Security Council Chamber Mural from Norway
What Modest Dreamers We Have Become. Zadie Smith
Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. Coco Chanel
I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Viktor E. Frankl
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. Leonardo da Vinci
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. Dalai Lama XIV
Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. Francis Chan
Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. Flannery O’Connor
It is common to this specific weekly resource that, while its origins are squarely within the framework of multilateral policy engagement in general and the UN in particular, posts about the UN are always among the least read of all our contributions.
Some of this resistance is understandable. The UN has issued many resolutions, made many promises, that are candidates for “effort” awards more than achievement awards. We “try” our best to mobilize governments on climate change, but global temperatures have actually risen since the signing of the Paris accords. We “try” to get governments to honor their groundbreaking commitments to the sustainable development goals, but a combination of spreading COVID-19 infections and lukewarm intent to change what needs to be changed — and not just what we are “willing” to change — has set some of goals and targets back in ways we might not have anticipated. And on COVID itself, we are almost a year into a pandemic that has killed people on a scale that is generally reserved for our World Wars, a staggering total despite daily briefings and admonitions from UN agencies to better align our behavior on infections and vaccines with existing risks.
And this recitation does not even count the UN’s attempts to promote democracy and human rights in a world increasing seduced by authoritarians and their ethno-centric lenses, nor by the conflicts that continue to rage, year after year, resolution after resolution, tarnishing the Security Council’s reputation and creating humanitarian emergencies from Myanmar to Cameroon which drain massive amounts of member state resources and push the formidable skills and bravery of UN humanitarian personnel (and their NGO counterparts) to the breaking point.
Despite its many tentative-only successes and resolutions more ignored than embraced, the Security Council remains the focus of a UN system still struggling to convince its own members to abide by the values and obligations which underpin membership. Council meetings and press briefings deliver routinely higher levels of press and NGO interest. Council failures and successes are more likely to make front-page news than anything else that the UN does or tries to do (at least until the current pandemic exploded on to the scene). Council reform –whether related to its member-state composition or the use of the veto by its permanent five members – is always a “hot” topic among the general UN membership, most of whom feel, not without reason, that the Council represents the dynamics of a world long-gone and is simply no longer representative of current geo-political realities let alone of the security needs and interests of UN states.
And yet, despite disconnects within the Council itself and with the general membership, despite a legacy of half-successes which impacts virtually every aspect of the UN’s work –personnel and states largely without a voice regarding how the Council does its business — states frequently do not hesitant to campaign for an elected, two-year Council tenure. Part of the motivation for this is clearly tied to national prestige and the right to chime in on security policy on a regular basis (either as individual states or as part of a group such as the African (A3+1), the “1” for this cycle being St. Vincent and the Grenadines). But it is also a lot of work, especially in chairing “subsidiary organs” and especially for small missions such as the soon-to-depart Dominican Republic which managed to “punch well above its weight” but still had to work much-too hard to keep up with the other, larger members of their “class,” let alone with the likes of the US, China and Russia.
Complicating matters is the fact that the Council itself is currently lacking leadership commensurate with its lofty status. This is not a high-water mark for representation from the Permanent Five members, a situation which has created openings for elected members, especially so for the five members of this current, soon-to-depart class. But it also has exacerbated tensions as elected members attempted to steer the Council into more productive if not calmer waters, to help move the world (as the Council chamber mural suggests we should) from greater conflict to a greater peace. In this class, Germany was the core provocateur, publicly chiding (mostly) Russia and China for ignoring the human rights dimensions of conflict and for enabling rights abuses on a virtually unprecedented scale in places like Syria. However, the fact that Germany was perceived as stepping beyond protocol while largely ignoring abuses by other permanent and elected members was not lost on the Chinese whose final retort to the German Ambassador upon completion of his tenure was “good riddance,” a phrase which the Chinese might want to hold at the ready as a new group of feisty (we hope) elected members joins the Council on January 1: India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway.
This incoming group might do well to study the class they are replacing which, to my view at least, ticked off the boxes that make elected members key to Council effectiveness and, we can only hope, eventual Council reform. Of these boxes, a couple stand out: First, elected members must be willing to expose willful limitations in the Council’s ability to fully grasp and address the manifold causes and implications of global conflict. From Belgium’s extraordinary advocacy for children’s rights and welfare and Germany’s insistence on climate change and gender dimensions in all conflict analysis, to Indonesia’s constant reminder that the Council’s job is ultimately to “save lives” and that “neighbors know best” how to achieve peace in local and regional contexts, this group was not shy about the “thematic obligations” which can broaden and enliven the traditional security formulations which have defined the Council “bubble” for far too long. Add to this South Africa’s leadership on strengthening (and properly funding) African peace operations and the compassionate but insistent interventions by the Dominican Republic, including on the security challenges of Caribbean and other small island states, and this class was clearly prepared to expand security dynamics to embrace all that we need to address and not simply those that the permanent Council members are willing to address.
In addition, this class perhaps as much as any others, clearly understood its responsibility to the rest of the UN membership, indeed to the global community, to ensure that a range of current security threats remain in focus. This group understands as well that its individual and collective responsibility for peace and security does not end when this calendar year does, but can be engaged in other multilateral forums, including the UN’s own General Assembly and Peacebuilding Commission. And by working with the new class of elected members as well as the class which rolls over into 2021, they can help keep pressure on the Council to end its sometimes petty bickering cloaked in national interest and demand successes in areas that really matter, especially areas of conflict prevention and resolution that can spare the people of this planet famine and displacement, trafficking and discrimination in multiple forms.
One of the fears coming out of the current pandemic and accompanying global insecurity is that we have collectively become “modest dreamers,” content to slog along in our own lives and excuse our institutions for doing likewise. We have willingly lowered our own sights and simultaneously lowered the bar for places, like the UN Security Council, for which “success” is now too-often measured in small, tepid increments rather than in grander insistences. For those who still care about such matters, and I think we all should, thanks must be extended to this outgoing class of elected Council members for reminding us that our bar for peace must always be set high, that the pandemic is not an excuse for failing to make and keep promises that matter to the world, that the Council can and must set a better example for others rather than wallowing, session after session, issue after issue, in the self-generated muck of its own politicized limitations, and that the values of the UN Charter are for the permanent members to aspire to as well — to improve their own performance — and not merely to serve as one more threat to hold over the heads of other states.
I didn’t always agree with the priorities and statements of this class of elected members. But they were on the right track most of the time and, more than that, they cared about what the Council was doing and why, the messages that were being sent out from this chamber to those millions of women, men and children whose lives has been ravaged by the conflicts the Council was unable or unwilling to stop. This was a group that wanted to “happen to things,” happen through their thoughtful clarifications but also through their willingness to make the necessary sacrifices, open every accessible door, and use all the tools in the toolbox – not only the coercive or threatening ones – to ensure both the well-being of global constituents and a UN community more compliant with the values which bound the community together in the first place.
We urge the new class of elected members to take up their responsibilities with that same sense of determination, to help prevent conflict whenever humanly possible but also to restore the full functionality of Council processes and insist on successes that are worthy of what might be still – and must become again – the world’s single most important chamber.
And to those of you who care enough about the UN and its role in global security to wade through this post, our heartfelt gratitude is extended to you with best wishes for a healthier and more peaceful new year.
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