Tag Archives: reconciliation

Two Faced: Healing the Ruins of a Broken Year, Dr. Robert Zuber

6 Oct

Let Ruin End Here.  Danez Smith

God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another. Shakespeare

The most common form of despair is not being who you are. Soren Kierkegaard

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.  Agatha Christie

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. Henry David Thoreau

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world and am free.  Wendell Berry              

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest. Benjamin Franklin

When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. Euripides

A year ago this week, as images of horrific violence by Hamas started a year-long recalibration of international relations, indeed of international law itself, people caught up in the wilfull malevolence of violence born of violence and begetting violence which continues to occur on a scale that we have not seen for some many years.

My response in the aftermath of the Hamas attack was to pen a (not particularly well received) piece entitled “Weighing in on Weighing in,” in which I tried to describe the short term, soon to become long term, impacts of old wounds revisited and new wounds inflicted, a Jewish people which had not –could not – assimilate one more of the many abuses perpetuated on them over centuries; and here faced off by another people, long occupied with serial miseries and indignities inflicted at the hands of an Israeli government which early on made it clear that any modicum of restraint – this October – was simply not in the cards.

The reasoning for that earlier piece was my early recognition that wounds had been ripped open in ways that left people little flexibility – perhaps even control – over their more and less intense emotional reactions.  Almost immediately after the attackas opinions hardened to an almost unprecedented degree, friendships frayed, organizational partnerships cooled.  “Who you stand with,” became the litmus test of continued conviviality, as though such “standing” often required something more than clicks on a social media page, or perhaps some street and campus“outrage” generated by high levels of anxiety about the state of the world alongside (as would be the case for me as well) an incomplete understanding of what might just be the most complex geo-political interactions on planet earth.

This hardening of opinions was often swift and unforgiving with implications far beyond individual friendships and organizational dynamics.  The UN also became entwined in it as well as US vetoes kept the Security Council (though not the General Assembly or the International Court of Justice) from issuing resolutions which at least promised some tangible respite from the horrific violence inflicted in reaction to October 7.  A few Council members refused to condemn the Hamas attacks or pay sufficient attention to hostage release.  On the other hand, the Council’s responsibilities to uphold their own resolutions and international law were reduced to mostly handwringing regarding the staggering number of UN personnel, humanitarian workers, journalists and health workers killed by Israeli bombs. But as Council members slowly sought to challenge IDF operations, the more Israel made clear that it will do what it needs to do, while claiming (not entirely without evidence) that any of the other countries around the Council oval would behave just as Israel was behaving if something similar to the Hamas attacks were to happen to them.  On several occasions, Israel’s diplomats even resorted to calling the UN and its Ambassadors “terrorists” for not recognizing and supporting the erstwhile righteousness of Israel’s cause. Even in these diplomatic halls, categorical opinions proved (and still prove, one year on) highly resistant to reconciliation.  Numerous calls for a cease fire and the restoration of respect for international law have been stubbornly rebuked, as were prior resolutions over many years calling for an end to occupation, terrorism, settlement expansion and settler-related violence.  Thankfully in UN forums outside the Security Council, clearer calls were made for an end to what can only be described as collective punishment, the destruction of entire neighborhoods, their infrastructure and inhabitants, justified by intelligence confirming wanted Hamas (and now Hezbollah in Lebanon) elements therein.

I have had something of a front-row seat to the diplomatic dimension of this multiplicity of carnage which has been characterized by reckless military incursions with little regard for civilian life, feckless resolutions with little or no enactment, the desperate measures taken by Gazans to find some basic nourishment and reasonably potable water only to find instead a sniper’s bullet, the “collateral damage” of child after child relegated to a life without limbs let alone any modicum of inner peace, the weapons gushing from multiple fronts into a widening conflict zone which only threatens to widen further, the hardening of “theocratic posturing” by those politicians and insurgents whose theology is anything but beyond reproach, the resurrection of “like it or leave it” governance reminiscent of the US during the Vietnam War, the dramatic rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia which seemingly fails every distinction suggested between the dubious actions of governments and insurgents on the one hand, and the deeper traditions struggling (and deserving) to maintain their full dignity and respect on the other.  There has also been a failure, including by some prominent western media outlets, to properly account for the millions across the Middle East and beyond, including in Israel itself, who refuse to swallow the bait, who see in the current carnage a path to ruin which will only grow in intensity and sorrow, which will only catch more and more innocents in its snares.

As with so many other examples nowadays, this is a horrific mess of our own making, a failure to uphold our own creeds while endlessly and obliviously pointing fingers at others all the while claiming some perverted notion of “divine sanction.”  This failure has left so many on the edge of despair and pushed so many others over the edge.  I have an easy life relatively speaking, as there are no bombs exploding outside my apartment window. There are no children in my back room suffering from health-related traumas while wondering if they will survive the next aerial assault.  I am not spending my days preparing funerals of hostages, journalists, children, aid workers, these and more killed during a year-long cycle of violence which has been two-parts predictable and three-parts contemptable. 

And yet throughout this horror and the emotional “dodge ball” that we have all been required to play, I have worried deeply and daily about our capacity to turn back from this newest of brinks, to become “who we are” with the caveat that we are now demonstrating only a portion of that capacity, certainly the portion that revels in destruction and righteous hate, certainly the portion that is willing to swap out our God-given face for a more grotesque version of our own making, certainly the portion that prefers tricks and treachery to honest engagement, including being honest with ourselves.  The Middle East is not the only global venue for horrific violence and abuse, for displacement and collective punishment.  It is not the only place on earth where authoritarians pursue authoritarian goals – including the goal of keeping themselves out of jail once they no longer enjoy unchecked power with which to insulate themselves from accountability. Israel has often reminded UN diplomats over years of occupation critique that Israel is the sole functioning, “moral” democracy in the region without completing the sentence – that democracy is more than voting and that morality transcends – often considerably – ascriptions of national or ethnic interests.

In trying to make sense of this past year and my own generally inept contributions to a peace which passes understanding (to quote my prayer book), a few images and memories have reverberated. I recall several of my Jewish friends who I feel may have been pushed into taking a harder Zionist line than otherwise might have been the case had the violence on October 7 not been immediately followed by more intense, anti-Semitic recrimination on October 8, rekindling fears of discrimination lurking below every human surface.  In addition, my social media feeds over the year have been filled with images from the Auschwitz Memorial archives (@AuschwitzMuseum), images of so many children and their families led to a collective slaughter once more in their collective history for no reason other than being Jewish. At the same time, I have kept a lengthy file from over 20 years of covering the major UN bodies which include multiple files chronicling abuses by an occupying power against an occupied people, abuses which are now being committed on a much larger scale, albeit a scale consistent with a past characterized by episodic bombings, settler violence, home demolitions and more. These allegedly “Godly” policy excesses are accompanied by an almost complete disregard of UN resolutions and other efforts to keep alive a “two-state solution” which is currently, at the very most, on life support.

One wonders if ending the occupation would have prevented an October 7, would have done more to end the toxicity of hatred now directed against Jews and Arabs. I cannot say.  This option is not given to us now. What is given is more saber-rattling by regional states, more bombs falling in civilian areas, more journalists and aid workers under direct attack, more acts of terror and retribution, and certainly more children facing lives without limbs, schools and hope, children who bear no responsibility for the carnage we continue to witness no matter how many officials claim otherwise, no matter how many snipers blithly use the children of Gaza as target practice.

The quotations above, especially from Wendell Berry and Agatha Christie, are there not for your benefit but for mine, this person of privilege and relative access who has not been able to move the pile of violent intent a single millimeter over many years of trying, who has no defensible solution for the acrimony  which has swept over friendships and partnerships like a dense fog, a person who can only incompletely process the profound moral backsliding which people across the world, including in my own country, have succeeded in recent times to normalize.

In some ways I seem to have been broken by all of this seemingly intentional reverting to a dark place from which we thought we might finally have escaped. But if this ruin is to end, and if I and others are to contribute something positive to its ending, then I must – we must reject the darkness, the hatred, the creeping dystopia. Much better is to renew as best we can our full embrace of that “grand thing” which is life itself.  For a time, those of us who have been granted this blessing must learn to “rest in the grace of the world,” if only long enough to be able to return to the practice of discernment, the practice of healing, the practice of peace.  There is, in the end, a way to convert our own blessings into pathways of healing and reconciliation for those who have so long been “racked with sorrow.” May we find and choose that path.

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Reconciliation Nation: A January 6th Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

5 Jan
See the source image

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire

How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought!  Charlotte Brontë

Liberty or death!’ A rebel, armed with a blood-stained pitchfork, shouted over-and-over. David Cook

Hard towards himself, he must be hard to others, and in his heart there must be no place for love, friendship, gratitude or even honor.  Mikhail Bakunin

The only thing we knew for certain was the American Civil War was not a prelude to a kiss. Aberjhani

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.  Elie Wiesel

The world needs people who have survived mistakes, tragedies, and trials to help the rest of us through. Kimberly Giles

I feel somewhat sheepish bothering you with yet another post so soon after the previous two, but this is an anniversary that I could not bear to let pass by.

One year after many of us within the US were transfixed with a brazen act of insurgency that we in the US should probably have seen coming, and as many outside the US were left to wonder if we had firmly entered “failed state” territory, there is little confidence in many quarters that the violence which was allowed to take root at the US Capitol has been sufficiently weeded from our national life.

If anything, the lines of ideology, even of reality, are increasingly sharp.  As I wrote last week, we have become quite comfortable taking shots at each other across a bow of willful misunderstanding and even enmity.  There are few voices now willing to stand apart from the chasms which define our culture, our values, our politics, stand apart not to remain aloof in its own right but to try and make space for choices beyond following an increasingly angry and stiff-necked herd.

This stiffness has taken many forms and is not confined to any one of the herds which now occupy and relentlessly defend their own pastures.

On the political right, we have seen and heard many insurgent voices, including ostensibly “religious ones” parroting conspiracies which could easily be debunked if folks were only willing to trust their senses more than the angry, victimized language communicated to them and from which some never seem to be satiated.  We have seen the spike in gun sales, we have heard the voices from radios and pulpits calling for “patriotic” violence, we have recoiled from the “lone ranger” fanatics willing to shoot up schools and shopping malls in some instances as their last gasp attempts to gain some measure of “patriotic” infamy before departing this life for whatever might come next.

What is most chilling about some of these incidents is the levels of financial and even political support which perpetrators of this violence receive from those in their herd.  Some of this support takes the form of vitriolic rhetoric, but also of silence, an approach which, even more than malicious or conspiratorial words, suggests that what happened last year on this date was “no big deal,” even as we now recognize that this hand of insurgency was being dealt from the highest levels of the US government.

It is hard for the rest of us at times to remember that this form of insurgent outrage is not new to this country; indeed our history would suggest that the current cultural configuration – love your country and distrust its inhabitants — has more or less been stitched into our national fabric.   We have long taken each other for granted if not altogether exploited one another; we have long  stoked culture wars, not only between believers and unbelievers, but among believers themselves; we have long proclaimed our cherished values and peaceful dispositions while arming ourselves to the teeth and using our power to unfair advantage over diverse races and cultures; we have long packed ourselves into cities and then denigrated those who still work the fields and mines essential to our urban lifestyles; we have long extolled those who “win” at money and power as though that game is not also rigged in favor of those who already control institutions and define pathways of access.

In the tribes which I more regularly frequent, we who mostly never fought in wars or saw fit to engage in other forms of national service seem to feel quite satisfied with our university educations, our jobs with health insurance and other social benefits, and our access to power and to those who hold it.  We, too, look after our own interests as though there was something vaguely sacred about them, as though these interests were somehow also baked into the rules of a game that has long been tilted in our favor.

One of the frustrating aspects of this year for me and many has been the slow pace of justice, including justice for those who fanned flames that erupted last January 6 after what had been a long and steady burn.  We in my tribe generally stand fast in our defense of the “rule of law.”  But where has this “rule” been hiding?  Indeed, as I have maintained in other contexts, one now presumably faces more severe legal jeopardy for stealing a Red Bull out of a convenience store than for launching an assault on the US Capitol. 

Clearly, we in our liberal bubbles also have things to answer for: Have we done much of anything over this past year to remedy this legal travesty?  And while we are at it, have we done enough over this past year to heal our broken politics, to eliminate gross inequalities of access to income and education, power and influence, to put the corks of discipline and service back in the bottles of military and police command, to promote notions of “freedom” which apply to all and not just to some and which are more textured and communally-binding than merely “doing what I want?”

I don’t think it can be considered in any way conspiratorial to conclude that I and others are collectively failing to meet the moment.  We have allowed deficits of justice and kindness to fester while increasing hostile divides and giving unearned comfort to those content enough to face additional “wrist slaps” in order to continue their assault on democracy.  And those wrist slaps, by the way, pertain to those well beyond the January insurgents themselves, those with plenty of money and the will to buy whatever and whomever can be bought — which appears to be most anyone now in government or contemplating a run for elected office. January 6 did not announce threats to democracy but did pull back the veil on how that threat has evolved and been duly monetized over time.

We are going to hear much over these days of political officials scared to death – as well they might have been — of the mob (and their enablers) who invaded the Capitol last January 6 and who have largely yet to face proper justice. But the storm that is coming and for which we remain ill prepared is one which promises more destruction, more enmity, more chaos.  We need voting rights, yes.  We need a revitalized response to the world’s “huddled masses” including those huddling due to our own economic and security policies.  At the same time, we need to fix what is wrong with ourselves, not just wrong with “them” but wrong with us, those of us locked away in blue state bubbles, those of us who make fortunes in our urban canyons and then place them beyond the reach of any public good, those of us who flaunt our degrees and other credentials as though they were primarily a sign of virtue rather than of privilege.

One year on, we must insist on accountability for the insurrectionists and their political enablers still prepared to do violence to uphold their own victimizations and conspiracies.  But we must also promote avenues of reconciliation with such people, people every bit as much citizens of this country and, if you will, children of god as we are, people who have reason to fear our largely-unaccountable political and economic hegemonies as much as we fear their weapons and reality-challenged leanings.  Simply put, our vaunted and oft-exported democracy does not work for everyone, if it ever did. We need to narrow those gaps before further eruptions of violence force us to shut down our democratic experiment altogether.  

One thing that seems to be clear as we approach this troubling anniversary – we and those we oppose on ideological grounds have something important in common – the deep trauma we feel courtesy of a global pandemic, climate and economic uncertainty, cultural upheaval and all else that has prompted many to retreat to our isolation chambers and hide under the metaphorical covers until it is time to lash out – with prejudice, with stereotypes, with conspiracies, with dismissiveness, with anger, even with guns.

The attack on the Capitol requires justice with urgency and determination, but it was also a symptom of national angst more than a cause, the flaring of a virus we have been carrying around long before COVID-19.  If we are to avoid the fascist-style outcomes some now predict for us, it is incumbent on we and our institutions – churches, schools, media and more – to help us find the language and actions which can soften hearts and stiffen resolve, the resolve not to give up on ourselves, on each other, nor on the democracy that so many of our ancestors gave their lives to preserve. We know more, it seems, about how to inflame emotions and harden opinions than to search for common ground and reconcile one to another.  And while we may well lament becoming a country allegedly “free” to choose its facts as well as its opinions, the “fact” also remains that we have much work to do – on our country and on ourselves – to fulfill the promise of our national creed.

As much as nationwide vaccination, the need for nationwide reconciliation remains acute. Time is running out for the people of this country to revisit and apply those skills. 

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Unity State: Replenishing our Thirst for Reconciliation, Dr. Robert Zuber

31 Jan
Unity Cartoon

While you see it your way there’s a chance that we may fall apart before too long.  The Beatles

Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.  Charlotte Brontë

I’ve learned that reconciliation has to occur between the parts of ourselves that are fragmented and wounded. Parker Hurley

The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other. Kiese Laymon

The simple, mutual recognition that mistakes were made is in itself a closing of the divide.  Steven Erikson

Statements often bring controversy. Questions often bring unity.  Emilyann Allen

No us. No them. Just we.  Steve Goodier

Earlier this week, a good colleague of ours called to discuss a new project designed to help promote reconciliation in our highly polarized country, reconciliation which might help unify factions across the US which have stopped listening to each other, stopped trusting each other’s motives, stopped looking for entry points thorough which we might promote each other’s goodness rather than assuming that every pronouncement, every statement, every mis-step, is some manifestation of evil intent.

I share her concern for reconciliation but wondered then as now to what extend there is truly a thirst for it or at least enough of a thirst to make reconciliation efforts viable.  For like the many other mountains of psychology and policy which we are now seeking to climb, reconciliation is also a hard slog, requiring substantial levels of honesty, attentiveness and staying-power, not only to address the excesses and insanity of our adversaries, but our own as well; not only to demand apologies but to offer them as well; not only to answer the questions posed by others but to pose questions that allow for our own spaces of ignorance to be filled with something other than malice and prejudice.

This “will-to-reconcile” is impeded by so many factors, and at so many levels.  The “bubbles” in which so many of us are content (or resigned) to reside – our own bubbles and not simply the ones we identify in our adversaries – can lead us to the mistaken notion that reconciliation is easier to achieve than could possibly be the case in our current circumstances.  If only others could accept the erstwhile “truths” that “we” represent, the “wisdom” of policies and structures that are assumed to be in the best interests of others, the “good intentions” of narratives about the world that seek to silence the guns of others while burying our own hostilities deep within the forms and structures of polite, “liberal” culture.  If only people could cross back over the line into “my” zones of affective and epistemic comfort, if only they could see the fundamental worthiness of my “propensities and principles,” maybe then we could find a common way forward.

It seems more complex than that doesn’t it? Current divisions seem larger and more intractable to me.  My priorities of policy and practice seem generally “right” to my mind, seem to be on a track that promises some pathway beyond climate ruin and the divides of technology, economics, social development, and even COVID vaccine distribution that threaten to expose existing wounds even further.  But I also recognize that others see it differently; others see the edifices and rules of mortar and ideas that people like me have constructed as the means for some to further their own interests at the expense of others.   Indeed, as we have noted often this space, we who are properly horrified at the growing threat from conspirators and their weapons have also to acknowledge that “they” didn’t by their own force of policy and practice create our plastic-filled oceans and staggering economic divides; they are not primarily responsible for our current climate emergency nor the “vaccine nationalism” that might well become the latest stake through the heart of our globalist pretentions.  “They” did not invent our longstanding embrace of racism nor the corruption at the highest levels of governance which takes multiple forms and damages us all.  Mistakes were made, even grave ones, but they have been made by many of us, mistakes compounded by the failure to “see” them clearly let alone to acknowledge or (God forbid) apologize for consequences unintended and otherwise.

While global leaders, including the current US president, are right to call for “unity,” the many steps needed to accomplish this seem only partially grasped. Some of these steps were on display during an extraordinarily busy January week in and around the United Nations, a week punctuated by an alternately sobering and hopeful “state of the union” address by the UN Secretary-General, a strong endorsement of science-based policymaking by the Deputy Secretary-General, and a useful joint session convened by the presidents of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council to sort out impediments both to development finance and sustainable development support for the Least Developed States; all of this in the shadow of the World Economic Forum annual event at Davos, a star-studded gathering to assess global trends that seems once again this year to be as much of a confirmation of existing inequities than a sincere effort to eliminate them.

That said there were two UN events which offered some good guidance how we might attend to our current, multi-layered fragmentation.  On Monday, the Security Council held a discussion that highlighted the ways in which conflict prevention and COVID response are mutually reinforcing, with most speakers affirming what Ireland referred to as our current “dark times” brought about by a combination of inadequate COVID preparations and cease fire arrangements which, if they exist at all, are held together by fragile threads.  It was up to UN USG Lowcock to highlight, in keeping with statements made by SG Guterres, that the pandemic is the crisis that we must find a way to solve together, noting that compromised health capacity, inadequate testing and other preparations and (now) predatory vaccine access have merely allowed fragilities of communities and states to grow, inflaming prospects for armed violence between and (especially) within states, and damaging economies and livelihoods in ways that could easily cost trillions of US dollars to repair. The “common goals” which are so often a prerequisite for achieving greater unity, the goals of ending the pandemic and silencing the guns, are still there, still beckoning, still awaiting a determined and humble response from states and stakeholders now one year on since the World Health Organization issued its initial warnings about the pandemic gloom we have still not unified sufficiently to dispel.

In addition to this, on Wednesday the UN convened a panel on “Holocaust Denial and Distortion,” which highlighted efforts to posit alternate realities which both deny the genocide and pry open rationales for the repetition of mass atrocity violence.  Much attention was rightly paid to Holocaust victims, including some extraordinary prayers and musical tributes and a mournful German Chancellor Merkel who expressed “shame” for the horrors unleashed by Germany but also shared a warning about how quickly our “cherished values can be cast aside.”  But for me at least, one core virtue of this event was not only its “calling to mind” the grave horrors of our not-so-distant past, but the extent to which “denial and distortion” characterize our present circumstances as well, the dual arrogances of unhinged conspiracy and unexamined convention that turn up the heat for all of us and make unity a more elusive goal than might otherwise be the case.

While rightly underscoring some of the specific and horrific consequences of Holocaust denial — including the attempted “rehabilitation” of those in more recent times who have yet to be held to account for the hatred they have espoused and the violence which such espousals have engendered –much of this event focused on the need for a common base of knowledge and understanding from which we can iron out our disagreements and move forward to heal the fragmentation within and outside ourselves, creating what one panelist called a “healthy relationship” with our often “inconvenient” past that allows us to “own our behavior, past and present, and not simply cast it aside or as another panelist put it, bury it under “lies and silence.”

Such ownership in our time would be warmly welcomed. Indeed, as our ideological and lifestyle bubbles continue to thicken, as the “ways and means to share forbidden fruit” only grow in volume and access, and as frustrations over pandemic and equity mis-steps rationalize new expressions of conspiratorial violence, our reconciliation challenges only continue to grow.  We seem to lack viable strategies to restore a reality-based platform on which we can all debate, declare and then build, a reality that now seems to require higher levels of competence and rigor, justice and accountability, but also levels of “honesty and generosity” that are virtually endangered species in our policy and public spaces. 

Though many are now in despair about our growing, seemingly intractable divides, there simply must be a viable third rail beyond “my way” and “your way,” beyond my version of reality and yours. Before we come fully unglued as a species, before our guns settle what our humanity has failed to reconcile, we need to do more than talk about unity, more than encourage unity. We must find the means to replenish our thirst for unity based on genuinely common purposes, common visions, common goals and common benefits; we must also locate and apply that third rail which can power and sustain reconciliation efforts; and we must do so without delay for our very future depends on it. 

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Scar Face:  Reconciling the Wounds we Barely Acknowledge, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Nov

Stolen 2

I talk to my patients, to my neighbors and colleagues–Jews, Arabs–and I find out they feel as I do: we are more similar than we are different, and we are all fed up with the violence. Izzeldin Abuelaish

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won’t be because of great statesmen or churches or organizations like this one. It’ll be because people have changed.  Kazuo Ishiguro

Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.  Charlotte Brontë

We must recognize before we can reconcile–especially in instances where we are too blinded by privilege, comfort, and tradition to even notice that reconciliation is needed.  Josh Larsen

I want to live in a neighborhood where people don’t shoot first, don’t sue first, where people are Storycatchers willing to discover in strangers the mirror of themselves. Christina Baldwin

Our week at the UN had more than its share of dramatic events, some of that courtesy of the decision by the US government to disengage the authority of international law and Security Council resolutions from Israel’s settlement expansion.   The long-term implications of this decision are unclear, especially given the high levels of political turmoil in Israel at present, but this represents another (by no means unique) “propensity” by large powers to distance themselves from the legal principles and obligations they seek to impose on others.

Other events were more hopeful, including move-the-pile discussions on peacebuilding reform and a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone for the Middle East, tentative progress on negotiated settlements for Syria and Yemen, and still-early efforts to hold Myanmar accountable in international courts for massive abuses perpetrated against the Rohingya.  There was even an event on the ways in which the stigma and lack of health-related resources for menstruation continue to negatively impact school attendance by girls in some global regions.

This last event was linked to a major celebration under the auspices of the General Assembly of the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  The Convention boasts the largest number of state ratifications of any UN agreement and, over two days, these same states were eager to share the ways in which they have worked to improve conditions for children and, with a bit less enthusiasm, the urgent commitments to children yet to be fulfilled.

Working on the Convention in its infancy, helping in my own small way to create a “world fit for children” was, for me and others, the “gateway” to a longer-term multilateral involvement.   The many children who graced us with their presence this week, some of whom represented their national governments at the podium, reminded us all of the road remaining to be traveled, the decisions and indecisions taking place inside institutions like the United Nations that are not as child-friendly as we might imagine, that are still too much about our own privileges and protocols and not enough about the precarious legacies we have bequeathed to so many young people. We still turn our gaze away from the scars children bear (as highlighted by Azerbaijan) that never should have been inflicted, the search for “peaceful environments” (as a child from Iraq shared) that too often come up empty, our oft-violent and melting planet which will likely occupy too much of their own creative bandwidth going forward.  We are simply too far still from what ought to be (as Portugal stated) something we should all be able to agree on, making a world of peace and justice for children “without tears.”

This 30th anniversary event (with a special appearance by David Beckham) followed by a day a debate on “reconciliation” in the Security Council organized by current president United Kingdom. This event called attention to what South Africa urged as “an enabling environment” for reconciliation that moves along the path between disclosure and punishment and that helps to ensure, as Belgium and others implored, as much of a guarantee as we can muster that conflict once halted will not be allowed to return.

The Secretary General was one of the briefers and was on point in his insistence that while there is no peace without justice, “there is no justice without truth.”  In this context, the SG highlighted the “truth” about the times we are living in and how we managed to collectively arrive at the places we now experience, places of dissonance and distrust, of compromised policy courtesy of both national interest and multilateral “consensus.”  Despite the tools which the SG has sought to improve or bring online, even in this precarious funding environment  — tools such as special political missions, mediation resources, a revamped resident coordinator system and increases in funding for peacebuilding activities – our ability to prevent conflict and to walk the fine line highlighted by South Africa and others linking truth-telling and accountability in situations where conflict prevention proved impossible is all still a work in progress.

Peru was among the Council members highlighting the potential, positive impact of preventive diplomacy on our collective reconciliation burdens, while Indonesia suggested that visible, concrete “peace dividends” could make post-conflict reconciliation more successful.  Beyond the Council members themselves, Kenya promoted the linkage between social and political inclusiveness and successful reconciliation, a theme also taken up by Switzerland which reminded delegates that “dialogue among political elites alone” cannot sustain peace or bring reconciliation.  One of the best lines that we heard all week was from Namibia, whose Ambassador suggested during Monday’s debate that “peace must be boring” given all of the unresolved violence that remains in the world, violence which this Council is mandated to address and towards such resolutions urgent reconciliation measures are called for.

All things considered, this debate was a good start on a subject that ultimately requires considerably more recognition and thoughtfulness.  As one of the civil society briefers noted, one of the requirements of reconciliation is the “re-humanizing” of former enemies.  But, to paraphrase the SG, the times we are living in are characterized by political polarization and massive trust deficits, people who are both “fed up” with the violence that surrounds them but also tired of the “blindness” of much privilege, including a “blindness” to the urgent need for “re-humanizing” in many social and political contexts well beyond the post-conflict dynamic.

Surely there is need for reconciliation in Yemen and Syria, in Myanmar and Cameroon, in South Sudan and Bolivia, in China and the UK.   But the demand for effective reconciliation cannot – must not – be confined to outsized conflicts and political divisions, gross abuses of human rights and existential threats to climate health.   The Security Council has its own internal reconciliation to effect as do many of its governments back in capital, the lack of which leads to conflicts unresolved or dragged through unseemly political deadlocks.  The UN writ large has its own reconciliation to effect in the form of promises made and not kept to constituents who lack viable alternatives for redress and relief.  Communities that are increasingly politically or ethnically polarized have their own reconciliation impediments; people just like us willing to believe, often without evidence, that we “know” the motives of our adversaries. People like us who resolutely fail to see the mirror images of our neighbors in ourselves. People like us who exist in social or policy bubbles that allow us to believe that reconciliation is the task of “someone else,” someone not us.  People like us who are too quick to jump to conclusions more than commitments, who listen too little and talk too much, who “write off” people who don’t toe our ideological lines.  All of this is understandable, but not to our credit and likely not of much value in achieving the future we say we want.

And what of the children who graced us this week let alone the children who endure “cold nights” and whose futures have already been compromised by factors such as unrelenting poverty, persistent conflict and tepid responses to climate threats?   How do we reconcile with these children?  How do we explain to them what we’ve done, how we’ve exercised our authority, and why they have so often been left to fend for themselves? How do we help heal their scars and then together with them build a future that is truly “fit” both for current generations and their progeny to come?

These are hard conversations, harder than we might acknowledge, harder than we might even have the stomach for.  But I’m convinced that if we can find the words and deeds to convince children that we have, in truth, amended our “adult” ways, we will be that much closer to helping the larger world reconcile its own disagreements, renounce its addictions to future-threatening items such as weapons and plastics, and plug the still-formidable gaps that separate our propensities from our principles.

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The Art of Forgiveness:  Helping to Make Peace Prevail, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 Apr

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  Mahatma Gandhi

It is rare that someone specifically asks me to take up a topic for the blog; in this instance a piece on forgiveness in the context of international security and conflict resolution.  For someone who has spent most of his adult life inside Christian churches, this might seem to be a fairly easy assignment. But as a member of the UN community for more than a decade, this task becomes sharply more challenging.   Needless to say, there will be much more than needs to be shared about this beyond what I share here.

To start, we should recognize that “forgiveness” is not a word we use at the UN.   We have in our active lexicon a full complement of justice-related terms, including the “impunity” that we are all struggling to end.   We also speak of “reconciliation” though often without pinpointing either whose responsibility this is (sometimes misapplying that to international courts) or acknowledging the slippery definitions and uses to which reconciliation so often comes attached.  Thankfully as a community, we are becoming more comfortable with the compensatory dimensions of justice, such as when we advocate for “reparations” for persons who have suffered sexual violence in armed conflict, reparations that acknowledge the long path towards healing and the services needed (but often not provided) to move that healing process along successfully.

But “forgiveness” represents a more challenging bar altogether, a bar that mostly eludes us here at the UN for better or (mostly) worse.  Forgiveness is a term that can be found in no statements that I can recall in my long years at UN headquarters, in part because forgiveness is generally attached to acts of contrition that are also highly unusual at the UN.  Here we don’t apologize for behavior; we defend behavior.  We don’t accept responsibility for behavior “on our watch”; instead we express “regret” for wrongdoing, mostly by spoilers or rogue states, sometimes by our own peacekeepers.  Responsibility for the mistakes we make ourselves — the people we failed to protect, the monetary pledges we failed to honor, the promises that we let drop by the wayside, the impunity we have allowed to continue, the vision of abundance blocked by our own narrow bureaucratic interests – is also too rare an occurrence.

And I would suggest here that an acknowledgment of responsibility, along with concrete plans to ensure non-repetition (what the church might call “amendment of life”) is indispensable if forgiveness is to mean anything to healing and wholeness beyond simply a resignation to “get over it” and “move on.”   We can “forgive” wayward actions by individuals or even states if their waywardness is accepted and recidivism is avoided going forward.  But repetitive waywardness, habits of disinterest or abuse, acts that are defended rather than confessed and that are repeated rather than shunned; in these and similar instances “forgiveness” loses much of its power.

Contrition and commitments to amendment are, of course, only one piece of this puzzle.   The other piece has to do with the one who has been wronged, their possible confusion about the motives of the perpetrator, the “confessions” designed more for “damage control” or to reduce the length of court sentences than to actually reconcile with others.   There might also be a struggle of sorts inside the hearts of victims – the struggle between a desire for vengeance against one with whom trust is broken and the allure of genuine healing.  Healing bears its own intimacies; as Gandhi insisted, it also requires its own courage.   It is not just about the promise of “feeling free” as some commentators have put it.   It is also about acknowledging that all of us are, in matters of forgiveness, a “responsible party,” responsible perhaps not for the wrongdoing itself, but certainly for at least part of any reconciliation to come. Not everyone is up to that challenge, even if it is in their best interests to accept its demands.

But it is important to be clear about a couple of things:  First, “forgiveness” at an individual level does not remove the obligation to justice at a social level.   Societies must uphold their legal obligations but should also acknowledge the degree to which punishment of offenders is itself insufficient to bring closure and healing.  We have enough testimony from victims’ family members witnessing the execution of a murderer to know how few empty emotional spaces such retribution actually fills.

Second, there are situations in which “forgiveness” itself must defer to more urgent obligations to enforce the most egregious violations of international law. Last week was rather satisfying for proponents of international justice as both Congolese politician Jean-Pierre Bemba and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić were convicted of horrific crimes. The emotional and physical carnage left in the wake of the violence perpetrated by these men (and others yet to face trial) almost defies imagination.  Any suggestion of “forgiveness” in a context such as this – with little remorse expressed for crimes committed that literally call our humanity into question– trivializes any potential response.  How and why would we possibly forgive those who so eagerly ordered the ruin of so many human lives?

Third, in a world that seems obsessed with pushing away responsibility or even clarity for our behavior and its consequences, there is value to understanding forgiveness as one of those things we learn to do ourselves based on our recognition of the value of having previously been forgiven by others.  We achieve kindness, generosity and even forgiveness through our own disciplines of practice.  But the inspiration for the discipline is the love and kindness we were initially shown by parents and others.  Recognizing and appreciating these points of origin are keys to our emotional well-being.

But such recognition is, more and more, hard to come by. I have had several conversations in the past few months with young people around the UN who were apparently trying to convince me (and no doubt themselves) of their deep disappointment with the behavior of others.  This disappointment is often justified to be sure.  What was less justified is the other part of their testimony – -that “I’ve never done anything wrong to anyone.”

This is where we are heading as a culture unless we are willing to take a hard emotional turn.  Not only are there monstrous and unpunished evils being perpetrated in our world.  Not only are we predisposed to posit ignoble motives to whatever few acts of contrition we can now find.  But we are also increasingly taking on a posture of hyper-sensitivity to the behavior of others all the while applying (an unconvincing) “blanket” immunity to our own.

This “everyone is out to get me, I’ve done nothing wrong” posture is anathema to intimacy, trust-building and emotional courage – the DNA of any forgiveness.  We can use the pious words all we want, but the positive consequences of forgiveness are too often swamped by lingering bitterness and self-interested assessments that make unreasonable assumptions between the ideas lodged in our brains and actual conditions in the world.

The good news about forgiveness is that we still need what it provides. We still can benefit greatly from honest, amendment-laden contrition. We still bear the need to reconcile even more than the need to punish.   The bad news is that we’re quickly losing that capacity for emotional courage and clarity that helps us to reconcile both with those who have wronged us and with our own, often-conflicted motives.

Pursuing justice and ending impunity for abuses is always the right thing to do and we should all seek ways to do so more effectively.   But it is not the final thing we need if we seek reconciled families and communities that can escape the bitterness that robs us of abundance and fuels new cycles of violence.  If reconciliation is a goal, we need to encourage more genuine contrition from ourselves and others; but also strive to establish more trusting and durable personal bonds with those who do so.

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Facing History and Ourselves: GA Debate on the Role of International Criminal Justice in Reconciliation

15 Apr

On April 10, the President of the General Assembly’s Office initiated a 1 ½ day event focused on the relationship of international justice – specifically the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) – and prospects for national and regional reconciliation. The President of the GA offered opening remarks.

The event drew a large crowd of diplomats and a few civil society representatives, though many of the folks we spoke with came for the spectacle as much as for the content.    Many were aware of the decision by several invited persons – including Adama Dieng, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch – to cancel their participation in the event precisely because of the specter of a contentious and one-sided event that hung over the room.

Those who chose to stay away had their share of good reasons to do so.  The event itself was a carefully choreographed and at times intellectually dishonest exercise that sought to rehabilitate the reputation of the Serbian government and people by attacking the foundations of the system of international justice for which Serbian government behavior was an initial impetus.

The event may have done more to polarize the international community than to help explore legitimate concerns regarding the effectiveness of our international legal architecture, specifically concerns focused on the unresolved inconsistencies of the system of justice established by the UN Security Council – itself a politically compromised body.   Sadly the event did too little to enhance understanding of how international law functions, the nature and limitation of Tribunal mandates, or the complementary functions needed to establish conditions of positive reconciliation.  It should be noted here that it was not specifically the task of the Tribunal to promote conditions for reconciliation divorced from (often neglected) initiatives by other parts of the UN system let alone by the regional States themselves.

Nor was there any discussion of how the behavior of Serbs and others led us down the path where Tribunals were considered to be a viable option to national courts which, 20 years after this phase of violence commenced, have still proven themselves unwilling and unable to prosecute their own.   The Serbs-as-victims line is not completely without merit, insofar as international efforts to end impunity were selective and inadvertently reinforced negative stereotypes about Serbian ethnic communities, even regarding the ability of their newly elected representatives to contribute as viable members of the international community.  But such damage has remedial options that should have been explored carefully, one of which should NOT have been calls to dismantle the Tribunal, especially with key figures still awaiting trial. Moreover, we must have more clarity regarding what is wrong with the Tribunals, what can be fixed, and how we would avoid making the same mistakes again in other international fora mandated to end impunity for the most horrible, State-sanctioned crimes.

There is certainly merit to attempts to understand more clearly the limitations and compromises of our system of international criminal justice.   They clearly exist, and it would be wrong to sweep them under the rug.   At the same time, many of the complaints throughout the event were as unbalanced as the alleged behaviors of international prosecutors and their judicial processes.   Below I attempt to wade through what I and others felt to be a swamp of sloppy and compromised analysis to make the following points:

  • While it is important for any Tribunal to be sensitive to the impacts of their prosecutions and convictions on public perceptions, it is commonplace for victims of abuse to be dissatisfied with the results of court action that presumes to apply justice to victims’ allegations.   Courts must weigh options and evidence.   They cannot convict if there is insufficient evidence, regardless of the need of victims for conviction.   Nor can a Tribunal impose punitive measures beyond relevant sentencing guidelines.   It would appear that the Tribunal did its work within an environment where governments and constituents were rooting for it to fail.   That it has partially succeeded in fulfilling its mandate has little to do with levels of regional cooperation, including efforts to understand and work with the Tribunal’s limitations.  The Tribunal was treated by many as more like a tax collector to be spurned than a reconciler to be welcomed, officials’ contentions to the contrary.
  • Moreover, a Tribunal is not responsible for addressing all violations of law, but only those that rise to a level that establishes a clear and compelling interest for international prosecutors. While many of us, for good reason, recoil from the notion of symbolic justice – that is, prosecuting some as a ‘lesson’ to others – there is clearly a tendency to focus the attention of Tribunals on the highest established levels of accountability for gross violence and violations of rights.  Given the many resource and political limitations of the Tribunal, there is little justification for spending time on the equivalent of ‘street level drug dealers’ when the narcotics bosses are firmly within your sights.
  • Tribunals were established by the Security Council as a function of its (self-perceived) Charter-mandated responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.   Many States are uncomfortable (as are we) with the recent history of Council effort to expand its own mandate beyond what we believe to be the intent of the Charter.  Nevertheless, it is not clear where the viable, authorized alternatives might be to Council oversight of peace and security concerns, especially if we accept, which some on the panels clearly did not, that State “sovereignty implies responsibility” for the protection of civilian populations.  Invoking a recycled, Westphalian notion of sovereignty, as some participants did, was most unfortunate.   States participate in the UN, not because it is perfect or because they are rushing to cede national authority to international institutions, but because they recognize the limitations of State centrism in a multi-polar world.     There are things that States want and need that they simply cannot get within a system that holds them solely and rigorously responsible for all internal matters – including the economy, security and international justice.
  • As highlighted on day 2 of the GA debate, a clear majority of States continue to support (in theory and even in practice) the work of international Tribunals while affirming the duty of responsible parties to ensure that justice is pursued in a fair, impartial and vigorous manner.  But it is also clear that ‘responsible parties’ are not confined to Council members and Tribunal officials.   They also include States and the political entities within States.   It is clear to most States that the fair and equitable pursuit of justice in countries wracked by ethnic bitterness and massive human rights violations – let alone the larger agendas of national and regional reconciliation – cannot find success in the absence of support from those very same regional governments.      It was disturbing to many participants at this event that so few commitments to reconciliation – new or existing – were made or highlighted by the very States that were criticizing the limitations of the Tribunal in this area.      It is unfortunate at best for States that have not done nearly enough to foster national and regional reconciliation to claim that a Tribunal somehow has ‘magic bullets’ to share in this area.
  • National justice systems, as many States acknowledge, are ultimately the best setting for the adjudication of grave violations of human rights.   As our program partners in Guatemala indicate, their national courts are taking responsibility for sexual slavery and other crimes committed under previous governments, albeit tentatively and belatedly. National courts in Guatemala have advantages that do not accrue to international Tribunals, including having a more contextualized understanding of the impact of indictments and prosecutions on elements as diverse as national mood and access to justice.  We must utilize and support national judicial authorities wherever it is practical to do so, though the opinion of most at the GA debate is that we must also be able to supplement such capacity at the international level where needed.

At the end of the day, the debate failed some basic tenets of intellectual and political viability.   For instance, it seemed odd at best to attack the Tribunal for not solving problems inconsistent with its mandate, while essentially letting off the hook States and other stakeholders for which reconciliation tasks are very much within their sphere of responsibility.  Moreover,  to dismiss (as did some ‘scholars’ in this process) the relevance of international criminal justice altogether without any viable alternatives  or suggestions for practically modifying the limitations which were legitimately called to account seemed to us to be an unprofessional attempt to toss the baby out with the bathwater.

We can do better than this.  Thankfully, many participating States pointed us in a more fruitful way forward.

 

—Dr. Robert Zuber

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