Tag Archives: development

Peacebuilding Week:  The UN Seeks a Sustainable Culture Shift, Dr. Robert Zuber

26 Jun

At a time in its history when so much is on the UN’s plate, so much globally and institutionally is perceived to be on the wrong track, the demand for reform is considerable.  More and more, people cannot fathom – and with justification – how structures designed for one era’s crises can be expected to overcome the new and daunting hurdles that lie before us.  A briefing on Syria last Tuesday under the auspices of PGA Lykketoft gave Special Envoy de Mistura and USG O’Brien an opportunity to tell the full UN membership about tentative humanitarian and peace progress, but also just how much further we need to go before we stop adding to the bloodshed and trauma that already stretch our common capacities to their breaking point.

We at the UN often run behind responsibilities and crises rather than head them off.  We negotiate resolutions on weapons systems that have already evolved more dangerous iterations.   We create agreements on climate and development destined to require more energy and resources to clean up previous messes than prevent new ones.  We seek to address the mass trauma from so many victims in so many conflict zones, at times overlooking the obvious fact that the only viable means to effectively address such trauma is to do more to ahead of time to minimize its occurrence.

Like much of the national legislation with which its own policies interact, the culture of the UN system is reactive more than proactive.   Diplomats now speak regularly about the need for better early warning mechanisms and prevention strategies, but this is still largely at the level of aspiration, not representative of a sustainable shift in culture.  As a system, the UN’s “directional” continues to stick on the “post” side of conflict rather than on marshalling wisdom and resources to address conflict threats that we increasingly have neither the skills nor the resources to heal once “threat becomes reality.”

The week’s numerous events on and references to UN Peacebuilding and the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) represented more than branding for a still-fledgling, underfunded and even under-appreciated capacity.   On Monday, the PBC’s Burundi configuration (Switzerland) met to discuss that country’s many current fragilities.  On Wednesday, the Security Council held a briefing on potential directions for the PBC as noted in its 9th annual report. Thursday the PBC was in session all day with excellent opening and closing events and more intimate sessions in workshop format.  At that closing, current PBC Chair Ambassador Macharia Kamau of Kenya made important pledges to take the “longer view” on peace and security, to find political alternatives to military interventions that “rarely promise peace,” and to do what is necessary to “raise levels of ambition” at the UN for ensuring more peaceful and inclusive societies.

The following day, the Economic and Social Council held an historic, joint session with the PBC on the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustaining Peace.”  Such linkages hold no surprises for the many civil society organizations (and their constituents) living daily with the conflict implications of failed development policies and their implications for trafficking in weapons, narcotics and human beings.   Still there was an urgent energy on display here that would have been encouraging if not reassuring to global constituencies.

It was truly, as noted on Friday by Ambassador Kamau, a “Peacebuilding week” at the UN.  But this was more than a routine assessment, more than a commemoration of “configurations” well-tended.  It was an affirmation that UN Peacebuilding is staking genuinely hopeful ground, hope that the UN can do more – sooner and tangibly – to reduce levels of global tensions and deprivations before they spill over into active conflict.

We have long advocated for a higher profile for the Peacebuilding Commission.  We laud its ability to attract some of the very best diplomatic talent in the UN system; its longstanding affirmation of the primacy of diplomacy and political engagement; its flexibility in assembling the most contextually relevant and competent stakeholders; its commitment to a full-spectrum engagement with peace, including its economic, development, environmental and cultural dimensions.

Our wish for the PBC, one which is intimated in the Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding review, is for the PBC to reach that point where it transcends its current structural and “cultural” limitations: able to assess and address peacebuilding needs beyond the “configuration” states; able to provide guidance on peacebuilding to states that are anxious but not yet in turmoil; able to provide perspective on the conflict implications of all three UN pillars within an evolving culture that seeks to broaden the policy tent more than control its location and functions.

As part of that transition, the PBC and its evolving UN partnerships must help the development-security linkage to find a deeper discernment, what Korea’s Ambassador Oh Joon on Friday outlined as that “blending of a universal agreement and a fundamental responsibility.”   Part of that discernment was offered by Mexico’s Deputy Ambassador who outlined the “healthy social fabric” needed to sustain peace, but also (along with the Swedish Minister) chided governments for investing more in weapons of war than in tools for building and sustaining peace.

The Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, someone on whose leadership we often reflect fondly, predicted on Friday that the culture change we are seeking, and that was represented by Friday’s joint meeting, is well on its way.  If the problems we face are linked, Eliasson noted, our solutions must be also.   We can and must all do more to claim more “horizontal” and collaborative space if we are to build and then sustain an institutional culture that encourages – as noted by Australia’s Ambassador Bird — full-spectrum response to our diverse peace and development challenges.  “Delivering as one,” she noted, is still frustratingly rhetorical within UN settings and must urgently become the go-to strategy of a reformed, cooperative, preventive UN culture.

We have planted many seeds here at the UN on peace, development, climate and justice, but too many of those seeds have fallen on thin soil.  As the words of Kamau, Bird, Eliasson and others grow deeper roots at the UN, the flexibility and wisdom gathering within the PBC can help ensure a more hopeful, predictable harvest for more of the world’s people.

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City Harvest:  Seeking a UN Urban Agenda That Deepens our Rural Connections, Dr. Robert Zuber

22 May

This week the UN Security Council was on mission in East Africa, the General Assembly was focused on AIDS and Migration, and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues concluded another round of UN-based advocacy.  The rest of the building was taken up with preparations for the UN Humanitarian Summit (now underway in Istanbul) and with aspects of trade, development and “south-south” cooperation relevant to the fulfillment of our general obligations under the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Perhaps the most important of these were discussions took place under the aegis of UN Habitat on a Draft Document towards a “New Urban Agenda” that will help guide the Habitat III convening scheduled for later this year in Quito, Ecuador.

The rationale for another major gathering on cities is difficult to refute.  As the document’s introduction makes clear, our global demographic continues its rapid shift towards urban areas.  Predictions now are that, by 2050, as many as 70% of global inhabitants will reside in cities making urbanization “one of the 21st century’s most transformative trends.”

These meetings were largely upbeat, highlighting significant improvements in the quality of lives of urban residents since the UN first took up the challenges of cities in the mid-1970s.  Delegations were generous in their acknowledgment of the technological, economic and cultural innovations so often characteristic of cities.  As mostly urban dwellers themselves (even when not serving in New York) delegates seemed grateful for the opportunity to do their part to enhance the longer-term quality of urban settings.

As we know, cities are places of cultural and ethnic diversity; they also, as UN Women duly noted at a related event this week on “Movements of Refugees and Migrants,” provide places of hospitality and employment opportunities for migrants who often find within cities both a base line acceptance along with a community of ex-pats to help ease what can often be a frustrating and lonely transition.  Cities are magnets for the underemployed and dispossessed, but also for the entitled and ambitious.  Cities allow people to redefine themselves, to test their skills and talents, to become something other than what had been “planned out” for them by others.

But cities are also places of distraction and suspicion.  They breed anonymity and emotional disconnection.  City residents are so often found staring into tiny smart phone screens rather than seeking out what little sky lies beyond the tops of buildings.  People in cities become more comfortable with the insides of transit stations than with farmlands or watersheds.  They are part of increasingly relentless, market-driven environments with vast options for consumption and entertainment far beyond those found in other settlements.  And there are times when an endless range of options makes it difficult to make – and hold fast to – any decision, be it about consumptioin or more personal matters.  Sometimes there are so many tempting dishes on the menu it takes many frustrating minutes to figure out just what you want to order.

In our work with environmental mapping (Green Map) we have noted, time and again, the growing impact of human and technological innovation on urban living, offering pathways to make such living more convenient and helping to solve infrastructure related problems that were previously resistant to change.  But we have also noted the degree to which peoples’ (even basic) knowledge about their urban environment is flimsy and compromised.  While advances can regularly be cited related to urban poverty reduction, protecting wildlife habitats, enhancing food security, expanding waterfront access, and “greening” our energy use and modes of transportation, too many urban residents continue to “go small,” seeing mostly what is on the screens right in front of them instead of grasping the issues and connections that that will give us the best chance to move beyond still-current threats to the longer-term achievement of sustainable urban living.

Part of what we need to see now is that larger picture that Peru and others provided during the Habitat discussions: In addition to attention to things like the preservation of cultural heritage and fortifying disaster preparedness and relief in this unsettling time of climate fluctuation, Peru also cited a critical need to enhance urban-rural connections, including a renewed respect by city dwellers for the lifestyles and livelihoods of a shrinking rural populace.

This last agenda is easier said than done.   Until and unless there is a crisis of access (or until we need a vacation break from our urban chaos), city folks too often tend to take rural areas and their inhabitants for granted.   Collectively, we don’t think much about the ways in which our food is grown and produced.  We don’t worry much about the security and sustainability of our reservoirs and watersheds.   We don’t pay much attention to the people who mine our minerals, maintain our cross-country roads or bury the cables for our internet upgrades.   And we almost willfully ignore the lifestyles of people – indigenous and not – who choose to reside beyond the bright lights of cities, people who resist joining the throngs seeking opportunity, security, convenience and endless distraction in urban settings.

Changing this dynamic portends benefits for many, including those who still reside in rural areas and whose issues are often buried under an avalanche of city-focused policy and city-obsessed media.  What is now required, as the Food and Agricultural Organization noted during the South-South discussions, is a new form of cooperation on matters of vital, common interest, a new way (as the “New Urban Agenda” document referred to it) of “conceiving urban-rural linkages.”

This “conceiving” must go beyond rivers and melons to embrace common efforts to reduce our eco-footprint and create reciprocal and tangible regard for diverse lifestyles that reflect important aspects of our human character.   As we cannot flourish without urban innovation and diversity neither can we flourish without deep connections to the land and its biodiversity which surrounds us, or to the people who live with and cherish such connections.  As Cuba noted this week, sustainable development cannot be achieved without the active participation of global “south” countries, but neither can it be achieved in the absence of the skills, care and wisdom of their diverse rural peoples.

A representative of one of those rural peoples – the Sami – came to the Indigenous Forum this week seeking (as did others) redress and reconciliation for what was termed policies of “forced assimilation.”  Whether we like it or not, in an age of climate-related famine, weather-related disasters and widespread armed violence, much of what is driving urban growth feels a bit “forced” as well. We urge Habitat III to do everything possible to continue on the path to make urban centers thrive.  But city life can be vital without being inevitable.  Preserving, enhancing and respecting the “rural option” should be understood as being in the best interests of urban dwellers and constitutes a major objective for those tasked with defining urban interests.

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Lens Crafters:  The Vision Deficits that Cloud our Global Policy Choices, Dr. Robert Zuber

14 Feb

I am sitting in my New York office having earlier braved a record cold morning, wearing more clothing than I ever knew was in my closet.  Time now to reflect on a line from a speech given in Munich yesterday by Russian Prime Minister Medvedev, who reportedly wondered:  “Can we unite in order to stand up against the challenges we face? Yes, I am absolutely sure that we can.”

The “challenges” in this case refer mostly to those related to Syria – ending the war, “degrading” ISIL, addressing almost unprecedented violations of international human rights law, providing access for humanitarian relief to those trapped in zones of despair or sitting in camps in Lebanon and Jordan.

Any alleged “certainty” about Syria’s future is heartwarming I suppose, but also mostly problematic.  The bombs of several countries (including far too many of Russia’s) continue to fall.  The Saudis are set to send in ground troops.   Turkey continues to keep an eye open for opportunities to vanquish the Kurds.  A full spectrum of abuses committed against civilians continues to unfold.  NATO ships are set to interdict and return refugees to places characterized by empty markets and violent unrest.  Arms continue to flow in all directions.  Pledges of assistance are more numerous than pledges honored.

Prime Minister Medvedev is right at one level.  We can address these and other global challenges.   They are not beyond our collective skills set; not even beyond our politics.  They might, however, remain out of reach given the self-inflicted “degrading” of our collective vision, seeing what we need to see, what we need for others to see, rather than all that lies in front of us.

 Self-distraction and self-delusion stealing the stage from clarity and honesty

The default for sub-standard policy these days seems to be some form of “we didn’t see this coming.”  At the same time, we gush over all of the technology – both earth-bound and in space — that allows us to probe and peek, to prod and predict.  The weather system rattling my leaky apartment windows last evening was forecast well over a week before it arrived.   Indeed, our forecasting in so many areas relevant to policy has reached breathtaking proportions.   We might not have been able to predict with full confidence the extent of the current Zika outbreak, but we certainly know enough to stay vigilant regarding potential pandemics, the “when” exhibiting a stronger probability than the “if.”

Unfortunately, our policy vision these days is too often saturated with a blend of enthusiasm and desire.  And there is no impediment to clear and honest assessment quite like that of desire.  When we want it to be so; when we need it to be so; we find ways to convince ourselves that it is so.

More and more, our claims “not to have known” are undermined by the very technology on which already we over-rely.   When we fail to see all that is in front of us, when our enthusiasm blocks our willingness to assess all obstacles that threaten our cherished policy assumptions and conclusions, we run the risk of doing damage to the very constituents we otherwise seek to assist.  But this is less about our technological “eyes” than it is about the personal lenses we have allowed to become foggy and dusty.

In the case of Prime Minister Medvedev, it would appear that his enthusiasm for a resolution to Syria consistent with Russia’s national interest has created its own thick blinders.  Russia’s conduct in Syria is hardly the only conduct beyond reprehension, but it is staggeringly reprehensible in its own right.  Indeed, it is hard to see how peace can be sustained given such levels of myopic leadership.

This problem of vision affects more hopeful policies as well.  The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, a remarkable achievement in their own right, have been subject to a series of urgent discussions in the early days of 2016. Much to its credit, the UN has not waited for the dust to settle but is making strong connections to important stakeholders (youth, women, indigenous, persons with disabilities) and urging member states to quickly identify areas of priority activity and relevant needs for capacity assistance.

In addition, good work is being done in two key areas – the indicators that will drive assessments and the financing that will sustain progress.   But there also seems to be a largely unspoken assumption of predictability in the “enabling environment,” one which is likely related more to our enthusiasm for the goals than to a sober assessment of current security, fiscal and climate prospects.

As noted in a recent UNCTAD briefing in New York to launch the report, “Rethinking Development Strategies after the Financial Crisis,” any assumptions about an “enabling environment” are fraught with peril.   UNCTAD officials noted two major impediments which have to date received insufficient attention and which have the power to short-circuit the most enthusiastic applications of the 2030 development agenda.  The first of these is the prospect of another major financial downturn, most likely initiated by some of the very same institutions that we failed to hold accountable for the last one.  In such a scenario, equity markets will shrink and states will feel forced to preserve stasis rather than reaching out to help lift the fortunes of those hitherto marginal.  Another financial collapse will likely ensure that our best development efforts will still “leave plenty behind.”

Second, there is a noteworthy shrinking of policy space in many countries, a shrinking that damages prospects for full participation, but also for policy innovation and assessment of “official” priorities.  We must explore the participation and assessment implications of all the SDGs, perhaps especially Goal 16, but we must do so based on clear analysis of the current threats posed to journalists, human rights advocates, indeed most anyone who dares to expose an emperor’s nakedness.  In many parts of the world, there is currently no “enabling environment” to count on here either.  Not yet anyway.

For many young people rightly frustrated by their elders and our global legacies, there are occasional bursts of concern for our collective future.  Are we going to make it?  Do we have what it takes as a species to get over ourselves and address the full implications of all the challenges that face us, not just the ones we are willing to see?

It would be foolish to sell us short.  We can still make good on our promises and bring some healing to the planet in the process.  We can end violent conflict, bring international finance under control and wedge new policy space in otherwise recalcitrant states. But it would also be foolish to believe that we can make any sustainable change merely by tinkering with policy resolutions and other international instruments.   Those instruments, while not perfect, are mostly already sufficient to their purposes.   The “wild card” here is us, what we see and what we refuse to see.

In the Christian bible, there is a line in which Jesus of Nazareth warns those looking for specks in the eyes of their neighbors to first take the “logs” out of their own.  Such excavations are encouraged as they can do much to restore the clarity of vision and firmness of purpose we will need to get over both our “enthusiasms” and our current, bulging “humps” of security, development and climate challenges.

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Creating Spaces for Creative Participation:  Practicing Fairness, Heeding Evidence: Dr. Robert Zuber

25 Jan

One of the tangibly hopeful things around UN headquarters is the degree to which participation concerns have been legitimized in policy.   The skills and perspectives of people across gender, race, age, culture, social class, nationality, (dis) ability and more receive at least rhetorical confirmation somewhere or other within the UN’s increasingly busy schedule of policy deliberations.

From the vantage point of the still-excluded voices, gender gets the most attention these days around the UN, with strong agency leadership and NGO support from those running a gamut of gender-specific issue concerns – from ensuring more women’s voices at UN functions to the complete dismantling of patriarchy in all its forms.

And certainly there is plenty to atone for where women’s rights are concerned.

Nevertheless, despite all this legitimate, multi-layered attention, there remain structural and political limitations to enacting our participation concerns.   At the UN, as in much of the rest of the world, we have ample evidence for a tenuous relationship between the things we discuss and the things we actually change.   Sometimes conversation serves as a springboard for personal or institutional reform; other times it serves as their substitute.

In the case of gender, our participation-related limitations take multiple forms.  For instance, despite all of the current institutional focus on gender equity, we still have too many single-gender panels at UN Headquarters.   We still put excellent diplomats such as Luxembourg’s Ambassador Lucas in the awkward position of having to remind her peers, as she did during Friday’s 70th Anniversary celebration of ECOSOC, of the pervasive male dominance of much UN agency leadership.  Despite our generally supportive gender rhetoric, we still have not fully grasped the degree to which national economic policies, peace and mediation processes, poverty reduction efforts and much more remain exclusive domains, including exclusive of too many women.

As Denmark noted during Thursday’s “Implementing the 2030 Agenda to Accelerate Realization of Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls” event, we must do more than we are now doing to ensure that we bring the “marginal into the center.”  This has implications beyond gender, but certainly many implications for how women – including working class women, women with disabilities, and indigenous women – find space to pursue their policy skills and interests. As Regions Refocus’ Anita Nayar stated, the 2030 development agenda gives us another opportunity – one we would do well not to squander – to claim the space needed to “democratize and feminize” implementation of the new development goals.

Indeed, at Thursday’s “gender and development” event, there were many important statements that fit under the heading of “not squandered,” including several shared by men.  For instance, Latvia highlighted the need for more attention to the “gender digital divide” and better indicators to monitor gender-specific compliance. UNCTAD’s Carpentier raised the concern that the current preoccupation with “public-private partnerships” is not delivering the goods on women’s employment. Cuba went so far as to criticize diplomatic training, noting that if such training is gender-biased, future diplomatic placements are likely to remain biased as well.  And Canada noted “evidence” that gender equity signals many important social benefits, and urged all to listen more carefully to that growing body of evidence.

But the event also highlighted an even broader, more systemic concern.

There is a pervasive flaw, in our view, in events around the UN that are “given over” to issue interests:  Gender advocates talking about gender.   Indigenous advocates talking about indigenous issues.  Youth advocates (however you define “youth” these days) talking about youth concerns.   Disabled persons talking about the unmet needs of persons with disabilities.

These mostly branded conversations rarely add as much as we imagine to the evidence base of the largely knowledgeable audiences around the UN. They certainly don’t help build capacity across issue interests.  They do tend to consolidate domains rather than create linkages across domains.  They do not, as advocated by Ireland’s Ambassador Donoghue on Thursday, effectively promote “whole government” and whole systems commitment to full and effective constituent participation.

In response to this trend, we have long advocated events characterized by persons deliberately advocating for “space” for other groupings, not only for their own issues.    With full respect for the incredible talent that the UN routinely seconds into its meeting rooms, we see relatively little value in organizing events wherein the same voices advocate for the same things in the same way.   Such events tend mostly to ritualize policy concern rather than explore its next frontiers.  People come to these events in the hope of new insights or creative policy formulations, only to leave – more often than not – disappointed rather than reassured.

For us, it is always more inspirational to hear about the “stakes” people acknowledge in the unresolved concerns of others.  Why should advocates for genocide prevention care about efforts to eliminate arms trafficking?   Why should youth advocates care about elder rights?   Why should women’s rights advocates, as highlighted by GPF’s Barbara Adams at Thursday’s event, care about illegal financial flows?  Why should Security Council reform advocates care about the accelerated pace of melting ice caps?

And why should those tasked with implementation of the 2030 development agenda care about the full integration of gender perspectives?  On Thursday, we got a hopeful glimpse of what those answers might look like, as well as some insight into all the many other “cross cutting,” (or as Nayar proposed) “co-constructed” discussions that need to take place in and around our multilateral policy centers.  The clarity of our priorities, the quality of our resolutions, the depth of our commitments, can all be enhanced through our willingness to walk a pace in each other’s policy shoes.

At the UN, who speaks at events is largely (and too often) a function of who has been authorized to have a voice.  However, we have sufficient band-width as a policy community such that we can enable voices beyond the usual, and at the same time demonstrate broader policy discernment beyond our organizational mandates and diplomatic portfolios.  The participation space that we increasingly seek to open in the world must be opened wider at the UN as well; on gender yes, but also with respect to other, too-often “marginal” stakeholders seeking their policy moment.

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Assessing the 2030 Development-Security Linkage in Latin American Contexts, Dr. Robert Zuber

1 Nov

The following represent slight revisions (improvements) of remarks given in Mexico City on October 29.

I want to pay tribute to Dr. Simone Lucatello and his colleagues at Instituto Mora for holding this launch event and for their excellent guidance on this publication.

This is one of several books that we worked on thoughtfully over the past year or so.  We have very little funding and the UN in New York is a very large institution to cover and analyze.  Why do we invest our time and resources in this way?

  1. First, it helps to build credibility for our project as we seek to weigh in on a range of complementary initiatives that make up the UN system.  If we have a demonstrable “expertise” at all, it is this sense of how issues fit or should fit — the complementarity of concerns and interests that serves as a sound intellectual and political basis for effective policy.
  2. Second, it represents a contribution to leveling the policy playing field that can help dismantle some of the hegemonies of scholarship and policy that persist in our current world. There are so many voices across Latin America, including perhaps within this institution, which have yet to find their proper level.   Given all the security and development challenges we have to face today in the international community, there is seemingly little rational about keeping other talent on the sidelines. As I have said often to others, I have had my turn.  In our office, we have our turn every day.  It’s someone else’s turn and we want to do what we can to make space for that policy balancing.
  3. We have a special regard for young people who have much to learn but also to teach. They are inheriting this world and its challenges as we gather here.   My generation has made some real messes and they will be responsible for the clean-up.  The least we can do is give them the broadest and most hopeful access to multi-lateral institutions, channels to respected publications (like this one), and experiences in making sound policy that we are capable of providing for them.

As you in this institute know, many strategies are now being suggested for the 2030 goals implementation, but three seem to be rising most quickly to the surface:  robust, flexible data; reliable funding sources, and a stable social fabric.  We must stay connected to all three areas of concern, but the last one is of special interest.

Keeping the social fabric safe without engendering feelings of intimidation or fear remains an area of considerable challenge.  As we were writing and organizing this book, it became clear that some states are still quite reluctant to establish a strong security-development linkage and there are several reasons for this. From my standpoint, this reluctance his has something to do with what I would prefer to call a security-culture linkage.   Many indigenous and rural persons, many politically active and outspoken persons, many marginalized persons such as live around me in Harlem, New York — they often fear the “culture” of the security sector, and often for sound empirical reasons. At the same time, it is very difficult to hold that same security sector itself accountable for abuses, or even to acknowledge that they are CAPABLE of abuses.  In the US, it is a struggle to hold police accountable for their mis-behavior.  It is a struggle to hold military officials responsible for bombing civilian targets in the name of fighting terror; indeed many persons in the security sector take refuge in a system and its culture that only rarely acknowledges failure of any kind.

To promote a viable security-development linkage in the 2030 goals is to actively engage this possibility of cultural failure, a predisposition in more than scattered instances to discriminatory and excessive and even unprovoked use of force that can and must be reformed to serve the cause of social development rather than impede it.  Few still have the stomach to engage the security sector on its conduct – reminding the sector that it has the skill to enhance 2030 implementation in many ways, including addressing various forms of trafficking that overwhelm many Latin American communities, but that it also possesses more than sufficient power to frighten, intimidate and discriminate.

Similar levels of scrutiny are needed regarding agreements to regulate or prohibit weapons. The Arms Trade Treaty is one of the agreements that found some criticism in the book.  Some people will evaluate this Treaty and decide that something is better than nothing. The question we should be asking is if the remedy is sufficient to the cure that we have already held out as a promise to global constituencies? It is not enough to give a child suffering from pneumonia some hot tea and a Vitamin pill.  Such acts may be helpful at some level, but they certainly don’t rise to a level of effectiveness that is even in “radar range” of the cure from armaments that we so badly need.

If the global arms trade (its volume not only its shipping) is as serious a problem as many of us maintained it was – and still is – we continue to need a more robust set of instruments than we now have. Since its negotiation and adoption, the ATT has been politicized; it has attracted more than its share of mercenary NGOs more comfortable with branding than discernment; it has been permitted a secretariat function that is almost completely emasculated; it has invited the diversion of much time and energy from the UN Programme of Action, which engages the practical, multi-lateral work of stockpile management, marking and tracing of weapons, trafficking in weapons, and better security at borders and ports. And of course the ATT, through no intrinsic failure of its own, has no actionable outcome with regard to weapons that have long since left the factory, the weapons that do so much damage every day in Libya, Mali, Yemen, Nigeria and elsewhere.

When we step back from this type and level of scrutiny and aim higher, we recognize that security and development represent more than bookend obligations by states; they point to inter-related existential threats to a planet that has quite enough to cope with at present.  A failed 2030 development project –data that is politicized, funding that is unreliable and applied in a discriminatory fashion, policy that reaches in the direction of the most vulnerable but never quite makes physical contact – these and related limitations are as likely to exacerbate excessive militarism than address its defects.   And conversely, a security policy that inhibits the education of children, the political participation of women, the promotion of a free press and the fair administration of justice will not develop people so much as keep them in subordinate social and political contexts.  Trust in the state and in each other is an under-analyzed dimension in community development, and heavy handed security has a much smaller role in trust’s promotion than security advocates would want us to believe.

So now we have our 2030 development goals and we have what will hopefully become reformed security arrangements.  Moving forward, we must understand their mutual influences and minimize the more toxic aspects of their respective practices.  As though we needed reminding, human beings are imperfect creatures.  The 2030 promises we have broadcast to a world full of anxious, long-suffering constituents will require us, as the Pope reminded the UN earlier this fall, to become less imperfect still.   These are “development” promises of course, but their implications are virtually existential. If we fail to make our “best faith” effort to meet these promises, including on security, it will do more than bring discredit to the UN; it will signal that we have likely crossed a threshold of trust, health and peace from which our species might never find its way back.

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A System Wide Awake: Promoting an Ethical Culture for UN Policy and Development Practice, Dr. Robert Zuber

11 Oct

Those who follow diplomacy in New York might have expected a bit of a lull inside the UN after two stressful weeks of presidents and other dignitaries.   But everyone involved with the UN from diplomats to cafeteria worker, had a very short turn around.  The General Assembly committees began their work and immediately became embroiled in issues from narcotics interdiction and space weapons to the status of Western Sahara.   In addition, some most helpful side events – on the dangers of current global finance and hopes for more sustainable cities and better criminal justice — helped to fill in gaps in what needs to become a comprehensive grasp of our post-adoption responsibilities to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

One of the most intriguing events for us was one on October 5 entitled the “Ethics for Development.”  In this event, chaired by the Kazakhstan Ambassador Abdrakhmanov and co-sponsored by Panama, Argentina and Palau, the UN took a closer look at how it does its development business beyond how it sets goals and targets and locates the broad data and stable funding to make implementation possible.  In the opening panel, Argentina’s Minister Tomada urged more attention to what he called the ethics of “decent work” noting wisely the multiple, SDG-related, beneficial consequences that accrue from increased employment opportunities: ending poverty, increasing social cohesion, strengthening democracy. Chef de Cabinet Susana Malcorra, specifically citing the recent UN visit of Pope Francis, noted “ethical shortfalls” leading to an unhealthy planet and persistent economic inequalities.  Several speakers noted that, given our heavy reliance on science and technology to solve development challenges, some consideration of the ethics of those domains – including unintended consequences — was clearly in order.

And the Kazakhstan Ambassador himself provided some helpful and ethical commentary, lamenting the cultures that choose to “throw away” or cast aside persons. Given the persistence of our tendency to “discard” much of what we should treasure, the Ambassador noted that we would do well to have a “watchdog” for all who seek to implement the SDGs, to do what we can to ensure that we do not repeat grievous errors of diminishing the needs and expectations of communities and their residents, in part by carelessly or intentionally promoting development for the few to the neglect of the many.

Despite the fact that the UN is primarily a norm driven institution – setting frameworks for action more than taking action itself – “ethics” is a category that gets little air time at UN headquarters, in part perhaps because of a misunderstanding of what “doing ethics” entails.   Ethics is less about the “values” we publicly espouse and promote, and more about our thoughtful engagement with our responsibilities, as well as with the structures and practical behaviors that support or contradict responsible conduct.

More than anything else, ethics is about mindfulness, in part about the mindfulness of our limitations — of the potentially negative consequences of our own best ideas; of the ways we “misplay” our power and influence; of our capacity to deliver on our sometimes excessive promises to others.   But ethics is also about ensuring that our words, deeds, structures and finances are, to the best we are able, “speaking” with a singular voice.  It is about resisting the urge to “offload” responsibility on to others that rightly resides within us. And it is about the sometimes arduous task of incarnating goals and objectives in a way that accommodates cultural contexts and expectations, building on them more than imposing on them.

Ethics is about having the courage to “mind the gaps” that exist in our norms and practices, to be willing to ask the next question rather than getting bogged down in the last one, to anticipate changes and challenges rather than waiting for them to frustrate or even overwhelm us, to confess both our privileges and our sometimes excessive needs for reassurance and “credit.”  We do all of this as ethical beings not to “beat ourselves up” but as an invitation to the many people outside our loops of influence who actually have much to contribute to the policy work left undone, the healing that remains.

Ethics for us at the UN means living and working as though our objective truly is what we are actually privileged to pursue every day – building human potential, eliminating economic and social inequalities, caring for the planet as though our grandchildren depended on it.

Ethics in our policy contexts also means explaining ourselves so that others can discern our intentions (not necessarily agree with them).  It means using language as the basis for connection, not salesmanship.  And it implies the willingness to “de-center,” to give more than token attention to the aspirations and values of others, especially persons in so many parts of the world where aspirations have been trampled over and over by flawed governance, excessive weapons, multiple discriminations, and soul numbing poverty.

Around the UN as in other policy environments, we can discern many instances of structures and practices that contradict our responsibilities.   We have instances of unresolved allegations of rape by peacekeepers; Security Council members that violate the laws they expect other states to uphold;  states bullying other states to get their way on policy; NGOs claiming to represent what they mostly try to control.  Even the recent indictment of a former President of the General Assembly this past week gave clear evidence of another ethical contradiction: the power of money to corrupt our best intentions and literally overwhelm our worst.  We don’t often speak with a clear voice on these and related matters.  We are not sufficiently forthright about what lies behind the curtain, which we know full well is often more important than what lies in front of it.

What the events above (and others that could have been added) have in common is that they threaten the reputation of the UN as an institution, something which the UN cannot afford if it is to secure global public confidence for the long struggles ahead to heal the planet, eliminate nuclear arsenals, fulfill development commitments, achieve gender balance and address the attractions and abuses of terrorism.   Every resolution or treaty drenched in political considerations; every failure to prevent mass violence in its earliest stages; every committee deliberation doomed to repetition or irrelevance; every voice stifled by another seeking funding and status more than equity – these are no mere annoyances to a cranky, ageing philosopher (who should probably start thinking about staying home and watching Wheel of Fortune), but represent genuine threats to the long-term viability of this system.   When our system’s credibility is challenged, so too are the policies emanating from it, no matter how hopeful the garb in which they appear.

Compared to naming and promoting “moral values,” the practice of ethics is indeed a challenging craft, a special responsibility and high calling for those of us fortunate enough to labor at the center of global governance.  Thankfully, my long experience at the UN has convinced me that this is not a craft beyond our capacity. Indeed, the discussion on Ethics for Development, the diplomatic reaction to the Papal visit and other recent events demonstrate clearly that we still have more than enough to amend our course when needed, communicate forthrightly as required, deepen our policy resolve to address problems before they become crises, and see all that we need to see and not only what we are willing to see. In other words, we have all that it takes to be a more engaged focal point for ethical discernment at the center of both multi-lateral policy and global expectation.

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Profit and Loss: States Parties Rethink Contributions to Civil Society, Dr. Robert Zuber

14 Jun

Global Action is privileged to be part of several online ‘communities’ linking diverse NGOs, UN policymakers and place-based civil society organizations serving constituents around the world.   Such involvements on our part help us to keep track of developments impacting diverse communities, but also to remind us of responsibilities we have to help build local capacity and link that capacity to relevant policy discussions taking place in the international community.

Thus we were quickly made aware of shockwaves this past week when it was announced that Finland would significantly cut back on assistance to civil society organizations within its own borders as well as in areas of the world where it had previously made significant and helpful investment.  This decision was a blow to those who feel – rightly I might add – that Finland’s national identity is bound up with its capacity to share its abundance beyond its pay grade.   At the UN, Finland was an early supporter of UN peacekeeping and has consistently provided leadership disproportionate to its size in areas such as international law, the global arms trade and, perhaps somewhat ironically given recent policy shifts, international development cooperation.

Finland’s decision was not, however, a stand-alone incident involving a single country but is part of a larger trend within and beyond Europe.   Across the board, even as diplomats and NGOs seek to develop and endorse funding guidelines for post-2015 sustainable development goals, the donor terrain is shifting dramatically.   For a variety of reasons, commitments to end inequalities and promote peaceful, inclusive societies are being crowded out by institutional branding of one form or another.  Corporations are shifting their “giving” programs to serve the interests of advertising.   Private foundations are simply turning over funds to well-branded, existing grantees rather than keeping their funding commitments on the cutting edges of social change.  States at the UN are reassessing commitments to “general operating” funding in favor of direct grants to support programs and capacity within the UN that align more closely with the “national interest.”  And in the US (and likely elsewhere), what can be a toxic “noblesse oblige” has given way to an even-more-toxic narcissistic competition to see who can most effectively ‘game’ the system, reap its vast rewards, and brand the results.

A few of these shifts are somewhat understandable, inasmuch as donors have often wondered (even aloud) why they should continue to support organizations and structures that fail to produce even minimal results (UN Disarmament sometimes comes to mind). And funding commitments in whatever form are not “matrimonial” in nature but come with timelines and most often expectations of transition.  Here in New York, we have been blessed with enough supporters (none of them governments) to stay just barely above the line of basic solvency, but there are few guarantees going forward.  The only true guarantees are related to how badly we want to do this work and how creatively we can forge global partnerships to preserve some small and hopefully effective spaces at the policy table.

On the other hand, one of the things we have witnessed (and at times assisted) in various communities around the “developing” world is the enormous energies that local civil society organizations have invested in ‘getting up to code’ with their largely northern donors.   Despite sometimes horrific infrastructure limitations, as well as the many local needs which continually beg to be addressed, we know of many civil society organizations that have painstakingly adopted technology and procedures to meet the increasingly burdensome expectations of these donors.   To have made those infrastructure commitments and then to have the funding to sustain those commitments unilaterally dismantled is a particularly discouraging irony that should seriously grieve those of us working in more comfortable circumstances.

One of the responsibilities now for NGOs in the north is to find ways to respond to this creeping disregard for the non-governmental, non-corporate side of civic life. Indeed, one of the groups with which we regularly conspire is drafting a letter to the Finnish government, citing the “political” dimensions of its funding decision and asking for reconsideration.  It is important to remind governments and other donors that their sometimes cavalier and self-referential relationship to funding can have a traumatic impact on human lives.

But this is about more than money, and those of us facing threats to our budgets will also need do a bit more of our own discernment. We must think about our ongoing responsibilities to promote equity for the planet’s marginalized, but also more deeply discern our own relationship to money and to the institutions that provide it (and increasingly it appears skeptical of providing it).

The Finnish government has not suddenly become our adversary. Other states that have decided to reposition their global contributions have not necessarily become so either.  From Financing for Development (SDGs) and obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty to Ocean ecology restoration and the prosecutorial work of the International Criminal Court, we are rarely in UN conference rooms where requests for funding are not being made by one state (or NGO) or another.  Politics notwithstanding, states are under pressure to preserve multi-lateral space and fulfill ambitious commitments such as the SDGs, all while ensuring constituents back home that funds expended on international development and other key concerns also serve a national interest.  This is not an easy soup to bring to table under the best of economic conditions – and these are surely not that for most.

As civil society, our task is also multiple.   We must remind governments of what they are doing – and losing – as they “recalibrate” their funding commitments.  We must find ways to strengthen our commitments to diverse communities of social practice while rethinking our own relationship to money and its sources.   And finally, as funds are available, we need to make sure that we take no more than our share and accomplish as much with what we take as humanly possible.

A long time ago, a friend reminded me that “money changes everything, and only occasionally for the better.”  With full respect for those around the world with a different relationship to the funding community than we have here in our little New York office, there is a lesson here that we would all do well to consider.   Resources are not self-authorizing but need our very best efforts to ensure their fair, transparent and effective application. Thankfully, where funding is concerned, we have what it takes to ensure the “better” change.

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Guns and Roses: The UN Delivers Uneven Messaging on Disarmament and Development, Dr. Robert Zuber

25 May

The week just ended did not always bode well for the United Nations in its efforts to find meaningful consensus on core issues affecting the health and sustainability of our planet.

On Thursday, the co-chairs of Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Post-2015 Development Agenda – Ambassadors Kamau and Donoghue — were subject to some serious blow-back on their efforts to prepare a document on Sustainable Development Goals that would be fit for inspection by Heads of State when they come to New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly in September.  The co-chairs attempt was to lightly edit the outcome document, eliminating un-clarities and even blank spaces where data should have been inserted, such that heads of state could concentrate on endorsing obligations rather than searching for missing text.

Nevertheless, one by one, the G-77 and China, the African Group, CARICOM, the Arab Group and others urged the co-chairs to accept and pass along to the President of the General Assembly the negotiated consensus document intact, even with its obvious flaws.   For this majority of states, reopening agreed text means also reopening opportunities for the large powers to manipulate outcomes and meanings.  The related discussion within Conference Room 4 on the use of “vulnerable groups” was valid at one level – it is important in our deliberations and the actions they set in motion to avoid the stigmas of group labeling  – but this concern was interpreted by many in the room as also an issue of trust more than content.

This (largely rhetorical) lack of trust, even in a process overseen by such highly respected diplomats, was evident in other areas of UN activity.  For instance, in the UN Security Council, the current president (Lithuania) struggled to gain support for a far-reaching resolution on small arms that incorporated some important dimensions (including robust gender perspectives) to help address the scourge of illicit weapons. Lithuania made the strongest possible case for why the UN system needs to place more emphasis on addressing illicit arms flows and the massive community-level violence that follows from any collective failures in this area.

The resolution that Lithuania championed certainly made progress in sharpening our understanding of the deep dysfunction caused by so many weapons in the ‘wrong hands,’ and in its suggestions for how to strengthen arms embargoes and work more effectively with other UN agencies. But this process was also bogged down in controversy – related to the unwillingness of the US and others to allow the resolution to explicitly reference “non-state actors” in its prohibitions – that caused an extraordinary number of Council members to abstain during the vote.  There was also, at least from our viewpoint, confusion among some Council members as to whether our remedial strategies are up to the global challenges posed by illicit small arms. This confusion was evidenced in part by excessive referencing to the Arms Trade Treaty, a limited process that is not yet ready for prime time and that, at its best, will restrict the intended destinations of manufactured arms without impacting either their quantity or their lethal potential.  Other referenced response options, including marking, tracing and stockpile management commonly associated with the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms, are equally valuable and equally works in progress.

The US, which in the minds of some shed its ‘shadow’ oversight of UN weapons-related architecture this week — preferring instead to point aggressive fingers at states that it felt tried to ‘sabotage’ progress – made clear that the small arms resolution is a significant, if tentative step forward. What the US did not mention, and caused others to wonder about, is that the P-3 role in the resolution controversy might be an effort to assert a “right” to arm non-state groups serving national interests based on distinctions between terrorists and “legitimate” opposition forces.  Trust issues perhaps emanating from such an alleged “right” motivated some Council members to question (unfairly) the legitimacy of the resolution itself, but certainly motivated a critique of Council working methods that left, once again, some members shaking their heads while the P-3 questioned the flexibility and good faith of all but themselves.

Finally it was not until late in the evening of May 22 when delegates completed the task of tossing flowers on the grave of the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Amidst various accusations from Canada, the UK and other states about which delegations ‘wrecked’ the conference, it had been clear for some days that the ‘wreck’ had already occurred.   The tentative hope for a Middle East WMD Free Zone, the avalanche of energy around the allegedly ‘new’ humanitarian initiative, the unprecedented Marshall Islands lawsuit, none of this had power to overcome legacies of bad faith that have long since blocked meaningful progress towards fulfillment of the NPT’s disarmament pillar.    Even if Egypt and the US had been able to suspend their spitting fight long enough to agree to some sort of deal that both shed light on Israel’s nuclear arsenal and preserved the US’s pride of place as facilitator of the Zone process, the lack of progress on disarmament would have placated few of the diplomats and even fewer NGO participants.  The absence of both urgency and flexibility by at least a few key states cast a dark shadow over the UN system that no amount of finger-pointing by Nuclear Weapons States or their NAM counterparts could hope to lift.

The ‘step by step’ approach advocated by the P-3 could be useful inasmuch as it creates the prospect of feedback loops to help assess progress, to ensure that we don’t stubbornly adhere to a policy that has been found to undermine the very goals it seeks to achieve. But in a UN context, step-by-step is more often a formula for institutional and diplomatic inertia, a systemic failure to match urgency with initiative.   We should avoid as much as we are able recklessness in our movements, but global events compel us to move.  Global citizens beg us to move. Apparently, Paper Smart misplaced that memo.

When we as a collective body cannot figure out how to push forward on urgent matters threatening the planet, the odds are that mixed motives are in play.   They were in play as the post-2015 negotiating sessions moved forward on a final text.  They were in play as Lithuania tried to ‘herd cats’ towards an agreement on small arms that generated some suspicion but avoided direct opposition.  They were certainly in play in the NPT as states – especially the P-5 — once again asserted the primacy of their own security interests over the increasingly clear and compelling disarmament interests of the global public.

The lessons for the week are as mixed as the outcomes.   Despite the fussing, the GA president will get a set of development goals and objectives to present to heads of state.  Moreover, the process will come attached to metrics and mechanisms for assessment and funding that can help us honor commitments made to end poverty, heal the planet, unleash the talents of women and indigenous people, and much more.

On small arms, Lithuania’s resolution adds good value, specifically in its gender referencing, more effective sanctions,and unusually warm and supportive regard for the parts of the UN system already tasked with many important activities related to small arms flows.   What role the heavily-referenced Arms Trade Treaty will play remains to be seen, though delegations are urged to revisit some of its intrinsic limitations – some significant– that will require a great deal of complementary work from other disarmament stakeholders if we are indeed serious about controlling arms flows.

On nuclear weapons, despite the contention of some states and NGOs of a “humanitarian tidal wave” that will overcome the objections of stiff-necked nuclear weapons powers, we are still in need of combined and multiple strategies that not only link legal, political, moral and humanitarian advocates but that create venues for discourse that are broad and kind, and that help widen circles of concern far beyond what the nuclear disarmament field has achieved to date.  We have our doubts about these possibilities, but also trust many of the diplomats and NGOs seeking to ensure security based on the least possible levels of armament.

What is probably not in doubt, however, is that a week of sometimes head-scratching objections, half-measures and outright disrespect has not raised levels of public endearment regarding the UN system.  We wasted vast quantities of time, energy and money of diplomats and NGOs; we insulted the honor and dignity of our political friends and opponents; we failed to match the urgency of our analysis with commensurate remedial measures.

We all need a bit of rest and then return to the UN ‘armed’ with more roses and fewer weapons, ready to do better than “mixed messaging” to persons facing security threats and development deficits who need more from us than we have so far been able to provide.

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No Culture Left Behind: Ensuring Indigenous Rights ‘take root’ in the UN’s post-2015 Development Agenda  

12 May

Editor’s Note:   This piece by GAPW’s Human Rights Fellow, Karin Perro, explores the growing sustaiinability, human rights and climate implications for the health of indigenous communities. In many UN commissions and conference rooms, including the current Forum on Forests, respect for indigenous rights is growing in promience as are the worldviews that ground indigenous communities. As Perro makes clear, no successful post-2015 development strategy can neglect the aspirations and contributions of indigenous peoples.

As winter relinquished its final hold on UN Headquarters, springtime’s colorful cherry blossoms and tulip buds vied for attention with the vibrant hues and textures of traditional native attire embellishing UN corridors. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues kicked off on April 20, 2015 under the capable leadership of Australian Chair Megan Davis, who began the fourteenth session urging full participation of indigenous representatives in shaping the Forum’s agenda.

In his introductory statement DSG Jan Eliasson eloquently set the Forum’s tone, calling for a collective embrace of indigenous peoples’ visions and aspirations while reaffirming the UN commitment to indigenous rights, including the right to health, education, land, and self-determination. Imploring a global ‘peace negotiation with nature’ and respect for all living things, Eliasson invoked (for many) indigenous spiritualism as embodied by an inviolate ‘Mother Earth’, and emphasized the need for safeguarding the world’s environmental health that is so vital to both indigenous community and global development.

The right to ancestral lands was a tenuous thread woven throughout the Forum proceedings, with significant indigenous clamoring for ‘free, prior, and informed consent’ in matters of land rights and development initiatives. And rightly so – depletion of land fertility, dumping of radioactive waste, deforestation, and contamination of waters by extractive industrial processes are all byproducts of multinational corporations’ circumvention of prior and informed consent mandates, too often with state complicity and ineffective regulation enforcement.

There are, of course, other social and environment forces at play that adversely impact indigenous land rights and usage, beyond the prescience or control of well-meaning governance bodies or human agency. Natural disasters, climate change, and soil and water defamation due in part to illicit crop cultivation leave indigenous people dispossessed of land and land-dependent livelihoods, reduces tourism revenues, and decimates traditional medicine and food resources. As the Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues noted, indigenous peoples compromise 5% of global population but 15% of the world’s poor.   Eradicating indigenous poverty, hunger and malnutrition can only be attained if proactive measures are funded and enforced to protect vulnerable lands, forests, oceans and coastlines and halt all forms of environmental degradation.

Increasingly the UN has recognized the undeniable connection between natural resources, environmental health and sustainable development. This is good news for indigenous communities that rely on local natural resources for subsistence and food security. However, potentially irreversible environmental consequences lead many disaffected indigenous youth to abandon traditional practices and seek alternative employment beyond ancestral territories.  Assimilation erodes the link to cultural identity and knowledge, as limited opportunities for traditional livelihoods encourage youth migration to urban centers. Once there, pervasive discrimination and inadequate education create barriers for entry into the mainstream workforce.

Consequently, the damage inflicted upon the collective indigenous psyche is staggering.  According to cited research reports, rights curtailments and the continued denial of self-determination has led to an alarming acceleration in youth self-harm, suicides, and alcohol abuse. Substandard or scant mental healthcare facilities are often ill equipped to provide culturally sensitive care, treatment or support.  As a result, indigenous youth representatives expressed feeling disaffected, disempowered and ‘spiritually broken’.  Hopelessness now thrives where once pride and dignity proliferated, rooted in a spiritual connection to nature that engendered vibrant culture diversity and a richness of cultural heritage.

For many, past injustices still inflict fresh wounds and reopen unhealed scars. Proud indigenous representatives condemned the persistent remnants of colonialism, casting an uneasy (and in some corners unwelcome) spotlight on the insidious legacy of Western dominance, born from arrogance and greed, and fed on ignorance and fear. Treaty violations, unfulfilled promises, contested spaces, political exclusion, and cultural genocide remain stubbornly resistant to the implementation of fair and equitable policies. Where fragile incipient democracies struggle for survival, dormant seeds of dissention now sprout and propagate largely unimpeded, supplanting rule of law and strong governance. Many of the world’s indigenous are now perilously caught in the chaotic interstice between regional armed conflicts and nationalism, xenophobia and ethnic cleansing, forcing their displacement and threatening their cultural existence.

In spite of the identifiable commonalities within the global community of indigenous peoples, there are also substantial distinctions among and between groups that preclude a one-size-fits-all policy approach.   The Forum’s kaleidoscopic cultural display often reflected the diverse – and often divergent – grievances expressed by indigenous participants. If too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth, will too many diverse indigenous issues on the Forum’s platter undermine their fully realized inclusion in the upcoming post-2015 sustainable development goals?

For indigenous activist leaders seeking commonality of causes within the indigenous movement as a means of pooling resources for greater political leverage, a force-fitting of group-specific goals into overarching umbrella targets may inadvertently create policy vacuums for already isolated or less vocal indigenous groups. Many smaller indigenous communities already have societal burdens too great to shoulder without also having to contend with the ‘double-whammy’ of additional marginalization within an already marginalized community.

That said, aligning indigenous interests with other rights-based groups, particularly those having garnered significant visibility and influence, could prove useful in gaining an indigenous foothold in the pre-September 2015 scramble to endorse a set of SDGs. Indigenous solidarity may well increase pressure in international forums to comply with their general demands, but pressuring of regional and national institutions will still be crucial in promoting singular or specific needs-based targets unique to discrete indigenous communities.

To the outside observer, there was a noticeable (if unsurprising) unwillingness to acknowledge the competing needs of coexisting, non-indigenous groups suffering from the same (or similar) inequities that require redress in both developing and developed states. Impoverished indigenous and non-indigenous populations often compete for the same limited financial aid, social programs, and government resources.  State obligations to uphold the respective rights of all citizens often lead to internal conflicts of interest that can be difficult to reconcile.Moving forward will require clear targets and enforceable monitoring, and transparency mechanisms. Also troublesome is state non-compliance with UNDRIP and other non-binding international instruments. The UN system suffers from inadequate mechanisms to enforce what is ultimately a state responsibility to its people, including state duty to consult with indigenous peoples on policies and legislature that directly impact their maintenance of traditions and cultural heritage.

The UN is (arguably) at its best when providing aspirational goals and normative frameworks and (it is hoped) creating concrete policy guidelines; less so in their implementation and financing of those goals and frameworks. As reiterated in the Forum, indigenous rights are human rights. Civil society and private sector stakeholders, in unison with governmental agencies and institutions, will ultimately be tasked with implementinguniversal development goals. To date, scant mention has been given to indigenous concerns in the post-2015 SDGs.  If we truly envision an inclusive human rights based development agenda, we must ensure indigenous issues are fully addressed by member state governments. States must be held accountable for inclusion of indigenous people in data aggregations to formulate more inclusive national action plans that provide fair redress to legitimate grievances and close socio-economic gaps.  For its part, the UN and other international governing bodies must fully integrate indigenous rights within the human rights based SDG framework.  Only through a conscious (and conscientious) cultivation of fair and equitable policies will indigenous societies be allowed to re-establish their cultural roots and assure their survival.

 Karin Perro, Human Rights Fellow, GAPW

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Child’s Play:  The Security Council Seeks to Shelter Youngsters from Abusive Elders, Dr. Robert Zuber

29 Mar

In an earlier life when I was arrogant enough to fancy myself a philosopher, I was involved with a transnational group of scholars analyzing what it means to live in a world with children in it, the unique combination of gifts offered and responsibilities mandated that bring value and meaning to our otherwise emotion-starved lives. The ‘poster’ for this work came in the form of an old New Yorker cartoon in which a young girl – perhaps 6 or 7 – is pulling a wagon inside the chambers of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.  One of the generals seated on a dais looks down at the girl and asks a question that many of us might be inclined to ask but which also has enormous irony attached to it.

And what can the Joint Chiefs do for you today little one?

What indeed?  The ironies of this cartoon are at least two-fold:  First the assumption that children only ‘need’ us for things, that they are merely bundles of vulnerability that somehow find strength in the often-silly ‘uniforms,’ structures and speeches that we adults use to impress them.   And second, the assumption that ‘we’ have the wherewithal to deliver the goods for children, that we can somehow find the means to make the world ‘fit’ to sustain their normative and creative ambitions rather than leaving behind legacies of scarcity and violence that make the obsessive refuge of social media seem like a perfectly sane response to global circumstances.

On Wednesday, amidst a bevy of UN activity on sustainable development goals and targets, peacekeeping recommendations, ocean health and much more – all with ramifications for the safety and well-being of children —  the Security Council held an ‘open’ discussion on Children and Armed Conflict, with a specific focus on child recruitment perpetrated by ISIL and other terror groups.  As Council president for March, France organized the discussion and, it should be noted, was also instrumental in the early development of the thematic office of Children and Armed Conflict then run by Olara Otunnu and now by the Algerian Leila Zerrougui.

As with so many other crisis-laden conversations in Council chambers, this one combined frustration, sadness, righteous indignation, thoughtfulness and even some hopeful energy supplied by a former child soldier in DRC who has managed to thrive despite the horrors he endured, and perhaps even inflicted.  Needless to say, his story was heartwarming, though not necessarily representative.  Behind this ‘theme du jour’ lies the sober reality that so many children in this world may have already lost any meaningful chance to transition from violence-related trauma to creative engagement.  Urgings by Angola, Slovenia and other states for more psychological services for trauma-infected youth is wise policy, but with the caveat that, from a professional standpoint, the only certain way to address trauma successfully is to prevent its occurrence in the first place.

What there was little of during this Council discussion, thankfully, were facile recitations of the intrinsic value of education in countering planetary threats beyond what Lithuania and Save the Children referred to as the restoration of “normalcy” for victims.  Though this community often (and rightly) posits universal educational opportunity (especially at elementary and secondary levels) as one key to social stability and economic success, “getting ahead” in a world that seems to be slowly collapsing under its own hubris might not always be the most attractive option for children and youth, no matter how many school degrees (and school debts) they ultimately accumulate.

After all, what could children need from the adult world beyond the shaky promises of a sustainable future while conferring a bevy of expensive school diplomas representing a misleading assessment of their precious talents?  Isn’t that enough?

It’s not nearly enough.   Nor will solving ISIL’s forced recruiting and conversion madness, as important as that is, be enough.   As evil and civilization- threatening as ISIL and its ilk seems to be, it is not the only crisis for which we have deployed – and will deploy again – robust UN capacity. Nor are terrorists the only forces in the world inflicting suffering and future-deflating trauma on children.   Indeed, as SRSG Zerrougui noted, children are also victims of those of us responsible to protect them, agencies which at times have also demonstrably ‘fumbled the ball.’  Clearly, we have much work to do to ensure that our legacy for children is more hopeful and comprehensive than promoting school skills to help them navigate the coming wreckage.   We can and must do better than this.  As Malaysia and the Secretary General both reminded us, there are simply too many children in the world struggling to recover from the impact of “adult wars.” Too many of these children will simply not be able to handle the transition. The brutality of terrorists confers no plenary indulgences for our own transitional negligence.

As New Zealand sensibly noted this week, there is an irony to Council debates held in a windowless room far removed from any of the scenes of horror our resolutions seek to address.   For its part, Argentina asserted that ‘wisdom’ for dealing with our responsibilities to children is not something we’re born with, but rather something that we must practice with a prevention-oriented eye.   The world simply looks more manageable from the vantage point of a closed room full of overly-crafted policy positions no matter how many somber outside voices are invited to brief. As the human world gets younger, more restless, with values defined more by advertisers than by teachers, with youth more anxious about their collective future, and where stability in childhood is more and more elusive, we can’t jump to assumptions that our current protective preferences are in step with the long-term needs of future generations.  If we are to get in step, we’ll probably need to first ‘turn the heat down’ a bit, finding more time for consultation and prevention and earmarking fewer resources on reaction. We will also need to cultivate more measured wisdom to guide the urgent way forward, with less anger and moral righteousness. Adding a few more windows to the world – real and metaphorical – probably wouldn’t hurt either.

What can the Joint Chiefs, or the Security Council or the IMF do for you today little one?  Perhaps we can start by reminding ourselves of just how intolerable our adult lives would be without the presence of children in them. And once we accept the sublime gift that children represent, perhaps we can then accept the responsibility that the fields we so blithely cultivate now must have enough good soil left so that today’s children will have a realistic opportunity one day to plant and harvest for themselves.

Across programs and sectors, within and beyond the Security Council, the UN has many capable hands in this soil.   It’s incumbent on us to cultivate cooperatively, wisely and with greater earnestness. The children we neglect, abuse or even politicize today are much less likely to manage handling the sometimes grave challenges of their own adult lives.

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