Tag Archives: dignity

More Reflections from the UN High Level Political Forum: Liberato Bautista on “Communities of Hope.”

12 Jul


Editor’s Note: Our Good friend and colleague, Rev. Dr. Liberato Bautista, made this excellent presentation at a recent HLPF side event on “Communities of Hope: Advancing Human Dignity and Development for Sustainable Futures.” “Levi” as he is known, is of Filipino ancestry and has long served in New York as Assistant General Secretary for United Nations and International Affairs, General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church. He is also immediate past president of the Committee on NGOs. Levi is a familiar figure around the UN and this fine talk is what we have come to expect from him.


Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, friends, partners in civil society and faith communities: Thank you to the organizers for convening this timely parallel event to this year’s High-Level Political Forum, titled “Communities of Hope: Advancing Human Dignity and Development for Sustainable Futures.”

At a time when much of our public discourse seems saturated with anxiety, uncertainty, and division, I am grateful that you have chosen to organize a conversation about hope. Some may even accuse us of being hopeless romantics for injecting hope into an anxious world. I confess that I am happy to join that company. So, allow me to invite you, for the next few minutes, to imagine with me a future in the present tense. That may sound like a contradiction. Yet much of our work in the United Nations, in civil
society, and in communities of faith depends precisely on this capacity.

We live amid the present tensions of our time—war and displacement, widening inequalities, lingering historical injustices, ecological degradation, technological uncertainty, and growing fragmentation. Yet we are called at the same time to orient our vision toward futures that are both visible and viable—futures shaped by human dignity, sustainable development, and shared flourishing.

I am especially drawn to the title of this event and its use of the word futures in the plural. Not future, but futures. That choice matters. Because no individual, no nation, no institution, and no tradition possesses a monopoly on what the future should look like. None has a franchise on hope. The future is not something handed down by the powerful. It is something imagined, negotiated, and built together. The language of hope and the language of futures, therefore, share a common invitation. They call us into a collective exercise of moral imagination about what makes for a more just, peaceable, and sustainable world.


Communities of hope help us hold these realities together. The timing of this event is especially meaningful. In just two days, on July 12, the international community will observe the International Day of Hope. By establishing this observance, the United Nations reminds us that hope is not merely a private sentiment but a force that advances dignity, peace, social stability, and sustainable development. Indeed, the United Nations has described itself as “the product of hope.” Hope, therefore, is not peripheral to the multilateral project. It lies close to its heart. The United Nations emerged from humanity’s determination that war, devastation, and fear should not define the future. Hope is among its animating purposes.

And it is in that spirit that I would like to begin with a lesson I continue to learn from people experiencing forced migration. Part of my work has involved creating platforms for migrants, refugees, displaced persons, and communities uprooted by conflict, persecution, environmental degradation, and economic necessity to speak about their own fears and hopes. One quickly discovers that hope, for people in forced movement, is rarely an abstraction. Hope does not recover the passport left behind. Hope does not reunite a parent with a child separated by war. Hope does not erase trauma. Hope does not instantly provide protection, livelihood, housing, or belonging.

And yet they continue to hope. What amazes me is not simply their resilience. What amazes me is their moral orientation. It is their determination to anchor their breath, their being, and their future to hope even when circumstances seem determined to deny their dignity. One of the lessons forced migration teaches us is that human dignity often survives long before development arrives. People continue to imagine futures for themselves and their children even when the path ahead remains uncertain. They continue to seek community amid displacement, dispersal, and dislocation. For some, the hope is a return. For others, it is the possibility of rebuilding life in countries of transit and destination. Development worthy of the name begins there. It begins with the recognition and protection of human dignity.

Communities of hope emerge wherever people refuse to surrender their dignity to conditions that deny it. That experience has led me to a conviction: Hope cannot merely be the ceiling we seek to reach. Hope must also be the floor from which we begin. Too often, we speak of hope as a distant horizon. But when hope is permanently deferred, its very unreachability can become a source of fear. Hope must be accessible. Hope must be tangible. Hope must be lived.

In the Wesleyan understanding of grace, God’s action is not merely a destination awaiting humanity at the end of the journey. Grace is already at work, preparing the way and opening possibilities where none previously seemed to exist. Hope functions in much the same way. It is not only the horizon that beckons us forward. It is also the ground beneath our feet that enables us to move at all.

Perhaps this is one of the lessons we must learn again regarding sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals were never intended to be merely a collection of targets and indicators. They were intended to advance human dignity through development and thereby create the conditions for sustainable futures. This year, as the High-Level Political Forum reviews Sustainable Cities and Communities and Partnerships for the Goals, I am reminded that both are, at their heart, questions of hope.

Communities cannot be sustainable if people are denied dignity, participation, belonging, and opportunity. And partnerships cannot flourish where fear, fragmentation, and exclusion prevail. One reason implementation gaps persist is that we have learned to count the goals while becoming less adept at encountering the people they represent. When goals become detached from lived realities, they risk becoming fossilized. Sustainable development is ultimately about creating conditions in which human dignity can flourish. Yet dignity, while inherent in every human person, does not protect itself. It requires protection through institutions, laws, norms, and regimes of human rights.

Hope, therefore, is not sustained by aspiration alone. It also requires institutions capable of safeguarding dignity and advancing rights. It is precisely because the SDGs are ultimately about people that I have come to believe that we live in a world in deficit of hope and in excess of fear. Fear generated by poverty and inequality. Fear generated by conflict and displacement. Fear generated by lingering historical injustices of slavery, colonialism, and racism. Fear generated by ecological degradation. Fear generated by technological change whose ethical consequences remain uncertain.

Yet fear today is more than an emotion. It is increasingly becoming a governing narrative. But we must not allow the present tensions of our day to determine the future. Hope begins with a refusal to make that concession. Hope is humanity’s insistence that another future remains possible.


This is why I increasingly refer to Agenda 2030 and the Pact for the Future as elements of the United Nations’ agenda of hope. They express not only hope for a better world but also hope for a United Nations transformed and fit for purpose—faithful to its foundational responsibilities to advance human dignity and human rights, promote peace and security, and foster sustainable development for people and planet.

For many years, I have argued that civil society must have access to the United Nations’ premises, promises, and processes. Today, I would add a fourth imperative: Civil society must also have access to the agenda of hope. Because hope belongs not only to governments but to peoples. Yet aspirations do not advance themselves. Norms do not implement themselves. Hope does not
institutionalize itself. Every agenda of hope requires institutions capable of shepherding it. The multilateral infrastructure entrusted with this task—the United Nations—is under strain. Ultimately, humanity’s collective capacity to imagine and pursue a common future is under pressure.

This is why I continue to advocate for a people-centered, ethical, and transformative multilateralism. Ethical multilateralism is not merely cooperation among governments. It is the encounter between the community of nations and the community of peoples. Human beings flourish not in isolation but through mutual responsibility, solidarity, compassion, and participation in the common good. As Minjung theologians in South Korea reminded us, ordinary people are not objects of history but its makers. When people become subjects rather than objects, the horizon of hope becomes clearer, and the space for collaboration widens rather than shrinks.


My friend and colleague, Christian social ethicist Dr. Lester Edwin Ruiz, has challenged us to distinguish between what is fundamentally new and what is fundamentally better. This question is especially important in the age of artificial intelligence. The issue is not whether AI is fundamentally new. It clearly is. The deeper question is whether it fosters fundamentally better relationships. In this regard, I find resonance with Pope Leo XIV’s insistence that: People must come before technology. Human dignity must come before efficiency. Ethics must come before capability.

For many of us who work in and around the United Nations, no passage from sacred scripture has captured the moral imagination of the international community more profoundly than Prophet Isaiah’s vision that nations shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Yet eighty years later, we must acknowledge that the world has not yet beaten all its swords into plowshares. The answer, however, is not to abandon Isaiah’s vision. The answer is to deepen it. This is where I find Prophet Micah’s injunction indispensable. While Isaiah calls us to transform the implements of war, Micah calls us to transform ourselves: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly.


Here, I also hear an echo of John Wesley’s first general rule: Do no harm. Between the present tensions of our day and the future we aspire to build lies a profound moral responsibility. Do no harm. Do not compromise the future of generations to come with our own follies. Do not diminish tomorrow through the choices we make today. Do not sacrifice the dignity of others for immediate gain.


In a world marked by conflict, displacement, dispersal, dislocation, ecological degradation, widening inequality, and technological disruption, this remains a profoundly relevant public ethic. The world does not need less imagination. It needs imagination disciplined by justice, tempered by mercy, and guided by humility. Perhaps this is what communities of hope are called to offer in our time: not merely a vision of a future without swords and spears, but the moral capacities to build and sustain it.

Finally, these traditions remind us that the future is not merely something we await, inherit, or discover; it is something we create. As the musical Rent reminds us, the opposite of war isn’t peace. It is creation. War destroys. Creation builds. War wounds. Creation heals. War closes horizons. Creation opens possibilities. Therefore, communities of hope become communities of creation. They participate in the ongoing work of creating a world where human dignity is protected, human rights are respected, communities flourish, and sustainable futures become possible. And because destruction is ultimately aligned with death, creation remains one of humanity’s deepest affirmations of life itself.

In a world in deficit of hope and in excess of fear, communities of hope remind us that hope must be more than a destination. It must become a lived reality. They remind us that human dignity is not a consequence of development but its foundation. They remind us that sustainable futures are built when peoples and nations work together to move our world from fear toward hope, from fragmentation toward solidarity, and from what is merely fundamentally new toward relationships that are fundamentally better.

That, I believe, is the promise and calling of communities of hope: advancing human dignity through development for sustainable futures. Thank you for your indulgence.

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Reflections from the UN High Level Political Forum: Rebecca Irby Highlights the Dignity Foundations of Development

11 Jul

Editor’s Note: Rebecca Irby’s investments related to her leadership of PEAC (www.peacinstitute.org), investments in sustainable development, youth and women’s engagement, nuclear disarmament and NGO-focused media are becoming legendary in UN spaces. Here she kicks off what will surely be a fruitful, longer-term engagement, one which has already attracted the attention of other parts of the UN system, including from the leadership of the UN mission of the Republic of Korea. Her comments in relation to the newly-formed NGO Committee for Dignity were very well received and I am pleased to be able to share them here.

Opening Statement + Introduction of the Committee for Dignity

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us for Dignity and the SDG Implementation Gap: Structural Discrimination, Community Evidence, Nature, and Meaningful Participation.

It is an honor to gather here during HLPF, in this space so close to the United Nations, and in the company of civil society leaders, advocates, community partners, researchers, and people who continue to believe that sustainable development must be more than a promise on paper.

At the heart of today’s conversation is a simple but urgent idea:

Dignity is not an ornament added to development after the fact. Dignity is the measure of whether development is happening at all.

When a community lacks safe water, it is not only a service gap. It is a dignity gap.

When people are denied clean energy, housing, infrastructure, health, education, or safety because of who they are, their race, caste, gender, disability, migration status, Indigenous identity, poverty, or political exclusion, that is not only a policy failure. It is a dignity failure.

And when communities are studied, counted, consulted, and photographed, but not trusted to shape the decisions that affect their lives, that is not participation. That is performance.

The United Nations begins with the words “We the Peoples.” Those words matter. They remind us that the UN was not created only for states, systems, or institutions. It was created to serve humanity.

And at this particular moment, the role of civil society has never been more important. Around the world, too many people live under systems where their voices are restricted, dismissed, or unheard. NGOs, grassroots movements, Indigenous leaders, youth organizers, disability advocates, faith communities, women’s groups, peacebuilders, journalists, educators, and community institutions help ensure that the lived experiences of people remain part of the global conversation.

That is why the NGO Committee for Dignity exists.

This Committee was created to bring organizations together around a shared commitment to dignity, justice, inclusion, peace, and meaningful participation.

But I want to say something plainly: a committee is not meaningful simply because it exists. A coalition is not powerful simply because names appear on a list. An organization becomes meaningful when it becomes a place of commitment.

Commitment to one another.

Commitment to the communities whose lives are shaped by these decisions.

Commitment to the difficult, patient, disciplined work of moving from concern to action, from action to accountability, and from accountability to transformation.

Our purpose is not to speak for people.

Our purpose is to create spaces for people to speak for themselves, and to help make sure that when they do, institutions are prepared to listen, respond, and change.

We are here to help ensure that all peoples, including stateless peoples, Indigenous communities, vulnerable populations, marginalized groups, and communities facing structural discrimination, are not treated as afterthoughts in global policy conversations.

These communities are not footnotes.

They are not simply beneficiaries waiting at the end of a system.

They are the authors of evidence. They are the holders of wisdom. They are the builders of solutions.

Dignity is inseparable from the dignity of life itself: the dignity of nature, the dignity of water, the dignity of land, the dignity of future generations.

Protecting dignity and protecting the planet are not competing responsibilities. They are deeply connected.

As Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, reminded us, when we help the Earth heal, we also help heal ourselves.

And that brings us to the core question of today:

What is the SDG implementation gap really telling us?

It tells us that promises are not enough when the structures that deliver them still exclude people.

It is telling us that technical solutions are not enough when the people closest to the problem are kept farthest from power.

It is telling us that participation without influence is not participation. It is choreography.

And it is telling us that the people closest to the harm must be central to defining the repair.

This week, as the United States reflects on 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, we are reminded that every nation, every institution, and every global framework is tested not by the beauty of its ideals, but by the honesty of its implementation.

The question is not only whether we can repeat our founding promises.

The question is: Who is still waiting to be included in them?

That is true for the American story. It is true for the United Nations. It is true for the Sustainable Development Goals.

Our task is not simply to celebrate the promise.

Our task is to close the distance between the promise and people’s lives.

So today, we gather not only to talk about dignity, but to ask what dignity requires of us.

Dignity requires memory, because communities know the histories that institutions often ‘forget’.

Dignity requires truth, because we cannot repair what we refuse to name.

Dignity requires evidence, because lived experience must be treated as knowledge, not anecdote.

Dignity requires humility, because institutions must be willing to learn from the people they were designed to serve.

And dignity requires communities at the center, not as symbols of inclusion, but as partners in shaping what comes next.

Most of all, dignity requires us to move from symbolic inclusion to meaningful participation. These are not abstract values. They are the conditions that determine whether communities are treated as partners in implementation or as evidence after the fact.

Thank you all for being here. I am so grateful for the wisdom in this room, and I look forward to the conversation we are about to build together.

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Ballot Blunders: Election Influence in a Partisan Age, Dr. Robert Zuber

18 Oct
Oregon's vote-by-mail gets scrutiny from inside, outside state

To win the people, always cook them something savory that pleases them.  Aristophanes

Numbers by themselves cannot produce wisdom and may give the best favors of office to the grossest flatterers. Will Durant

Good governance in a democracy is impossible without fostering in our communities and the electorate, an appetite for leaders who are committed to respectful conduct. Diane Kalen-Sukra

The wish to be elected cannot be more important than the wish to do the right thing.  Victor Bello Accioly

An election must be more than a search for honesty in a snake pit.  Stewart Stafford

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.  Alfred E. Smith

This is likely to be news to none of you, but the US is holding an election for president in a bit over two weeks.

And while national elections are frequently held with greater and lesser degrees of integrity – voting results New Zealand and Bolivia have recently attracted a fair amount of attention in the global press – the US presidential race has become something of an obsession (if not a circus), especially for policymakers and poll watchers in many global regions.

Despite (or perhaps due to) our commitment to weigh in on national issues only to the extent that they impact multilateral effectiveness, we have shared more of this obsession than would normally be the case.  It is a temptation at the ready to spend endless ink critiquing one’s own country under the guise of interrogating multilateral processes.  It is a temptation we have largely avoided over the past 20 years, though challenges to multilateral cooperation on pandemics, food insecurity and climate change have never seemed as daunting – and untimely – as they do at present.

Some of this recent obsession has a “bull in a china shop” feel to it.  Even after the past few years of attempting to roll-back US engagements in the world, my country retains an outsized influence in economic, military and even to some extent in diplomatic circles such as the UN Security Council.   And as citizens and leadership gawk in amazement (at times even pity) at the acrimony and disinformation that has infected our political life – or at least forced it out into the open – many fear the implications for small states and vulnerable peoples when rich and powerful states see their often sub-optimal checks and balances heading completely off the rails. 

When the largest animals scuffle, the smaller ones have the sense to move away.  But in a world that is as interconnected as this one now is, there is simply nowhere to run.  Many smaller states – in Latin America certainly but also in other global regions – have had to adjust with alarming frequency to the political and economic whims of their northern neighbor.  But in this time of pandemic and security unpredictability, when that neighbor seems to have less and less interest in honoring agreements and championing core norms and values meant to bind states in collaborative action, the chills felt across multiple global regions are no trifling matter.

And so this US election does matter to many beyond national borders as well – a referendum not on our hegemony so much as our sanity, not on our irascibility so much as our reliability.   Despite our laundry list of hypocrisies and self-exemptions based on some perverse notion of exceptionalism, there has been some sense at least that the values we say we admire – and that infuse most of the multi-lateral charters that we once sponsored and from which we now seek our distance – were deemed ours to uphold as well to champion for others.  There was some sense, albeit one now largely relegated to our rearview mirror, that to whom much is given, much is expected; that blessings are to be shared more than hoarded and that others have a right to judge us as we often judge others — by our deeds and not by our carefully and often self-righteously crafted brands.

As elections draw near and anxiety levels rise within and across borders, a couple of points on where we currently stand.  First a reminder that Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – to which the US accedes — conveys to all people “universal and equal suffrage,” which pertains not only to the right to vote, but to participate in civic life and have access to public services.    These are rights which the US has steadfastly – if imperfectly – sought to encourage in other states. 

Thus the shock from many global quarters as measures to disenfranchise domestically have been as numerous and shameless as the disinformation that accompanies them.  Thus the shock as our pre-electoral discourse lays out political competition among erstwhile domestic enemies seeking each others’ ruin rather than among citizens who share a franchise and a constitution.   Thus the shock as domestic gun sales go through the roof as though we were preparing not for a peaceful transition of power but for a violence-prone showdown among people whose differences – real and provoked — can no longer be reconciled.

As the agencies of the UN know full well, elections, are a pre-condition for good governance, not its guarantor.  But elections matter most when they are conducted with proper regard for rights of access, and when they are free of fraud and intimidation, as they can then contribute to elevating the legitimacy and authority of the duly elected government.  To those ends, many millions in the US are now determined to cast their ballots, even if it takes a full day to exercise their right to do so, and even if it is often with fingers crossed that their ballots will not arbitrarily be discarded or “harvested;” fingers crossed that the local heroes who have committed to deliver massive numbers of ballots by mail, who will count and certify ballot totals, and who strive to minimize illegal impediments to the legal exercise of a franchise, can somehow help produce a result that we can, quite literally, all live with.

In this context, the campaign season for this election is as troubling as any potential outcome itself, for it reminds us once again of how far we have fallen from the grace that our founders sought to bestow on those who would follow, a grace that we have sullied through selfishness and willful ignorance, through self-justifying lenses of partisanship and a corrupted nationalism which, as lamented this week in the General Assembly’s Third Committee by UN Special Rapporteur Okafor, “obscures multilateral benefits.”  Added to this is our propensity for short-termism that soils our own bed and risks a world for our progeny bereft of any bed at all.

Though we are hardly alone in this, we in the US have slowly chipped away at the effectiveness and credibility of our structures of governance.  We seem more willing than ever in my lifetime to gouge and humiliate each other in order to “win” and, if victory eludes us, to then deliberately and systematically undermine those who prevail even before they are formally inaugurated.  As the Washington Post wondered this week, can any election promise a viable path out of the extreme partisanship that has marooned us on ever-distant islands of opinion and practice?

We’re about to find out.  If you are in the US and legally able to do so, please vote.  If you are not so authorized, help us prepare for the possibility of fresh assaults on the integrity and legitimacy of multilateral processes that we and so many others have strived to uphold.   In either case, we would do well to prepare as best we can for choppy seas that will take all our wisdom and patience to calm and will leave more than a few immobilized with some incarnation of post-electoral nausea.  This election might actually result in a path that takes health disparities and climate threats more seriously, that honors more of our international commitments and shares governance-related information more transparently.  But an election alone will not be enough to rebuild trust in each other, to restore credibility within and across borders where it has been discarded, or to heal domestic divisions that have in some instances been festering for years.  

A commitment from elected leadership to “respectful conduct” would surely be one desirable electoral outcome, as would leadership more interested in “doing the right thing” than in consolidating political power. But these outcomes require common undertakings by the rest of us as well:  a pledge to respect each other across differences and to uphold rights and dignity of those beyond the boundaries of our tribe better than we have done to date.  Whether we recognize it or not, we’ve mostly all been swallowing pills of partisanship and self-interest. If upcoming elections are to achieve the larger result we need them to achieve, it’s past time for us to toss away that bottle.

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Identity Theft: Restoring Access and Dignity for Millions, Dr. Robert Zuber

8 Mar

Without dignity, identity is erased. Laura Hillenbrand
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.  Oscar Wilde
Living a lie will reduce you to one.  Ashly Lorenzana
We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Albert Einstein
I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. Audre Lorde
You are a thousand things, but everyone chooses to see the million things you are not. m.k.
One of the most interesting aspects of life inside UN headquarters these days is the diversity of conversations and events focused on what the Secretary-General has designated as the “Decade of Action” regarding fulfillment of our responsibilities to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  This decade seeks to make clear that while the SDGs require us to “stop doing things” such as polluting our oceans and discriminating against migrants, it also requires us to raise the bar to ensure food security, promote the rule of law,, create decent employment opportunities and much more.
From alleviating the impacts of violence on children to the statisticians charged with monitoring progress on goals from gender to environment, the UN is indeed making a good faith effort — and must continue to demonstrate even more — to honor its unprecedented promises to bring sustainable dividends to those for whom such dividends in the past have largely been a mirage.
And yet, sitting through these UN discussions of varying levels of interest and passion, there are several trends that we frequently notice.  First, there tends to be more problem sharing than problem solving. This “Decade of Action” is admittedly still in its infancy but it has not yet sufficiently permeated the “culture” of UN conference rooms.  Parallel reforms to the UN’s resident coordinator system offer the promise of development that is more tailored to circumstance and better coordinated with national development priorities.  But at headquarters the talk is still much about the logistics of forthcoming meetings or policy guidance on actions still to be taken rather than on states inspiring other states to do more for those genuinely in danger of being left behind.
The second thing we notice is a failure to clearly articulate the ways in which parts of the UN system are still “in the way” when it comes to fulfilling our common SDG commitments.  The primary culprit here might well be the Security Council, whose half-successes on preventing and resolving conflict (see Iraq or Yemen) contribute to enormous pressure being place on UN agencies responsible for humanitarian and development assistance.  Of the looming threats in the world that have the potential to wipe away development progress and drive humanitarian need to the breaking point, the persistence of armed conflict and the trafficking and excess weapons production which provide its oxygen remain as major culprits.  Indeed it seems as though more sustained policy reflection is in order regarding the “drag” on sustainable development coming from within the system responsible for ensuring such development.
And finally we notice that so much of the policy discourse focused on SDGs comes from the mouths of persons, like myself, who surely live under threats from climate change, ocean degradation and weapons of mass destruction, but for whom the bulk of needs and access issues associated with SDG commitments do not directly apply.  Indeed, even a cursory review of the 2019 Sustainable Goals Report reveals this often gross disparity between those in danger of being left behind yet again and those, like me, who are virtually never left behind.
For instance, according to the UN report, food insecurity is on the rise in many global regions, yet my own food access is both abundant and stable.  Access to fresh water is under threat in many places, but the quality of New York City drinking water is virtually unmatched among major global cities.  There have seemingly been some significant health-related improvements in recent years — notably with regard to tuberculosis, HIV infection and under 5 mortality rates — but health care access for many millions, especially those homeless or displaced, bears little or no resemblance to the doctors to whom I have access and who find ways to keep this now-aching shell of a body intact. Millions of children lack access to schooling and adults to literacy training, but my own educational profile is unassailable.
One can go up and down the line, across all SDGs and indicators to reveal a truth that those who make development policy live in very different realities than those who seek development assistance; that we in the policy community inadvertently put on display some of the very inequalities we profess to address. This is, at least in my own context and surely for others as well, a manifestation of privilege largely undeserved, a function of skill that surely exists, but skill that has also found its points of access to opportunity and resources far beyond its portion.
One such “portion” especially caught our eye this past week during a side event hosted by the UN Statistical Commission focused on a manifestation of inequality that is largely off our collective radar but which creates uncertainties and threatens dignity at depths that most of us could scarcely contemplate — and that is the matter of identity.
Identity is something we think about often in “developed” societies, though not in the same way that its deficit implies for the quality of life of too many in our world.  In our islands of privilege, we tend to see identity largely in terms of access and attention.  On the one hand, we generally possess multiple indicators of identify — birth certificates, marriage licenses, school diplomas, drivers licenses, credit cards, passports, social security cards, home and business addresses.  On and on it goes, pieces of paper that allow us to board airplanes, cross borders, access loans and medical attention, keep our increasingly complex lives in order, and  lay the groundwork for the next levels of success and privilege.
On top of this abundance is our other identity-related obsession, the “identity” that helps us to build a brand, get noticed, make sure “people are watching” both in the sense of earned recognition and in the sense of attention more akin to celebrity than substance, attention that “eclipses” as much of the self as it reveals.  In such instances we are more likely to exercise those “muscles” of separation and distinction than of complementarity and respect. The enormous personal benefit of being identified in this world as a diplomat, teacher, designer, farmer, nurse or even an NGO, is both a manifestation of our professional success and a privilege tethered to our worldly status, in response to which we now tend too often to skew the balance between the “optical delusion” of personal pride and the larger truths of gratitude and service.
But beyond the bloated contents of our wallets and egos, let the reader reflect for a moment what it would be like to survive in a world of constant uncertainty or even displacement, without anything like a proper paper trail to help establish who you are, where you came from, who you are connected to, who (if anyone) is watching your back.  No birth records or credit cards, no forwarding addresses for your personal effects, no national documentation that might be recognized as such by another state’s officials, no way for others to “know” who you are aside from whatever words you are able to successfully exchange with strangers. And, to say the least, no equivalents of the  little “blue badges” that allow those of us privileged to have one to access UN Headquarters and its many material and identity benefits.
In the Christian tradition this is the season of Lent, a time to do more for others but also to stop doing things which cause harm to the dignity and well-being of others — all in recognition of the gifts that accrue from a sojourn of faith, gifts that we did not earn, could not earn, gifts that have been lavishly bestowed  but in response to which much is also expected. It would be especially appropriate in this season to recall the many contributions from those who have made us who we are, the unearned identity conferred on us which underpins our own dignity and which, in our view at least, should inspire a more humble and just response to the identity and dignity needs of others.
That we in our “advanced” societies and our policy bubbles are literally “saturated” with identity opportunities and resources in a world where millions literally have little or nothing to “show” for themselves is one of the more profound and cross-cutting aspects of global inequality.  During the aforementioned Statistical Commission side event, reference was made to the launch of the UN Legal Identity Agenda. As we contribute as we are able within and beyond this UN policy space to identifying and reducing poverty, food insecurity, employment discrimination and other global scourges, we pledge as well to devote a bit of extra energy to ending the identity deficits which place both service access and human dignity in perpetual danger.

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Justice Matters:  The UN Explores Multiple Pathways to Human Dignity, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Jul

Roman

On July 14, Judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi, president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), spoke to a packed conference room at UN Headquarters.  The event was chaired by Italy’s Ambassador Cardi and was intended as part of the UN’s acknowledgment of the International Day of Criminal Justice which falls each year on July 17.

The president hit many important notes during her address, including reminding the audience that the ICC is a court of “last resort” for the “crimes against humanity” under its jurisdiction, including the use of child soldiers, sexual violence as a tactic of war, the wanton destruction of cultural property, and soon the crime of aggression.  It is up to member states, she rightly noted, to help the ICC establish a “consistent pattern of accountability” for international crimes, in part by taking greater national responsibility for the investigation and prosecution of such crimes and in part through efforts to deter and punish those who seek to undermine the administration of justice through the ICC, including the interference with/harassment of witnesses.

The president did not take up several questions that some of us might otherwise have expected.  The ICC’s relationship to the Security Council, for instance, has been a contentious one that has included untimely referrals, massive security restrictions on investigations, significant budgetary limitations, and the Council’s refusal to sanction states that fail in their responsibilities to arrest indicted criminals.  Moreover, the president chose not to ‘call out’ states parties which have hosted – rather than captured – those very same criminals.

But what she did suggest was important: that credible international justice is essential to the restoration of rule of law, to human development, indeed to the dignity of victims.   She recognized that a “global system of justice” has many facets that are tied to the activities of courts, certainly to the vigorous promotion of internationally recognized human rights but also to a development and conflict prevention system that can uphold dignity and help ensure that the worst of crimes can be addressed in their potential before they unfold in grotesque practice.

As the president also recognized, other UN events during this past week touched on key elements of a global system of justice.   In the General Assembly, PGA Lykketoft convened a high level event to assess the human rights performance of the UN as it concludes its 70th year.   Fittingly, states used the occasion to promote the need to, as New Zealand and others noted, examine the implications of human rights across the three UN “pillars.” States from Panama and Chile to France and Estonia noted the many rights dimensions that affect people in overt conflict situations, but also highlighted those suffering from torture, discrimination, incarceration-related abuses and many other violations.   And while Liechtenstein rightly lamented that disregard of the ‘rules of war’ seems now to be reaching epidemic proportions, there was broad agreement with the Netherlands and others that we can do more  — and must do more — to ensure that people can finally live in a world “free from armed conflict.”

Last Wednesday in another small conference room, an “A” list of UN officials was brought together by Uruguay and Portugal to discuss the economic and social rights implications of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  ASG Šimonović set a collaborative tone, urging all of us “to bring human rights to the core of our development work.”  ASG Gass went ever farther, noting that the SDGs represent a “new social contract,” while lamenting a “shortage of tools” with which we can hold states (and others) accountable to their SDG promises.   Happily, Gass rightly suggested that the integration of human rights into the SDGs would help make accessible the more fully developed capacities within the human rights community which are already doing much to hold states accountable to rights-based obligations.  As it turns out, tools for SDG accountability need not be created.  They can be borrowed.

As for the convening states, there was enthusiasm for SDG-rights linkages but also cautious tones.  Uruguay’s Ambassador responded to those who see economic and social rights as “vague,” noting that genuinely sustainable development requires ‘dignity work’ in the form of ending gross social and economic inequalities.  Portugal’s Ambassador urged member states to show more leadership on core Charter values while simultaneously urging NGOs to help ensure that values espoused are values enacted.  But he also painfully referenced the many millions of persons in our world for whom rights and dignity remain only “a mirage.”

During his report on Friday in the UN Security Council, Special Representative Jan Kubiš made reference to the upcoming efforts by Iraq and its military partners to liberate the city of Mosul from ISIL control.   While clearly supportive of reducing all manner of ISIL’s influence, Kubiš also predicted that such liberation would likely trigger a humanitarian crisis that could dwarf the already horrific stories of deprivation and rights abuses (including by Iraqi forces) now emanating from Fallujah.  In many instances, it seems, “liberation” bears the potential to create and magnify trauma and deprivation in the name of eliminating them.  The Council, the government of Iraq and the entire UN community must leverage additional capacity to address the psychological and physical dimensions of victim’s assistance in all their aspects.

And of course to do more to ensure that the “pipelines” of trauma are effectively sealed, that relief is more than a fleeting mirage.

As the week’s events underscored, the struggle for sustainable human dignity is a long road, easier to claim than to protect.  As the ICC president noted, we live in a world in which “many perpetrators continue to be untouched.”  Sadly, there are millions more victims in our conflict zones who also remain “untouched.”   Our commitment – on sustainable development and international justice, on poverty reduction and trauma response – is to find the means and the will to touch them all.

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