse can be laid at the feet of our persistent and toxic inequalities, including of gender, reinforcing our own view that we must do more to “level the playing field” before it can properly be groomed.

This broader security must also integrate accountability for abuses already committed, as several states and the always-thoughtful Tonderai Chikuhwa of the UN Office on Sexual Violence in Conflict duly maintained, underscoring the importance of ensuring that, however painful it might be for some, such crimes must never be stricken from the “historical record” of states.

But if we must, as Chikuhwa and others insisted, double down on accountability for these humiliating crimes, Council members and others insisted that our lens must also focus on related matters, specifically the call by Germany and other speakers for more victim services to help minimize prospects for “re-traumatizing.” Indeed, states including Côte d’Ivoire and Chile, insisted on the priority need for “healing” — in part a function of services and reparations but in part a function of ensuring that there is a “cost” for such abuse, a “cost” that can be made consistent across states and that can be employed to help citizens remain mindful of the deep trauma suffered by far too many.

In listening to this good discussion with one of our interns, two things came to my mind.  First was the “relentlessness” of the dehumanizing abuse which casts a fog over human life that never quite seems to lift.   In the relative triviality of my first-world bubble, I have encountered only episodic stalking – by a few people who wanted things from me I was unwilling to give them or through exposure to online hackers demanding ransom in exchange for keeping silent about alleged behavior which, thankfully, never took place.

And yet even within these limited and mostly modest bouts with our sometimes frayed and predatory social system, one now defined by a largely “fallen” and self-authorizing morality,  I could revisit some lessons about the unrelenting nature of more grave abuse, specifically the degree to which external violations leave “footprints” within us that continue to hijack our best selves long after the physical or psychological violence stops: those remaining in hyper-vigilant mode for signs that stalkers might be close at hand; those refusing to communicate unless completely sure who is on the other end; those dreading turning on the computer because of yet another virus ready to inflict mayhem in ways much like the “virus” of conflict-related abuse — doing its dirty work now from inside the systems on which we must rely and changing how we engage the world in ways that we are more likely to defend than to carefully examine.

And the second, related insight comes courtesy of the 2030 Development Agenda which is filled with positive implications for those who might otherwise risk humiliation in conflict zones, but which insists to all who participate that we must not only “leave no one behind,” but that we must reach “those in greatest need first.”  It is difficult and at times counter-productive to create priority lists for human need, and yet there must be some special dispensation, some special accountability in situations where grave crimes have been committed against women and girls, men and boys in too many conflict zones, crimes more akin to slavery than to the “first world” dramatics that we far too routinely indulge.

I confess that my own patience for “first world problems” is now even lower than before, not because growth and change in own my life are no longer needed (they are), but precisely because I acknowledge more deeply an unearned privilege allowing me to trust (albeit with gratitude) that my own fog is destined to lift, my “well” is largely close at hand, my erstwhile “deprivation” is almost entirely imaginary.  The “cries” of the powerless don’t always penetrate my thick skull as they should, but neither have they become the “melody” that transforms sexual violence as a tactic of war and other traumatic circumstances from something preventable and accountable to something that we simply accept as part of the price tag for getting on with the “world’s business.”

The “paralysis” of many trapped in poverty or in cycles of dehumanizing despair must never become acceptable to those of us ensconced in the policy world, including “accepting” that the drama of our own lives constitutes some rough equivalent.  We at Global Action were deeply appreciative of the reminder provided to us on Friday by Germany and other Security Council members, a reminder that while many windows of opportunity seem always to be open to us, such windows are still largely and even serially impaired for persons humiliated or otherwise traumatized at the point of a gun.

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Fort Worth:  The UN Presents Diverse Lenses on Human Potential, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 Feb

Mother Earth

Most of us must learn to love people and use things rather than loving things and using people. Roy Bennett

We know that we are the ones who are divided; and we are the ones who must come back together, to walk in the Sacred Way.  Ojibway Prayer

Isn’t it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us – and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.  Isaac Asimov

Cover my Earth Mother four times with many flowers.  Zuni Prayer

And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.  George Eliot

Teach us to walk the soft earth as relatives to all that live.   Sioux Prayer

We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. Michael Crichton

In beauty it is finished.    Navajo Chant

As many of you have gathered from even occasional readings of these Sunday missives, the UN offers what at time represent an equally dazzling and frustrating lens on global policy but also on the people who, among other things, establish its norms and responses.  This week alone, saw government experts convene to establish the basis for a framework to address the growing threat posed by the militarization of outer space, a well-organized briefing on Yemen to “hold the fort” on humanitarian response until a viable political process to end the conflict can be established, and a joint presentation by the presidents of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council respectively in an attempt to ratchet up both funding pathways and diplomatic urgency to keep our collective commitments to the 2030 Development Agenda at least somewhat on track.

We do lots of “holding the fort” at the UN, trying to maintain global attention on the difficult (non-Martian) issues that cause many constituents to turn their gaze away or “settle back for a comfortable nap,” but also to gather resources within the UN and in member states to support “good faith” responses to what are at times ugly manifestations of the human condition. The UN does what it can, in many instances keeping the focus on often-ignored matters of planetary urgency while organizing competent and strategic responses in the hope that various forms of “reinforcements” — of funding, capacity support and political will — do not lag too far behind.

Of all the “ugly manifestations” of human conduct that the UN highlighted this week, perhaps the most discouraging was an event on human trafficking organized by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime.  The event itself was very well done, focusing on the launch of two related reports, UNODC’s full assessment of global trafficking and a second report covering much of the same ground but focused specifically on trafficking in the context of armed conflict.

The latter report was directly requested by the UN Security Council and is perhaps more germane to Global Action’s organizational priorities; but both “booklets” paint a sordid picture of the willingness of human beings in diverse circumstances to contribute to brutality, abuse and “exploitation” that contexts of armed violence merely magnify.  Highlighted within booklet 2 is the recruitment of children into armed groups to serve as everything from porters to suicide bombers, and victims trafficked for purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation.  In addition to copious statistics on trafficking demographics, law enforcement responses and conviction rates, mention was made often of the particular vulnerabilities of displaced persons — including those many thousands displaced by armed violence — and the often-desperate people, mostly women and children, who sign on to what are certain to become exploitative arrangements in the complete absence of viable options, arrangements perpetrated by those who, at the very least, “love things and use persons.”

One can (and we often do) laud the efforts of law enforcement, peacekeepers and UN officials to provide urgent perspectives and high-quality data on this soul-crushing issue. At the same time we also lament the “blows” inflicted by traffickers to any sense of optimism about the ability of human beings to do any better than to “hold down the fort” as our norms of international order prove themselves “thinner” than we imagined and predation in many forms continues to flourish; traffickers, yes, but also an economic system that allows some to build massive wealth casting dismissive shadows on the many millions resigned to running (if they can) from people and institutions content to treat them mostly as “things” to be used, rather than beings to be cherished.

For many younger people, even those around Global Action’s orbit contemplating careers in international affairs, one can perceive a pervasive sense of cynicism about the human condition, a sense that self-interest is fully entrenched as our collective guide-star, that narcissism has become a social expectation and, moreover, that there is really not much that people can do – UN resolve notwithstanding — to “turn this tide” characterized by too much ugliness, too many people content to sleep through crises or turn a blind eye to the inequities that are actually within their power to change.

This assessment of “human nature” – less a science-based lens for exploration of both our warts and potential, and more an excuse for not changing what we are able to change – must also be countered.   After all, the forts we “hold” will not stay held forever.  We see evidence throughout that the walls are cracking, that provisions are scarce and unequally distributed, that communications are increasingly vexing, that promises of reinforced capacity are too-often unreliable. We simply cannot go on the way we are, cannot reverse our current slide while simultaneously enabling (often unintentionally) the forces committed to an unequal and rapacious exploitation of what little is left to exploit.

As the gorgeous group of quotations above makes plain, there is another path that integrates honor and gratitude, that upholds the dignity of human beings while rejecting indignities directed towards our natural home. The UN also knows this other path.  On Friday in the General Assembly Hall, the UN launched the International Year of Indigenous Languages, an event that included powerful statements from President Morales of Bolivia and the President of the General Assembly Maria Fernandez. The event also highlighted indigenous representatives who spoke directly to the multiple benefits of indigenous language preservation – not only the safeguarding of indigenous culture itself but the life given to forms and depths of expression to which indigenous languages are particularly well suited – expression that links people to each other and to the many blessings of creation, that reminds us of the power of beauty to inspire our better selves, that urges us to cover our “mother” with flowers of her own making rather than with bulldozers and space weapons of our own.  As Ecuador’s minister affirmed, the words of indigenous languages “have a soul, a memory, a heart.” They tie together those who live where their sounds are uttered, binding the human and non-human, ties of gratitude and what the PGA called “symbols of belonging,” all held together with pledges to walk more “softly” on a planet that too many of us have conspired to treat much too roughly for much too long.

This event was not designed to romanticize indigenous culture, to promote the soul-energy embedded in indigenous languages as the singular antidote to modernism’s excesses. Indigenous leaders are all-too-aware of the “divisions” that need to be reunited in their own communities, the many sources of pain (including the self-inflicted variety) that require a more robust healing response.  And yet there is so much richness embedded in these language forms, so much beauty, connection and “will to cherish” that culturally-homogenous modern societies — too comfortable in what they “know” and too resolved to “have their own way” — need much more of.

An aboriginal woman from Australia told the diplomats in the GA Hall of the joy it brings her to “whisper into the ears of her grandchildren words from my ancestral language.”  We owe our children and grandchildren more than smart phones and foolish owners, more than forts buckling under the strain of assaults coming from predatory humans in many forms.  We owe them, as one indigenous speaker on Friday noted, the chance “to sing the songs of the earth,” songs that in too many corners of this planet “have simply grown silent.”

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