Temperate Zones:   The UN Celebrates its Climate Covenant, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Apr

This past Friday the UN once again made history.   Heads of State and other High Officials from 175 states added their signatures to the Paris Climate Agreement, the largest number of states ever to sign a UN agreement on any single day.

The opening ceremony was mostly a lovefest and not without reason.   To create this consensus agreement was a truly massive undertaking, one that required states to overcome latent climate skepticism while working through some intense political considerations, including the concern that states finally finding their economic footing are being asked to break their carbon habits while the large states make only modest efforts to combat their own carbon addictions.   That states were able to overcome (or at least overlook) these and other obstacles to reach this agreement will go down as a truly historic undertaking in this age of climate trouble.  People outside the UN can only imagine the degree of difficulty associated with bringing a large number of diverging state interests together in an agreement of this complexity and magnitude, albeit with its multiple, notable limitations.

The ceremony was not entirely about hugs and congratulations.  There were warnings as well from inside and outside the UN.   In addition to the seemingly endless “we must move to action” yearnings, several more pointed critiques were made.   For instance, Bolivia was noteworthy in calling attention to the root causes of the climate crisis which in the mind of its president are linked to individualism, greed and militarism and which will allegedly require a thorough re-acquaintance with indigenous lifestyles if the Paris agreement has any chance to succeed.   Special guest Leonardo DiCaprio was equally blunt in urging states to “leave the carbon in the ground,” and transition more rapidly than at present to a more sustainable energy matrix.

Beyond UN confines other warnings abounded, often with greater intensity.  While the ceremony was taking place in the UN General Assembly hall,   twitter was exploding with images of melting ice caps, “bleached” coral and other difficult – if-not-impossible problems to reverse.  The Stimson Center in Washington DC was referring to our oceans as “the world’s largest crime scene.”   As I’m sure was the case with many others, our twitter account was engaged by groups far from New York weighing in on the “temperate” measures being suggested by UN member states for a planet besieged by massive storms and droughts, a planet now thought by many in the scientific community to be at a dangerous tipping point.

Indeed, early on, the negotiations for the Paris Climate agreement exposed an uneven sense of urgency, as large industrial (and polluting) states hedged their bets, newly developing states sought to continue their growth trajectories, and small island states sought to counter what for them is more akin to an existential threat, even in the very near term.   And despite urgings on Friday from French President Hollande for states to overcome what remains of “narrow interests,” there is legitimate concern about how much agreement implementation will actually be able to transcend the rhetorical and self-referential.  During the opening ceremony, it was only Canada’s Trudeau who specifically called for special support for the most vulnerable states, the states which, as a group, bear the least responsibility for the climate mess we now find ourselves in.

During the daylong activities, several states – quoting from the Secretary General’s climate agreement assessment – also noted that “the unthinkable has become the unstoppable.”   As I watched the ceremony, I thought about what is needed – beyond the agreement itself – to keep up our sense of urgency to reverse current trends and replace climate crisis with climate health.  And as is often the case, my mind wandered to concerns that are mirrored in more common human practices.

For instance, in counseling it is common to speak of “bargaining,” clients who agree to make changes that are not so terribly important while escaping responsibility for the more fundamental changes that they really need to make.   This tendency to focus on what matters less in order to avoid commitment to what matters more occurs in many contexts and creates numerous, well-documented problems for families and communities.

In the context of the climate agreement, bargaining by states might well spell the end for life as we know it, substituting carefully-crafted by largely token gestures for the more fundamental shifts on which, as Italy and others noted, the existence of our children and grandchildren depends.   The gifted Tanzanian youth who spoke to the assembled UN dignitaries made clear the stakes of the moment noting, almost as a warning, “I am not alone.”   If the climate agreement is to meet its full potential, states (and other stakeholders) will have to suspend all vestiges of bargaining and be willing to live with some of the highly inconvenient consequences of a climate challenge created largely on our watch.

It is also important, as several states noted during the opening ceremony, that climate health is seen as a full-spectrum responsibility and not merely one of state and even corporate concerns.    The refrain from within the UN of “common but differentiated responsibility” can be put in somewhat more familiar terms – unless we get many more capable and committed hands on deck, this “ship” will take on more and more water, agreement or no agreement.

Easily said, but there are many obstacles to filling this deck – including deep, well-cultivated habits of consumption and media distraction that impede both the development of skills that can contribute meaningfully to address the current crisis, and the strength of character to push us to continue contributing through disappointments and setbacks.  Much like teenagers behave with parents, it is just too easy for all of us to externalize blame on to states and other stakeholders, eschewing the full-spectrum engagements and commitments that bring into sharp relief just how difficult and complex the climate mitigation task actually is. Reversing habits that threaten our survival is every bit as energy and time consuming as forming those habits in the first instance.  There is no time like the present to get started on this difficult but life saving work.

At one point during the opening ceremony, the Secretary-General noted that “we are running behind schedule,” thus delaying the actual agreement signing.   For some, this seemed almost metaphorical – a response to climate threats that many fear might be just a bit too little and just a bit too late.   Others commented on the “footprint” of the signing ceremony, a huge UN room full of officials and their entourages who chose, yet again, to fly in rather than Skype in to express their climate concerns.   Like citizens and their governments, the UN also has habits to address, habits that motivate some to turn their backs on a problem we simply cannot solve without them.   People – skeptical and otherwise — need to know that the policy community, too, is willing to wrestle with and amend our habits for the sake of our common future.

As the Prime Minister of the small island state of Tuvalu made clear at the UN, climate impacts are now a global phenomenon.    Sea waters in every ocean are rising, storms are intensifying, drought and flood zones alike are expanding, traumatized climate refugees are desperately seeking safer ground.   We’re all in this now.   We must all be in this now.  GA President Lykketoft specifically cited the role of civil society groups (like our own) in keeping states on track regarding their climate responsibilities.  Clearly, we on the non-governmental side also have our own, long road to walk on climate impacts before any “all clear” signals are likely to be heard.

The aggregate message conveyed on this Climate signing day was simple and clear:  This is going to be a hard task.  The hour is getting very late.

Let’s get busy.

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The Young and the Restless:   Seeking a Wider Gaze at UN Headquarters, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Apr

It was a chaotic and, in some ways, historic week at the UN with major sessions on the threats of terrorism, data-related work by the Commission on Population and Development, special discussions on “drugs and the death penalty” and “the rule of law” (the latter with a focus on children and juveniles), the release of the UN World Water Development Report, assessment of the peace and governance implications of the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit, and of course unprecedented “interviews” of eight candidates for the position of UN secretary-general moderated by current General Assembly president Lykketoft.  (For background on the interviews, including candidate “vision statements,” visit http://www.un.org/pga/70/sg/.)

Amidst all these high level events were a few more “intimate” discussions that raised issues significant for us and other non-governmental organizations. For instance, this past Tuesday, Ambassador Laura Elena Flores Herrera of Panama headlined a breakfast discussion on “Rethinking the Role of Civil Society in an Evolving UN System,” The breakfast was co-sponsored by the Baha’i international community (probably the most generous of the NGOs around UN headquarters) and the International Movement ATD Fourth World (one of the more “grounded” groups around these parts).

Ambassador Flores Herrera has been a breath of fresh air since assuming her current post in late 2014 and she had some important things to share about the ever-shifting role of NGOs in the UN system.  While (rightly) praising NGOs for their contributions to cementing the 2030 development agenda, she also urged a “widening of our optics” when it comes to partnership building within and beyond our common policy community.  Many of our existing partnerships, she noted, have been disappointing at best, leading some to now distrust the whole notion of partnership building altogether.

Of course none of us can solve global problems alone, not even the largest government or the most well- funded and heavily-branded non-governmental entity.   The question isn’t whether we will have partnerships, but who will they be with and on what terms?   Will they be defined more by generosity and respect or competition and predation? Will they open space for others or shut down helpful alternatives to our often narrow agendas?  Will we as NGOs continue to answer the call when governments (often cavalierly) request more civil society involvement, or will we yield the floor to those many groups worldwide who have important things to share and little opportunity to do so, in part because we in New York so often take up more than our share of policy space?  Is our commitment to a diverse and thoughtful engagement with our system of global governance sufficient to overcome our “duty” to impress our funders and imprint our brand names in every possible conference room?

In sorting through these and related questions, the Ambassador’s notion of “widening optics” was most helpful.   It calls to mind our collective attention deficits, our apparent need to share our own “positions” when we could be serving as the eyes and ears of a vast, rich policy community that, for no particularly good reason, will never be invited to sit in the places we do. It calls to mind our emotional limitations, the deficits of transparency and clarity that we tolerate in ourselves all while critiquing this in our institutions and those who run them.   It calls to mind cognitive dysfunctions that manifest themselves as hyper vigilance around mission statements and policy preferences while willfully ignoring other policy urgencies attached to those preferences, not to mention the many communities worldwide still desperately seeking policy relief.

And it calls to mind our collective discomfort with having our assumptions challenged by new and perhaps even “naïve” voices, persons young and old who perhaps do not represent UN policy interests but, in their own way, are perfectly fine representatives of human interests, interests that as most of us recognize are now facing considerable strain.   These are the voices that can at least begin to reboot some of our acquired UN habits, reminding us that a deeper engagement with these strains on the world generally lies beyond the limits of our organizational preoccupations.

Two stories this week illustrated this “reboot” for me:

The first involved a New York City middle school girl whose class, thanks to a colleague of ours, came to visit us this week, ostensibly to hear about issues in Asia.   The group wasn’t particularly interested in Asia as it turns out.  They were kids – mostly distracted, peer and smart-phone preoccupied, and seemingly so anxious about their lives.  At the end of our session, the girl came up to me and asked if she could make a YouTube video with Global Action.  About what, I asked?  “I want to teach people how to love,” she replied.   When I mentioned to her that it is perhaps less important to teach about love than to practice it in the world, she agreed but said, “I want to do this anyway. I think it matters.”

The second story came about during the question and answer portion of the Secretary-General candidate-interview with UNESCO’s Irina Bokova.   After fielding many, mostly predictable questions from diplomats, a boy (perhaps 16) from Brazil appeared on the video screen behind the dignitaries and asked, “If you aren’t selected for the job, how will you continue to help change the world? Will you still care about us?”

At that point, delegates sitting in that UN chamber let out a collective but muted chuckle.  The diplomats, as it turns out, are pretty anxious about the world as well, and they have all lived through their share of disappointment. But most of them, I gather, continue to believe that a “position of prominence” is needed in order to make change.  You must become the head of a mission, or UN office, or large NGO in order to make a difference.  The boy apparently didn’t care much about that. Indeed, he was suggesting something else:  that what we really need to make change, even more than fancy “positions,” are big hearts, flexible minds, and a passion to leave the world in better shape than we found it, no matter what obstacles – self-inflicted and not — lie in our path.

Teaching others to practice love better.  Persevering through inevitable failure and disappointment to help heal the world.  These reminders from sometimes restless youth are surely outcomes we would associate with a widening optics, reminders that point to the true, core metrics by which we govern and assess the value of our work in the world, even more than large funders or professional recognition.

Doing more and better than we can ever be compensated for or even recognized for, keeping our eyes open, our brains engaged and our hearts generous – this is perhaps more than anyone could ask of us. But it is also less than we will need if we are to contribute – fully and successfully — to a world that a girl from Manhattan and a boy from Brazil can truly believe in.

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Home Improvement:   The General Assembly Initiates Some Deferred Repairs, Dr. Robert Zuber

10 Apr

Anyone who has followed this space knows that Global Action is committed to a UN system that is suitably structured both to focus on needs and threats that states can’t solve alone, and to better honor its many development and security promises made to global constituents. If and when the UN bogs down in petty concerns or takes undue liberties with its vested authority, the hopes that people have invested in this community will continue to fade.

Our own humble contribution to this system has long focused on the way we do our collective business as much as the content of that business.   The promises of a disarmed world, of an end to extreme poverty, of responsive governments that respect the rights of their people, of a planet that can find healing amidst the relentless onslaughts of human ambition – these and more require structures of global governance that privilege effectiveness and whose movements and rationales can be more easily discerned by the governed.

Those of you who rightly wish for the UN to “do more” on development, climate and security should recall: When the home roof is leaking, the boiler barely functions, the tap water is contaminated and the weeds have taken over the lawn, the quality of life of the family is compromised, as is its ability to make meaningful contributions to the life beyond the home.

Indeed, the three major bodies that constitute the UN’s “home” base have all heard rumblings in recent years that their structures and methods of work are simply insufficient to the many challenges on their collective agendas.  In the Security Council, the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) group is just one of several initiatives designed to ensure a Council that is better able to respond to security threats at earlier stages and assess past decisions so as to eliminate future mistakes, while strongly urging the permanent members to “work and play” better both with elected members and with other core components of the UN system.

Under the presidencies of Austria and now the Republic of Korea, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has recently recovered its own footing, demonstrating through the High Level Political Forum and other structures that it is able and committed to creating meaningful and reliable space for assessment and oversight of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals — including its emphasis on ending economic and social inequalities — perhaps the single most far-reaching “promise” issued by the United Nations over the past decade.

As the most representative of UN organs, the General Assembly (GA) has also had its share of effectiveness-related issues. In the recent past, it has struggled trying to manage the needs and expectations of a growing roster of member states, including the expectation that the UN as a whole must become more democratic in its core concerns, including on matters of peace and security.  At the same time, the Assembly suffers under the burden of one-year rotating presidencies that make it difficult for leaders (especially from some of the smaller states that have recently held the position) to get full policy traction. The GA has also been limited by a funding mechanism that does not provide resources adequate to any sort of ambitious presidency (which exacerbates tendencies to bend the rules as appears to have been the case with 2013 GA president John Ashe).  And the president has always to contend with large and powerful states (including permanent Security Council members) that do not wish to have the Assembly wandering into their policy territory.

Into this morass in 2015 wandered the current GA president (PGA), Mogens Lykketoft of Denmark, who has made much of his country’s diplomatic reputation and links to the European Union (perhaps even exploiting his country’s pre-eminent levels of happiness) to rapidly enhance some of the GA’s luster.  He and his senior leadership have done so through massive infusions of attentive energy, insisting that this GA house be restored to purpose and set on a path of relevance to a new standard of global expectations.

His strategy has had multiple facets, but two stand out for us.   The first is his office’s omni-presence in the system.  Just this month, he has presided over/keynoted discussions on topics as diverse as African development, trafficking in persons, disaster relief strategies, and peacekeeper abuse in the Central African Republic.  He has traveled to other UN sites to share and to listen. He has also been an indispensable voice in efforts to open up the selection process for the next Secretary-General, a process that might well result in the first female SG but one which will surely change forever the dynamics affecting future selections.  This presence from the PGA has been both consistent and understated, permitting the president to define the GA’s stake in key global issues without undermining the expertise and authority of others, nor the many helpful precedents in the UN system that have brought us to this current, reform-minded place.

The second facet is related to a decision by the PGA’s office to hold fewer key policy discussions in a mostly formalized GA Hall setting – where prepared statements rule the day – in favor of more informal, less predictable discussions in other UN conference rooms.   President Lykketoft did not invent this format by any means, but he has seemingly embraced it in a way which allows delegations to reflect on responsibilities without the burden of producing resolutions, and which also underscores the abundant skills within the general UN membership that simply must be energized if the current collection of existential threats is to find permanent relief.  That some delegations continue to read prepared statements in such informal settings testifies in part to the complexities of the UN’s diplomatic habit; perhaps even to a lingering mistrust in a process that is likely to result in what for Global Action would be a welcome leveling of decision making authority within the entire UN system.

There are no either-or impediments looking forward.  We can find ways to honor both policy precedent and policy innovation.   We can test our current working methods to ensure they are sufficient to our policy challenges without throwing the UN system into procedural chaos. We can show competence on issues and contribute to their resolution without excluding other relevant stakeholders or marginalizing other helpful contributions.   We’re learning how to function as a system – as a home base — slowly but steadily.  It’s an exciting moment; but also an essential one.

The recently released Panama Papers provide those who question the motives of government officials with yet one more reason to do so.   For the UN, deviating from the revised direction recently established for our most important policy organs must not now be an option.  We seem at this point to have the energy and urgency to take better care of our home business, initiating the repairs we have long needed to make. We need to stay this course so that the hope still invested in this global policy community is not in vain.

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The Art of Forgiveness:  Helping to Make Peace Prevail, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 Apr

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  Mahatma Gandhi

It is rare that someone specifically asks me to take up a topic for the blog; in this instance a piece on forgiveness in the context of international security and conflict resolution.  For someone who has spent most of his adult life inside Christian churches, this might seem to be a fairly easy assignment. But as a member of the UN community for more than a decade, this task becomes sharply more challenging.   Needless to say, there will be much more than needs to be shared about this beyond what I share here.

To start, we should recognize that “forgiveness” is not a word we use at the UN.   We have in our active lexicon a full complement of justice-related terms, including the “impunity” that we are all struggling to end.   We also speak of “reconciliation” though often without pinpointing either whose responsibility this is (sometimes misapplying that to international courts) or acknowledging the slippery definitions and uses to which reconciliation so often comes attached.  Thankfully as a community, we are becoming more comfortable with the compensatory dimensions of justice, such as when we advocate for “reparations” for persons who have suffered sexual violence in armed conflict, reparations that acknowledge the long path towards healing and the services needed (but often not provided) to move that healing process along successfully.

But “forgiveness” represents a more challenging bar altogether, a bar that mostly eludes us here at the UN for better or (mostly) worse.  Forgiveness is a term that can be found in no statements that I can recall in my long years at UN headquarters, in part because forgiveness is generally attached to acts of contrition that are also highly unusual at the UN.  Here we don’t apologize for behavior; we defend behavior.  We don’t accept responsibility for behavior “on our watch”; instead we express “regret” for wrongdoing, mostly by spoilers or rogue states, sometimes by our own peacekeepers.  Responsibility for the mistakes we make ourselves — the people we failed to protect, the monetary pledges we failed to honor, the promises that we let drop by the wayside, the impunity we have allowed to continue, the vision of abundance blocked by our own narrow bureaucratic interests – is also too rare an occurrence.

And I would suggest here that an acknowledgment of responsibility, along with concrete plans to ensure non-repetition (what the church might call “amendment of life”) is indispensable if forgiveness is to mean anything to healing and wholeness beyond simply a resignation to “get over it” and “move on.”   We can “forgive” wayward actions by individuals or even states if their waywardness is accepted and recidivism is avoided going forward.  But repetitive waywardness, habits of disinterest or abuse, acts that are defended rather than confessed and that are repeated rather than shunned; in these and similar instances “forgiveness” loses much of its power.

Contrition and commitments to amendment are, of course, only one piece of this puzzle.   The other piece has to do with the one who has been wronged, their possible confusion about the motives of the perpetrator, the “confessions” designed more for “damage control” or to reduce the length of court sentences than to actually reconcile with others.   There might also be a struggle of sorts inside the hearts of victims – the struggle between a desire for vengeance against one with whom trust is broken and the allure of genuine healing.  Healing bears its own intimacies; as Gandhi insisted, it also requires its own courage.   It is not just about the promise of “feeling free” as some commentators have put it.   It is also about acknowledging that all of us are, in matters of forgiveness, a “responsible party,” responsible perhaps not for the wrongdoing itself, but certainly for at least part of any reconciliation to come. Not everyone is up to that challenge, even if it is in their best interests to accept its demands.

But it is important to be clear about a couple of things:  First, “forgiveness” at an individual level does not remove the obligation to justice at a social level.   Societies must uphold their legal obligations but should also acknowledge the degree to which punishment of offenders is itself insufficient to bring closure and healing.  We have enough testimony from victims’ family members witnessing the execution of a murderer to know how few empty emotional spaces such retribution actually fills.

Second, there are situations in which “forgiveness” itself must defer to more urgent obligations to enforce the most egregious violations of international law. Last week was rather satisfying for proponents of international justice as both Congolese politician Jean-Pierre Bemba and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić were convicted of horrific crimes. The emotional and physical carnage left in the wake of the violence perpetrated by these men (and others yet to face trial) almost defies imagination.  Any suggestion of “forgiveness” in a context such as this – with little remorse expressed for crimes committed that literally call our humanity into question– trivializes any potential response.  How and why would we possibly forgive those who so eagerly ordered the ruin of so many human lives?

Third, in a world that seems obsessed with pushing away responsibility or even clarity for our behavior and its consequences, there is value to understanding forgiveness as one of those things we learn to do ourselves based on our recognition of the value of having previously been forgiven by others.  We achieve kindness, generosity and even forgiveness through our own disciplines of practice.  But the inspiration for the discipline is the love and kindness we were initially shown by parents and others.  Recognizing and appreciating these points of origin are keys to our emotional well-being.

But such recognition is, more and more, hard to come by. I have had several conversations in the past few months with young people around the UN who were apparently trying to convince me (and no doubt themselves) of their deep disappointment with the behavior of others.  This disappointment is often justified to be sure.  What was less justified is the other part of their testimony – -that “I’ve never done anything wrong to anyone.”

This is where we are heading as a culture unless we are willing to take a hard emotional turn.  Not only are there monstrous and unpunished evils being perpetrated in our world.  Not only are we predisposed to posit ignoble motives to whatever few acts of contrition we can now find.  But we are also increasingly taking on a posture of hyper-sensitivity to the behavior of others all the while applying (an unconvincing) “blanket” immunity to our own.

This “everyone is out to get me, I’ve done nothing wrong” posture is anathema to intimacy, trust-building and emotional courage – the DNA of any forgiveness.  We can use the pious words all we want, but the positive consequences of forgiveness are too often swamped by lingering bitterness and self-interested assessments that make unreasonable assumptions between the ideas lodged in our brains and actual conditions in the world.

The good news about forgiveness is that we still need what it provides. We still can benefit greatly from honest, amendment-laden contrition. We still bear the need to reconcile even more than the need to punish.   The bad news is that we’re quickly losing that capacity for emotional courage and clarity that helps us to reconcile both with those who have wronged us and with our own, often-conflicted motives.

Pursuing justice and ending impunity for abuses is always the right thing to do and we should all seek ways to do so more effectively.   But it is not the final thing we need if we seek reconciled families and communities that can escape the bitterness that robs us of abundance and fuels new cycles of violence.  If reconciliation is a goal, we need to encourage more genuine contrition from ourselves and others; but also strive to establish more trusting and durable personal bonds with those who do so.

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Ballot Stuffing:  The UN Confronts State Claims of Indispensability, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Mar

Vote for Nobody           Bosnia

I’m sitting in my office on an Easter morning having just walked through a park filled with Narcissus (Daffodils) – bright yellow and white flowers that bear within themselves the promise of their own regeneration.

In the northern countries, budding flowers have long served as visual confirmation of at least part of the Easter message – that death is not the final word, that renewal is possible and that the keys to renewal reside partially within us.

Some states on and off the UN Security Council claim such a power for elections as well, seeing them as an “elixir” of national stability, an integral step towards any prospects for national regeneration.  In many parts of the UN system, including the Security Council, elections are widely encouraged as an antidote to political stalemate, to insurgent violence, to restorations of both the rule of law and the good graces of the international community.

Nonetheless, as we look around the world on this Easter morning, this ascription of “elixir” would appear to be a hard sell.   High levels of “negatives” for US presidential candidates, confidence in leadership undermined in Brazil, concerns about Turkey and the political collapse of the European community, economic woes in Burundi, the DRC and elsewhere spiking public anxieties and threatening transitions, spoilers within too many states (and not all of them insurgents) stoking violence and unrest that undermines reasonable prospects for the maintenance of some semblance of normalcy.

And then there are those leaders who simply refuse to leave, those who imagine themselves to be “indispensable” to the maintenance of whatever prospects for national stability and prosperity might exist.  Some of these leaders have thumbed their noses at their own constitutions.  Others have committed grave abuses against their own people and then manipulated electoral processes in order to shield themselves from post-office litigation.  Too many lay claim a “mandate” that is neither constitutional nor performance-based, a mandate that serves only to further widen the distrust  of citizens towards a state fully convinced that its continued presence in office is beyond reproach.

Clearly, as noted by Paul Collier, “elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.”   Nor, apparently, do they always determine when and how such power is to be transitioned.

In preparing to write this piece, I searched for quotations on elections that I thought might be uplifting.   What I mostly found were quotations both humorous and skeptical.   Among them:

The Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queiroz alleged that “Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and both for the same reason. “ The US humorist Will Rogers noted that, “If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven.”  Also from the US, Mark Twain noted that “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”

There were many more in this vein – grateful for the existence of elections and their own ability to participate in them, but skeptical of the motives of those running for office and mostly despairing of the accountability of the winners after all the votes have been counted.  Many are skeptical as well of the disproportionate influence of those holding large fortunes on the political “fortunes” of others, of the ability of leaders to resist the allures of power and redirect that power to public benefit, of the willingness of leaders to battle the demon of “indispensability” through which so much violence, discrimination and political inertia flows.

Clearly, as many within and outside the UN recognize, elections cannot be abstracted from the societies in which they occur.  Moreover, the holding of elections, while useful in helping to “settle” and legitimize the political order, is hardly a panacea for what ails people.  Indeed, much of the violence which occupies the UN Security Council and security establishments in national capitals relates to the inability – or unwillingness – of ostensibly “elected” governments to offer protection, legal integrity, political freedom and development-without-discrimination to their populations.

As the US noted rightly this week in the Security Council, if leaders are “indispensable,” then clearly they have failed at nation building.  Clearly they have too often failed to uphold the rule of law on which most national constitutions are based. Clearly they have also failed to guarantee an end to impunity for violations of public trust committed by any officials of the state. Clearly they have failed — as suggested by UN SRSG Sidikou during that same Security Council meeting — to create and maintain vigorous public spaces for journalists, civil society and even dissenting policy voices, helping to ensure that official promises are addressed in good faith and any abuses of power are not repeated.   Clearly, they have failed to heed Spain’s recent Council urging for electoral processes that do their part to help turn citizens into “protagonists for their own future.”

In other words, “indispensable” leaders who lack the commmitment to enabling rather than obstructing citizens as they seek to express and enact the powers of social regeneration that lie within them.

More and more, elections themselves seem to be more of a “fingers crossed” moment than any guarantee of future inclusiveness – fingers crossed that “changing the diapers” willl result in happier outcomes than another round of diaper burn.  States worldwide are under assault from terrorists and climate-induced drought, from criminal networks and economic predation.   Even the most accountable of states are now staring down multiple traumatic circumstances.   All states now need help in one form or another, from the UN and other mutilateral institutions, of course, but also from their own citizens.

At the UN this past week, Special Envoy Djinnit noted that, in the African region for which he is responsible, successful elections are now the occasion for mostly “fragile achievements.”   Even in these treacherous times, we know some of what it takes to remove the “fragile” tag; replacing repression with open political space, discrimination with fairness, and manipulations of the law with accountability to its cherished provisions.  We must also do better at ensuring vital and thoughtful linkages between national governance and the three, public commitment pillars of the UN system – to security, human rights and development.  “Fragile” is still within our power to change.

And of course we must find ways to do better about selecting people to lead us who have the humility and wisdom to pass the torch when it is time for them to go.

Elections are one significant piece of a larger puzzle towards ensuring peaceful relations, participation and fairness, both elections within member states and even elections within the UN itself: A puzzle incorporating balloting that underscores – rather than undermines – commitments to political and social inclusiveness, while cultivating a “verifiable trust” in government by citizens that is – more than any political leaders themselves – indispensable to a just and effective political order.

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Sue Me, Part II:   The Marshall Islands Pushes the Nuclear Weapons States on Their “Good Faith” Deficits, Dr. Robert Zuber

20 Mar

ICJ (2)

There is a line not far off the United Nation’s home page that indicates what UN officials imagine the role of journalists to be: Journalists who cover the United Nations play an important part in its work, because they help explain to the public what the Organization does and why. 

There are several ways to interpret this, but the most obvious is to assume that the job of journalists is to act as conduits for the promotion of UN activities, largely employing the words with which the UN seeks to have those activities conveyed.  The assumed role of journalists, it would appear, involves some measure of capitulation to the dominant narrative, pushing the soundbites that elevate the stature and impact of the UN in ways that are likely misleading – explaining away mistakes and even missing some important ways in which the UN adds value beyond the fringes of policy centers.  After all, in a highly competitive, branded environment, we are as likely to lose sight of the places where we add value as the places where we have failed to add it.

What we need from journalists, with all due respect to the UN’s web content, the pressures of the media market and the unpredictability of editors is to be attentive, thoughtful and, to the extent any of us can be, balanced.  We need journalists who strive to see the whole picture, who eschew easy abstractions focused on political power or celebrity scandal, who resist the pages handed out for them to read in favor of pages they investigate for themselves.

And most of all, we need journalists who flock to the places where matters of genuine importance are taking place, matters where lives are potentially being saved, where threats are being vanquished, where longstanding prejudices are being overcome, where awareness can swiftly lead to action on some of the critical issues facing our planet.   Those of us who supplement journalism with active social media know how to get to the scenes of impact, but professional journalists most often bring a more disciplined eye.

From March 7 to March 16 before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, one longstanding threat to the human race came a bit closer to being vanquished. A superb team of legal experts – with leadership from Dutch lawyer Phon van den Biesen and HE Tony deBrum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands (and including John Burroughs of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy) — argued persuasively that the nuclear weapons states have manifestly failed in their obligations under customary international law and the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue “in good faith” negotiations towards a nuclear-disarmed world.

The cases entitled, Obligations concerning Negotiations relating to Cessation of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament (www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=3&code=miuk&case=160&k=ef) also brought to the court legal teams of the three nuclear weapons states – United Kingdom, Pakistan and India – which had previously accepted compulsory jurisdiction of the Court regarding adjudication of these claims of obligation. (For more on these cases, see https://www.wagingpeace.org/international-court-of-justice-concludes-hearings-in-preliminary-phase-of-historic-nuclear-disarmament-cases/).

While a comprehensive review of this process is beyond our competence, the arguments of the nuclear armed states seemed to us simultaneously vigorous and fatuous, attempting as they were to make the case that the jurisdiction which they had already accepted did not now apply, while also seeking to re-write history such that the weapons each state has unilaterally pursued and now seeks to modernize are somehow “consistent” with legal obligations to negotiate towards nuclear disarmament.   Perhaps even more remarkable, states seem to have been largely oblivious to what is quite a “high character” gesture by Foreign Minister deBrum of the Marshall Islands.   The Minister was consistent throughout that his country was not seeking punitive damages, financial compensation or reparations in any form, but was rather seeking legal remedy that would help to drive meaningful (and irreversible) policy change regarding any alleged “right” to ignore disarmament obligations.

Despite the damage inflicted on the islands and its peoples from years of above-ground nuclear testing, the Marshall Islands early on in this process took the prospect of financial compensation off the table.  The “compensation” of preference was a judgment that nuclear weapons states have simply not fulfilled their obligations under customary international law, and that the tangible commitment to “good faith” negotiations was necessary to satisfy both the judgments of the court and the people of the Marshall Islands that their longstanding and radiation-soaked sacrifices could serve a higher calling – a world once and for all free of nuclear weapons.

There were other matters about this case that were intriguing from the vantage points of policy and media. First, we have to admit that we don’t quite understand what appears to be incessant squabbling over relevant lenses – legal, humanitarian, moral – through which the question of nuclear weapons possession can finally be put to rest.   The skillfulness of the plaintiffs’ arguments in this case was matched by the compelling, kind and far-reaching nature of the relief being sought, not treasure in the conventional sense but the treasure of the greater good.  In these three legal cases, what is at stake is nothing short of our ability to have confidence in international law as applied to the dangers posed by the possession of these potentially “ecosystem destroying” weapons.

Second, while all arguments stayed fairly close to issues of admissibility and jurisdiction that dominated so much of the three state “defenses,” there was an under-current in the room that these three cases might create “jurisdiction” of another sort in the form of “good faith” negotiating pressure on the (majority) nuclear weapons states that chose to stay away from this case.   It surely occurred to the ICJ judges – as it must have for the Marshall Islands legal team – that it is a short distance from precedents established in these cases to accusations of “good faith” negotiating failures on the part of the other weapons possessors, including and especially the two largest possessing states.   The UK’s “one hand clapping” reference notwithstanding, there is reason to believe that such precedents coupled with political pressure from the “humanitarian” sector and moral pressure from the faith communities might finally be sufficient to get us on a path characterized by something other than pious statements advocating disarmament followed closely by negotiating intransigence.

By any relevant standard, this process before the ICJ would seem to rise to a level of importance –politically, symbolically and legally – for it to have received wider attention from both professional journalists and social media advocates for disarmament.  While grateful to the outlets and organizations that covered the cases (and even in the latter instance funded the participation of the Marshall Islands legal team), we simply cannot fathom how so much of this important work remained in the media shadows.   There is so much about peace and security advocacy that is bogged down by duplicitous state interests, distracted NGOs, even a lazy press.  This is one instance when our collective eyes and ears should have taken better notice.

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“Sue Me”:   The Council Seeks Belated Traction on Peacekeeper Abuse, Dr. Robert Zuber

13 Mar

One of the things we do in our office with interns and fellows is insist that they pay as close attention as possible to as many parts of the UN system as they are able.   The UN offers remarkable learning opportunities beyond international peace and security: from global health to fair employment access, the UN’s conceptual and policy scope is virtually unparalleled.

Despite this robust scope, what our young colleagues learn quickly is that, for all of its conceptual clout, the UN is primarily political space: political in the sense of having to negotiate agreements within diverse and often contested settings, and political in the sense of trying to convince others of positions which might well be misleading.  Thus the job of fellows and interns involves both openness to learning and wariness about the “truth” limitations within any government position or presentation. They come to recognize the “salesmanship” even within the most thoughtful statements; they become sensitive to the fact that what is “left out” of statements is often more important than what is included.

This discernment takes time, but once it happens, lights go on in some creative ways.   For instance, this week in a General Assembly informal on the rights of indigenous peoples, my youngest intern listened intently to statements focused on getting “higher” representation in indigenous forums – by which was meant more duly elected tribal leaders and fewer activists who speak and act “more like NGOs.”  Many statements also noted the need to include indigenous peoples in all issues “relevant to them.”

Shortly after, the intern noted, If delegates are looking to integrate duly elected representatives of indigenous groups, he noted, what is NOT relevant to them?  Health? Security? Human Rights?  Employment?  Water Access?  And if “relevance” has issue limitations, doesn’t that make indigenous representatives a bit like NGOs?  If the GA wants a more formal level of representation at forums, doesn’t this mean extending participation to all aspects of the UN’s work?

The politics impeding such broad participation aside, this is what we want from our people – attentive and supportive, but also discerning and evaluative.  Discerning to improve the UN, not to embarrass it.  Attentive to the hopeful evolutions in government positions, but also to efforts to politicize solutions to the world’s horrors, ignoring or covering up inconvenient elements to a full and complete picture.

Some of those “elements” have been on display this past week as the Security Council succeeded at responding to what has become a persistent blight on the UN system – the abuse by peacekeepers of civilians entrusted to their protective care.  Such abuses may represent a small fraction of the violence taking place in sites of UN operations from Central African Republic to Yemen, but the despair left in the wake of peacekeeper abuse is a strong and pervasive multiplier impacting both civilian populations and UN operations far beyond peacekeeping.  This effect called to mind the impact of techniques used by torturers whereby they surround the victim with persons posing as police and religious clergy who appear to be condoning what they should otherwise be preventing.  Abuse at the hands of erstwhile “protectors” and “caregivers” is doubly traumatic.

During the debate and the subsequent discussion on what became resolution 2272 – which included a rare separate (no) vote on an amendment proposed by Egypt – the Council went on the record, in the words of Japan, to preserve this “last hope” to civilians represented by peacekeepers through measures that include robust state reporting of response to abuses and threats of repatriation for offending units. The Council also, as highlighted by Spain, Uruguay and others, urged greater effort to honor our collective responsibility to victims abused by forces originally generated and then mandated for purposes of their protection.

The passion in the Council chamber on this day was palpable and seemed sincere.  As many members noted, the impacts on the abused and on the reputation of the institution tasked with protecting them is staggering.   Most military people –including my own family members around the dinner table – understand full well that abuse destroys confidence in all aspects of operations, making the task of honorable military (and other) protectors that much more difficult.  As the US, France and others rightly noted, it is appalling when citizens fear the sight of blue helmets rather than see in them a sign that their ordeal might finally have some positive resolution.  Such fear does not easily dispel.

The US – one of several states on the Council that is not a Troop Contributing Country but which served as penholder on resolution 2272 — clearly articulated the manner in which abuse by those trained to protect represents a higher order of offense. Indeed, the US Ambassador used the opportunity provided by the Egypt amendment controversy to address Council members in a lengthy statement that in some ways was among the best of her Council tenure. She was passionate, powerful and mostly off-script.  Unfortunately, she was also dismissive of any who challenged the scope, working methods or motives behind the resolution, as well as of other efforts inside the UN system to confront and address this scourge. “My motive,” she proclaimed at one point, is to address this cancer. “Sue me.”

Indeed.  As the dominant power within the Council, even more so in back rooms than in official settings, the US knows perfectly well that no lawsuits are forthcoming.   No state would dare.  None would be permitted.   States seemed to be biting their metaphorical tongue as they so often do when the US or some other permanent member takes off on an accusatory rant.

And not all the stated cautions regarding this resolution were in bad faith.  As Malaysia noted during the Council discussion, due to an “insufficient” consultative process with Troop Contributing Countries we might have lost the chance for forging genuine consensus on peacekeeper abuse. Senegal was reasonable in urging that notions of “collective punishment” for abuse be avoided at all costs. Venezuela’s formula of seeking “justice not stigma” was wise, if a bit unclear on the implementation.   Russia made veiled references to the (also) unresolved abuse by French forces, not a factor to be taken lightly within these discussions.

Clearly, not all the relevant factors are served by emotive and dismissive bursts.  Why, as the US itself noted, have these abuse investigations taken so long?   Why has no senior official in the Secretariat to date been held directly accountable for what are now longstanding and mostly neglected patterns of abuse?   Why have abuses (and uneven investigations) by French forces in the context of larger peacekeeping operations not been more public?  And what does it mean for the Council (and for future support by Troop Contributors) when a key non-contributing member dismisses the concerns of Council colleagues (not to mention General Assembly “C-34” efforts to deal with this problem) with what seemed to border on contempt?

One of the grave problems of our time, from which the UN is hardly immune, is the confusion of branding and truth-telling – words used as instruments to convince more than as a means to discern and disclose.  The political tensions within the Council, coupled with the need to brand national policies beyond their potential effectiveness, have created conditions in which all positions – including the most forceful, passionate ones – require a closer scrutiny.  All contain elements of truth, but all neglect elements that can turn partial remedies into effective, sustainable international commitments.

For my young colleagues, this is all becoming a sober but challenging occasion for discernment — a positive and badly needed step on peacekeeper abuse undertaken within a scenario characterized by damaging delays, mixed national motives and rhetoric that alternates between passion for victims and the patronizing of UN colleagues.  We are, all of us – victims and diplomats, caregivers and civil society – desperate for that just and lasting solution to the horrific pain which these abuses have inflicted. At this point, we can only hope that resolution 2272 is the starting point for honest, sustained engagement.

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Travelocity: The Council’s Ticket to Closer Connections to Difficult Security Challenges, Dr. Robert Zuber

6 Mar

As of this writing, Security Council members are in the final stages of a visit to West Africa to confer with regional leaders and assess security arrangements and ongoing threats in countries such as Mali and Guinea-Bissau.

We support such trips as, in the best of circumstances, Council members can both share concerns with political and military leaders (even opposition forces as in Mali), and also get a feel for how tenuous the peace can be in these places despite the Council’s often well-meaning meetings, resolutions and mandates.  It is good that they go, good that they listen, good that capitals experience their concern first-hand.

We look forward to the report on this trip later this month, under Angola’s presidency.   As part of that report, we would appreciate some rationale for the invitation list, specifically why the chair of the Peacebuilding Commission’s Guinea-Bissau configuration, Brazil’s Amb. Patriota, was apparently left off.   Indeed, a meeting of that configuration focused on the political stalemate in that country was held this week prior to the Council’s departure, a meeting which attracted an “A” list group of permanent representatives, virtually all of whom were properly encouraging of Amb. Patriota’s personal involvement with (at least) the Guinea-Bissau portion of the Council’s travels.

Indeed, from our vantage point, and having been present for virtually all recent meetings of this configuration, this would seem to be an opportunity missed.   Closer linkages between the PBC and SC have been called for repeatedly by Ambassadors and featured in SG reports.   These connections are considered essential both to ensuring broader participation by member states in relevant peace and security issues, and in helping to push our conflict-related energies further upstream, balancing our commitments to remedial measures in post-conflict settings with assurances that we will do all that we can — and more than we are currently doing — to fend off conflicts in their earliest stages.

Such assurances, as we have noted many times in the past, require more of us as we seek to become fair, thoughtful and collaboratively-minded brokers of our respective mandates.

This “more” was ably expressed during “Human Rights at work in Peace Operations,” convened by Sweden to look at the human rights implications of peacekeeping operations (including of course the obligation not to abuse the people PKOs are mandated to protect).  During that event Francesco Motta, Head of the Human Rights Component of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, made clear that UN reports must be used to enhance human rights practices and not for UN publicity purposes.  Such reports must have direct application to circumstances on the ground, not only with regard to the values and strategies by which we respond to threats, but as a means for deepening our understanding of the nature and origins of threats.  Extremism did not appear out of nowhere, he advised, and the more we allow ourselves to know about its complex origins (including at times our own facilitating roles), the better we will be able to prevent their recurrence.  This self- and organizational reflectiveness from a human rights officer (and from several of his panel colleagues) was warmly received and rightfully so.

Some of the value of that reflectiveness could have been extended to the pre-trip Council chamber during discussion of resolution 2270 (2016) that tightens sanctions on the DPRK, including restrictions on new categories of exports and providing for the intercepting of DPRK vessels.  The US and China, as the two nations most closely associated with the resolution, had predictably different response to its unanimous passage, though both acknowledged the limited value of previous sanctions regimes to changing DPRK behavior.  The US took the lead in highlighting yet again the many levels of security threats and human rights abuses attributable to DPRK’s leadership.  China, again typically for them, highlighted the need for dialogue and negotiated settlement while noting the grave challenges on their own doorstep represented by some of the belligerent policies emanating from Pyongyang.

Two things particularly struck me from this discussion.  First, despite the many evidences of horrific DPRK behavior noted by the US, other Council members such as Japan, and even from ECOSOC president Oh Joon, there was an underlying if unspoken presumption of “rationality” of the DPRK leadership, some sense that this leadership is capable of internalizing the disapproval of other states and making sound judgments designed to resolve (or at least appease) such disapproval.

This assumption has merit with bratty children desperate for their mothers’ attention or “high maintenance” partners looking for reassurance.  But for bullies harboring what appear to be severe reality deficits, provocation seems always to be lurking in the metaphorical shadows, provocation which can be both a cause of and an excuse for obsessive, abusive, reactive behavior.

Still, regardless of any state sanity misconceptions, it would have been useful to have the DPRK in the Council chamber to gauge their reactions to the resolution, indeed their capacity to respond reasonably (if not positively) to its demands. It is standard Council practice to invite states under consideration – Yemen, Libya, Syria, Sudan, etc. – and then provide them the courtesy of response.  In this instance, as with many other UN deliberations on DPRK, government representatives were nowhere to be found. We have written previously urging the Council to abandon the process of letting erstwhile “offending” states have the “last word” in these formal sessions in part because of the high levels of “spin” characteristic of most of their presentations.  Nevertheless, these appearances are useful both in helping to take the “temperature” of states and to ensure that government officials actually “hear” the concerns of Council members.  Given this, every possible effort should be made to have the DPRK in the room when they find themselves (as they assuredly will) back on the Council’s agenda.

The lessons from this week’s travels and briefings largely confirm lessons of prior weeks:  If we politicize findings of potential mass violence or other security threats; if we protect officials who fail to address human rights abuse allegations forthrightly;  if we turn our backs on complementary capacities (including mediation experts) that can help us fulfill our own mandates (not to mention save lives); if we allow our political lenses to cloud our policy judgments;  if we craft statements or reports that tell the truths that we want others to hear, not the truths they need to hear; if we appear to encourage some abusive state voices while stifling others; then we risk undermining broad confidence in the multilateral structures we still very much need to implement the promises we have already made.

Whether we like it or not, that confidence is now a bit shaky.  We need quickly to demonstrate more resolve to preserve – even enhance — what is left of it.  If we were ever to lose this confidence altogether, we can rest assured that no Council session or overseas mission visit could likely restore it.

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Stating the Obvious:  Good Governance as a Justice and Health Priority, Dr. Robert Zuber

28 Feb

This week at the UN provided more fodder for policy writing than most weeks, and more than can possibly be summarized in a small space.   From Monday’s extraordinary Operational Activities for Development segment of the Economic and Social Council to late Friday in the Security Council as Special Envoy de Mistura counted down the final moments before the start of the Syria “cessation of hostilities” agreement, the week was diverse, notable and hopeful.

Steady movement towards diplomatic consensus could be seen at high level events this week focused on issues as diverse as the development implications of migration, increasing gender-balanced mediation resources, and motivating more engagement by the full General Assembly membership on peace and security issues, including on our civilian protection responsibilities.  But sometimes it is the smaller events that highlight important linkages we need to pursue further.

Two such events occurred this week, one “off campus” involving medical personnel discussing the spread of the Zika virus and the other at UN Headquarters highlighting the need for additional resources for Legal Aid as one component of state commitments to justice and criminal accountability. The Zika discussion was sponsored in part by Women in International Security whose programming we broadly endorse.  The Legal Aid discussion at the UN was sponsored by Norway, the US, South Africa and the International Legal Foundation (ILF).

While it might not seem so at face value, these two events had some important dimensions in common.  For one thing, the events highlighted the many “pro bono” services both medical and legal professionals offer, often under extremely challenging circumstances, in an attempt to help redress access and resource imbalances and the injustices that often flow from them.  Indeed, generations of lawyers have put their lives on the line to uphold the work of human rights advocates and other, perhaps more ordinary people, in danger of having wrongful abuses swallowed up by inattentive or corrupt states. At the same time, many of us have watched in awe and mainly at a distance as doctors with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other groups keep societies on life support through bombing raids and grisly pandemics. While Zika impacts are not to be equated with those of Ebola nor HIV in its earlier iterations, there are risks to take account of here as well, including to expectant mothers in areas of limited medical care and female doctors who might themselves wish to conceive at some later time.

Those of us with relatively “easy duty” here in New York surely do not give sufficient honor to those with high professional credentials who choose a much more challenging path, bringing some measure of justice and healing to places most of the rest of us hesitate to go.

The other major commonality of these events is an implication for good governance.  At the Zika event, the medial professionals competently explored the epidemiological implications of the disease and drew connections to other (often more severe) pandemics.  But it soon became apparent that descriptions of disease response needed to be placed in their larger political and social contexts.   What are the security, development and governance dimensions of a viable health response framework?   What does the medical profession need from states, all states, such that doctors can contribute more than helping patients recover from disease or injury only to face economic deprivation, insecurity in many forms, even abuses at the hands of their own leaders? The doctors in this discussion were not entirely comfortable responding to this inquiry, but all have served in challenging settings and all understood the “enabling” criteria for effective medical response which many states are unable or unwilling to provide.

The event on Legal Aid offered another lens on this problem.   As with response to pandemics, no one in the UN conference room would have suggested that Legal Aid was not a useful commitment.   All of the designated presenters and diplomats who followed voiced concern about chronic imbalances our justice outcomes.  US  Amb. Power gave full support to ILF’s work while noting the degree to which the US continues to fall short on legal fairness.  Argentina’s Amb. Garcia Moritan made clear that legal access – a core provision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – should privilege free legal assistance if such access was ever to become universal.  South Africa’s Mlambo highlighted Legal Aid as a key element in any successful effort to eradicate poverty, itself perhaps the single key objective of the SDGs.

Ever-thoughtful Brazil reminded the audience that access to justice and access to the courts are simply not the same thing, and urged more dispute resolution resources outside formal courts.  What was not discussed at great length, to the chagrin of some listeners, is the ability of Legal Aid, court-appointed legal assistance, or any other form of pro-bono aid to overcome the enormous legal advantages accruing from the growing economic inequality within many states. As access to legal aid is not the same as access to courts, neither is it the same as legal clout sufficient to take on the corporate and political hegemonies that can pay for (or in some instances pay off) the highest caliber of legal services.

The sad reality is that, while Legal Aid should command higher policy attention, many of those who could benefit most from that assistance already feel “burned” by their justice system.  This was certainly the case in my Harlem parish, and I have heard similar stories in poverty stricken areas worldwide.  Many people know (or think they know) that the legal system is “rigged” against them, not just because they have irresolvable difficulties locating some form of legal assistance, but because economic and social inequalities have clear, compelling and largely detrimental legal dimensions. Rightly or not, these people have developed significant trust issues with the state and its legal institutions.

When I was a child, it was common to see summertime trucks passing through the neighborhood spraying chemicals designed to suppress mosquito populations.  And while the fumes seemed toxic enough (and in fact turned out to be of some medical consequence to more than just the bugs) folks in the neighborhood had sufficient residue of trust in the government to allow the sprayers to pass without protest.  But in too many parts of the world, such spraying might be interpreted as an attack of the state.  In too many parts of the world, the urgent instructions of medical personnel seeking to control a pandemic might be interpreted as a state-endorsed violation of their personal and cultural integrity.  In too many parts of the world, people have had painful, interactive lessons with the legal systems in their countries of residence and, as a result (as quoted recently in a NY tabloid), simply “don’t do courts” any longer.

Building trust in the principles and practices of states is not an optional measure, but is essential to any medical healing or legal leveling in the social order.  At the same time, recognizing the myriad of consequences for medical healing, legal assistance and more from both an unequal social order and the resulting deficit of public trust is just as important.  Those of us seeking to expand medical, legal and other assistance must commit more to ensure a proper “enabling environment” for needed services; which in large measure is tantamount to better ensuring more effective and trustworthy patterns of governance.

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Bible Study:  The UN Security Council Revisits its Sacred Origins, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Feb

On Monday January 15, under the presidency of Venezuela, the UN Security Council held a full debate on the UN Charter, the fundamental document guiding this institution’s objectives, values, relationships and working methods. The debate, “Respect for the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations as a key element for the maintenance of international peace and security,” attracted a chamber filled with ministers, mission diplomats and others.

It should be noted here that the General Assembly has also been involved in its own efforts to revitalize itself in accordance with the Charter.   The GA’s version, of course, is a more inclusive process.  Indeed, much of its membership is also suspicious of efforts by the Security Council to “filter” such important conversations through its much more narrow accountability frameworks.   Thus, much of the conversation on this Monday was less about the Charter per se and more about the working methods of the Council itself – how to improve Council effectiveness in responding to security threats but even more its accessibility of and accountability to the wider membership.

To the extent that the debate kept its focus on Charter values and obligations, it followed along lines similar to those of religious communities debating the contemporary relevance of ancient scriptures.  Some UN members stressed the need to hold fast to the fundamentals of the Charter as the basis for all UN action. Others stressed the need for flexible Charter applications to respond effectively to security and other threats – including asymmetric threats from ISIL and other groups – which those giving birth to the Charter could not possibly have foreseen.   Still others acknowledged a shifting security environment while insisting with the Secretary General that we “must get out in front of conflict,” as the Charter suggests we should do, and without recourse, as Pakistan warned, to “power politics”

The world that welcomed the UN Charter has certainly changed on a massive scale since 1945.   At the same time, states joining the UN entered an organization defined by Charter obligations and limitations.  Indeed, many smaller states have seen in their UN membership both an opportunity to participation meaningfully in global policy and a means for resisting big power incursions into their internal affairs – a window on the one hand, a wall on the other.

At this particular debate there were frequent references to Charter values that seek to protect territorial integrity and sovereign equality.   Sovereignty itself was the subject (as it always is whenever the UN membership addresses the Security Council) of much discussion, especially among some states that see sovereignty as a protective principle, including too often protection from accountability for abuse of its own citizens (a point made strongly –but not only– by Spain and the UK).  Sovereignty is too often invoked as one obligation abstracted from others, and is unfortunately also invoked as the ultimate principle within the household of UN Charter values.

Such debates in the Security Council often dredge up regional tensions owing to the fact that states do not always act in accordance with Charter responsibilities and those that don’t (when they don’t) are not held to the same levels of accountability under international law.   In the Monday debate, along with a few side-skirmishes (such as with Cyprus and Turkey), the focus of several delegations, most notably Ukraine, was on Russia’s aggressive behavior in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

We think that this aspect of the debate, while a bit of a diversion, was largely “fair game.” Indeed, it is part of a larger discussion that needs to continue and that focuses on the degree to which Security Council members – most notably the permanent five – seen by many as the guarantors of important Charter-based responsibilities, routinely abrogate those responsibilities.  This rightly includes, but is by no means limited to the Russians.   One doesn’t have to accept at face value Venezuela’s concern about violations of rights by large powers in the name of “democracy” to agree that accusations of rights abuses are too often externalized, too often used as a tool for political ends, too often used to deflect attention away from other abuses committed closer to home.  As a body, and certainly in the case of the permanent members, we are still prone to accusing too readily and apologizing too seldom.

Indeed, there is probably no institution on earth that is subject to less accountability for its excesses and errors than the UN Security Council.   70 years removed from its founding, as the world recovered from a shattering conflict, it is hard to imagine that Founders Intent could have included such a lack of accountability both to those impacted by its decisions (or lack thereof) and to the general UN membership.  Armenia and India were only two of several states during the debate noting that trust in the UN system is currently under strain due in part to the Council’s working methods.  Fixing those methods, as many states seem now prepared to do, would go far to enhancing the UN’s trust reserves.

But any discussion about Charter intent is to some degree speculative and subject to review by the historians who have a better sense of what those Charter framers were thinking, the new world that they were helping to set in motion.  It is for us to take that analysis and apply it to our own multi-lateral framework for addressing contemporary problems – problems both outside and inside the UN.  Member states breathe life into the Charter, as noted by Malaysia, implying that fair and inclusive working methods can be as important a Charter value as respect for the rule of law. Like so many other states at this debate, Malaysia clearly seeks strategies that enhance the Charter, not bypass it.

As we examine appropriate ways to modify and enrich our understanding of the UN’s founding “scriptures” to accommodate new security and development realities, it is imperative that we abandon, as Japan duly noted, any predisposition to apply “rules” to some and not to others.  We must also ensure, as Sweden, Italy, the African Union and others urged, that we always make the full and best use of UN and regional capacities to address conflict, and to apply preventive tools wherever and whenever possible.   We need a more level field of play as well as a full complement of partners to play with.

Latvia got it quite right, I think, when it referred to the UN membership – inside and outside the Council – as the “guardians” of Charter promises.   Panama also got it right when it encouraged Charter applications that place people at the center of our policy deliberations.  These and related recommendations from the membership imply a reverence for the values and principles that underpin our collective responsibilities that is all-too-rarely seen inside UN headquarters.   The specifics of those promises may at times have to adjust to new and even unforeseen circumstances, but the promises themselves and the values they embody continue to uphold the foundations of the UN’s sacred trust.

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