Tag Archives: General Assembly

Small Fry: States and Stakeholders on the Front Lines to Save Multilateralism, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 May

You hide to protect yourself.  Charlotte Eriksson

She hadn’t chosen the brave life. She’d chosen the small, fearful one.  Ann Brashares

It started small, as such fates often do. Nancy Springer,

With a great passion, you can do so much with your little talent.  Utibe Samuel Mbom

Welcome to our tribe of misfits and outcasts and rebels and dreamers. We are the story-weavers. And we’re all on this ride through the galaxy together.  L.R. Knost

At an earlier point in the lifecycle of Global Action, we were described by a former UN official who shall remain unnamed as “small but mighty.”  The small part has persevered through staff and office changes and a pandemic that forced us to rethink all that we had been doing.   As we resume some vestige of our place of scrutiny inside the UN, on social media, and as an honest broker between communities of policy and practice, the term “mighty” no longer applies, if it ever did.  Our concern now is to do as much as we are able with our “little talent,” our modest capacity and almost non-existent budget.   We weren’t prepared for the changes and choices that the pandemic would prompt.  We weren’t prepared either for that time when the doors of multilateralism would reopen, confronting diplomats and even groups like ours with challenges and outright crises with existential implications for the UN if not for the entire human race.  No longer mighty in any real or imagined sense of that term, there is still work for us to do, a role to play, a fate to help transform for many beyond our modest blog and twitter audiences.

As you surely recognize, the global community at present is absorbed by a needless war waged by a permanent member of the Security Council against a neighbor previously part of its larger “Union.”  While there are places on earth which suffer even more from armed violence and attendant deprivation, the aggression against Ukraine has hit a raw nerve.  Without digression into the specifics of that impact, it is clear that this conflict has implications beyond Ukraine’s borders, including food insecurity for states within and beyond Africa dependent on Ukrainian wheat, national budgets already strained from a global pandemic dipping frantically into the global weapons market, and states close to the conflict zone scrambling to find reassuring security ties which may or may not ultimately reassure.

In addition to the norm-busting atrocity crimes associated with the Ukraine aggression, it is the UN system itself which seems to be teetering on the brink of yet another stern blow to its credibility.   Despite all of the activity around UN Headquarters (especially in the General Assembly) since the first inklings of invasion – from ocean health and international justice to peacebuilding financing and the strengthening of global prohibitions on torture, slavery and violations against children — there have been few moments devoid of an  undercurrent of dread about the future of an organization (especially given its Security Council) which can muster up brave and competent humanitarian response to conflicts which it, time and again, can neither prevent nor resolve in a timely manner. One or more of the larger powers, once more and with unprecedented bravado, has demonstrated that the rules only apply, if they apply at all, to the smaller states, the ones that can be pushed around, the ones who must “hold their noses” in diplomatic terms due to their security and economic ties with the larger states, ties which UN diplomats are rarely authorized to threaten. 

I’m sure this is true for others as well, but in my own case the volume of “suggestions” from friends and colleagues that this might be the time to get out of the UN rather than double down on at least a couple of core UN-related commitments has grown dramatically.   After all, if small states can be maneuvered into relative submission by the security interests of the major global powers, how much easier is it to push our little NGO into a corner where we are free to fight imaginary windmills of global policy without the slightest chance of altering their movements?

For over 20 years through some very lean and uncertain times, we and others  have never accepted banishment to that corner, have never accepted the notion that our size automatically guarantees policy impotence.   And to its credit, the UN system and many of its smaller member states are pushing back as well, are both insisting and demonstrating that a system which guarantees sovereign equality at its core does not have to fold in the face of this latest (and in some ways most severe) challenge to UN Charter values by one of the states once accorded a special responsibility to uphold those values.

You can see evidence of this small state trend all over the UN system.  Barbados through its extraordinary Prime Minister Mia Mottley has helped keep the UN focus on the particular economic and ecological vulnerabilities of small island states.  Liechtenstein has been a consistent force on international justice and recently shepherded a resolution through the General Assembly triggering a GA meeting every time a permanent Security Council member issues a veto in that chamber.   Costa Rica has been a consistent supporter and enabler on issues from gender justice to disarmament. Kenya has been a strong and principled voice in a UN Security Council desperate for its policy clarity.  Fiji and other Pacific states have sounded the alarm on ocean health including existential threats from warming seas and declining fish stocks.  And the current President of the General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid from the Maldives, has taken care to ensure that the GA is involved in all relevant issues — from development finance to pandemic vaccine access and Security Council reform; and that that the voices of a wide range of small states – beyond regional statements and those by groups such as the Non-aligned Movement and The Group of 77 and China – are encouraged, heard and respected.

And the GA president is not isolated in this effort.  Last week, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Singapore convened an event entitled “Small States, Multilateralism and International Law” which highlighted reasons and resources relevant to why multilateralism and international law mean so much to small states and what such states can do to preserve a flawed but indispensable system from the too-frequent ravages of larger states and their leadership.   As Chair of the  Forum of Small States (FOSS), the MFA underscored a range of ways that small states can positively impact multilateral forums, including their insistence on both promise keeping and in promoting stability in matters of economy, ecology and economy upon which such promises can indeed be met.

During this session, some wise and passionate contributions emerged from small states across the globe, including from Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs who urged all to “push back against isolationism and unilateralism” and to reaffirm International law as our “guard-rail.” Denmark affirmed the role of small states as “true guardians” of the international order and a corrective to a still impactful “might makes right” mentality.   Even China took the floor both to acknowledge that “large states are not particularly popular at present,” and to insist that all must push harder to eliminate the “unfairness and injustice” in the international system. 

But it was the GA president Shahid who provided the main takeaways, for me at least, reminding the audience of his role in upholding the legitimacy of the Assembly in part through assurances that the voices of small and large members in the Hall over which he presides “have the same status,” while insisting that “states can be both small and significant,” empowered and empowering.  Indeed it may turn out that unlocking the full bravery and wisdom of small states will be key to preserving the credibility of a UN which continues to groan under the weight of threats from large states using UN mechanisms in part as a backhanded way to achieve national interests, including those at firm and resolute odds with the values and priorities embedded in the UN Charter.

We know from our own work that the world is filled with “story weavers,” rebels and dreamers who wonder aloud if the structures of global governance we have inherited and done too little to change can be trusted with the immense crises chipping away at our fields and shores, our courts and communities.  Theirs are the stories which we patronize routinely and heed infrequently.  Theirs are the stories emanating from obscure communities and small states, those places which have more to offer to help us restore legitimacy to the institutions which we know we need and which are being undermined, day after day, by one or more of their erstwhile state guarantors. 

We also know from our own experience how easy it is to hide from the responsibility which is ours to discharge, how easy it is to choose the “small and fearful,” thereby burying rather than sharing our assets. We know as well that small is not always beautiful, nor is it always effective.  But in a world dominated by billionaires, predatory economics and weapons merchants – in some instances the very same people – it is the small and determined, the attentive and passionate, who can create conditions for a reset of a global system now teetering in too many instances on the brink of its own invalidity.

During the “Small States” event, several states concluded their remarks with a Star Wars spinoff:  “May the FOSS be with you.”   Indeed, may the FOSS be with all of us, states and peoples willing to share and risk to preserve the full promise of multilateralism from those who seem determined to destroy it.

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Reform School: UN Lessons Incompletely Learned, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Nov
land reform | agricultural economics | Britannica

Agricultural Reform in our Distant Past

Enlighten yourself and then enlighten the world. Rashid Jorvee

We can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living.  Wendell Berry

Reforming ignorantly, will consequence crisis and destruction.  Kamaran Ihsan Salih

I’m not good,” he said, piercing me with eyes that absorbed all light but reflected none, “but I was worse.”  Becca Fitzpatrick

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.  Derrick Bell

The best reform is to repent.  Lailah Gifty Akita

It is very easy to point, but very difficult to refine and reform.  Sarvesh Murthi

We’re nearing the end of these weekly posts and there are so many people to thank, those who (often unknowingly) contributed quotations and images, those whose comments helped us to become something perhaps a bit more than one shrill voice amidst a cacophony of statements and other noises from both diplomats and NGO.  We are grateful to all of you, we will write many of you to say so individually over these winter months, and we will be sure to avoid any assumptions of value going forward without checking with you first.

Indeed, many questions loom at this moment, not only what is next for us but more importantly what is next for the institution we have tried our level best to discern over a generation.  What is next for a policy center which is itself not particularly adept at discernment, which does not easily own up to its failures, which asks the questions which makes consensus possible but not the harder questions of unintended impact?  What do we say about an institution that is constantly calling attention to itself, touting the multilateralism with the UN positioned at the center, promising global constituencies solutions to global problems that remain elusive at best while rebuffing suggestions that the UN was meant to do anything more, could ever anything more than “save us from hell?”  What next for a system that has managed to fold unto itself virtually every issue of global importance, but also one that is constantly being forced to cater to the states which fund its programs, the results of which are an endless stream of “what we are doing” and a trickle of “what isn’t working,” with sometimes uncomfortable consequences for both human dignity and planetary healing?  What is next for an institution that, at its core, tends to be a bit more smug than enlightened, that maintains the dubious assumption that changes in institutions are both possible and sustainable without simultaneous changes in those who manage those institutions?

To be fair, the UN has engaged in serious reform processes in most all of its Charter bodies.  The Economic and Social Council represents a much more formidable setting for discussions on sustainable development –especially on finance – than was the case a decade ago.   Pushed hard by small island and other developing states, and in response to the habitual gridlock on peace and security within the Security Council, the General Assembly has taken up the task of “revitalization” in earnest, a task which involves both strengthening the office of the GA president and clearing away the debris of endless resolutions tabled but not implemented, resolutions which maintain a GA “stake” in the large issues of the day but also help guarantee that such stakes will remain stuck in infertile ground until it is time to dust them off and peel away the accumulated rust in one year’s time.

The General Assembly has also been engaged – for what at times seems like an eternity – in prospects for reform of the Security Council, a body defined by its “provisional rules of procedure,” its endless and oft-repetitive speechmaking, the “bully ball” routinely played by the largest three of its five permanent members, and its inabiliy or unwillingness to ensure compliance with its resolutions (with the possible exception of peacekeeping mandates) despite both the coercive tools at its disposal and the erstwhile “binding” nature of such resolutions.  Indeed, interest by the General Assembly in exploring its own peace and security bona fides, including in Syria and through the Peacebuilding Commission, is due in part to frustrations about Council inaction and in part due to longstanding concerns that the Council has long since failed to accurately represent the will or security interests of the general UN membership.

And yet, some of those member states go to sometimes extraordinary lengths to campaign for a seat on that very same Council, in some instances because they believe that, together with other elected members, they can force change in a chamber which gives up its privileges with great reluctance; while others seem excited by the expectation of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with global heavyweights and perhaps just as eager for the prestige (and even deference) that comes along with the heavy burdens associated with that two-year tenure.

Where the Council is concerned, much of the reform energy, especially emanating from the Council itself, is focused on working methods – including the system of resolution “pen holders” and levels of consultation required (especially with African states) prior to the crafting of peacekeeping mandates or the application of coercive measures such as sanctions and arms embargoes.  And as pushed by a bevy of increasingly bold elected members (now including Kenya, Ireland, Niger and Mexico), the unfolded and sometimes even unwashed “laundry” of the Council is increasingly aired.   Such an airing has been duly noted in the General Assembly where Council reform energies largely take the form of membership expansion, veto restrictions for the permanent members and a more regular (and respectful) engagement with the General Assembly and other Charter bodies.

We have long welcomed such efforts as our own view has been (and remains) that the elected Council membership is where the drive for more equitable relations within the Council and more impactful (even enlightened) relations beyond chambers is most likely to emerge.  As conflict settings loom – having failed the prevention test and now dragging on year after year (and in the case of Palestine, generation after generation) it has become undeniably clear how the world has changed – in demographics and in global threats — certainly more than the Council’s permanent heavyweights have allowed the chamber they still largely control to change in response.

But it has also long been (and remains) our view that reform must be more than about tinkering with working methods, more than about clearing away the debris of endlessly tabled resolutions, backroom arm twisting and tepid commitments to consultation.  Yes, UN bodies are improving accountability to constituents in some aspects.  Yes, it has certainly been worse in terms of the hegemonic dispositions of the major powers.  Yes it has done legendary work in keeping alive millions impacted by the conflicts we have failed to prevent or resolve.  Yes, it has found space for virtually every area of global concern within its conference rooms, even if a number of those concerns – including technology, weapons production and climate change – are evolving much faster than our policies can address or at times even grasp.

We will have more to say about this in the months to come.  But for now, a note of caution to those who make policy in the absence of discernment, or who remain unwilling to ask the question of even our most cherished policies, “What can go wrong here?”  As hard as many diplomats and NGOs work in and around UN spaces, it might be too much to ask for those same stakeholders to invest a bit more in our own collective enlightenment, our own discernment, our own empathy.  But we must.   We all must.

Despite the disappointment that the UN, for all its access to expertise and accumulated wisdom, has failed to become a genuine learning community; despite the disappointment as well that we continue to run from our values and psychological resources as though fleeing a crowded room of unmasked, unvaccinated partygoers; it is still the depth of our character, our sustained empathy for the people looking to us for hope, which is key to pushing through our current bureaucratic limitations. Such are the barriers that stifle reflection and repentance, the ones that drown some of our best intentions under waves of protocol and status, the ones that funding and consensus alone cannot resolve, especially so when pledges of organizational or humanitarian support remain unmet and consensus sometimes means something even less than “agreeing to disagree.”

In this often august and intermittently smug and self-important community, the reform we need now goes beyond tinkering with working methods and levels of representation. What is needed is changes in how we choose to live, what we care about both in theory and in practice, the examples we set for others, the promises we insist on keeping no matter how inconvenient with regard to energies or financial resources. A women’s rights advocate speaking in the Security Council debate on Afghanistan this week began by confessing how “exhausted” she and other Afghans are by war and conflict. We must find the means to engage that exhaustion and other feelings lying largely beyond our own privileged experiences if she and many others are finally to find some place of dependable rest.

This is the truth of the reform we, collectively speaking, might continue to dodge or ignore, but make no mistake: we do so at the peril of our multilateral institutions and of our planet as a whole. Despite the failures of Glasgow and on Ethiopia violence, despite a more narrow, pandemic-influenced, state-centrism governing UN conference rooms, it remains true that our success as an institution requires that the people of this planet, the farmers and teachers, the journalists and caregivers, believe in us, believe that our rhetorical and negotiating skills represent tangible hope for their own communities, even believe that we are willing to change our ways, especially our most privileged and unenlighted ways, embracing what Mexico referred to this week as “dimensions of service” in that noble task of making life better for others.

If we cannot make these changes, if we are unwilling to make them, I worry for the future of an institution we still largely revere, but which has also sapped (at least for a season) all of our freely-given, if modest, organizational energies and resources.

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Excuse Me: Owning our Policy Investments, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 Oct

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.  Florence Nightingale

To rush into explanations is always a sign of weakness.  Agatha Christie

There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving.  Jean-Paul Sartre

The heart has its reasons but the mind makes the excuses.  Amit Abraham

For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.  Søren Kierkegaard

Excuses and complaints are signs of a dreamless life. Bangambiki Habyarimana

An archer must never blame a target for missing it.  Matshona Dhliwayo

Sometimes you find yourself walking alone on the road.  That doesn’t mean you are on the wrong one.  Akol Miyen Kuol

This week, amidst policy concerns ranging from the daily abuses occurring in Tigray record high temperatures for late September in several global regions, and the more subtle crises related to our unsustainable agricultural practices and shocking levels of food waste, the UN witnessed some potentially important leadership shifts.  In the Security Council, Kenya has replaced Ireland as president, continuing a trend of high-profile and at times bold and outspoken leadership by elected members in a Chamber that has had more than its share of issues telling the truth about what it has and has not done, what it is able and unable to do, as it struggles to maintain the peace and security on which the dreams of a weary planet increasingly depend.

And, on Friday, the newly-minted president of the General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives, gave his first press conference in that role, conveying both the core priorities of his presidency and the importance of making the UN – and more specifically the GA – a stronger and more relevant player in solving a host of problems that we are running out of time to solve and that present to us obstacles which – once again as they have in the past — will surely test our collective mettle; indeed the very sincerity of our policy convictions. 

During his press briefing, president Shahid noted that he “would rather be seen as naïve than as a doomsayer.”  He would also rather invest energy in raising levels of GA engagement with obstacles to progress rather than getting bogged down in endless explanations for why we can’t act, why we can’t solve, why we can’t do more to restore a sense of possibility to the hungry and the skeptical.  His “presidency of hope” will surely absorb charges and challenges of naivete, but as his predecessors have often noted before him, the multilateral system of which we are all part must attend to the often self-inflicted wounds of suspicion and disinterest which are only growing as its policy bubbles thicken and become, in more than a few instances, both self-referential and tone deaf.  

The formula for making president Shahid’s “hope” more consequential, more believable beyond the boundaries of the bubble, is not complicated:  more delivery and less deliberation, delivery which is inclusive, thoughtful and contextual; delivery which does not require us to navigate an endless parade of political concerns, protocols, procedural impediments and state interests. Such delivery is more about our determination to solve and less about excuses when our “solving” is impeded by a gauntlet of national interests, funding expectations, and uneven levels of accountability both to stakeholders and to those who claim to represent them.

For those who have somehow forgotten this, the UN is largely beholden to the interests of its member states, and more specifically its most powerful and largest donor states.  Many UN briefings, in our view at least, take on the flavor of funders exchanges, with agencies trying to put their activities in the most favorable light such that pledging states will both honor and step-up their funding commitments.  This “dance” between skilled agencies and state donors is common in UN spaces, leading too often to discussions about “what we’re doing” rather than “what is working.”  It is also a dance which, over the course of the past 20 years, we have chosen to sit out, not out of any naivete regarding the power of money and politics, but because we recognize that these are not the only characteristics of a system that can covey hope to the hopeless, convey a sense that not only is a better world within our grasp but that the multilateral system is committed to doing what is needed, and all that is needed, to grasp it.

In our very way over many years, we have done our small part to contribute to a core mandate of the groups and organizations in our sector – increasing the transparency of the institutions with which we interact, holding them accountable to their promises, insisting that the sum of activities is designed to increase hope rather than dampen it through inaction or indulgence in the “swarm of excuses” which seems at times to hover over all our deliberations, an indulgence which seems perpetually to beckon as policy promises proliferate like bait on a hook, once attractive to metaphorical fish which have now largely wised up to its allures.

Regarding this indulgent path, needless to say, we are not exactly knights in shining armor. Our sector is equally prone to self-interest, to playing up to funders, to collapsing our policy attention even more tightly around organizational mandates.  We don’t always see carefully or deeply enough to contribute to the hopefulness which the UN system seeks to convey, indeed is morally obligated to convey. We also make excuses for our own failures or half-successes that could have been navigated more successfully. I have done so also.  It is unsavory at best. 

And yet, despite our serial over-branding and excuse making, it is hard to see how the promises of the GA president can be realized in our collective absence. Sadly, for almost two years now, we have been barred from the UN castle.  As I predicted might turn out to be the case back in spring 2020, the “excuse” of the pandemic has resulted in the complete barring of all NGOs from UN headquarters, with no plan as of this writing to restore access to us as it has long been restored for some other segments of the system; and with no platform for discussion established which would allow us to vet together the implications of procedures which allow unvaccinated diplomats to enter headquarters, but not vaccinated NGOs, including folks like us who previously spent as much as 10 hours a day walking those halls, each and every day, over an entire generation.

To be clear, our “drama” around access is a matter of petty concern when measured against the standards of famine and armed violence, genocide and ecological collapse.  Those victims could (and should) care less about whether we get our coffee in the Vienna Café or in the kitchens we are privileged to have in our homes.  But this serial denial of access is bad news all around, for our own work of course but also for the many groups – indigenous people, persons with disabilities, refugees and others – whose access to this policy space is a cardinal reassurance that the UN system is paying attention to them, that they are an integral part of our circle of concern rather than an afterthought.

As we have noted in other contexts, while the pandemic has set up many obstacles, it has also exposed longstanding flaws in our economic and social systems that, despite vast testimony from civil society leaders and others, have not been duly addressed.  But as the pandemic constitutes a genuine, far-reaching global crisis, it does not constitute an excuse.  It is not an excuse for any failure to fulfill the promises of the sustainable development goals. It does not excuse the weakening of our democratic norms, the fostering of hate speech, or our current (and too often violent) bursts of nationalist fervor. The pandemic is also not the cause of the conflicts we fail to resolve, the resolutions we pass that have no teeth, the disaster warnings we hear but fail to heed.  It is not an excuse for widening inequalities regarding health care access, opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, digital connectivity, and certainly not for our grossly unequal patterns of vaccine distribution.

And it is not an excuse for the thickening of our policy bubbles, for shifting the presence of diverse policy actors from in-person presence to online exile, certainly not in the absence of proper consultation.  Such represents an interruption of our work, especially with diverse young people looking forward to their time inside UN Headquarters.  But it is also represents a level of disrespect which no diplomat would rightly tolerate for themselves but which few have done much of anything to prevent from happening to others. We acknowledge that we chose this work, we chose these issues, we chose this institution in which to practice our evolving craft. Respect or no, such choices remain in operation, at least for now.

What we also know for certain is that, with whatever time we have remaining in this policy space, we are done with the “poisonous breath” of excuse making.  For the sake of a planet on the edge, for the sake of millions of people in the midst of an interminable wait for practical, loving acts of solidarity and relief, we will continue to walk whatever road is available to us, however isolated that road might sometimes be, encouraging others with access to the levers of policy and power to seize this moment, to stop “explaining” why we can’t honor our values and commitments, and to instead sustain the changes that much of the world is now begging us to make.

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Busy Body: Contemplating a Frenetic UN Week, Dr. Robert Zuber

26 Sep

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion.   Dorothy Allison

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?  Henry David Thoreau

It’s amazing how busy someone gets when they have no interest in connecting with you.  Steve Maraboli

I do a million things and nothing comes out. Dominique Goblet

One of the necessary correctives that must be applied to the character of humanity is a massive strengthening of the contemplative element.  Friedrich Nietzsche

The business of living can steal away the wonder of life.  M.J. Rose

Inevitably we find ourselves tackling too many things at the same time, spreading our focus so thin that nothing gets the attention it deserves. Ryder Carroll

As of this writing, another General Assembly High Level week has concluded its formal business for the year.   Despite residual pandemic fears, many delegations were represented in New York at Foreign Minister and/or Head of Government level. 

We ourselves were not present in the UN Headquarters building for any of this activity as we have not been allowed engtry for the past 20 months.  But we have seen all of this before and had some inkling of the energy levels this year via both the wonders of digital technology and the in-person presence of a colleague who gratefully kept us in the loop as best as he was able.

And what a loop it was.  In addition to the bilateral and regional discussions which this High-Level format makes possible, the week provided opportunity for the UN to show off the range of both its policy concerns and the expertise which it is able to assemble to help frame issues and potential solutions. While some of those events were a bit too glossy for our taste and tended (as they often do) to highlight the same group of voices, the same policy preferences (at least in their opening segments), the events themselves ably called attention to more than a few of the multiple problems that face the global community and that we mostly do better at identifying than resolving.

In what was a frenetic week of diplomatic activity, several events stood out for us.  The long-anticipated Food Systems Summit was dedicated to enabling what one delegate called a “hard reboot,” on how we grow and distribute food, the “moral consciousness” (as noted by Ireland’s president Higgins) that we need to cultivate in order to eliminate food waste, increase food and nutritional access and, as noted by DSG Amina Mohammed, learn how to “feed the planet without destroying it.”

We were also intrigued by an event focused on the anniversary of the Durban Declaration, an important (if anti-Semitism challenged) event which highlighted what the PM of St. Vincent and the Grenadines called our “skewed international system” which has yet to own up to – or provide reparations for – a long history of colonial violence and abuse.  While the new president of the General Assembly (PGA), Abdulla Shahid of Maldives, called for higher levels of  “self-awareness” regarding the failings of our collective past, the PM of Fiji lamented outbreaks of “hate speech” in our troubled present which seem to have no difficulty finding online enablers.  

And there was plenty more where this came from – discussions in the Security Council on the climate-conflict nexus; discussions on the status of efforts to end war and avert famine in Yemen and protect the now-fragile rights of women and girls in Afghanistan; discussions on the unique social, economic and trade-related challenges affecting Landlocked Developing Countries in a time of pandemic and climate risks; discussions on promoting accountability for what are still too-numerous violations of international humanitarian and human rights law; even youth-led discussions (in Geneva) on global peace which directly challenged the notion that a  policy community often “disconnected from human misery” can necessarily make the world a safer, saner place. In one of the more interesting side events by our reckoning, these youth held up both the inspiration of artists and the abundant, if anxious, energies of younger generations as keys to affecting changes which have largely proven elusive to date.

And then there were the speeches in the GA Hall by heads of government, both in person and virtual. Such speeches by government leadership are generally a highlight (albeit stress-filled) for New York-based delegations who often have limited access to their leaders and want to demonstrate that funds expended on mission-related activities to drive policy change and enhance the reputation of states are funds well spent.   From Brazil’s defiantly unvaccinated Bolsonaro on Day 1 to India’s confident and reflective Modi on Day 6, all leaders who wanted their say got their say in a high-profile General Assembly format that remains largely misidentified as “debate.” 

Virtually all leadership identified the global pandemic and climate change as existential threats to their societies, with many calling once again for that elusive “vaccine equity” which can stem infections at local and national level while enabling a more effective pandemic recovery.  One leader after another also directed attention, often with grave concern, towards the uncertain prospects for the upcoming COP 26 event on climate change to be held in Scotland, wondering just how progress on reversing what Chile’s president called our “ecological apocalypse” can be sustained, wondering as well if the extinctions now upending our planetary rhymns can be rolled back before we humans join their number.  

And there were many heads of delegation who joined with US president and others in stressing the importance of upholding the values of multilateralism and the UN Charter, committing to use this UN policy space as a conduit to “fight for our future” in the multiple forms which this now takes.   

Despite some insight-filled events and positive rhetoric, we wonder if all this “busyness” could well be, as it often is, a cover for the “anxiety” highlighted on Day 1 by the General Assembly president. Such anxiety stems from the fact that too many global threats, too many sustainable development targets, are headed in the wrong direction, victims of pandemic spread to be sure, but also of our collective inability to focus our energies and honor our pledges; our unwillingness to curb our collective appetites for everything from unregulated weapons to the fruits of unsustainable harvests; even a function of our reluctance to confront our past and “make good” towards those many persons, past and present, caught in various webs of violence and indifference, webs that continue to keep people stuck in place when what they seek (according to the PGA) is more “peace of mind” courtesy of more tangible solutions to current challenges.

All year long, but especially during this High-Level week, the UN seems to be “doing a million things,” but many wonder about what comes out?  Yes, it is important to the UN (and to us as well) that commitments to multilateralism be renewed.  Yes, it is important that UN agencies and their large NGO partners put their best face forward such that the governments which authorize projects and provide needed funding will continue to do so. Yes, it matters that government leaders can use this annual opportunity to hold serial bilateral discussions beyond the reach of the press and/or their political critics. 

But as some thoughtful government leaders recognized during these days, it is not sufficient or even at times helpful, for the UN system to be in the throes of perpetual motion, for the UN to steer global energies in dozens of directions without priority focus or assessment of its practical consequences for the world.  After the barricades come down and the planes return leaders to their capitals, it is not unreasonable to ask what difference all this activity, all this motion has actually made?  Was this mostly about ceremony and protocol, mostly about political theater, or has it lent itself to tangible solutions for which people yearn?  Is the UN community content to “sound the alarm” on so many global concerns, threats which are surely linked and which the UN has done much to keep in the public eye, but which also require priority focus if we are translate the sounds of alarm into practical and timely progress?

Some global leaders, especially from the Caribbean and Pacific Small Island States, seemed unconvinced that all of this activity, this perpetual motion of delegations, this endless parade of policy reports and press statements is sufficient unto itself to deliver as the UN seeks to do for people and planet. To that end, the PM of the Bahamas demanded fresh measures to ensure that those countries primarily responsible for global emissions take stronger action to reduce them.  The PM of Fiji advocated for a “new UN” which fully commits to the empowerment of those on the margins of our global societies.  The PM of St. Vincent and the Grenadines insisted on a UN that can break “hegemonic patterns” of global policy which often fail to address discriminations of gender, culture or religion. And, in perhaps the most compelling statements of the week, the PM of Barbados, HE Mia Amor Mottley, called out our busy and often distracted international community for “dividing rather than lifting,” for being constantly in motion but not “moving the needle” sufficiently on the crises demanding the most urgent attention. The question she sought to answer is not about the volume of our policy activity but about “how we restore development hope to populations long exploited and rarely supported?”

This represents, for me at least, the “contemplative element” that stands in judgment of our habitual motion, that questions the busyness in personal lives and policy settings which seems as often a cover for anxiety and ineffectiveness as its antidote.  What are we busy about?  What precisely are we busy for?   What is the hope for the world generated by all these UN words, all these resolutions, all this policy activity?  After almost a generation spent in UN policy spaces in part attempting to discern the diferences between activity and agency, between motion and movement, we still struggle to answer these questions to the satisfaction of those who continue to pose them.

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Honor Code: Heroism Fit for the Times, Dr. Robert Zuber

25 Jul
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Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with.  Brodi Ashton

We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day. Brad Meltzer

We find not much in ourselves to admire; we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. Mark Twain

She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable. Louisa May Alcott

Dead people can be our heroes because they can’t disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.  Veronica Roth

Who are these so-called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?  Fyodor Dostoevsky

I like my heroes complicated and brooding.  Barbara Crooker

This week, the UN honored the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela in what has become an annual event for a system that is doing better and better at honoring in general, especially important as direct threats to UN personnel – peacekeepers, humanitarian workers, mine removal experts and other service providers — have risen dramatically in recent years.  Keeping people safe in the field, providing life-extending provisions of food and medical care, helping people recover from catastrophes of short and long duration, these activities are both noble and dangerous – the stuff of genuine heroism in our time.

Mandela certainly chose his own, difficult path.  When I met him briefly in South Africa he was well on his way from resistance to governance, bringing along with him values which are mirrored in the UN Charter and which are essential to both state-building and the promotion of lives of dignity.  These values were not for him, as they are so often for so many of us, attributes of adornment that we profess but don’t necessarily engage, but rather were embedded deeply in his person, a person who as noted during this event by UN Deputy Secretary Amina Mohammed, was grounded in a “stubborn optimism” which allowed him to carry on when others would have given up and allowed him as the DSG also noted to give to others in small and large ways with little regard for what he might receive in return.  He committed to ply his seminal gift, as described by South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, that ability he possessed to “see the indivisibility of the human condition in ways which were not always visible to others.”  As a result, as Gambia’s Ambassador offered, Mandela left a footprint that continues to help the rest of us and our perhaps more “obscure” heroism to leave our mark on “the sands of time.”

The Mandela ceremony and other events that defined this UN week reminded me of a long-ago incident in an Episcopal church where I was assigned in an attempt to learn how to do ministry and where I had just finished preaching about some social justice topic or other.   One of the parishioners on the way out of the service commented to me “I’m glad that someone is out there doing these things, doing the good work.”

Her comment, which I appreciated at the time more than I probably should have, was based on at least two assumptions which I later came to question.  The first of these is that because I am concerned about these issues, I am somehow contributing to their resolution – that “caring” has efficacy in its own right even when untethered to any viable, visible change strategy.   And the other, related assumption is that what I was allegedly “doing” was somehow sufficient unto itself, that is, that I magically possessed what it takes to move the pile independently of others – including her by the way – pushing and moving as well.

These are some of the lessons that I largely failed to learn at earlier stages but which have become harder to miss over time.  I have more recently embraced the importance of practicing all that we espouse and of engaging issues in a way that balances representation (which I have not always done well) and recommendation (in which I have been a bit too invested).  But I also learned of the ways in which heroism becomes a conduit for what is often a messy – borderline imaginary — brand of vicariousness, people who have (often romantic) expectations that they place upon designated heroes and that none could fulfill.  If Mandela were alive now, his life would surely be picked apart by journalists and critics; his complications would disappoint as well as inspire; but he would also likely demonstrate more than the rest of us might be prepared to accept, that heroism is often situational and that those situations call out to all of us from time to time in our lives, call us to run towards the light rather than hide from it.  

And I learned, in case there was any doubt in anyone’s mind, that I am no hero myself, that my own path has not been sufficiently transformative or radical, sufficiently determined or hopeful, sufficiently connected or willing to wrestle with critics in the public sphere. 

But not rising to the level of the heroic does not – must not – obscure the contributions to a better world we are actually able to make.  We may not leave a mark “on the sands of time,” but we do influence others; we can do more to shape and mold, to inspire and sustain, to help process the great questions of our age and within ourselves.  We do have skills and energies which, alongside the skills and energies of others, can help to overcome longstanding challenges, including those of violence, environmental degradation and racial discrimination which were raised in various UN settings this week.  And we can offer discernment, thinking through the ideas and policies that might not otherwise be sufficiently vetted and that threaten to lead us down unfruitful and even dangerous paths. 

And perhaps most of all, to we can extend invitations to others to walk their paths and to share what they experience with the rest of us.   In this context, I was heartened this week during an event to assess the UN International Decade for People of African Descent regarding how the contributions of youth were depicted and encouraged.  As part of her keynote address, the Vice President of Costa Rica urged us to heed the voices of youth proclaiming that “enough is enough,” insisting that we must no longer accept any role as “accomplices” to the pain of injustice.  At that same event, a youth leader urged all to commit to being a “conduit” of change regardless of our station in life. One action at a time, she claimed, powers change in the world.

At this particular UN event as well as another focused on “open science,” there was little talk of heroism in the conventional sense and more of the need to “co-create,” to blend skills, aspirations and ideas in the service of a less competitive, more equitable, more inclusive world.  But it was also clear that the dual threats which these events exposed – racism on the one hand, climate change on the other – demanded action which is both urgent and thoughtful, both inclusive and impactful.  

One of the best presentations I heard this week was from Professor Geoffrey Boulton of Edinburgh who reinforced at the “open science” event the importance of “acting early and acting hard” on climate change as well as acting in tandem. He lamented our collective failure to heed lessons on climate change shared by both scientists and community practitioners, their collective and consistent warnings of a slow, “angry” onset of warming.  And he even wondered aloud if there is something wrong with us, if we are actually “hard-wired” for the short-term alone?

There may indeed be something wrong with us, but it is something we can still fix in ourselves, indeed that we must fix in ourselves if we are also to fix the threats now closing in around us. For all that we can gratefully learn from the paths chosen by Mandela and other heroes similarly situated, we remain today on a rather somber path, one largely unjust and unsustainable. If the times call for early and determined action, if the times call for us to co-create as “conduits of change,” it might be time for heroism that is less about superhuman and vicariously assessed contributions and more about building a roster of people committed to making and inspiring real change, keeping alive visions of a sustainable future that require many more hands and brains than are now engaged in hope-filled actions; inspiring others to overcome the fear and suspicion to which so many have succumbed and which seems to have maintained at least a good bit of its wide appeal.

If we learned anything during this time of pandemic, it is that heroism in our time takes many forms, wears many garbs, operates in many, often subtle contexts.   As our activist youth remind us, the heroes we need now are the ones who make space for others, who support and guide without regard for compensation, who dare pay attention to the aspirations and needs embedded in the people and spaces around them, and who walk the uncertain path towards a collective future that can sustain both our dreams and the life which holds them close.

For those who prefer imaginary heroes to real ones; for those who prefer their heroes dead to alive; or for those who prefer only “complicated and brooding” versions, we must continue to offer up a brand of heroism that we can honor in real time, a heroism that is hopeful and future-oriented, a heroism that is defined not so much by vicarious acts of greatness but by promising paths that we can choose to walk each day, and that we can commit to walk with others.

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Irregular Times: Narrowing the Rhetoric-Delivery Gap, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Jun
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An irregular heart beat

So many distractions, when all she wanted was silence, so she could understand what was going on. Rehan Khan

It seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.  George Eliot

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. C.S. Lewis

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.  Robert A. Heinlein

But can we dispel “unusefulness” as worthless? For some, art and play may be “useless” but yet are fundamental ways and means for survival. Erik Pevernagie

Be beautiful if you can, wise if you want to, but be respected. Anna Gould

The UN was a veritable hive of activity this week, allowing those who logged in on the limited basis to conclude either that the world has either completely lost its mind or that it has found at least some of its ethical and policy bearings.  

Many of the “faithful remnant” who still consult these posts know a fair bit about the “lost mind” part.  The puzzling struggle in the Security Council over cross-border humanitarian access for Syrians; the seemingly endless US blockade of Cuba despite annual global condemnations; the crackdowns on journalists and civil society actors in settings from Turkey to Mynamar; the fresh casualties from our collective failure to stem the spread of new COVID-19 variants in part due to rhetorical support for vaccine access not matched by reliable deliveries; the armed groups, including forces made up entirely of children, taking lives with impunity in Burkina Faso and across the Sahel; the arms trafficking and lax measures on access and acquisition which are turned sections of the US and Latin America into weapons fortresses.

You get the point.  Even in a UN week dedicated in part to Counter-Terrorism it became clear that, despite some welcome progress on border control, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, and airline passenger data collection, terror groups often seem to be one step ahead of efforts to control their movements, restrict extremist rhetoric, and stem the recruitment of youth living in areas that offer little in the way of alternative hope.  That government actions too often feed terrorist narratives, as in the horrific example of Tigray where civilians are raped, tortured and starved and the lives of humanitarian workers are under constant siege, undermines at face value claims by some state and UN authorities that the pandemic – and not our own self-serving political interests and attendant rationalizations, is the underlying cause of our security-related breakdowns.

These are irregular times, but surely not primarily evil ones.   It is true that we have often hidden behind our bureaucracies and national interests, burying endless praise under protocol and seeking to call attention to what we are doing more than what is working, what comes next, what we need (besides money) that we don’t have, what role the rest of us should be playing to complement, and at times challenge, the decisions of states and diplomats.  It is also true that, disregarding regular calls for global and national cease fire arrangements, guns and various explosions continue to claim lives. Despite this, we continue to inadequately funnel our various human security activities, including on health, food and water access, into a more robust peace and security framework and then insist, here and now, that those tasked with such matters, especially the Security Council, do their jobs to maintain the peace or throw their collective weight behind agents and institutions that might have a better go of it.

Yes these are irregular times, but we are actually learning things, perhaps not enough and perhaps not in time, to stem the tide of violence and embrace the complex efforts of so many who are in the best sense of the term “essential workers.”  We have commented previously on the ways in which the UN honors the efforts and sacrifice of peacekeepers and other UN field staff, and has done so in ways beyond mere honoring, including mandates that narrow the gap between what is expected of peacekeepers and the training and capacity support required to do what is asked.  We also applaud that personnel able to engage communities and their most vulnerable members – including child and women protection advisers – are available to build trust and ensure context-specific protection in ways that soldiers with guns themselves cannot always do.  In this time, the honoring of peacekeepers and other field actors has evolved into something more than ceremonial, more than rhetorical, as their demands increase and threats to their safety proliferate.

And what of our front-line health workers, the “essential” professionals of this extended time of pandemic threat, those who found (and still find) themselves at the edge of exhaustion and despair trying to keep loved ones together and families and communities intact? Even more, what of those who perform these services not in modern hospitals but in makeshift clinics in urban and rural settings at times characterized by antiquated equipment, limited provisions for hungry families or vaccines for communities ravaged by the virus, and by the sounds of bombs which often distract from healing thoughts and sometimes even target their very facilities?  

In two events this week, one in the General Assembly and another in the Economic and Social Council, the UN sought to both honor these essential workers and to assess the state of affairs surrounding their grueling and often dangerous work.  We heard this week from many remarkable people, including a Ugandan woman helping to protect and empower persons with disabilities in the remote north of her country along with a bevy of other powerful policy and healing voices, some urging us in essence “to spare a thought” for those victimized by torture, pandemic, famine or sexual violence, but also for those who seek to rehabilitate them, to heal their wounds and restore some measure of the fulness of life after unimaginable ordeals.

But what made these events successful is that underlying the honoring of these workers – and we need to honor more often, more broadly, more sincerely – was the unambiguous recognition that “sparing a thought” was not nearly enough, not enough to change circumstances on the ground, not enough to restore hope in these “irregular times,” not enough to fulfill our responsibilities and ensure that we are better prepared for health and other threats to come; and thus our policy priorities must become as clear, distraction-free, respectful and sustainable as we can make them.

Where essential actions are concerned, there were in fact many urgent calls this week from UN officials and diplomats, calls for greater and more practical solidarity with front-line workers (from Costa Rica and the Caribbean community), for fresh and robust investments in health infrastructure (from the president of the General Assembly), for higher levels of mental health services for traumatized health and humanitarian workers and the victims they seek to serve (from the World Health Organization) and for a swift end to child marriage, child labor, child abuse, school attacks and other child-unfriendly practices which we should be ashamed to tolerate even one day longer (from the ICRC).

And for peace, blessed peace, that elusive commodity which, in its absence, makes every problem we face that much more difficult to solve, the armed violence which as noted this week by Acting USG Rajasingham complicates every aspect of health care and humanitarian access, ratcheting up dangers and demands for front-line workers in the field, and dampening hope and enthusiasm of traumatized community members who wonder amidst the noises of war if there will ever be a peaceful silence which grants them space to figure out other things, space to think great thoughts, make more culture, watch children play, and attend to other pressing needs within and beyond their own families.

Amidst the global carnage and policy partial-truths which punctuated this policy week, there were also some valuable lessons that rose to the surface, lessons grounded in dedicated efforts to heal our irregular hearts in part by narrowing the gaps between our rhetoric and our delivery.  We know that we must spend more time honoring and heeding the people who both care for us and hold up the promise of our world. We know that we must increase the solidarity needed to create more safe spaces for what can hopefully become a less harassed and stressed roster of front-line workers. We know that we must commit to build higher quality health infrastructure and take other measures to ensure that we are better focused and prepared to head off the next health crisis than we were for this one. We know we must increase access to vaccines, to potable water, to safe schools and to other measures which too many communities have been denied for far too long.

And we know that we must determine to make more peace in this world, peace in our communities, our schools and cultural institutions, our national and multi-lateral agencies.  It is a cliché to be sure, but it is hard to see how any of the problems we now face, any of the crises — current and looming — that now scar our planet and too many of its human inhabitants, can be resolved in sustainable fashion unless the guns have finally and fully gone silent.

Of all the rhetoric-delivery gaps which currently define our policy and practice, of all the misplaced promises that continue to stoke “unfavorable conditions” in our irregular world, the seemingly-endless cry for peace remains at the top of our attentions.  It is the cry, almost 18 years on in this current NGO arrangement, which we continue to hear the loudest and which we most encourage others of all ages and backgrounds to hear as well.

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Trust Funds: The UN Steps Towards a Culture of Integrity, Dr. Robert Zuber

6 Jun

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.  Mahatma Gandhi

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. Ayn Rand

It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.  Frank Herbert

Procrastination is also a subtle act of corruption – it corrupts valuable time. Amit Abraham

The aim of the old should be to ensure that the young grow up incorruptible.  Justin K. McFarlane Beau

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.  Clive James

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider.  Ernest Hemingway

I spent an hour last evening on a call organized by LINGAP Canada and featuring an indigenous activist from the Philippines seeking to protect the lands of local people from the onslaughts of both an international mining interest and governments at local and federal levels who enabled this corporate incursion. As is far too common, they offered police protection against the activists pushing back against operations which, in too many instances, have cover in the form of government contracts which are not transparent, which do not incorporate local needs and interests, and which confer large swaths of immunity as mining interests appropriate local water supplies, denude forests and destroy the social cohesion of communities and the biodiversity which once enveloped them.

In the rush to secure the precious metals and other resources that fuel lifestyles in the developed world, corporations are willing to drive hard bargains with government officials as they seek contracts that ensure maximum flexibility and only limited responsibility for the damage done to land and water.  For the governments, mining interests promote both “economic development” and, in the absence of genuine transparency, a reliable source of self-enrichment.   For the activists seeking to hold mining interests to a standard beyond their technically “legal” obligation, they often face both personal danger and the sad realization that the lands they love have likely been disfigured beyond the ability of any human or natural force to restore.  When the mining interests have extracted all there is to extract, the land they leave behind might be little more than a biological shell of its former self, a land now ill-suited to sustain the life it had previously supported for millennia. 

This story frames what was a busy week of intersected UN conversations focused on the multiple, negative impacts of corruption together with our still-uphill struggle to reverse climate change, avert a new round of biodiversity loss, preserve what remains of the health of our oceans, and heal our often-battered local ecosystems. 

The key here is “together.”  What was apparent during a fine UN Special Session (including side events) focused on “measures to prevent and combat corruption” is that corruption is both pervasive and “magnetic,” attracting unscrupulous and self-interested individuals like bees to honey, providing both opportunities and rationalizations for those among us more interested in exploiting fragility than helping it to heal.  What the president of the Economic and Social Council, Ambassador Akram of Pakistan, referred to this week as the “criminal misuse of resources” is an indictment that implicates many of us in our current world, a world in which integrity and transparency are constantly butting heads with that part of our nature which, as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador maintained, remains “purchasable.” 

As several speakers noted this week, including during an excellent side event organized by the president of the General Assembly, our current contexts make combating corruption a particularly formidable challenge.  The global pandemic coupled with the gross inequalities tied to our obsession with “wealth and power” are magnifying opportunities to divert resources from intended to unintended purposes, to maneuver contracts towards personal friends and business partners rather than to those providing the best and most cost-effective services, to deliberately direct vaccines and funds for pandemic response towards political supporters and away from political adversaries, to sign contracts that are full of loopholes enabling abuses and even kickbacks that ultimately rob citizens of development funds, undermine rights and even dampen enthusiasm for change.

But as the week’s events made clear, it is not only about the expanding opportunities for corrupt practices but the range of such practices – and their toxic consequences — that warrants prompt international attention.  Our former notions of corruption – of money in a brown envelope sliding under a table and designed to influence decisions — is still relevant but overly narrow.  We understand more now about the “trade-offs” that we are much too comfortable making, trade-offs that impede our path towards what the Holy See referred to this week as a “culture of integrity.”  We are too quick to rationalize behavior that we should readily challenge instead, thereby “consorting” with the structures of power that we know are often not operating in the public interest.  We know that, as Chile’s Ambassador stated, funds and lives are lost when we allow corrupt practices to flourish, when we accede to cultures of corruption that are within our grasp to shift.  We continue to allow people to “walk through our minds with their dirty feet,” making compromise with what Mexico declared to be a social “evil” more and more palatable, at least for some, just part of the cost of doing business as an “insider” in a sometimes unsavory world. 

And as one speaker after another this week noted, the consequences of corruption are dire, not only for the activists on the ground who must dodge unsubstantiated accusations and at times even bullets, but for the average citizen who still needs to believe that the large governmental and corporate powers that seem to run our lives have at least some of our best interests at heart; indeed that they are able and willing to play by the same rules that they expect the rest of us to play by.  The word that popped up over and over in this UN context is “trust,” a term which is hard to quantify and which diplomats are often fond of claiming for their governments without sufficient evidence; but a word which also continues to resonate deeply for many of us. 

Naively or otherwise, some of us still need to believe that, within the limits of human capacity and habit, that our public structures are trustworthy or can be made so; that mistakes are due to factors other than wanton malevolence; that the people who run the world operate on energies more diverse than riches and power; that leaders are willing and able to set a better example for those who might otherwise be inclined to join the parade of those convinced that the only way to “get ahead” is at the expense of others. And yet as the director of the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime noted with considerable alarm, too many of us have become “cynical” regarding both our responsibility and capacity to end corruption, to address an enemy “that shows little signs of retreating.”  Despite the contention of Latvia’s minister that his public at least seems be losing its “tolerance for corruption,” it still seems as though state and corporate entities are largely talking a better game than they play, thus setting a tone allowing too many of the rest of us to do likewise.

One of the things we might conveniently ignore in this context is the degree to which trust once betrayed is difficult to regain, in some instances more difficult than restoring a once-denuded Philippines mountainside. And this trust-busting incarnates a multitude of implications beyond government procurement and election results.  For instance, how do we as citizens and local communities get on board with healthy oceans, with greenhouse gas reductions, with rehabilitating eco-systems supporting healthier biodiversity if we can’t trust large state and corporate entities to do their part, to honor their promises, to use the resources at hand for public good rather than private interest?  How do we inspire sacrifices in communities when those who command the most money and power are reluctant to sacrifice anything of themselves, or even agree to play fair?

And what of the youth who, as one young contributor this week noted, must anxiously watch as their own futures are jeopardized by the corruption which drains public coffers of the funds that could be used – should be used – to clean up our environmental messes and put our economies on a more solid, greener footing.  Traditional means of fighting corruption, she maintained, are not sufficient to address levels of self-interested illegality which take up too much space in our current political and economic environment, indeed which are putting more and more young people in the unenviable position of needing to “sell their own integrity” to keep any glimmer of personal progress on track.

This week, Kenya’s president urged the UN community to “raise the bar” on integrity, recommending that states support more education for youth on “ethical values” in this effort.  But we must be sure, as the PGA noted, not to “kick this can down the road.”  Young people have much to contribute, especially at local level, to building trust and capacity for a more sustainable world.  But the rest of us need to set a better example, a more honest and transparent example, an example which communicates our resolve to identify and end all manifestations of corruption from our own lives, even to end the procrastination that rationalizes our putting off until tomorrow what we promised to address today.

The open and lifeless pits our mining interests leave behind are only one of the residual craters complements of our many self-interested and self-deceptive personalities. We have only a matter of years to demonstrate that we can rise to a higher standard, that we can return what has been stolen and then commit not to steal again, that we can repair some of what we’ve damaged and then commit not to damage further.  In this way, we might be able to convince other, younger persons that a fairer and more sustainable world is still within our grasp, and that the buying and selling of this world need not include the buying and selling of our souls.

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Mash Unit: Treating our Multiple Health Emergencies, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 May
Funeral homes struggle to keep up with rising deaths | Hindustan Times
Hindustan Times

What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.  Haruki Murakami

I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.  Frida Kahlo

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.  Joseph Conrad

As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else. Maya Angelou

I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of. Rachel Naomi Remen

And here you are living despite it all.  Rupi Kaur

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.  Novalis

Inside and outside the UN, health-related matters continue to occupy center stage in our collective consciousness.   Some good medical news related to infection levels in the US and remarkable progress reported from Oxford (UK) on a potential malaria vaccine was more than offset by news of devastating health emergencies in countries from Brazil to India – overwhelming existing health infrastructure and sending front-line health care workers in these and other countries to their emotional breaking point.  It was unnerving to read of doctors in India describing the “mental torture” they now experience from treating what even they depict as India’s “hopeless” COVID crisis.  

This “torture” is reminiscent of what medical personnel have experienced over this past year in community after community, country after country, places where political leaders have routinely bungled pandemic responses both within and across borders. Their not-infrequent politicizing of a public health menace has left medical workers with little option but to pick up the pieces from infected persons who, in many instances, refused to adhere to public health warnings and protocols. Such workers have been left to cope with waves of variants that are sure to multiply as cases explode in areas of the world largely (and sometimes willfully) excluded from adequate vaccine coverage, areas which in some instances are also coping with water shortages, limited sanitation and health access limitations which compromised local health outcomes long before the onset of COVID-19.

This pandemic isn’t over.  Through our science-suspicion, our short-sighted policy choices, and our lack of solidarity across borders and regions, we have seen to that.  And this is clearly not the only health-related threat to which we should now be paying attention.

The UN system has done some robust and cross-cutting policy work on matters of disease control, health access and the protection of health infrastructure.  This past week alone, the outlines of a comprehensive response to the current health crisis facing our planet once again came into focus.  For instance, in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the outcome document referenced the grave health disparities which indigenous communities face worldwide, noting both the diminishing health infrastructure in more remote rural areas and the important work done by rural caretakers to protect the forests and other natural resources that remain under severe threat, protection which is indispensable to biodiversity preservation and might even help us avoid future pandemics.

And in the General Assembly, the GA president hosted a high-level dialogue on Antimicrobial Resistance, a challenge to what the PGA called “our over-dependence and over-use” of antibiotics which have in many instances compromised our ability to stem infections and prevent the evolution and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  As speakers noted from across the UN system, the combination of threats including substandard sanitation systems, lack of access to potable water, and high levels of antibiotics in the meat some of us routinely ingest are enabling preventable outcomes, including making people with under-treatable bacterial infections more susceptible to COVID-19 threats. 

What was particularly hopeful about this GA discussion is the degree to which it enabled an assessment of other health-related concerns to which states and the rest of us should be more mindful.  The GA president, for instance, used the opportunity to call once again for states to commit to “universal health access.”  The Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed used her speaking time to call for “alternatives to antibiotics” and increased investment in health infrastructure as one means of “getting our commitments to sustainable development back on track.”  Dr. Tedros of WHO reminded delegations of the primary health-related responsibility of states to ensure fresh water and sanitation access, while the director of FAO noted the importance of ensuring food security and related measures we can and must take to improve public health instead of simply “waiting around for new medicines” to be developed. 

And in the Security Council, a session on the “protection of indispensable civilian objects” hosted by Vietnam’s president highlighted the extent to which, as Ireland’s Foreign Minister noted, “war is the enemy,” the enemy of trust and confidence, the enemy of person-centered funding priorities, the enemy of stable and effective health infrastructure, the enemy of brave doctors and nurses forced to “work from caves” in a herculean (and often futile) effort to heal wounds of war in settings far less conducive to caregiving than the now hollowed-out hospitals where they used to work. The makeshift mash units to which some transitioned have too often become targets of armed violence as well, causing many medical personnel to once again and quite literally flee for their lives.

And it isn’t just hospitals.  As noted by the Foreign Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines – a country now coping with health consequences from a major volcanic eruption — attacks on civilian objects by parties to conflict now directly target water and other infrastructure with growing frequency, leading inexorably to the spread of otherwise preventable diseases, including cholera.  Such infrastructure looting and outright destruction endangers both short and longer-term health care access, gravely imperils the growth and development of children, skews our funding priorities towards more military hardware and away from health facilities, and exacerbates displacement-related miseries that most of the rest of us can scarcely imagine.  War, indeed, is the enemy of healthy societies in multiple ways.

The question now for UN stakeholders is whether or not we have the collective will to hear and heed the advice from this week of policy discussions, to internalize and respond in kind to the mental burdens of front line workers and the misery and insecurity of those suffering under what one health aide this week referred to as a “genocide” of pandemic and other disease-related casualties. Such a “genocide” affects all sectors of society, but especially those persons with disabilities, the economically marginalized, the aged and those in relative rural isolation.  It is obviously that much harder to appreciate sunsets and spring flowers or the wonders of poetry and art while carrying around wounds that won’t heal or dealing with sickness that drains away energy while children cry out for a proper meal.

The remedial blueprint is clear but it will require much from us. Tangible commitments of persons, priorities and treasures are required if we are fix currently-grave health disparities given, as this pandemic has reminded us, that an out-of-control virus in one part of the world affects health outcomes in every corner of the world.  We must make forest protection (and its protectors) a priority.   We must demonstrate levels of solidarity required to distribute vaccines and health resources fairly and evenly across all areas of need.  We must do more to counter health disinformation and, while doing so, help to restore public confidence in both science and governance.  If we insist on eating meat, we must also insist on options for more humanely-treated and less antibiotic-infested animals.  We must invest more in community health with a focus on prevention, nutrition and alternatives to the medicines which once reliably saved lives (including twice my own) but which our overuses have made increasingly unreliable.  We must cease our relentless dismantling of health infrastructure, especially in rural areas, due in part to our skewed funding priorities and tax policies which have put money into dubious outcomes such as nuclear weapons modernization while also lining the pockets of those whose investment accounts are already filled to overflow.    

And we must protect the infrastructure we already have, ensuring that “indispensable civilian objects” and those brave souls determined to provide the essential services within them are spared the horrific impacts of armed conflict, impacts from indiscriminate air raids and explosive weapons which must be removed in practice as their legitimacy has long been “removed” under international law.  War, indeed, “has rules” as many noted this week in various UN digital “conference rooms,” but those rules are increasingly disregarded.  The Security Council must do more to enforce them.  And war as an alleged enabler of anything remotely constructive for civilians in either the short or long term must be thoroughly debunked.

We are now facing a health crisis with multiple dimensions and causes highlighted and exacerbated by the current pandemic.  As someone who is serially blessed by vaccinations and adequate health care access, I fear for those increasingly desperate for the portion of health care that should rightly be theirs, persons perpetually shouting (or praying) away the wolves of disease and violence baying outside their dwellings on a daily basis. 

Unless we take the recommendations from this week seriously, unless we step up regarding practical manifestations of genuine solidarity, my fear is that their desperation will eventually become our common franchise, their misery will spread as quickly and defiantly as our own self-interestedness. Then, the stench from so many burning bodies will fill our nasal cavities as thoroughly as those who manage the fires of India’s now-overloaded funeral pyres. I was stunned this week by a 1961 photo of a Russian doctor preforming a self-appendectomy while stranded on a base in Antarctica.  How many in this world are forced into similarly desperate measures to treat personal and family health emergencies without access to any of the technical skills and training possessed by that doctor? 

For their sake, for our own as well, we simply cannot allow this desperation to persist any longer. Our hearts need to open wider, our blessings shared more liberally. We know what needs to be done to enable healthier outcomes for all. We are collectively, undoubtedly, urgently on the clock.

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Priority Mail: Delivering on Multiple Global Threats, Dr. Robert Zuber

15 Mar

Priority

A crisis is the sum of intuition and blind spots, a blend of facts noted and facts ignored. Michael Crichton 

Truth is always a turning point. Sheila Walsh

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos. Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Antonio Gramsci

The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. Edward O. Wilson

The virus teaches us that security in the end is human security. Jan Eliasson

This is a week when the “embrace of chaos” took many forms, from people on the hunt for disinfectants and toilet paper to government officials ducking allegations of incompetence and reluctantly turning over control of COVID-19 response to medical professionals who actually know what they’re doing – even if much of the medical infrastructure needed to predict and prevent outbreaks has long been eviscerated.

Indeed, we are in a period where broad public confidence in our often–medieval institutions has taken a hit, as rumors are more readily available than truth, families struggle to reassure children whose lives have been upended through school closures and social distancing, and many millions who live paycheck to paycheck, if indeed they are fortunate enough to receive a paycheck, make gut-wrenching choices between attending to the threat of virus and providing a minimal sustenance for their families.

And as we now seek to “flatten the curve” on outbreaks, we know at some level that that there is more to come, more from this particular virus but also more from other viral threats lurking in our cities, in our melting ice, in our equatorial forests. At least in the US, we have yet to face the full force of social isolation, the degree to which “touching” has become both a social violation and a medical emergency, the distancing brought on by this virus that merely compounds that already solidified through our previous economic and political choices. And all of this is being reinforced by institutions that at times seem hell-bent on suppressing the expression of our better selves, institutions which act as though they have our confidence when they actually have little more than the wary resignation we now liberally bestow on all who are not in our own “tribe.”

There is something genuinely unsettling about the sight of people standing on two-hour lines just to get into supermarkets and then yanking virtually any cleaning agents or non-perishable foodstuffs off the shelves in a particularly frantic search for wipes and masks we collectively should have known we would need and which are now needed most by the various “first responders” who have to try to referee our newly-minted panic based on (in)decisions they had no hand in making. At the same time, a  Palestinian writer recently reminded western colleagues this week that the sight of empty shelves is a common one, not only in Gaza, but in many parts of the world where violence and displacement affect wider swaths of the population than this virus is likely to do, a reminder that this deprivation that rightly unsettles many in so-called developed countries is merely a taste of what many millions of families experience on a daily basis.

Indeed, one of the potential (if preventable) casualties of this current virus is a massive breakdown of what remains of our solidarity with the parts of the world (including in our own countries) where shelves are often bare, where health care and housing are always elusive, where children are perpetually in danger of a stolen childhood.

Like many institutions at present, the UN is flying at half-mast, trying to both protect staff from infection and find a way to keep our collective eye on issues that the virus might have made worse, but certainly didn’t make disappear. Families are still fleeing violence in Idlib and northern Yemen. Ice caps continue to melt into increasingly warming oceans. Migrants continue to face intimidation in multiple forms rather than welcome mats. Children are still being deprived of liberty or recruited into armed groups. So-called peace agreements continue to fail basic tenets of inclusiveness and transparency. Biodiversity remains under threat across the life spectrum. Governments and others continue to misuse resources, including their intentional mis-allocation, in ways that bolster some interests and devastate others.

But this virus is our preoccupation now, and not without reason. Indeed, it is almost shocking to hear conversations and broadcasts, about toilet paper to be sure but also about social policy, that do not in some fashion or other reference COVID-19.  And while we hold our collective breath in the US and await a peak in infections that is almost sure to come and which will likely be confirmed by even our barely-adequate testing regimes, there is plenty of incentive – driven in part by our stubbornly “paleolithic emotions” – to block out all but what we consider to be the most urgent of matters, allowing this virus to take up too much of our collective bandwidth, providing cover for our grabbing and hoarding, our suspicions and conspiracies, our distrust and indifference.

In this context, it was a bit comforting this week to see the UN take a longer if no less urgent view, one that focuses on remaking the institutions we need and don’t yet have, institutions that are able to both respond to crisis and, perhaps more importantly, anticipate crises yet to materialize.

During a debate on Wednesday on the “role and authority of the General Assembly” chaired by Ghana and Slovakia –this at a time when expectations of UN shutdown were rampant — delegates discussed ways to make the Assembly (the most representative of UN bodies) fit to address current and future threats in a manner that better integrates and energizes the priorities, energies, skills and initiatives of global constituents. A theme that resonated throughout the conference room was the importance of (as the European Union noted) setting sharper priorities for our work, eliminating the “noise” and “clutter” of the GA agenda such that it can become more than a “catch basin” of issues, more than a producer of resolutions that (as Costa Rica maintained) are often without clear implications for constituents.

At a moment in time consumed by a strange and unpredictable virus, it was refreshing to hear the UN vet its own limitations and “blind spots” in a manner that promised better communication, clearer priorities, greater policy effectiveness and (as the UK suggested) a firmer focus on “what is most relevant to others.” Mexico noted that “we know what we mean” in this chamber, but few beyond the chamber can decipher our methods and strategies aside perhaps from concluding that such methods are not yet up to the challenges and expectations that have long been mandated for this policy space.

In a moment when people are too often avoiding each other, strategizing around each other, grabbing from each other, it felt right to hear Malaysia challenge the Assembly to “get closer to the people.” The question now is how to get closer, how to engage people without “infecting” them, how to offer reassurance without subsequently engendering cynicism? Perhaps there is some policy version of the elbow greeting now used to maintain connection without handshakes! In any event, this is not the last of the health or other crises knocking at the door. We need institutions that can warn of what seem to be an ever-present laundry list of (mostly self-inflicted) dangers, but that can also demonstrate the will (with sufficient resources) to address threats (both on and off our collective radar) at their earliest possible stages, and that can facilitate the birth of structures and their policy prescriptions that we badly need but don’t yet  have.

We also need institutions that can encourage our better selves, the “selves” that enable community sing-alongs from otherwise isolated Italian balconies, or the sharing of health supplies with perfect strangers, or enduring the current “nightmare” of food shopping to make sure that the elderly and other vulnerable persons have what they need to survive the current threat, or advocating for prisoners and the homeless whose options for fending off sickness are limited at best.

If Wednesday’s discussion was any indication, the General Assembly seems determined to be one of those institutions, one of those that can predict more effectively, inspire attentive responses, set clearer priorities, and act with greater resolve alongside a wider range of skills and voices. We will help that process along in any way we can.

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School Break: Learning Strategies Fit for our Future, Dr. Robert Zuber

26 Jan

Outdoor2

It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.  Albert Einstein

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.  Robert Frost

When the roots are deep, there’s no reason to fear the wind. African Proverb

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.  Socrates

The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete. Paula Hawkins

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room. Barbara Kingsolver

There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.  Gandhi

The UN had a relatively quiet week but not one without its disappointments.   A General Assembly preparatory meeting for the 2020 Oceans Conference exhibited little energy despite the urgency of ocean health in an age of melting ice caps and our self-inflicted “plastics Armageddon.”  In the Security Council a debate on the Middle East during which the US and Israel attempted to divert attention away from Palestine and towards Iran was accompanied by an Arria Formula discussion chaired by Russia and devoted to undermining the conclusions of investigators probing the use of chemical weapons in Douma, Syria.  As is so often the case, what could well have been an opportunity for “staying with the questions” of chemical weapons use became just one more political football as most members had made up their minds long before this Arria commenced and the Russians seemed determined (and largely failed) to use Douma report inconsistencies to call other chemical weapons allegations into question.

We have said this many times previously, and we say it again each semester to our new (and returning) cohort of interns – the UN represents an extraordinary learning opportunity but is not in any sense an extraordinary learning community.   We politicize questions and reporting with regularity. We rarely if ever ask the “next question” or stay with the questions on the table long enough to exhaust more than a portion of their significance. We generally fail to link the questions in one room with those taking place in others, nor do we ever examine the pedagogical limitations of the conference rooms in which our wilfull neglect of curiosity takes place, rooms that are much better suited to predictable political discourse than to kindling the flames we must light if our own and our children’s futures are to be secured.

Such pedagogical limitations within this UN space have implications for our efforts to promote SDG 5 and thus insure “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” This goal is a particular priority for the current General Assembly President, HE Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, and he incarnated this priority in an all-day, High-Level, International Day of Education event this past Friday to promote SDG 5 implementation.  In his opening remarks, the PGA made reference to the gap between current levels of school enrollment (especially for girls) and the “skills” we will need to tap if we are to successfully pursue our sustainable development responsibilities.  Enrollment gaps matter, to be sure, and the PGA made a special plea to the international community to consider how to better serve (and finance) the educational needs of all children, particularly those “trapped” within zones of conflict.

In that same vein, Japan (speaking on behalf of the Group of Friends) noted that even improvements in “basic reading skills” can have positive implications for goals such as poverty reduction ane the promotion of “sustainable peace.”   And always-thoughtful Ireland highlighted the importance of “empowerment through learning,” and its “opportunity schools” that intentionally “break down cycles of disadvantage.”

Though I probably would never have said so when I was a teenager, classrooms clearly do have a role to play in securitng a more peaceful and sustainable future.  There are skills — including those related to “literacy” in all its forms — that classrooms are well suited to develop.  And in many parts of the world, classrooms represent a welcome escape for young people, escape from the problems in their communities but also an escape from the limitations endemic to those communities.   Classrooms managed by gifted teachers (of which there are thankfully millions around the world) can help young people work around “the holes in their lives” and kindle flames that will serve youth (and the rest of us) in ways that they can sustain for much of the rest of their lives.

But as much as we might value classrooms and advocate for more and better funded schools, there are also significant caveats, some of which were raised during the opening segments of this High Level event.  Deputy-Secretary General Amina Mohammed herself noted the prevalence of classrooms in which “children don’t learn much of anything.”  She called for a “transformation in the way we interpret and value knowledge,” noting specifically the importance of learning which addresses hate speech and extremism and that can do much to narrow technology gaps.  The DSG understood that alongside the need to place underserved children in classrooms is the larger responsibility of schools and communities together to “prepare children for the world they are set to inherit,” including those aspects of the world that they may not be so keen to embrace.

As many of Friday’s morning speakers intimated, this preparatory task is one much easier said than done.   Once we shift our focus from merely expanding school enrollment numbers to addressing those millions of other children in danger of being left behind in this “decade of action,” the complexities of our educational task become apparent.   Schooling has positive implications for literacy and poverty reduction and can help narrow some technology access gaps.  Moreover, classrooms can provide stability — a comforting routine — where it is safe for some to open their minds and even their dreams in the presence of skilled and trustworthy educators.

But classrooms have several downsides which those committed to sustainable development must interrogate.   They can be places of competition rather than collaboration where the “winners” are able to escape the confines of their communities and build their own brands in far-away places.   Moreover, classrooms are only one of the places where children can learn what those on Friday agreed are worthy pedagogical objectives. Indeed, some of the most engaging educational encounters I have experienced — in most cases through the sheer brilliance of friends and colleagues — took place not in classrooms but in prisons, around campfires, in church basements, in art museums and cultural sites, around family breakfast tables.  Indeed, if we want children to build their base of knowledge and curiosity, we have to engage more of the places (and the “teachers” who occupy them) where children seeking to learn can learn best.

As we pursue the goals and targets of SDG 4, we need to ask more questions and sit longer with the questions we pose.  Are our classrooms well-suited, for instance, to teach empathy for those in need or those with less?  Are they places that can properly promote “place-based” learning — deeping the familiarity of young people with home environments and cultures — and then encourage youth to make local changes?  Can they help young people develop “deep roots” such that they no longer need to fear the winds which they will surely encounter over what we hope are long and fruitful lives? Are they places where young people can successfully overcome their limitations and practice the curiosity that will keep them learning long after their time in classrooms has ended?

Perhaps they can, but this is unclear.  Whhat is clearer, to us at least, is that education for sustainable development requires more from each of us and will likely require even more going forward. Indeeed much of what it requires is in our hearts and minds beyond our policy matrices and spread sheets.  We  must find a way to inspire caring in an increasingly indifferent world; to promote civic engagement and conflict resolution at a time when our politics seem so degraded; to encourage doing the right thing even when no one is watching; to help others to learn and succeed rather than incessantly calling attention to our own “accomplishments;” to see more clearly the links between how and what we consume and the fate of persons escaping flood waters from our denuded forests and melting icecaps or from the toxic remnants of our polluted waterways; to prepare people for the community responsibilities and employment opportunities to come and not simply those of the present.

The “future” that we ask schools, families and other educational influences to help prepare young people for is uncertain at best and, at the very least, such uncertainty is not to be laid at their doorstep.  If it is to be truly transformational, part of this “preparation” must involve a deeper commitment to modeling by the rest of us: modeling the civic and environmental engagement that we seek to inspire in the young; modeling mindfulness regarding the implications of how we live and what we share with others; modeling an “awakening” in ourselves of empathy and solidarity that we hope to arouse in our students; modeling a commitment to solving the problems on our watch rather than running out the clock and shuffling the game along to the next generation.

If truth be told, we’re not doing particularly well in this regard.  Friday’s sesssion embraced some elements of the “transformation” called for by DSG Mohammed, but largely without an examination of the “educators” in homes and communities that have been marginalized amidst our school-focused policy obsessions as well as the diverse contexts for successful learning that we have yet to fully embrace. Such contexts can change what young people know and how young people learn, making space for those who will never be able to grasp in classrooms more than a portion of what they will need to know and experience, feel and share, if their contributions to a more inclusive, just and sustainable world are to be fully experienced and duly recorded.

A flame not a bucket.  This is the educational agenda that the SDGs call for and that will take more than classrooms and their teachers to achieve.  If indeed we are committed to providing “inclusive and equitable” education for youth (as we must), then we need also to promote the duty of older folks beyond school walls (including at the UN) to help awaken youths’ best selves.

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