Tag Archives: peace

Taking temperature, taking stock: Sustaining global efforts to combat endemic (and emerging) diseases

4 Oct

Editor’s note:  This post is written by Karin Perro who is currently finishing up graduate study at John Jay College of the City University of New York.   During her limited time in the UN Security Council, Karin witnessed the Council’s efforts to address the peace and security implications of the Ebola outbreak.  As she notes, however, Ebola is not the only health-related threat to peace and security, or for that matter to the fulfillment of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

Recently, the halls and chambers of the UN have resonated with horror over the growing specter of Ebola in West Africa. And rightly so – the current epidemic poses an urgent health threat to global human security, with the potential to undermine the already fragile economic and democratic vitality of afflicted states. While immediate, heightened efforts to staunch the deadly outbreak are imperative, we must be mindful that the current crisis not overshadow the need for continued vigilance in combating extant endemic diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and cholera. Such diseases are largely curable with early detection and treatment, yet account for an alarming number of global mortalities, with some estimates attributing over five million deaths annually to endemic pathogens. The transmission of polio virus is on the rise after two decades of near eradication. The Center for Disease Control warns that the polio virus could conceivably paralyzed more than 200,000 children worldwide annually over the next decade if coordinated curtailment measures are not initiated now.

The combination of an insidious persistence of endemic diseases – and the potential for more Ebola-like emerging disease outbreaks – has the potential to undermine the objectives articulated in the Post 2015-Millennium Development Goals. Health is a fundamental human right, and crucial to global security. It needs to be prioritized.

New challenges continue to exacerbate the underlying malaise already stifling international health security. This month’s briefing to the UN by Every Woman, Ever Child (EWEC) noted impressive progress in reducing maternal and infant mortality, with Dr Robert Orr of the UN Executive Office of the Secretary General announcing that the lives of 17 thousand children are saved daily as a direct result of EWEC initiatives. While laudable, such goal attainments might ironically lead to an increase in those populations most susceptible to endemic diseases, and a further taxing of already resource-scarce national health plans. In addition, the disturbing proliferation of armed insurgencies worldwide are creating unrelenting burdens in delivering health care and essential medicines to those suffering in conflict zones.

Access to affordable, essential drugs and vaccines in developing countries is fundamental in combating endemic diseases. Greater political commitment and funding is needed to address the inadequate access to such drugs by undeveloped countries. In addition, many organized criminal networks have redirected their enterprises from the illicit drug trade to marketing in counterfeit drugs that often prove more lucrative. Current anti-counterfeiting policy measures have proven inadequate in stemming the flow of pharmaceutical counterfeits, particularly to developing nations where treatments based on fake essential drugs, such as anti-malarials, imperil the lives of millions in Africa, South East Asia, and parts of Latin America.

As we approach the final adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and initiate their implementation, it is incumbent on all stakeholders to take stock of the current overall global health “temperature” and reconfirm their commitment to their stated goals as they relate to global health security. The focus of the SDGs on eradicating poverty and promoting universal education is inextricably intertwined with the physical health of targeted populations. Poverty and endemic disease are tandem barriers to the overall socio-economic health of developing states, while the success of SDG educational goals are predicated on the physical well being of the communities they aim to serve.

Without adequate support for the prevention, treatment, and control of endemic diseases, malaria-stricken children will be incapable of attending SDG-inspired education programs and initiatives. Women debilitated by tuberculosis will be prevented from participating in community or regional governance in a sustainable and substantive manner. Adults weakened from cholera will be denied the ability to provide economically for their families through newly developed, SDG-inspired employment opportunities. And emergent diseases, conceivably affecting large swaths of regional populations, will only compound the severe obstacles already facing global health objectives.

For the moment, we must divert our energies to suppressing the dire Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The Secretary General’s formation of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) is a positive step in addressing the current heath crisis. However, with unabated world deforestation and climate shocks, deadly new pathogens will certainly continue to emerge. We need to take proactive steps now to avoid dilatory, reactive attempts at squelching pathogenic wildfires in future. To that end, it is hoped that the recently developed Crisis Response Mechanism of the United Nations will provide an effective framework for predicting and then responding to current and future health crises. At the same time, the Global Health and Security Agenda (GHSA) calls for accelerated progress in combating biological threats, including control and prevention measures, through a five-year implementation plan. But timely and intensified responses are critical. As stated by the Chair of GHSA, “a biological threat anywhere is a biological threat everywhere” and “the consequences of not acting are unfathomable”.  ‘Health keeping’ now rivals the importance of peace keeping in the struggle for global security.

Synergy across sectors (a considerable UN refrain) will be essential in achieving not only SDG health initiatives, but also rapid response strategies to avert future epidemics. Triangular partnerships will need to be forged between governments, the private sector, and civil society. Uneasy alliances will be required linking corporate sponsors and health NGOs. Moving forward, corporate partners must demonstrate transparency in achieving local health objectives consistent with national health priorities. They will need to ensure that their efforts are not predicated on profit bottom lines, and must be open to accountability if their credibility as health actors is to be maintained. ‘Might’ in this instance rarely equates with ‘right’.

Likewise, NGOs must refrain from appropriating bureaucratic, big business practices that can stifle flexibility towards the achievement of urgent health response.  The inclusion of all stakeholders must be real and substantive, not sidelined as merely rhetorical participation. Perhaps most importantly, political will is paramount in avoiding what might be seen as ‘anemic’ responses to global health challenges. Eradicating the ‘ills of the world’, as articulated within the SDGs, could well be undermined by more literal, health-related ills if threats from both endemic and potentially emerging diseases remain inadequately addressed by all relevant stakeholders.

Karin Perro, GAPW Intern

 

 

 

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Climate’s Impact on Hunger Games

18 Sep

I’m writing this on a plane returning from a week of visiting with new and longstanding colleagues working on an exciting range of security-pertinent issues as the UN seeks policy clarity and sanity on climate health this week.  From peacekeeping reform and the abolition of capital punishment to strategies for healing victims of trauma in post-conflict settings and demonstration projects in the Mediterranean to promote climate health, the range of conversations was breathtaking.   There are many fine people, it seems, who are both looking for meaningful connection to global policy and interested in the degree to which their core missions impact – and are impacted by – broad peace and security concerns.

Writing while flying is surely not the best way to advertise a commitment to sustainable futures.   My office does much less flying than in the past, and we need to do still less going forward.  Indeed, at this critical time, all of our material commitments must be carefully scrutinized.   As heads of state and concerned citizens converge in New York this week for climate discussions, it is clear that too many of us who accept the logic of climate change still resist the urgent lifestyle reform which that logic would suggest.

This next week’s key climate deliberations will take place alongside another core UN commitment – to the endorsement and implementation of a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  While diplomats have been reluctant, in part for good reason, to resist a stand-alone peace goal, there is wide recognition within this SGD process that armed violence has a major negative impact on development, and certainly on the types of development that can enhance climate health rather than accelerate the opposite trend.

These two major UN engagements certainly have points of convergence, but perhaps none so much as with the alleviation of poverty.   This clearly is a core issue for SDGs though vast obstacles remain related to debt, speculative finance, unfair trade practices, lack of access to markets and security for rural workers, a lack of public participation in national policies that have poverty implications and much more.

But one of the obstacles to poverty eradication is the degeneration of our climate itself.   Climate change is held more and more responsible – rightly in our view – for increased human migrations, food insecurity, the lack of access to potable water, and many more complicating factors.   And all of these features of our contemporary social condition – and more where they came from – have security implications.   The search for water increases the physical vulnerabilities of the seekers, especially women.   The control of water and related resources creates cross-border tensions and limits essential access. Shifts in rainfall dramatically impact crop yields and threaten local food security, shift internal migration patterns and further imbalance global trade agreements.

On September 20, Global Action will participate in a workshop on “Poverty and Peacemaking” at Princeton University.   Our specific panel will deal with food security issues.   In my 12 years running a food pantry in Harlem and in our work at GAPW with women farmers in Cameroon and elsewhere, there are several important things to communicate to the Princeton audience, including:  the impact of an increasingly sick climate on agriculture; the core insight that human security is not possible without food security; and the perhaps too-obvious insight that food security itself is severely undermined by conflict and armed violence, including conflict motivated by conditions of a deteriorating climate.

Indeed, one can make the case, and I will seek to make it at Princeton, that food security and other dimensions of physical security are intertwined at several levels.   In neighborhoods defined by heavy narcotics use and even heavier gun fire, a full refrigerator is only one of the security reassurances needed for families to break out of poverty and participate more fully in building stable and sustainable communities.

Security, we hasten to add, is as much a feeling as a condition.   There are metrics of various competencies pertaining to gun violence, child abuse, narcotics use, rape, domestic violence, etc.   There are statistics to measure welfare levels, average income, educational attainment, and more. But in the end, it is how you feel about your life and community that has the most to do with levels of personal commitment and engagement.   We choose to participate in poverty alleviation or peacemaking based on how we feel about conditions, prospects for meaningful change, and options for participation; certainly more than on how our community is tracking statistically.

During my many years in a Harlem parish and food pantry, I was sometimes called to help clean out the apartment of a deceased neighbor when there were no family members able or willing to do the job.  Often we found evidence of great hoarding, including many cans of pantry food.   In some instances, the food was piled to the ceiling with apparently no plans for it to be consumed.   Those cans represented security of one sort, a sort that is indispensable to community life.   But food issues represent only a start towards development that is fully participatory, context and gender specific, and integrative of many security concerns.  Full spectrum security must be our peacemaking goal, not merely a slice of security.

Especially this week, we must be mindful of the ways in which the grind of poverty is directly influenced by climactic imbalances.  As our climate deteriorates, more fields will lie barren and more communities will embark on new and more desperate migrations.  No matter how comprehensive and well-intentioned our MDGs, climate sickness might well make poverty harder to alleviate than ever before.

What happens this week in New York is no game, no mere diplomatic exercise. It’s time to step up, to feel the desperate urgency that many millions of people around the world just can’t shake as their crops wither and weapons proliferate around them. Indeed, it’s quite a bit past time.

Dr. Robert Zuber

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No Water, No Peace

24 Jun

Editor’s Note:  Sulekha Prasad comes to us from Rutgers University with extensive experience in gender and development issues.  She has been following post-2015 development priorities at the UN, notably the intersections of food, water and human security. 

At the recent UN event “Civil society perspectives on the Post-2015 agenda” organized by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the European Union representative asserted that “[development] goals need to be universal and no longer the goals meant for the developing world.” While precise objectives and means of universal attainment regarding the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remain elusive, accountability for those goals remains of paramount importance. How can UN member states ensure that the most effective, measured actions are taken to eliminate on a global scale inequality of access to poverty reduction measures and resources such as water while protecting the environment?

We learned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the need for holistic responses to cross cutting and inter-linked goals is imperative, but this insight has been unevenly applied with the SDGs. For example, proposed SDG Goal 6, “Secure water and sanitation for all for a sustainable world,” lacks a standard of measurement, which makes accountability for that standard challenging. Currently, the right to water gives a private ‘holder’ legal permission to use water for any number of purposes including, but not limited to, agriculture, storage, sale, hydroelectric power, or treatment plants. Holders currently reserve the right to retain and use water for private purposes as much as the law permits. In response to this seemingly unaccountable model that limits access, UN member states proposed SDG Goal 6.3, to improve water quality by significantly reducing pollution, eliminating dumping of toxic materials, and improving wastewater management as well as recycling and reuse. While this attempt at measurement is a sensible response to the urgent need for responsible usage of a precious resource, it does not provide accountable restrictions on current ‘holders’ mainly due to the frameworks heavy reliance on what some social scientists call “measuring the immeasurable.”

When the human rights community and member states discuss the right to water, the conversation shifts between a civilian’s right to water access and the rights of a “legal holder.” According to human rights advocates, there is a lack of accountability protecting citizen’s rights to water access over and against private rights to water control. There is also the challenge of trying to ‘measure’ a resource that is challenging to measure: assessing both water quantity and quality from ground water and other sources remains a formidable challenge to SDG 6 and other SDGs dependent on water security.

Available evidence substantiates the claim that water access is heavily politicized and yet tied invariably to economic, social and environmental well-being. Indeed, the discourse and trajectory of water rights carries with it the threat of further compromising local, state, and international security. In 2000, Hazarajat, Afghanistan experienced violent conflicts over drought-depleted local resources. In the same year locals of Cochabamba, Bolivia experienced extreme violence and conflict over the privatization of their water supply. In Chennai, Tamil Nadu, local farmers engage and experience conflict and violence over water access, while private ownership of the Cauvery (Kaveri) River between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu continues to result in daily clashes. Moreover, India’s 37.7 million annual deaths is in part a direct consequence of water borne diseases. On another continent, Darfur, Sudan experienced 400,000 deaths in part over diminishing water supplies and access to other resources.

Water-related resolutions that define and guide access may be one of the most strategic ways that the UN and member states can effectively prevent future conflict and even war that have water scarcity at their origins.  The possibility of fair and accountable sharing of water resources both locally and internationally could be used as a spring board for launching other ways of ensuring peace and security when scarcity threatens.

Solutions to developmental problems cannot always be measurable, but they can be made accountable. There is no denying that there are proven techniques that help state officials mange water supplies, but they do not adequately address rapid urbanization, the legal state of water rights, and difficult to measure ground water sources. In addition they do not adequately acknowledge threats to communities caused by over-reliance on measure such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the thematic concerns of Human Development Measurement Index (HDMI). Excessive fidelity to such measures may have caused considerable damage to peace, security and governance, and thus it is imperative that we develop more fair, effective, and accountable means to ensure access to water and other key resources.

One possible solution may be to seek and install more accountable leadership; leaders who do more than keep an ear to the ground, but daily, practice self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, and empathy for the needs of families and communities for social, economic and environmental progress. Another aspect to this solution would be to communicate individually with women in local communities to assess the extent to which a particular water-focused resolution would be effective in their respective areas. Lastly, an increase in women-led initiatives and women’s political participation with power to create and implement measures for effective water policies might go far to providing the water security we all seek.

In an era characterized by a lack of climate health and increased pollution of existing waterways, access to water is a growing global concern with grave implications for human security.   If we want to keep the peace for coming generations, access to fresh, clean water is indispensable.

Sulekha Prasad, GAPW

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A Call for Stable and Peaceful Policies

4 May

On April 25, Global Action joined with other civil society organizations (WFUNA, FES, WILPF) in launching an initiative to support the work of the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly in promoting the cross-cutting theme, “Ensuring Stable and Peaceful Societies.”  These organizations affirm the important value of this theme as the UN seeks adoption of a new (and hopefully expanded) set of sustainable development goals.

Our event immediately followed a day and a half long Thematic Debate in the General Assembly on ‘Ensuring Stable and Peaceful Societies’ that sought to field comment outlining both state aspirations and responsibilities within this dynamic normative framework.

As one might anticipate, the range of lenses that diplomats sought to include in their analysis of ‘stable and peaceful societies,’ was quite broad.   This is as it should be.  The normative framework suggested by this Thematic Debate touches on all facets of the UN’s work as diplomats were quick to acknowledge.   Some, like Qatar and Israel, noted the need for more ‘honest and responsible governance.’ Cuba underscored the deep divides that must be overcome between rich and poor.  Switzerland called for dramatic improvements in accessible public space.  Japan called for more attention to the management of ‘disaster risk.’ Australia, Nicaragua and others highlighted the need for more efforts to empower women.  Ecuador called for restraints on over-consumption and the end of what it called ‘speculative economies.’  Argentina affirmed the need for more attention to ‘rule of law’ obligations.  Egypt called for more efforts to address ‘massive refugee flows.’  Kenya noted challenges to peace represented by both illicit weapons and shortages of precious water.  The US and others clarified and solidified the linkages between violence and impediments to the fulfillment of development priorities.  Indonesia called for internal UN reforms to better serve the interests of a ‘rebalanced’ economic system.

On and on it went for over a day: states sometimes being provocative but mostly pointing out diverse elements of the massive, multi-dimensional undertaking that is ‘stable and peaceful societies.’   The Thematic Debate in the GA underscored the degree to which challenges associate with all three pillars that delineate the UN’s primary responsibilities – peace and security, human rights and development –   must be addressed in tandem.  Indeed, our growing populations and shrinking access to available resources; our increasingly sophisticated, digitally-driven military tools; and a new set of often-gruesome human rights responsibilities from Damascus to Bangui are more than sufficient to keep the policy community engaged at multiple levels.    The bar is set high here. The expectations for action coming from beyond UN headquarters are considerable.   This is not a ball we can afford to drop.

We know from the NGO side that we need to do more to support states and UN secretariat officials in keeping linkages relevant to the promotion of ‘stable and peaceful societies’ fresh among diverse stakeholders.  This involves a deeper level of partnership commitment, more than simply telling diplomats what’s missing and what ‘they’ need to do about it.    Through our own related initiatives, we seek to take more responsibility for goal setting and implementation, to do more to redress imbalances and end violence than merely pointing out the limitations of others.

As the presidency of the General Assembly shifts from year to year, we can do our part to be both facilitator and ‘institutional memory’ when it comes to ‘stable and peaceful societies.’     This involves a commitment to work closely and effectively with the new GA president’s staff on another round of diplomatic engagements with this thematic issue.  But it also involves a commitment to take account of broader fields of inquiry and their stakeholders, to perceive wider relevance and open doors to different kinds of constituent participation. ‘Stable and peaceful societies’ represents both a compelling aspiration and a profound test of our policy commitment and maturity.   This is one test we need to study hard for.

Dr. Robert Zuber

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Solidarity Across Religious Lines: World Interfaith Harmony Week at the United Nations

15 Feb

Editors note:   This essay by Lia Petridis Maiello first appeared in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lia-petridis/solidarity-across-religio_b_4774894.html

There are few places other than the United Nations where the fruitful seeds for complex global paradigm shifts of ethical and political concern can be planted so effectively. As a result, cultures, traditions and with them, international policy, can be affected in the longer-term, and often fundamentally reformed for the advancement of societies.

The World Interfaith Harmony Week provided UN audiences with varying views on faith, religion and social responsibility. One of these opportunities was a well composed panel on “Engaging Religions to Prevent Atrocity Crimes,” co-organized by the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, The United Religions Initiative, The Partnership for Global Justice and the Department for Public Information (DPI) Outreach Program on the Rwanda Genocide.

The acknowledgement that religion in the past has indeed played a significant role in the promotion and execution of atrocity crimes, including genocide, thereby reinforcing the fact that any religion can be modified and abused by political leaders for the promotion of hatred, levels the playing field for those that are of the conviction that “true belief” is represented by only a few.

However, if religion can work this way, it can certainly work in a conciliatory manner as well. The UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, stated how most religions indeed teach the equality of all individuals and the unity within the diversity that considers differences within race, gender or nationality as a gain and fundamental to healthy, contemporary societies. He also described how religious leaders in the ongoing unrest in the Ukraine have physically positioned themselves between angry residents in order to prevent violent clashes.

Carol Rittner, Distinguished Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, confirmed how historically some religious institutions and leaders became “part of the engine of genocide,” and how others used their influence to protect those minorities who faced grave danger of being persecuted or killed. “Unfortunately,” she noted, “religions have failed to teach and create solidarity across religious lines and between people, so that they can stand together against any form of degradation.” Rittner further explained the complex role that religion played in the Rwandan genocide.

Author Timothy Longman described in his book, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda (2010) how some members of both the Catholic and Protestant churches helped to promote the genocide by giving moral legitimacy to the killing:

Churches had long impacted ethnic politics in Rwanda, first by favoring the Tutsi during the colonial period, then switching allegiance to the Hutu after 1959, inadvertently sending a message that ethnic discrimination and favoritism could actually be considered as consistent with church teaching.

Both author Longman and Professor Rittner refer in their remarks to the helpful role that certain Muslim leaders played during the Rwandan genocide as protectors of Tutsis, preaching a message of tolerance rather than hate. As a result, many Rwandans converted to Islam when the humanitarian catastrophe was over.

Understanding how religion can function as a tool for peace, rather than an ideology for marginalization and division, is a message that needs to be relearned in numerous places, worldwide, including in international institutions and many houses of worship.

Lia Petridis Maiello, Media Consultant

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Here’s to you, Mary Robinson: Thoughts on Intertwining Security and Development Goals

9 Feb

It is not news to anyone who follows this space that Mary Robinson is one of our favorite global civil servants, someone who is thoughtful, courageous and committed.  Her ideas exploring the human rights dimensions of climate change is just another example of her encyclopedic understand of the multiple facets of UN policy activity and her skills in bringing those facets into some harmonious, intentional relationship.

As the final sessions of the Open Working Group unfolded, Ms. Robinson was called upon to reflect on the security-sustainability dynamic, one which preoccupied the last phases of this long interactive process and which resulted in many thoughtful presentations by delegations.  As she has done previously, Ms. Robinson hit the mark for many listeners, describing security (and gender) as “cross cutting” concerns impacting any and all consensus Sustainable Development Goals, and reinforcing the need for goals that address the “causes and consequences of conflict.

Many delegations also wrestled in these final interactive sessions with the implications of adding security-related objectives to a lengthening list of SDGs that themselves will likely defy full achievement. For instance, in its statement, CARICOM expressed worry about having too much of the SDG process tied up with security concerns, not because they dismiss such concerns (they have been for instance major supporters of efforts to control illicit small arms, narcotics smuggling and the global arms trade), but because they like other delegations are concerned about the volume of development objectives that states will ultimately be held responsible for.   We share much of this concern, in part because we do not yet feel that we have learned enough from our limited successes with MDG implementation, in part because of the elusiveness of quantifiable definitions of ‘peace,’ and in part because we do not believe that the post-2015 SDG process to date has sought to engage sufficiently other, relevant components of the UN system.

Returning to Ms. Robinson’s remarks, it is important to maintain the dual meaning of ‘cross cutting.’   Often when we use this now familiar phrase, we refer to issues that have to do with each other in the sense that illicit arms contribute to an escalation of violence against women or deteriorating climate can lead to conflict over water and other resources.  But there is another dimension, not about issues and objectives but about structures of implementation.  If peace and security are fashioned into development objectives alongside clean water and poverty reduction, whose responsibility does this become?   To address this question, we need to look beyond the structures normally associated with the development community to the broader capacities of the UN system (and beyond).

There is little doubt among delegations and other participants in the Open Working Group that peace and security are indispensable requirements for just, transparent and sustainable communities, a “development enabler” as it was referred to by the African Group and others. However, as we seek to reduce violence (and as Brazil noted, reduce military expenditures) that impedes participation in civic life, restricts the pursuit of educational or economic opportunity, and exacerbates unsustainable ‘footprints,’ we must look beyond the institutional infrastructure most directly relevant to development to those other agencies and capacities that can help to illumine and address key security challenges.  When we do, we would surely also reaffirm the ways in which pursuit of development priorities are, themselves, ‘enablers’ of more secure communities, fewer illicit weapons, a more reliable system for preventing mass atrocities, a resolution to existing negotiating stalemates on nuclear weapons, and other hopeful outcomes.

Even in a time of budget restraint, the UN as a system maintains many security-related capacity options to support successful development outcomes.   “Cross cutting” is as much about infrastructure effectiveness and responsibility as about issues.  As Mary Robinson’s presence in the Open Working Group reinforced, it is possible to appreciate and draw upon resources beyond the most familiar.   As interaction gives way to negotiation, we urge delegations to integrate a more thorough embrace of the ideas and capacity resources of the entire UN system, not only the parts that have ‘development’ imprinted on their mandates.

At the closing of this interactive process, we would like to thank the co-chairs for their hard work in keeping this process on track, as well as to NGLS and others for their good leadership on a wide range of issues pertinent to the work of setting post-2015 goals as well as other members of global civil society that have sought to impact development priorities.

Dr. Robert Zuber

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Mandela’s Footprint

6 Dec

The death of Nelson Mandela was a surprise to few and a shock to many.

It was a shock because we can never really grasp that our heroes succumb to the same limitations of life that the rest of us do.

But succumb he has, and now it is up to the rest of us to figure out what that means, how to incorporate a legacy for the ages into an ongoing, daily strategy for justice and fairness.   There was once a child (I cannot find the exact citation) who allegedly responded to a teacher’s question with the following:  “A hero is a celebrity who does something real.”  In an age with many alleged celebrities and few recognizable heroes, this is a helpful, powerful distinction.

But beyond this, a hero is someone who performs at levels beyond what their social contexts and circumstances would otherwise suggest.   In the parish where I used to work, such courage abounded.  The grandparents who had to raise their grandchildren and sent every one of them to college.  The couples who had long ago stopped “loving” each other but continued to care for one another, often through gruesome illnesses.  The formerly incarcerated who battled demons of addiction and despair each day and thereby kept themselves from a return trip to prison.   The parents who buried a child killed by gun violence and continued to build a hopeful life for the children who remained.

We love our heroes and secretly even wish for more of those “celebrities who do something real.”   But make no mistake:  heroes can inspire us to action but they can also provide a substitute for action.   It is so much easier to cheer the greatness of a Mandela than to embrace our own heroism.  It is so much easier to listen to voices of unusual courage than to allow those voices to penetrate through all of the emotional filters that keep such messages hopeful but not actively compelling.

For those of us who believe that, somehow, we are entitled to make policy when we have never stared hatred, or gratuitous violence, or poverty, or discrimination squarely in the eye, Mandela should be a lesson.   Greatness is not a function of our academic degrees or our genetic pedigree.  It is a function of our character, which in turn is forged from a willingness to stand squarely against our tormentors, insisting that they cease their torment but knowing that one day they will become something else to us – a friend perhaps, but certainly no longer an impediment to the world we say we want.

One of the loveliest tributes to Mandela that I have heard so far has come from FW de Klerk, an old adversary who alleged to learn so much from Mandela’s “lack of bitterness.”   The ones with whom we lock horns often understand and appreciate such strengths, more so than our supporters.    Moreover, we learn things from engaging with our adversaries as well, including the uncomfortable truth that, as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr used to make clear, “the evils against which we contend are the fruits of illusions similar to our own.”  Locked away in our bureaucracies or blinded by self-delusion, we can get away with believing that we really are the ‘good ones.’   But the great ones know how elusive the ‘good’ truly is.   Our task is not to look away from the worst of which we as a species are capable, but literally to stare it down.

Mandela had three long decades in a horrible prison to test his capacity to stare down his tormentors rather than give in to them.   He wouldn’t read the statements that they held out for him to read.  He refused to be released from prison with ‘conditions.’ His moral and political ‘footprint’ was unmistakable, with both clarity of purpose and an absence of malice.  He kept his covenant with others similarly tormented.   His death challenges us to keep our own.

 Dr. Robert Zuber

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Conversation Starter: Civil Society Consultations

14 May

On the morning of the 14 of May at UN headquarters in New York, four panelists reflected on an important regional consultation that took place recently in Guadalajara, Mexico with the support of the Mexican government.  The Guadalajara meeting was part of a larger process designed, in part, to assess and integrate regional civil society concerns in laying out follow-up processes for the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework and the Rio plus 20 Conference on Sustainable Development held in June 2012.

The speakers highlighted the value of more regional engagement as a post-2015 agenda begins to take shape.   Also noted was the need for clear feedback loops that can help civil society track their impact on documents prepared by States and the UN Secretariat to help guide movement on development going forward.

In listening to the speakers, I was both grateful for this attention by UN stakeholders to the needs and wishes of civil society groups and also dismayed by what seems to be the unwillingness of speakers to publicly identify some of the enormous challenges associated with conducting a genuinely consultative process at this moment in our collective history.  There are now so many civil society groups, so little civil society consensus, and some particularly ‘muscular’ non-governmental organizations (especially in New York) that brand their work in ways that deflect as much civil society involvement as they invite.   We in New York are too often prone to gate-keeping more than assessing and promoting a wide range of voices from diverse social, geographic and economic circumstances to help address shifting circumstances. Gate keeping, perhaps more than any other NGO activity, is anathema to the kinds of consultations which the panelists envisioned.

It is probably valid to say, as one or more of the speakers mentioned, that the initial MDG process in 2000 lacked a clear consultative element.  It is also true that we were in a different period then with respect to civil society involvement.   For one thing, there are so many more of us than there used to be, a great blessing to be sure, but one which makes fair and transparent consultation difficult to implement.  What is the dividing line for involvement–   a history with the issue, connections to groups in New York, or perhaps a defined skills set related to some sustainable development priority?

There are certainly no firm criteria for participation in consultations and certainly no consensus by civil society groups regarding how development-related issues should be articulated and supported, both politically and financially.   It is wishful thinking to think that it is otherwise, and it is disappointing to hear people talk as though the key to a good consultative process is merely wanting it to be so.

Moreover, there is an issue about how civil society interventions in consultative processes should be assessed.  Is it solely about the number of times when language favorable to our own organizational mandates appears in resolutions of the General Assembly or its constitutive bodies?   Given the uneasy relationship between resolutions and practical engagements on the ground, is resolution language alone the bar that we need to be reaching for?  Are there deeper levels of engagement to which we should be pointing, engagement that continues to reach out beyond the most widely known ‘players’ to the many new leaders and organizational assets anxiously awaiting their turn?

This is not a critique of the specific panel hosted by Mexico, but rather a reflection on the degrees of difficulty that we face when we try to organize a field (civil society) that is expanding more quickly and in more diverse directions than we can map its movements.   There are many challenges and limitations in our sector that we must address, such as when we settle for new resolution language when so many in the world are clamoring for just and robust implementation of existing resolutions; or when we endorse existing ‘seating’ arrangements at a time when there are so many more chairs that need to be set up at the policy table.

It is possible to be thankful to the Mexican government and speakers that there is more consultation moving forward on development priorities, and still lament all of the ways in which civil society participation is still very much a work in progress.   While there is an abundance of responsibility to share among different stakeholders, including governments and the UN itself, much of this development-related work is the responsibility of civil society groups themselves. We need development in our sector that can complement and enrich prospects for development on the ground.

–Dr. Robert Zuber

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Green Lantern: UNGA Informal Debate on ‘Harmony with Nature”

23 Apr

As a nod to Earth Day 2013, the UN General Assembly was the setting for an ‘informal debate’ focused on ways to more effectively promote planetary ‘harmony’.

A half-full conference room listened to a short presentation from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and more passionate speeches by the UN General Assembly President, Mr. Vuk Jeremić of Serbia, and by Ministers from Bolivia and Ecuador, two ‘left-leaning’ governments that tend to exercise a great deal of control over national economic outcomes.

There were some valuable reminders shared by these four speakers during what was a bit of an ideologically-imbalanced opening session.   From our own organizational standpoint, it is good to be reminded that consumption in the developed world is largely optional and has increasingly deleterious impacts on natural health in all global regions.  In addition, we should recognize that too much of the ‘green’ movement has been co-opted by those who seek to institutionalize levels of developed world consumption while attempting to ‘manage’ levels of growth in less developed nations.

At the debate, there were also renewed calls for a ‘universal declaration’ of the rights of nature tied to an alleged, if helpful, ‘right to recovery’ for nature that has been ravaged by a preponderance of short-term economic resource use disconnected from any reasonable capacity for future generations to access (and preserve) the same resources.

Our economic situation has been increasingly dark in recent times – inequities and shortages abound, as do the toxic effects of our mindless exploitation.    While it is not yet clear how ‘nature rights’ could be properly identified and enforced, nor is it clear how economic reform would result in locally based economies rather than state structures attempting to micro-manage large scale economic development, it is critically important to shine a light on alternatives that are urgent, viable and fair.  Needless to say, we don’t have sufficient alternatives at present. We need to keep the lantern lit as much as possible.

An office like ours has very limited access to deliberations on economic futures.   From our experience in meetings such as this one, it is clear that States too have limited options, more limited than they generally acknowledge.  Economic decisions, more and more, take place beyond the reach of states in board rooms and investment houses.  Whatever one thinks of “Occupy’ and other movements to expose economic inequities, including in economic decision making, it is clear that this current system is being driven by self-interested and unaccountable forces.   If such forces were merely accumulating wealth, there would be sufficient cause for general concern.  That accumulated wealth is driving so much planetary dysfunction should be cause for the loudest general alarm.

Simply put, there are biological limits to economic growth.   And those limits are not being acknowledged, let alone respected.   As one of the ministers from Ecuador wondered aloud and with some urgency, “Who precisely is going to bell this cat?”  How will that be accomplished? The cat has a defensive, nasty disposition and sharp claws.  It will take some real courage to bell it.  Until that happens, though, the rest of us will largely remain ignorant (willfully or otherwise) of the ways that our lives are about to become more painful and toxic than they need to be!

Our collective disenchantment with our economic system seems to grow daily.   At the same time, our resistance to economic change borders on the neurotic.   We have deep addictions to unsustainable and largely optional patters of consumption that remain stubborn in their remedial application and are also quite devastating to our long-term biological prospects.

On Earth Day, we need to shine more light on the structures and choices that undermine a ‘green’ agenda – unequal economic access, unsustainable (and largely optional) patterns of consumption, and more.  We also need to renew our connections with some of our more ‘intimate’ ecological processes – how our food is grown, where our drinking water comes from, what happens to our waste when we are ‘done’ with it.

Our ignorance of basic environmental processes as well as our insistence that we own everything we use are both planet-defeating attitudes. Our preference for owning a neighbor’s land to having a neighbor undermines community integrity.   Our relentless pursuit of non-essential consumer goods represents a psychologically defective, wasteful application of time and resources.   Our ability to simultaneously express a deep love for our children while contributing to the demise of the system that supports their lives is a dangerous inconsistency.  Clearly, we must continue to shine a light on these and other discontinuities, and then organize a viable, participatory strategy to overcome them.

 

–Dr. Robert Zuber

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Remarks from Global Action’s Director at World Order Values Reception

10 Dec

We are here to highlight and celebrate the World Order Values: Peace, Social Justice, Economic Well-Being, Ecological Balance, Positive Identity

These are not values to inspire belief so much as values to guide and inspire practice.

These values have no hierarchy, but they have witnessed shifts in urgency. When I was younger at the World Order Models Project, it was the peace values that preoccupied most of us – more specifically peace in relation to the nuclear arms race.

The priorities have shifted over the years. Our climate now poses even deadlier challenges than our arsenals.

And, as we saw recently in Guatemala and South Africa, positive identity is more and more a requirement for healthy living, as important in its own way as clean air and a reliable security system.

  • No more are people content to remain trapped in self-concepts bequeathed by their captors or those who have otherwise humiliated them.
  • No more are people willing to ‘move on’ from gross abuse without as full an accounting of what happened to them as humanly possible.
  • No more are people willing to accept promises of assistance or respect from governments or corporations or even universities at face value.

The task in this season is not only to practice these World Order Values but to practice them in the right spirit  – a spirit of kindness and hospitality and attentiveness and humility. These values and the tasks associated with them represent a calling that is both high and common. ‘Common’ because everyone can contribute. ‘High’ because they demand so much of our spirits – our souls if you will – more sometimes than we seem willing to commit.

With all of the frustration that characterizes this work at times, all the travel to meetings that don’t result in real policy movement, all the strategic discussions that go nowhere, all the applications for grants or workshop opportunities that come back rejected, we have still – each in our own way and all of us together — helped to make world order values incarnate. We don’t know yet if it will be enough to turn energies and commitments away from consumption and competition and domination. But there is more in place now to help us reach our goals – more diplomatic infrastructure, more public awareness, more treaties and resolutions, more transparency, more skill.  This should reassure us that our task is only formidable, but not impossible.

The world order values have become for us more than candy sprinkles on our ice cream, more than adornments on our holiday trees.   They are the lifeblood of our work, the standards by which we will be judged by our grandchildren — and their grandchildren as well.

And so, a toast, to those children yet to come and to those of us who believe that Peace, Social Justice, Economic Well-Being, Ecological Balance and Positive Identity represent a future that is worthy of our progeny.

 

–Dr. Robert Zuber

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