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Bomb Shelter: Deferring the Risks We are Expected to Face, Dr. Robert Zuber

All choices are fraught with peril, but inaction is the most perilous of all. Frewin Jones

To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn. Helen Keller

To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. Anne Rice

To save all we must risk all. Friedrich von Schiller

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. Tacitus

Burning bridges behind you is understandable. It’s the bridges before us that we burn, not realizing we may need to cross, that brings regret. Anthony Liccione

I have been asked often over these past two weeks by widely dispersed colleagues about the 10^th Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference taking place this month in New York.

While I no longer expend enough energy on the issue of nuclear weapons to be branded anything but an active onlooker, I have spent more time in these NPT sessions than I might have done otherwise. This is due to the (relative) lack of policy activity inside the building, the exceptions this past week including some appropriately moving tributes to humanitarians killed or injured in the service of others and another policy event designed to extend treaty protections for the oceans and its biodiversity to areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ).

While many stakeholders came to New York in the hopes of informing the NPT and BBNJ negotiations, to ensure that urgency rather than propriety dominated the affective policy landscape, processes continued the post-pandemic trend in UN spaces of calling for NGO involvement on the one hand while marginalizing it on the other. Despite a few glimpses courtesy of short, infrequent plenary sessions, the BBNJ has been conducted almost entirely in informal sessions to which our collective participation is largely unwelcome. The NPT has offered more opportunities to watch the proceedings but rarely to challenge their content or direction. Moreover, the most important of the discussions, those taking place in the “subsidiary bodies” have been almost completely off-limits to those, many with considerable expertise themselves, who dared (foolishly or otherwise) to risk time and treasure (and burn considerable carbon) in yet another attempt to ensure that delegations embrace a larger portion of their generally under-implemented treaty obligations and otherwise “meet the moment.”

Aside from stakeholder marginalization, what the NPT and BBNJ process have in common is that both are treaty processes dealing with what are widely regarded as existential threats to our very survival as a species. The humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons use have been in full view since the “duck and cover” days of my youth, and more contemporary efforts to modernize arsenals (as opposed to de-commissioning them) have produced weapons which are quicker to deploy, more powerful, better able to avoid detection and other features which provide little comfort to those tracking the impacts of nuclear explosions on our already violence-prone and over-heated planet.

In much the same manner, our oceans are rapidly approaching their own tipping points as water temperatures and sea levels rise, as the PH of the oceans continues to slide towards unhealthy metrics and as the open ocean remains in some of its areas a massive water-borne dump for ocean-going vessels and other polluters with degraded plastic becoming an increasingly prominent feature of the diets of marine wildlife. As we need an NPT which is functional and accountable, especially to its disarmament obligations, so too do we need a BBNJ process to result in treaty obligations that extend and amplify our concerns for the oceans beyond national jurisdiction to the ubiquitous areas of our inter-connected seas negatively impacted by human activity.

In both instances, there are grave reasons for concern. The clock is ticking on both existential threats, and it is clear from the vantage points that we are still able to occupy that there is insufficient urgency on the part of delegations and negotiators to create and/or move existing agreements forward in ways that both speak to this uneasy moment and serve to bring us back from the brink of a ruin which we (including our policy leadership) have literally brought upon ourselves. We have created space to deliberate on this ruinous state of affairs but have largely failed to ask the questions that might set off a “whirlwind” of change beyond the narrow confines of diplomatic control. We have spent much energy (and wasted the energy of others) in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable, such as recent Russian nuclear weapons threats against Ukraine and the US position that, despite all evidence to the contrary, my government is upholding its commitments under Article 6 of the NPT. For those of you fortunate to have escaped previous iterations of this double-speak, Article 6 is the disarmament pillar of this treaty, a condition which has been piously flaunted for the most part by the nuclear weapons states since the NPT first entered into force.

When colleagues ask us about the status of treaty negotiations and/or review, they are largely asking about functional levels of urgency in evidence amongst the delegations. Do the people responsible for creating normative and/or legal frameworks to help ensure a future for human and other life genuinely understand the dynamics of this precarious moment? Do they understand that the “inter-governmental processes” which they increasingly seek to protect from the undiplomatic utterances of those of us focused on doomsday clocks rather than UN clocks, that these processes and the “consensus” outcomes which more often ensure non-compliance than inspire its opposite have simply not yet delivered the goods, have not allowed constituents to rest easier or, in many cases, to rest at all?

After countless hours in UN conference rooms, I still wonder myself. More to the point, the colleagues reaching out to us about these treaty processes are generally expressing more anxiety than confidence, more skepticism than gratitude. They are asking, as we might also, questions more human than diplomatic, questions that go beyond the diplomatic calculus of sufficiency to the wider concern of a world in flames that those tasked with response have done too little to remediate.

Is the diplomatic community both authorized and willing to turn a corner when a corner urgently needs to be turned? Are they prepared to engage the hard (and possibly unauthorized) questions and not only the ones which will “cause no trouble” to their permanent missions or careers? Can they properly assess the bridges we have carelessly burned such that we also avoid burning the ones we will need to cross over to escape the damage wrought by our endlessly tepid policy outcomes and the sometimes-misleading promises they communicate to constituents?

The polarities of the UN community’s relationship to risk have been clearly evident over the last week. On the one hand are the humanitarians, those who feed and protect under dangerous conditions, those who lay their lives on the line to compensate for the policy failures of the states who pay the UN’s bills and largely – increasingly unilaterally – govern its policy processes. And while peacekeepers are being attacked and humanitarian workers are being abducted, we fail to resolve the conflicts which threaten them (let alone prevent their occurrence). We continue to speak in repetitive tones in this UN space about “leaving no one behind” without communicating clearly that we understand the dramatic political and economic risks which need to be taken in order to address what in our complex human history would be the fulfillment of a genuinely unprecedented SDG mandate.

And so we go forth in a system made up of often-bewildered civil society organizations, NGOs who too often reinforce a game we are running out of time to change, and diplomats who represent positions, often ably, which they largely do not create themselves. Ours (if I might be so presumptuous) is a system which privileges consensus, not as an aspiration but as a de-facto veto, resulting in resolutions and other obligations likely to be implemented only in part if at all, documents couched in language likely to inspire only states already walking the pathways which our oft-compromised resolutions and treaties seek to define.

As diplomats continue their work to create documents on which all can agree if not commit to actually implement, we continue to send willing soldiers, security officers and aid workers into the field, people who have worked through their need for safety in order to feed and clothe, house and protect those facing the ravages of war and terror, of drought and flooding, of environmental degradation, of exile from familiar people and places. We continue to send them into the conflict zones we have not been able to resolve through political means, into zones of deprivation courtesy of endemic economic inequalities and a climate crisis which we are seemingly willing to allow to devour what is left of our forests, biodiversity and ice caps.

We know that diplomats around the UN generally work hard. They are skilled at compromise, at pouring over text that would make the eyes of the rest of us glaze over. They are also able to keep the windows of diplomacy open, to refuse to allow personal or national grievances to impede the potential for negotiating progress. But their energy is not the energy that global constituencies can easily relate to, the energy that communicates that we are genuinely in trouble, and that we are willing to do what is needed and all that is needed to remove threats to our existence while we are still able to do so.

Moreover, that we are willing to put more of ourselves on the line; we who function mostly within our bureaucratic and career bubbles, we who cannot pretend not to know, not to know what is coming, not to know what will happen once it comes, once the tipping points of violence and environmental degradation have been crossed for good.

If the processes at the UN these past two weeks are any indication, especially with regard to the NPT, it is still unclear if delegations can move beyond their training and instructions and convince the global public that they truly understand the moment. We will find out tomorrow if global constituents have been misled once more by rhetoric insufficiently backed by devotion, the sort of energy that keeps humanitarian actors seeking out lives to save in our numerous killing fields. Given the likelihood of insufficient movement, it behooves us to remind delegates that constituents deserve more than summary overviews of a month-long engagement, more than pledges “to do better next time.”

They deserve an apology.

Tags: climate, diplomacy, disarmament, urgency

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Power Grid: Accompanying the Traumatized and Those who Serve Them, Dr. Robert Zuber

22 Aug

To know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden. Goethe

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin. Sara Zarr

The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessings of the universe. Amit Ray

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know. Amy Tan

I am weary of this frail world’s decay. Murasaki Shikibu

I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. Albert Schweitzer

When you don’t think you can, hold on. James Frey

While riding the subway to and from our shared office this week, I noticed a new public service announcement among the placards which adorn each of the cars. This one read, “connections are stronger than addiction.”

This reminded me of what has now been years of accumulated evidence from neuro-biology that humans are, indeed, “hardwired for connection,” that as Dr. Amy Banks and colleagues put it over a decade ago, before the onset of a death-scattering pandemic and the systemic degrading of our politics, “we need to get back to the real basics of having relationships be at the center of our meaning.”

The implications of her work (and others in her field) lie far beyond the realm of the drug and alcohol addictions which were the sub-text of the subway messaging. Indeed, one can make the case that our “addictions” are, perhaps even more than they always have been, much broader and more pervasive than substances alone: the stubborn habits of the heart that bring pain to ourselves and others but that we feel powerless to change; the ideas and values which we have allowed to ossify into conspiracy, becoming more and more divorced from any human realities they might once have been intended to address; the defensiveness that rises to the surface at the slightest provocation, indeed often absent any provocation at all; the paranoia which comes from social isolation (often now self-imposed) and which attempts to project on to others a malevolence which has often taken shape first within our own souls.

As at least some have been reminded during this seemingly endless pandemic, connection remains a good portion of the cure for what now ails us. Unfortunately, it has also become uncomfortably clear across lines of age, of gender, of race, of culture, that we simply don’t know enough about each other — or perhaps even care to know — to nuance our responses to the complexities of other lives, to see the flaws but also the promise, to appreciate the contributions more than the inconveniences, to resist the rush to judge and to punish which often serves interests far darker than any alleged nobility of justice. We have “wearied of the world’s decay” in part because our experience of that decay is less and less first-hand, a product of images that tell us less than we think they do, as well as accounts from diverse media that tell us mostly what some think we want to hear or, perhaps more to the point, that share only what they think “our hearts will allow us to know.”

If as the neuro-biologists increasingly accept, that we are “hardwired to connect,” then much of our current behavior constitutes a dangerous denial of our very essence, a particularly distressing challenge to those who seek to keep connection at the heart of their own life’s mission, but also for those have suffered in greater measure and who understand the degree to which the “ripples of kind hearts” are indispensable to their own healing, indeed to the full restoration of their own capacity for kindness and compassion.

This week at the UN, amidst some appropriate hand-wringing over the fall of Afghanistan and its implications for everything from women’s rights to state corruption, amidst the latest crises of high winds and shifting earth heaped upon the already-traumatized people of Haiti, we gratefully joined with others in modes of reverence, mourning and connection. At a series of events honoring the sacrifices of peacekeepers, UN field personnel and humanitarian workers (as part of World Humanitarian Day), an array of speakers paid homage to those who choose to place their life energies at the service of others, to stay the course and “hold on” when others would be tempted to flee the scene or lift their hands in desperate frustration, those who choose to remain at their demanding posts, insisting as one staffer boldly said this week that threats from terrorist violence, a pandemic and climate-related factors often closing in around them are simply not enough to “deter humanitarian vocations,” are not enough to distract their attention from those “traumatized from attacks” including women made widows and children made orphans by weapons, famine or other forms of abuse.

While many in the audience resonated with the words of UN High Commission Bachelet honoring this “work of a lifetime,” to accompany survivors and raise our voices on their behalf, many also recognized that this is now, in places from Yemen to Tigray, much easier said than done. Yes, we must learn better how “to support each other” along life’s journey. Yes we must, as SG Guterres notes this week, place more services at the disposal of those facing unimaginable “heartbreak.” And yes, we must continue to honor and support the sometimes-incomprehensible risks taken each and every day by humanitarian workers in conflict zones — but this requires the rest of us to ensure an end to the violence which complicates every facet of their life-preserving work and which also claims the lives of far too many of the workers themselves well before their time.

And then there were the discussions focused on the survivors themselves, survivors of often horrific terrorist violence which represented, as noted by the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, “attacks on humanity itself.” As USG Voronkov acknowledged, there are times when our preoccupation with fighting terrorism “obscures our view of the victims who need more from us.” Indeed it can also obscure from view the testimony of victims who know for themselves what they need in order to overcome the trauma that generally lingers longer than they could possibly have imagined, trauma that, as one said, can change life dramatically “through no fault of your own.”

And what did they say they most need? For starters, they need people around them who can resist the temptation to forget, to forget about the dark side of the what this world can continue to offer up once the remembrances have concluded and the symbols of honor have been stored away for another year. Moreover, survivors of terror, or mass atrocity violence, or sudden displacement or tragic personal loss recognize that the pain can never be healed through social isolation, can never be restored by allowing personal trauma to metastasize into a life force, an addiction if you will, one which denies the core of our biological essence. It was so encouraging to hear one survivor after another call for “platforms for healing and connection,” for “powerful victims’ networks” which can help restore something close to full functionality in this challenging world. It was also encouraging to note the support expressed by survivors for the humanitarian workers who so often stand in courageous attention between those vulnerable persons for whom “time seems to be running out” and the person-centered services that can help them re-engage with more of the life which can still be experienced in many places as a kind of “inhabited garden.”

For those who doubt that lives of trauma can become lives of healing and purpose, for those who believe that the deep pain of violence and abuse is forever consigned to impede and isolate, we end as we began, with words from Amy Banks and her neuro-biology colleagues, those who understand that lasting change in our distraught human community is still possible despite all contrary evidence. The key to this change, they make clear, is within us, in the quality and steadfastness of our “motivation and interest in making different choices which will stimulate new areas of the brain and re-wire us.” And as they know, and as the survivors of violence and abuse we heard from this week and those humanitarians who accompany them also know, there is no choice more impactful to healing and change than the choice to connect, to widen our circles, to reinvest in what we think we know of others including those we have already “given up on,” to have the courage let whatever kindness we have at our disposal flow to every corner of life that needs it, to refute the lonely conspiracy and paranoia that a life of isolation and distance is prone towards, to affirm what is most natural to us rather than investing in what are often vast quantities of energy required to keep connection buried under layers of resentment, suspicion and grievance.

Every once in a while in our UN spaces, the traumatized and victimized among us serve up reminders to those of us who seek to “re-wire” our national and global institutions, to both recover the core of why they were founded in the first place and help them meet current expectations. One such reminder is directed squarely at us; that we also can recover and nourish that capacity at the core of our human condition, the connection that alone can ease the deepest pain, stem chronic suffering, vanquish isolation, and restore that kind, human presence which can steadfastly rewire our institutions and refresh relationships with those they are mandated to serve.

The good news is that we still have what it takes to do this, though we must resolve to return to the path of connection without delay. The longer we deny who we truly are, the longer we bury the power of our own hardwiring, the longer we will have to deal with the consequences of people and institutions being less, sometimes far less, than we need them to be.

Tags: connection, disarmament, healing, surivors, Terrorism, UN

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Planting Season: Young Advocates as Seeds of Peace, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Jan

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. Dinos Christianopoulos

It’s senseless to disarm the hands, if the heart remains armed. Bangambiki Habyarimana

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. E.B. White

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller

If things don’t work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again! Sarah Dessen

Art cannot change events. But it can change people. Leonard Bernstein

In some ways, the United Nations represents the epitome of an “if at first you don’t succeed” institution. Important discussions on emerging global issues occur long before resolutions are tabled and adopted. And many adopted UN resolutions appear in similar form, year after year, in the hope that additional states will “get the message,” on matters from capital punishment abolition to ensuring greater protection for journalists, “getting” indicated not only by support for the resolutions themselves but for the policy change at national level that the resolution seeks to promote.

And its not only with respect to UN resolutions, these carefully negotiated documents by diplomats trying to navigate between instructions from capital and the compromises needed to move policy priorities from possible to actual. In the realm of peace and security where we invest much of our attentions, change can be painfully – even deliberately slow, in part because of a lack of consensus regarding the direction that change should take, whose interests are served, how the consequences of change should be managed. This leads to some severe policy bottlenecks, such as with respect to Syria and Yemen as well as some stunning ironies such as this week when officials in the city of Bangui, Central African Republic were forced to declare a state of emergency just one day after the Security Council met to consider how best to confront armed groups determined to undermine and even reverse recent presidential election results.

Within the domain of weapons and weapons systems, there is also ample room for frustration with occasional if welcome, bursts of sanity in the form of resolutions and treaties which promise, albeit with significant caveats, to regulate or even prohibit altogether the weapons that continue to threaten human communities, even human civilization. These include weapons locked in silos or placed on submarines, weapons trafficked across borders or carelessly allowed to leak from government control into a vast illicit market, weapons placed in outer space under “dual use” cover, weapons designed to explode primarily in heavily populated areas; weapons with new “bells and whistles” manufactured at still-staggering rates and shipped off to states with dubious human rights records or without much of a clue regarding what to do with the weapons – still deadly – that are set to be replaced by newer models.

These are not, for the most part, new issues for the UN nor for the many NGOs gathered around headquarters with a keen interest in promoting a disarmed world. Their determination to find ways to end the threat from nuclear weapons has persevered, a threat which has only grown as the weapons themselves display greater precision and payload and as unresolved global tensions have provided ready (if not convincing) excuses for states seeking to hold on to their weapons stockpiles or even develop their own nuclear capabilities. Some of my closest UN colleagues, have invested a professional lifetime of thought and organizing energy in a valiant effort to solidify the relationship between disarmament and non-proliferation obligations, including obligations under international law, as well as to examine political obstacles to “general and complete disarmament,” and to remind governments and citizens of the overwhelming humanitarian imperative to keep these weapons out of harm’s way until they can be eliminated altogether.

I also have a long history with disarmament obligations and issues, which I won’t unpack here, except to say that nuclear weapons issues proved to be a “gateway” concern for me, one which I have never renounced or discarded but one which has made space for other “human security” concerns to which we are now linked by a bevy of excellent institutional partners who focus on torture and climate change, racial discrimination and biodiversity loss, atrocity crimes and incarcerated children, terrorism and corrupt governance, unsustainable cities and food insecurity. While making it clear that we endorse the specific concern of our nuclear weapons partners – that human security priorities must not be reconstituted as security “conditionalities” which excuse neglect for nuclear disarmament obligations – it remains our view that security linkages can lead in the best of circumstances to mutual security investments that can, among its other benefits, strengthen support for the disarmament we all want and need.

While more and more of my older disarmament friends and colleagues have moved towards a more nuanced security framework, especially with regard to gender, race and climate, our younger colleagues have embraced such linkages as a matter of course. This week’s entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) (for the treaty in multiple languages, click here: Ch_XXVI_9.pdf (un.org)) bears the broad policy and preambular concerns of several progressive states (such as Mexico, Austria and Costa Rica) along with youthful leadership from around the world who together brought the treaty into existence While holding on to the hope that the core promise of the TPNW – that nuclear weapons rendered “illegal” by this treaty will lead to concrete disarmament measures – we nevertheless applaud the degree to which the treaty’s prohibitions and positive obligations for ratifying states are certain to “shrink the space” for the influence of nuclear weapons, impeding security cooperation with nuclear-armed states in part through the rejection of longstanding “nuclear umbrellas” and related security arrangements.

The TPNW should perhaps be understood more as a stage than a solution, but it is a hopeful and welcome stage, one which seems to have unleashed some positive and inter-linked initiatives by young advocates who are well-suited to organize online and across barriers of identify and culture in this age of COVID. One initiative close to home is “Reversing the Trend,” which was also launched this week by a diverse group of young advocates with support from the diplomatic missions of Costa Rica, Kazakhstan and Kiribati. In a virtually seamless manner, the leaders of this initiative, including our office-mates Christian Ciobanu and Danielle Samler, have fashioned a format for discussion and advocacy that brings together youth from diverse cultural backgrounds but also links the nuclear weapons issue to other powerful impediments to their future (climate change and racial discrimination among them). They have also opened a space for creative contributions (fashion design and visual art so far) that not only help to contextualize nuclear weapons threats but allow young people to blend policy leadership and artistic expression as they navigate the personal, structural and ideological minefields that older folks like me have not done enough to clear.

These youthful advocates are skillful, articulate and determined. They know that their very future is on the line as pandemic variants continue to spread, as ice caps continue to melt, and as weapons continue to modernize and find new hiding places. They also know that tinkering with the existing frameworks is not likely to be good enough; they recognize that they must locate a healthier balance between “changing the world and enjoying the world;” and they are determined that efforts to “bury” their ideas and influences are destined to fail as these young people represent, indeed, the seeds of future well-being for themselves and so many others.

And the diplomats are paying attention. For instance, Ambassador Maritza Chan of Costa Rica, a longtime champion of the TPNW and advocate for “human security” lenses on contemporary threats, was one of those welcoming the Reverse the Trend launch. She reminded the largely youthful audience that security is ultimately “not based on military competition but on human cooperation,” that multilateralism is key to progress on peace, and that diverse voices worldwide, including a new generation of experts on human security and the rule of law, remain dedicated to ending what she described as a “perverse” arms race. For his part, the Kiribati Ambassador was more cautious, noting the longstanding and stubborn resistance to disarmament by the nuclear possessing states but also reassuring the audience that, in part due to the TPNW, nuclear weapons threats can still be overcome under UN auspices.

My own hope for initiatives like Reverse the Trend is that they can help examine and assess, together with the rest of us, which models of governance can be fixed and which need to be replaced; which skills and voices must get closer to the center of discussions about the “world we want” and not just the world that seems most likely ; which threats most impact their future and how can such threats be robustly identified and then addressed in tandem; which “seeds” these young people are keen to plant, may already have planted, and how we can all do more to help nurture a successful crop; which global problems are most likely to resist resolution and how can we best inspire perseverance across generations until they are finally sorted.

And perhaps we could add to that a bit of youthful guidance regarding a task that, certainly for my generation, has proven even more daunting, even more elusive than forging resolutions or negotiating limits on weapons and weapons systems: the task of disarming our own hearts as we seek to disarm the world.

Tags: disarmament, United Nations, youth

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Bee Keepers: Bending the Curve of Life under Stress, Dr. Robert Zuber

4 Oct

By the Late Tara Tidwell Bryan

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. Rainer Maria Rilke

That bird sat on a burning tree and sang the songs that this creation had never heard before. Akshay Vasu

The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. Anaïs Nin

If we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. Wendell Berry

I don’t know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We were all forged in the crucible. Gayle Forman

Because God took one look at Adam and said, ‘Wow. This guy’s going to need all the help he can get.’ And here we are. Nancy Mehl

I had a lovely and important message this week from a former intern now working in Vienna. A Polish citizen great of skill and big of heart, she lamented her current assignment with a multilateral agency, not out of ingratitude so much as impatience to move beyond bureaucratic maintenance towards those issues in the world that now beckon so many in her generation. As she put it to me, “I wish one day I could do something that actually matters.”

The stakes are high for this generation and the need to matter is often acute. Indeed, I think we under-estimate the longing of many people of all generations and life-circumstances to have or recover lives that matter more, incorporating higher levels of significance and even adventure than their daily routines and “realisms” generally encourage.

Many of us scoff at people of middle age who harken back to secondary school as the highlight-reel of their lives. But there is a clue in this that we are in danger of missing and are, in turn, endangered by missing. I remember listening to family members talking about their military service with a fondness that exceeded most all of their story-telling. That fondness, I was quite convinced, was related not to the violence of war but to the significance of service. This was a time in their lives when what they were doing really mattered, when the merits of their sacrifice were both encouraged and honored in a way that, in many instances at least, had not happened to them since. Few listened to them anymore. Few sought out their advice or paused to hear their stories. Their service was “past tense” but so was its mattering. What was “forged in the crucible” of war had become voices largely of nostalgia, almost empty of any larger impact.

Staying on this theme, I have seen so many photos since the recent, dismal US presidential debate of “patriots” who have been dubbed (and denigrated) as right-wing warriors, folks apparently preparing for some sort of “war” with their fellow-citizens, testing the limits of official response (and implicit permission) by grabbing their guns, donning military-style gear and taking to the streets to “defend” some makeshift iteration of morality, order and legacy. Without endorsing one iota of the tendency to conspiracy and lawlessness, I also wonder how long what I see in their faces and hear in their words has been simmering? But it is apparent that, in part due to a self-serving shout-out by the US president, these folks matter now, more than they have perhaps mattered in many years. Their ideas and actions have consequence again, both for their own self-worth and – as they see it at least – for the future of their country.

There is no part of that truth-defying intimidation and incitement that I can support; but as someone whose ideas and opinions on global issues and the “psychology” of our collective responses carry more weight than they surely deserve, I don’t overlook the fact that the people who do matter in this world continue to represent an all-too-small subset of the people who should matter. And some of these folks, in ways that are sometimes both violent and reality-challenged, are now declaring their insistence to matter.

The irony for me in all of this is that there are now so many crises vying for higher levels of attention and response, many of which have been either enhanced or exposed by virtue of the current pandemic. At the UN this past week alone, three events of existential importance, mostly virtual, called attention to threats that we have not done nearly enough to mitigate and for which we lack both full disclosure from leadership and sufficient hands-on-deck to truly care for our present and do “full justice” to our future.

All three of these High Level events were dripping with opportunities to matter, and all attracted a bevy of senior leadership from the world’s governments. Friday’s discussion on nuclear disarmament highlighted the dangerous expansion and/or reintegration of “modernized” nuclear weapons capability into national strategic defense doctrines, complete with threats to resume nuclear testing and move offensive capacity into outer space. There was also some reflection (mostly by Palau and other small states) on the impact of excess military spending on funding access for development needs and related global concerns including those highlighted in the UN General Assembly earlier in the week.

One of those concerns took center-stage on Thursday as states convened to assess the impact, 25 years on, of the Beijing Platform for Action on women’s equality. With statements (mostly by men) lasting well into the evening, one leader after another delivered prepared and often unremarkable statements seeking to convince us that gender equality is both indispensable to peaceful societies (surely right) and lies at the very heart of their domestic policy — though equality progress in many of these societies remains limited at best. Perhaps the presidents of Luxembourg and Costa Rica put it most helpfully as they focused their remarks on enhancing the “practical dimensions of equality” at a time when “not one nation” can claim to have achieved the goals of Beijing. “Not one.”

Lastly, Wednesday’s High-Level event was, to my mind at least, the most urgent of the three. On this day, world leaders and others convened virtually to assess the rapidly declining health of global biodiversity on land and in the sea, a decline so precipitous that it directly threatens the health of our agriculture, indeed calls into question the viability of the entire food cycle, not only for ourselves but for the still-abundant life forms with which we are still privileged to share this planet. And while most of us are rightly appalled by the sight of slaughtered elephants and emaciated polar bears, biodiversity loss is felt most acutely at the lower levels of the biological chain: the bees which are disappearing from our farms and gardens, the insects whose presence is no longer in sync with the birds who need them to sustain their migrations, the coral reefs which have been bleached into oblivion by warming seas. The image offered up by the director of the UN Development Program, of trucks full of bees traveling to save California farms from unpollinated crops, was a stark reminder of how disruptive we collectively continue to be to the natural rhythms and needs of our now abundance-challenged planet.

The science on this potential mass extinction event we seem determined to create is clear. As UNSG Guterres noted on Wednesday, we must now find a way to “bend the curve” on biodiversity loss and we are running out of time to do so. Such bending requires more thoughtful attention to economies pitched more to destruction than protection. But it also requires more initiative and activity at local level, urgently appealing to those many people (including and especially indigenous people) with the energy and skill to matter: to help lay the groundwork for a future in which loaded guns, clenched fists, predatory economics, bloated military budgets and unresolved inequalities and exclusions no longer have pride of place.

Such a future must also be more attuned to the very human though often unrequited desire to matter. A young woman from India speaking at the biodiversity summit responded to what she interpreted (and not without reason) as a string of often “empty statements” by global leadership: “We are ready to do our part,” she intoned, “Are you?”

Like my former intern, this young woman is clearly determined to matter, and there are many millions more like the two of them. Our task now is to get back to work on what ails us as a species and as a planet, in part by getting to the heart of what it means to matter, what people of diverse backgrounds require such that they can call forth more of the “riches of life” for themselves and for all with whom they come in contact. It also means learning how to better accompany each other as we “sing the songs that creation has never heard before,” including songs revering the presence of the bees, the trees and other life forms on which our own survival depends and that we simply must do more to keep.

Tags: biodiversity, disarmament, gender, meaning and purpose, United Nations

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

7 Apr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: disarmament, Security Council

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The Courage of Good Questions, Dr. Robert Zuber

5 Mar

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Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. – Marie Curie

I’ve always been really curious about things and slightly confused by the world, and I think someone who feels that way is in a good position to be the one asking questions. -Terry Gross

I spent many years in school, but it was rarely a happy or satisfying place for me. There were simply too many times when the “who said so” of ideas trumped the complexities behind what was actually being conveyed. For me, school was full of ideas that seemed beyond reproach when they left the mouths of the instructors, only to be revealed as incomplete and at times even misleading down the road.

And such a long road it was. It was not until my doctoral program that I literally “lucked into” mentors who were more passionate for their ideas than for their careers, who were far more curious than defensive, who understood at the deepest levels that most of the problems soon to confront the world had not yet been faced, let alone overcome.

These mentors pushed me hard, beyond trying to impress others with my edgy “cleverness,” towards a place of rigor and kindness – rigor characterized by attentiveness and the willingness to “ask the next question,” and kindness grounded in the (hopefully) humble recognition that all of us, even the most accomplished in worldly terms, have much still to learn.

Part of what Global Action seeks to accomplish (and occasionally does) is to embody that all-too-rare combination of attentiveness and curiosity, understanding that the best questions make good use of existing context and help to examine not only what has been “settled,” but to preview the ground soon to move under our feet, requiring more of what Jeremy Taylor once referred to as “the incontinency of the spirit.” In our office, we don’t often abandon attentiveness for chatter, but we do at times try to ask good and hard questions at the UN, not to draw attention to ourselves but rather to the unresolved matters of policy that are both far from consensus and close to undermining our current, fragile stasis.

The UN can be a remarkable place, filled to the brim with experience and expertise on the widest possible range of policy concerns. It provides, in some ways, an education like no other. But it also harbors noticeable intellectual deficits. There are few opportunities for genuine open-ended discussion on policy needs and responsibilities. There are few questions posed that genuinely push “authorized speakers” to signal new space for potential policy shifts. We are a building full of consensus-builders and (on the NGO side) campaigners, useful skills to be sure, but skills not ideal for breaking up our superficially optimistic mood or reminding people of the hard truth that some of the consensus resolutions they worked so hard on are unlikely to accomplish much in the world beyond First Avenue.

Two examples from this past week highlighted the pedagogical frustrations and opportunities of this very political space. On Wednesday, the UN University organized an excellent discussion on the problem of modern slavery. The keynote speaker made learned and helpful background remarks which emphasized distinctions between the “prohibition” of slavery and its “eradication.” The pitch was, as is often the case in UN conference rooms, for the provision of national legislation that parallels and supplements international legal obligations to prohibition.

Fair enough, though as we pointed out, there is a deep conundrum attached to this approach. Within the Human Rights Committee, for instance, a frequent response given by states whose human rights record has been called to account is something along the lines of, “this can’t be happening here, we have laws to prohibit it.” But as NGOs in Geneva are fond of reminding Committee members, the presence of laws does not by any means guarantee eradication of the practice. Thus our concern that a focus on legislation alone is insufficient to end the scourge, while a focus on eradication might make states more reluctant to sign on to human rights agreements in the first place. How to navigate this problem?

The response we received was unfulfilling at best, almost as though the expert hadn’t considered this conundrum previously (surely he had) or failed to appreciate it being brought to his attention during a session that was being webcast. Moreover, no one in the audience approached us afterwards (or even made eye contact) to continue the conversation. Apparently, ours was not a polite, courteous question, despite the fact that it seemed well within the band-width and interests of the speaker to respond and reflect.

This is what the UN is like too often – implicit and even excessive deference to “experts” and “authorities” who are often, but by no means always, on the best possible policy track.

Fortunately, there are bursts of healthy curiosity to be found if one is open to them. One such occasion was on Tuesday when Ecuador ably convened a gathering to discuss prospects for a Fourth Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD). There has been no such “special session” for 29 years now and delegates spent most of this morning discussion debating the scope of a possible meeting, whether to focus on one of the many stubborn areas of disarmament dysfunction or instead authorize a thorough review of all disarmament-related processes.

At one point, the Ecuadorian diplomat intervened, wondering aloud (lamenting perhaps) why the word “disarmament” so rarely is heard now across UN headquarters? The question was simultaneously simple and brilliant. For if disarmament has been downgraded in at least some quarters from a core UN priority, can a “special session” possibly help to restore its luster?

Despite the fact that disarmament matters attract some of the most capable diplomats in the UN system, the topic itself has never had a lower profile in my entire UN-based tenure. Part of this is due to the discipline itself – inflexible architecture, low levels of state trust, treaties that are disregarded or are full of loopholes that uncooperative states are happy to exploit, invitations to weapons manufacturing states to hide behind consensus as a way of undermining disarmament agreement, a focus on managing the flows and modernization of weapons rather than reducing their volume and “footprint.”

But part of this low profile is due to successes in other parts of the UN, successes that have spawned a series of new, interesting, policy-rich discussions on conflict prevention and sustainable peace, conversations that often explore the implications of omnipresent weapons for development, climate, trafficking, even gender based violence. Disarmament practitioners are only rarely present for these discussions; indeed SDG 16 on “peaceful and inclusive societies” was drafted and adopted with almost no involvement from disarmament-focused diplomats or related UN resource persons.

Whether another SSOD can resurrect the UN disarmament priority is debatable. What for us is less debatable is that our collective task here remains not to get things settled so much as to get them right. Good questions – probing and respectful – are important contributions to ensuring timely and credible responses to constantly evolving global challenges, including human rights and disarmament challenges.

The most-curious Ralph Waldo Emerson once prodded teachers that when your students correct your mistakes, “hug them.” There is little reason to believe that hugging will become common practice inside the UN, but a bit more curiosity regarding gaps yet to be filled — and perhaps even a modicum of gratitude for those who expose such gaps — would help keep us all on a more progressive policy path.

Tags: curiosity, development, disarmament, human rights

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The UN’s Coordination Dilemma, Kai Schaefer

25 Nov

Editor’s Note: Kai is one of our fine group of fall 2016 interns and fellows. Having orginally come here to pursue an interest in Responsibility to Protect, Kai has taken a keen interest in both disarmament affairs and the working methods of key UN agencies, including and especially the Security Council. The following reflects his rapidly expanding policy interests.

With heightening tensions at the international level– recently manifest during the Security Council meeting of October 27^th which ended with a walkout by the U.S, UK, and Ukrainian delegations when the Syrian representative took the floor — the efficient functioning of the United Nations system and its subsidiary bodies is of increased importance. However, in addition to increasing tensions among the world’s great powers — especially Russia and the United States — which prevents the efficient functioning of the Security Council, the UN system itself and its lack of coordination creates various obstacles that need to be overcome.

The problem of coordination and cooperation shortcomings among the various GA committees, UN bodies and subsidiary organs is not a novel problem. As the 71^st GA session continues to unfold, the international community would well benefit from increased dialogue especially between the disarmament and human rights committees, but also in linking to diverse areas of peace and security more generally.

A recent example of the lack of coordination is draft resolution L.41 that was introduced by Austria and adopted by the first committee on October 27^th with almost three-quarters support from the General Assembly. L.41 calls on all states to start negotiations on a legally binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons in 2017. Especially given the fact that the resolution was not supported by any of the nuclear weapons states, the lack of coordination and failure of states to link crucial issues of security, development, and human rights is equally hampering in creating treaty bodies and resolutions that will have lasting impact.

First Committee disarmament debates in New York seemingly occur in a vacuum, shielded from external influences and events, as well as security-related trends highlighted in other UNGA committees especially in 3^rd. The inherent connections between disarmament and socio-economic development, human rights, and international law often remain unexamined. Likewise, the NGO’s involve in the promotion of L.41 would benefit from a widening of their vision for disarmament by taking note of other events and advancements occurring at UNHQ.

This problem, however, is systemic in nature and goes beyond narrowly focused NGO’s and member-states negotiating at the UN. The UN cannot necessarily be characterized as a learning community, which is in part desired by certain member-states. The shuffling around of diplomatic delegations and missions in New York make sustained efforts in developing robust and lasting political commitments difficult to achieve. Moreover, as the UN is often described as one of the world’s largest bureaucracies, a certain degree of overlap, duplication, waste, and lack of coordination is hard to avoid.

Much of the work carried out at the UN suffers from the oft-mentioned “silo approach.”Many delegations now realize that in order to create policies that will have a lasting and sustained impact on the ground, increased coordination among the numerous UN bodies is needed. The value of cooperation and coordination among NGO’s, IGO’s, civil society, academics, epistemic communities, MNC’s, and nation-states has long been recognized. However, the continuing lack of practical coordination within the UN itself often remains unaddressed. Certainly, the amount of specialized knowledge which is at the UN’s disposal is one of its core strengths. Nonetheless, the current compartmentalized approach taken by the UN often misses crucial links among security topics and across policy spheres. The UN membership continues to insist that peace cannot exist without development, and development cannot be achieved without lasting peace. However, public rhetoric and institutional structures are clearly not always aligned.

In regard to the previously mentioned resolution L.41 calling for negotiations to ban nuclear weapons, it is noteworthy to state that many of the arguably most compelling and probably more effective security-related discussions occur not in First Committee but instead in the
Third, a committee largely centered on the protection and promotion of human rights. In order to create effective and efficient treaties centered on disarmament that will end up having a genuine effect on the ground, it is crucial to consult with voices of locally engaged staff, special rapporteurs, and persons directly affected by weapon inflicted violence. Thus the ongoing stalemate in First Committee could be overcome by joint events between first and third committee, and more significantly between all relevant stakeholders, and not solely by the disarmament community alone.

In like manner, the UN and international community as a whole, would benefit from stronger emphasis on preventive measures instead of acting largely retroactively. This holds especially true for the Security Council which tends to only take action when crises become unsurmountable. Increased consultations between the SC and TCC’s / PCC’s as occurred on November 10^th is also welcome in order to create sustainable peace and foster capacity building. Furthermore, coordination shortcomings within the security domain at the UN could be overcome in part by not scheduling Security Council and Peacebuilding Commission sessions at the same time. The link between coordination and prevention is crucial in this regard. Essentially, a fundamental flaw is not the lack of information available at the UN, but how such information is being processed, disseminated (and even scheduled) throughout the organization.

Nevertheless, despite coordination and cooperation shortcomings within the UN, it remains the epicenter of multilateral diplomacy. The Security Council continues to be the arguably single most important chamber in the world. However, due to deadlocks over Syria, the rest of the UN membership is becoming increasingly anxious to find an end to six years of brutal conflict. A General Assembly informal dialogue organized by Canada on October 20^th underlines efforts of various states no longer willing to sit on the sidelines until the Council finds the means to take urgent action on Syria, especially in Eastern Aleppo. The participation in this GA dialogue by Council members both permanent and non-permanent accentuates this general concern.

The UN is tasked with settling the world’s most protracted conflicts and finding solutions to some of mankind’s most pressing issues and problems. There is almost no issue area in today’s globalized world that has not been impacted by the UN or at least found its way on to the UN’s agenda. This becomes evident upon examination of a plethora of “side events” at UNHQ sponsored by states, NGO’s, civil society, and the UN itself. During these side events the real scope of UN activities becomes apparent, highlighting the ongoing relevance and importance of the UN, providing a forum where a multitude of relevant stakeholders can raise awareness, set agendas, and sustain momentum towards agreed upon policies and treaties. Nevertheless, it is vital that the UN remains more than a mere talk-shop. Enhancing internal coordination regarding issues, scheduling and more can help create broader, sounder security policy.

Tags: disarmament, nuclear weapons, Security Council

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

20 Mar

ICJ (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: disarmament, nuclear weapons, Rule of law

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Measuring Stick: Keeping Track of Disarmament Progress

12 Oct

At the opening of the General Assembly First Committee last Tuesday morning, and reinforced at a side event later in the day hosted by New Zealand and with the participation of Mexico, Indonesia and the First Committee Chair, High Commissioner for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane made several upbeat, and even hopeful statements regarding the possibility of progress in both the machinery and objectives of disarmament affairs.

Two statements struck us as particularly pertinent, the first of which is her quite correct contention that there is an important relationship between progress on disarmament and the successful pursuit of other core UN goals. This of course requires more dialogue between and amongst the goal setters. During this month, other General Assembly committees as well as the Security Council, UNODC and other agencies are addressing policy on terrorism and foreign fighters, stable and peaceful societies, strengthening the rule of law, rapid response peacekeeping, the trafficking in arms and drugs, and other issues that have important perspectives to contribute to First Committee deliberations. As we have noted over and over in this blog, relegating disarmament discussions to one GA committee creates temptation to needless reiteration and even robs discussions of some of their urgency. Aside perhaps from discussions on humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, the compelling responsibilities to reduce weapons transfers, eliminate needless weapons spending and stop illicit weapons flows are often more keenly felt in these other security-related discussions.

The other intriguing statement by Ms. Kane focused on progress in developing “metrics” to guide and measure progress on the implementation of various disarmament resolutions and treaties. We need, she noted, significantly more in the way of results-based implementation.

Indeed we do. Her emphasis on metrics adds significant value. We have long argued that, especially in the context of the Programme of Action (PoA) on Small Arms and Light Weapons, more disclosure of successful initiatives and less normative posturing would contribute much to confidence building in conventional weapons – confidence in the quality of interventions generated by the PoA and confidence in the ability of the entire UN system – including its often beleaguered disarmament machinery — to leverage meaningful progress on weapons spending and weapons systems.

But there are issues here as well that require some attention moving forward. First, we need to maintain clear distinctions between outcomes and impact. For many years, I ran a food pantry in an East Harlem neighborhood, the objective of which was not to pass out groceries – which we did in large amounts — but to use food security as a lever to enhance the health and participation of the community. That we did not always succeed at this was a failure of skill and stamina, probably mine specifically. But we never confused full grocery bags with any outcome that was related to the achievement of full and meaningful lives.

Donors in many sectors are increasingly driven by ‘numbers’ which sometimes indicate and sometimes belie impact. In its recent statement announcing cuts in its contributions to the UN budget, Norway underscored that its preferred development strategy must become driven by metrics that are more about impact than piling up statistics. While we hope that Norway reconsiders levels of its general contribution to the UN, its point is well taken. The point of diplomatic and capacity support is not activity to generate numbers but meaningful, sustainable progress towards a more peaceful, stable existence for more of the world’s people.

Second, there are dimensions of metrics in this instance that go beyond ticking the boxes of disarmament progress, one of which has to do with a full accounting of stakeholders and responsible parties. It is important not to horde credit for disarmament progress any more than we should horde information regarding ‘best practices’ on reducing or eliminating the impacts of specific weapons. With all of the crises we face related to weapons, we must steadfastly resist any temptation to marginalize state and non-state actors willing to help address these challenges.

A potential example of misplaced metrics in this sense is a large and quite attractive display that can now be seen near the Vienna Café in the newly renovated General Assembly building. The display marks the successful entry into force of the Arms Trade Treaty and is essentially a series of multi-lingual aspirations by government officials and select members of the NGO Control Arms about how the ATT is poised to become a ‘game changer’ when it comes to saving lives at risk from illicit transfers.

Putting aside the excessive claims of treaty impact that so often accompany the ATT sales force, the otherwise welcome display misrepresents – miscounts if you will – the footprint of a single NGO coalition and a handful of “supportive’ states in bringing the ATT into force. As someone who watched and weighed in for many years as the ATT process took shape, who contributed daily to an ATT Monitor whose impact on the negotiations was considerable at least for some states, and who was in regular contact with NGOs in Geneva and in diverse global regions trying to knock down the ‘gates’ of policy access, I have some sense of how much more this display left out than it included.

In addition, I distinctly recall discussion and negotiating rooms over many years filled with diplomats from states far beyond the handful of (mostly benevolent, enthusiastic, well-meaning) co-sponsors. Simply put, this treaty could not exist without these states as well and their many hours of deliberative investment. Indeed, from our reading it was the states who raised (what we felt were) often valid concerns, rejecting the easiest and most immediate consensus, that helped make this a better treaty in some significant aspects that it would have been otherwise. As we move beyond entry into force, some of these states (and civil society groups) still need convincing on one or more key points, and these concerns should remain tethered to the Treaty implementation process.

Let me be clear. GAPW would never agree to be the focal point of any display on any of the issues with which it is concerned. However, we do recognize that, states have the right to fund NGOs and even to brand them in UN spaces if they so choose. But in the case of disarmament or any other field of UN activity, such branding comes with a reminder that metrics is more than counting the equivalent of grocery bags – it is also about assisting as best we can in all its aspects related to the building self-sufficient and resilient lives. And it is about acknowledging to the best of our ability diverse and even essential contributions to complex processes beyond the most obvious and best funded suspects.

Dr. Robert Zuber

Tags: ATT, disarmament, GeneralAssembly, small arms

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Disarmament Deadline: Powering Down a Three Year Cycle

20 Apr

In reviewing the most recent versions of the Disarmament Commission Working Papers submitted by the Chairs of both Working Group I (nuclear weapons) and II (conventional weapons), it would seem that we are getting close to some kind of agreement whereby recommendations will be forthcoming that can both bind the two Working Groups within a successful process and provide real guidance to a disarmament community badly in need of deliberative assistance.

Without disclosing the specific contents of these Working Papers (negotiations on text language are well under way), we would like to offer the following comments:

After three weeks and, in essence, three years of the current policy cycle, it is imperative that the Disarmament Commission renders a set of recommendations on its two policy objectives – nuclear disarmament and confidence building in the field of conventional weapons. As we have noted in other contexts, the value of these recommendations lies as much in building confidence in the Disarmament Commission itself as in providing working ‘capital’ to inspire movement on some of the difficult disarmament challenges that we all face.

Confidence, of course, is largely in the eyes of the beholder, but Working Group II especially seems to have found the language to facilitate some movement in that direction, in part by keeping in mind the nature of the deliberative process – recommending next steps in areas such as stockpile management or ending the diverted arms trade rather than engaging in preemptive policy precedents that are the proper domain of other parts of the disarmament machinery.

The ‘bar’ regarding Working Group I is set higher of course, since the objective is the elimination of a potentially devastating weapons system rather than spreading confidence to address a range of weapons tasks, from marking and tracing to regulation of the global arms trade. Still, as weapons of all kinds increase in destructive potential and find new pathways (i.e. unmanned aerial vehicles, outer space) for threat or use, an approach that is disarmament-focused (more than about mere regulation) and at the same time committed to greater trust building among states should be able to result in shared policy advice.

That task is hardly a modest one. As noted by Working Group II, confidence building measures cover a broad range of mutually reinforcing activities of a political, military, economic, social, humanitarian and cultural nature. This is important point, tying the work of disarmament to other core functions of the international community and reminding diplomats and others that all work on weapons includes confidence building dimensions.

Some delegations have taken their Working Group responsibilities quite seriously. Mexico for instance has offered its own recommendations for achieving nuclear disarmament, joining other proposals offered by the Non-Aligned Movement and the League of Arab States, as well as the significant input on Working Group I drafts offered by Iran, Egypt, China, Brazil, the UK, Morocco, South Africa and other states.

The essence of Mexico’s position takes account of the fact that, “in the past, weapons have been eliminated after they have been outlawed. We believe that this is the path to achieving a world without nuclear weapons.”

While delegates seem united in affirming the need for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, Mexico’s strong commitment to a legally binding instrument towards that end is unlikely to be echoed in the final Working Group I document. Indeed there are several other items of importance to us that are also unlikely to be included: modernization comes to mind as does a stronger insistence on convening a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone conference with full engagement by regional states. In addition, it would also be useful from our standpoint to reaffirm that nuclear disarmament and its conventional counterpart are best promoted through multiple lenses – humanitarian to be sure, but also legal, political and even ethical. A combination of lenses that can reinforce commitments and inspire greater will to abide by them seems to us to be the most propitious path.

But the most important thing now is to produce a document that satisfies the basic commitment of the Disarmament Commission to the productive policy engagement by the remainder of the UN’s disarmament machinery. While disarmament is a matter of utmost urgency, this particular deliberative body must show it can first walk before being expected to move at a more urgent pace.

Some good, sound, actionable suggestions from each Working Group that provide guidance without threatening work in other disarmament settings would be a welcome outcome of this final week of a long and winding cycle, welcome for the Commission’s future as well as for the wider world.

Dr. Robert Zuber

Tags: disarmament, Disarmament Commission, disarmament machinery, Nuclear disarmament

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Measuring Stick: Keeping Track of Disarmament Progress

Disarmament Deadline: Powering Down a Three Year Cycle

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