Tag Archives: Multilateralism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hunger Pangs: Cooperating on the Things People Long For, Dr. Robert Zuber

11 Nov

Blog Photo Please

Let him who has not a single speck of migration to blot his family escutcheon cast the first stone. José Saramago

Once you set out from shore on your little boat, once you embark, you’ll never truly be at home again. What you’ve left behind exists only in memory, and your ideal place becomes some strange imaginary concoction of all you’ve left behind at every stop.  Claire Messud

Human traffickers are simply vectors of the contempt which exists at the two poles of the asylum seeker’s journey; they take their cue from the attitudes of warlords and dictators, on the one hand, and, on the other, of wealthy states whose citizens have learned to think of generosity as a vice. Jeremy Harding

At times it seems as if the whole world has become a refugee and the few of us, who are privileged enough to wake up to the sound of an alarm clock instead of a siren, those of us who are enveloped by a veil of safety many of us fail to appreciate, have become desensitized to the migrating numbers, to the images of the dead, shrugging them away as a collective misery that this ailing part of the world must endure.  Aysha Taryam

This past Tuesday, the UN convened a special meeting bringing together the President of the General Assembly (PGA), María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, and the heads of various UN agencies tasked with addressing food insecurity and promoting Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals – End all forms of hunger and malnutrition by the year 2030.

On the surface, and given some of the complexities of funding and indicators afflicting other SDGs, this one would appear to be an utterly achievable goal.   Supermarkets in the US and Western Europe are bursting with fresh and prepared foodstuffs, and those foods are trending in the direction of fewer pesticides and greater nutritional value.   Agricultural technology offers the promise of crop yields even on lands that have long since been abandoned. It seems difficult to imagine that there is another side to food access that is actually growing and, in the case of Yemen, becoming more and more grotesque as military assaults and climate-related events gouge any and all prospects for local food security.   While walking the aisles of our superstores, it is more challenging than it should be to think about the often-devastating impact of bombing raids and rainless seasons on small holder farmers, male and female alike, whose labors are essential to the stability of local communities from the Sahel to Syria.

There are times when heartbreak where we have made our homes simply becomes too much to bear.  As we see now in the midst of the California inferno, this can be true even for people in more affluent settings. For those in settings closer to the margins, we find many family members and neighbors doing all they can to ensure stability and nourishment for the children in the places they come from. But for millions, when the sea waters rise and the tsunamis come ashore, when the landmines explode and the rains refuse to fall for yet another year, they simply can do no more to keep those places.

Tuesday’s UN event was based in large measure on a resolution of the General Assembly supplemented by some excellent (if a bit more abstract) analysis on the conflict and climate triggers of our growing hunger challenge offered by senior UN officials from the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development as well as from several member states led by Italy.  The resolution covers these triggers in good detail (as did many event speakers) and lays out a strategy that involves more innovative support for rural areas, including for small holder farmers, such that people can better cope with political and environmental hazards and increase the chances that families can somehow remain in their communities of origin.

What was new about this particular event, and happily so, was the migration-focus of much of this discussion. The aforementioned resolution does not mention migrants at all, but this omission was rectified as speaker after speaker made the migration-hunger connection. As PGA Espinosa Garcés, put it, we are in serious need of a “course correction” when it comes to our global commitment to end hunger, more specifically to eliminate food security among migrant families, with a special concern for forced migrants. This requires adoption of a formula that more than a few who labor within the policy world of the UN would advocate: offering mindful hospitality , ensuring  consistent, comprehensive and rights-based migration governance, and doing more to end violence and mitigate risks that undermine even the most ardent attempts by farmers and families to maintain the homes of their youth.

These are responsibilities, like so many others in the world, that mandate a careful blend of national ownership and implementation together with cross-border and multilateral cooperation.  The “go it alone,” “take care of our own” mentality that seems to be spreading like the plague in these times sounds tough-minded but mostly ensures that families will experience the miseries of migration compounded by malnutrition, and that children will face the option of being rejected at borders or abandoned in detention facilities in societies “that have learned to see generosity as a vice.”

The gist of this insight was reinforced by my colleague at Global Action, Claudia Lamberty, who has given quite a bit of thought recently to the decisions by several states, most notably the US, Austria and Hungary, to reject the upcoming Global Compact on Migration which will be signed by (hopefully) many ministers and heads of state in Morocco in just a few weeks.  In a document which she produced to help us prepare for our own GCM participation, Claudia listed potential economic and political factors that might lead states to make a decision like this about a “compact” which is comprehensive in scope but has no legally binding authority.  Her conclusion is that this decision is as much about multilateralism as about migration itself, in essence a “poke in the eye” to a system that has been long on promises and, at times, short on results, a system which seems to some governments intent on trespassing on the affairs of small and mid-sized states (but mostly not the large states) in matters that are highly sensitive to some national governments.  Inadvertently, the now vast movements of migrants and their many needs – including for food security – have provided some of the fuel for this multilateral backlash, this seemingly appealing choice in some national capitals to promote “protection over principle.”

As we have written previously, the UN is taking pains to counter such threats to its core legitimacy.  This week in fact, the Security Council itself got in the act as China (November president) hosted a debate on effective multilateralism during which state after state took the floor to affirm the importance of the UN to resolving a range of thorny global problems – albeit with occasional interjecting (spoken and implied) of migration-related caveats.

But affirmation itself (with or without caveats) is insufficient to cure the suspicion of some states that the UN’s structure and culture innately privilege powerful governments thus ensuring that many core promises for which the world literally hungers are more likely to go unfulfilled.  Indeed, if the human race is not to dissolve back into some nationalist-stimulated tribalism, we must demonstrate – over and over – the tangible benefits of a system of cooperating states and stakeholders, governments that resist the temporary allures of nationalism and stakeholders who insist that they do just that.  As with migration itself, food security is both a global challenge and a national policy responsibility. As noted in the aforementioned GA resolution, as important as global consensus on such matters is (and it is), plans for addressing these challenges must be “nationally articulated, designed, owned, led and built.”

I am in Germany now about to join a team of experts in reviewing our options and responsibilities in the area of small arms and light weapons.  Increasingly, there is recognition of a symbiotic, if nefarious, relationship between our common insecurity courtesy of a world awash in both weapons and political enmity and the food insecurity courtesy of major external factors that affect harvests — especially for small holder farmers – including climate related events such as drought and flooding that can diminish yields beyond the tipping point; but also armed violence and landmines which can render farmland useless and ratchet up vulnerabilities impacting all community members, especially so for women.

There are many things in the world now for which people legitimately hunger:  for an end to violence, for meaning and purpose, for basic security of food and domicile, for adventure beyond the familiar, for potable water and accessible health care, for justice when abuses occur.  But as the PGA reminded delegates on Tuesday, “eating is a special act,” a fundamental and even primordial right.  As so many in “developed” societies build their fat reserves and clog their arteries through what Italy referred to on Tuesday as “suspect” food choices, we find ourselves in a world of deepening and evermore complex food insecurity that turns the act of eating for millions — including millions of migrants — into an ultimate “hit or miss” proposition.

Fortunately, this complexity is still within our competency to resolve successfully – together as nations and multilateral stakeholders — both for the sake of those who seek to remain at home and those who are driven to follow the promise of more fertile pastures elsewhere.

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Purpose and Repurpose:  The UN Seeks to Recover Its Multilateral Mojo, Dr. Robert Zuber

4 Nov

People and Planet 4

I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. Anaïs Nin

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.  Parker  Palmer

It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy.  Wendell Berry

He had been adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection.  Charles Dickens

Your job is to find out what the world is trying to be.  William Stafford

There was more than a proper portion of bad news this week, including Austria and other states following the US lead by refusing to sign the Global Compact on Migration which promises to streamline migration governance for the millions of people now on the move by choice or (in the case of the Latin America “caravan”) coercion.  Even Morocco, host of the Global Compact signing, is now apparently imposing travel restrictions on nationals from select African states!  In Yemen, the viral image of a young child wasting away in her famine-afflicted environment was a reminder of our collective indifference to the catastrophic consequences of our too-often, weapons-stoked, foreign policy choices.   And the bull-rush of global populations to elect “nationalists” to high office has exposed a pervasive – if not always well-founded – suspicion that the so-called “liberal order” and its multilateral incarnations might never fulfill its promises of inclusion and prosperity beyond the machinations and manipulations of its elites.

Inside the UN enmity reared its head, on and off, in several conference rooms.  In the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, states resisted critiques of their human rights records, including their treatment of human rights defenders, often making the badly-worn argument that because there are laws on the books guaranteeing rights, that rights are surely being upheld.   In the First Committee, weapons-related negotiations were, once again, the pretext for sometimes bitter recitations of deep political division.  And in the Security Council a discussion on the misery that remains Libya with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court exposed, yet again, the deep divides among members regarding the role of international justice in ensuring international peace.  Finally, back in the General Assembly, the overwhelming support by member states for the lifting of the US blockade on Cuba belied that fact that the US currently has no intention of doing so, thumbing its nose once more at the apparently absurd notion that multilateral institutions can force powerful states to behave themselves or even honor their public commitments to international agreements and principles.

And yet, at least in our little corner of the policy universe, events were held that renewed vigor for the challenges of keeping energized both our bureaucracies and our own souls needed to resolve the complex and difficult challenges that are in part of our own making.

This week, we were honored to participate in the formal launching of the “Peace Angels” sculpture at the World Trade Center in New York.   Led by renowned artist Lin Evola, this was a wonderful day of events which showcased the majesty and promise that can be created through the repurposing of metal from weapons that had once been used to intimidate opponents and spread havoc on our streets.   In the Christian tradition, we speak of baptismal waters transformed “from a common to a sacred use.”  As the Peace Angels project has only begun to remind us, there remains so much for the rest of us to transform as well.  The prospect of deadly weapons repurposed as inspiring monuments to peace should move us all to consider occupying more often this fertile middle ground between the first creation and the final destruction – places where opportunities for repurposing generally reside.

And back in the UN, a little advertised event brought together three current leaders of our still-grand multilateral experiment.   The president of the General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, was joined on the podium by the president of the Economic and Social Council, Inga Rhonda King, and October’s president of the Security Council, Bolivia’s Sacha Llorenti, all making passionate pleas for the preservation and renewal of our now-besieged multilateral system before a modest audience of (as Indonesia gratefully noted) mostly senior diplomats.

What struck me about this session was how personal it became.  Speakers and responders were clear (in ways that we rarely see in this space) that the UN’s many challenges are about our culture as much as our management, about our often misplaced sense of purpose that makes the task of repurposing ourselves and our institutions so fraught with unease and frustration. Some maintained (with Dickens) that we have become “adapted to the verses” but haven’t spent enough time listening to the voices that remind us of the life beyond the texts, the “life beyond our walls” as Egypt stated during this session. Ecuador claimed that delegates “are often running from one room to another” with little sense of the scope of activities of the UN or reminders of “why we came here in the first place.”  Ambassador Llorenti cited the many global challenges such as terrorism and climate change which simply cannot be resolved within national contexts, and chided states that now seem hell-bent to “go it alone.” Common sense, he exclaimed, now seems to be the “least common” of the senses.

One of the questions that comes up from time to time in our small cohort of interns and fellows is “how badly do people here want this to work?”  How much are people really invested in bringing about the world embedded in the UN’s security and human rights resolutions and its promises of sustainable development?   Is UN service merely a stepping stone to some higher career aspiration, or is there reason to believe that people here are truly committed to incarnate in diverse communities the resolution texts to which diplomats devote great energies but which too-often remain mostly in the realm of the aspirational? Do UN stakeholders fully grasp what the GA president said this week –that the UN can and must become the place that better “upholds a rule based order and provides a context for cooperative and equitable relations among states”?  Do we truly believe, as Canada stated, that we must be “here for the world” as much as for our governments and organizations?

Clearly there is an urgent need now to meld purpose and repurpose, to blend a renewed commitment to the aspirations and values that brought us to this place with the courage and creativity to transform the “common” that is killing us into the “exceptional” that might sustain us.  Only from this melding can we listen carefully to “what the world is trying to be” – despite current enmity levels — and then make the best contributions we know how towards helping that world break out.

As the president of ECOSOC noted this week, we are still in command of the resources that allow us to cope with what often seems like an “unforgiving universe,” including our capacities for compassion and creativity.  Zambia likewise reminded delegations that, despite this difficult moment for multilateralism, “we are capable of making the change” we need to make, both in these halls and in the wider world.  But if any of this is to happen, we must more effectively resist going through our motions, running away from disturbance, fitting in merely for the sake of fitting in, or substituting career for purpose. We would do better (for ourselves and the planet) to recover the vocations to serve in this place that can shift our current course, repurpose our working methods and mission statements, and turn draft resolutions into declarations and platforms for sustainable and cooperative change.

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Structural Adjustments:  The UN Anticipates an Unsettled New Year, Dr. Robert Zuber

31 Dec

The P-5 make every effort to avoid legal constraints on their actions, and they have been almost entirely successful in doing so. James Paul

If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it. Norman Cousins

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired. Jules Renard

Another year has come and gone, and we are about to be inundated with declarations of intent to change our ways: to lose weight, be kinder to strangers, cut back on alcohol, or any number of other “resolutions” designed to fix whatever we have concluded has been “wrong with us.”

Much like the resolutions that proliferate in the multilateral policy space that we inhabit, most of our personal declarations are likely to change little in real time and space, as they seriously misrepresent the degree to which habits can be altered by intention alone.  Rarely can we “talk our way” into change.  The habits which largely define our lives – for good and for ill – are thick and persistent.   They help organize our place in the world and at times even bring us comfort.  But they also divert energies from pursuing the summits that we might otherwise attain, from re-imagining our direction when the current one has lost its vitality, from staring our challenges in the face instead of giving in to the material and technological distractions of the moment.

Habit is not a prison, but we make it seem like one when we stop asking hard questions, when we stop “wrestling with our demons,” when we settle for what is good enough “for us” alone, when we give in to the urge to “relax” before our tasks are complete, indeed even before we feel tired.

This formula applies to institutions as much as individuals.   The UN is one institution that is thick with habit largely in the form of protocol, a place that can barely tolerate those who dare to ask the next hard question, voices for whom the UN in its current form is “necessary but not sufficient” to address looming threats from ever-more-powerful weapons, climate-related shocks and growing economic inequalities. Laziness is generally not an issue for the UN – diplomats and other stakeholders often work long hours and face many deadlines – but so much of the work is directed towards generating statements that are eerily similar to the largely ineffectual statements which preceded them.  Given the nature of the UN and its often-squabbling member states, the tendency here is to “double down” on consensus language rather than ensure that this language – and the tangible commitments which it implicates – are appropriate to the levels of threat we now actually face.

As we enter this New Year, there are significant differences in evidence regarding the direction that this institution should go.   For instance, under significant pressure from the US, the UN’s Fifth Committee recently agreed on a 2018 budget that included $285 million in spending cuts.  The assumption underlying this decision is that the UN is in some respects a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that needs to better live within its means despite a host of growing global challenges – especially in the realm of peace and security — to which the UN is now expected to respond effectively.

For others, the problem to be addressed is related to the degree to which the UN Secretariat is able to exhort for change, but not to insist upon it, and certainly not to boldly organize the resources of the UN system to address current threats in a timely and effective manner.   The more time we spend inside the UN, and we have spent thousands of hours in its conference rooms and chambers over the past 12 years, the clearer it becomes that the secretariat is still largely beholden to large state interests.   The “leadership” which the global community needs and anticipates from UN officials is  — sadly so – both subject to and compromised by the demands (and even whims) of the states that pay its bills and issue its visas.

For us, it is the power imbalances of the UN system – mostly beyond public scrutiny – that define the UN’s “habit” and limit its potential for the internal changes that can better address external threats.   And nowhere are those imbalances more pervasive – and perhaps hazardous to the overall health of the UN system – than in the Security Council.

As noted in a fine study recently released by James Paul, Of Foxes and Chickens, changes in the dynamics of power characteristic of the Permanent 5 members (and especially of the US and UK) have largely been cosmetic in nature – changes as likely to reinforce existing dynamics as set them on a more hopeful course.  Paul rightly gives the Council credit for (among other things) recognizing climate threats, committing to the full integration of women in peace processes, and engaging in meaningful relationships with regional organizations to address security threats throughout Africa. But he also (like many of his contemporaries) chides the P-5 for their failures to work effectively with other UN agencies and offices; to respond to threats before they erupt into full-scale conflict; turning a “blind eye” to some conflicts currently in motion (such as at the moment in Cameroon, Venezuela and even Yemen); positing humanitarian access as a substitute for hard-nosed conflict resolution which is its primary, Charter-mandated task.

And then there is the “bullying” that Paul identifies – of the elected members of the Council, of other UN states and agencies, of the Secretary-General and (his for now) cabinet.   Moreover, Paul chronicles well the archaic protocols that marginalize all but the P-3 (US, UK, France) and allow politics to stain the language of Council resolutions, the processes that brings such resolutions to a formal vote, even the determination of Council members to ensure that so-called “binding” resolutions are fully implemented.  He also understands better than most that the veto power which is the sole domain of the permanent members is exercised mostly behind closed doors – as yet another means for demanding concessions from elected members without a club of their own to wield.

Perhaps most discouraging is the tendency identified by Paul for the permanent members to hold themselves beyond the reach of the international law that they forcefully proscribe for others. This “do as I say, not as I do” mentality undermines confidence in Council decisions and reinforces the belief that power – not law – is still the guiding premise of global affairs.  As bad a guide to parenting as this mentality is, it has even more serious consequences for international peace and security, as we are likely to experience throughout the coming years.

Finally, Paul recognizes that all this comes at a high cost that dwarfs any budgetary concessions won by the Trump administration or other states.  This “habit” of power imbalances and accompanying bullying discourages bold ideas and initiatives by smaller-states and secretariat officials alike.  It also dampens what gusto remains in the global public to believe that the UN is truly the place to identify and address the wolves baying at the door.  There is truly a high price to be paid – beyond the fiscal ruminations of the Fifth Committee — once global constituents conclude that the “thickness” of the UN’s habits have largely rendered its peace and security promises moot.

It is probably too much, as many commentators have argued, to expect any meaningful Council reform, certainly not in the short term.   But as one small contribution to (hopefully) smoothing out some of what promises to be “rough edges” in the year to come, I offer the following:

In counseling one essential element in shifting habitual behaviors that have long outlived their usefulness is to ascertain levels of personal commitment.  In effect, how badly does the client want this change to happen?   In many such instances, the depth of commitment foretells levels of grit and determination needed to identify and ultimately divert “bad habits.”

Such (important and largely missing) information gleaned from the P-5 and other large states would be helpful for the entire UN community and beyond.   How badly do the major UN “players” want this system to function as an effective means to collaboratively assess and address global threats?  What changes are they sincerely willing to entertain in order for the UN to become what we spend too much energy now trying to convince others that it already is?

As the calendar flips over to 2018, an anxious global public needs to know if our erstwhile guardians of multilateral institutions are playing for keeps or playing largely for themselves.  For unless the powerful states resolve to make the UN more effective and less habituated, to generate healthier balances between global and state interests, the years to come are likely to be rockier and more frustrating for all of us than they need to be.

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