Tag Archives: Security Council

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

2 May

You hide to protect yourself.  Charlotte Eriksson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Attention Deficits: Moments of Decision for the Global Community, Dr. Robert Zuber

13 Mar

Sand was dribbling out of the bag of her attention, faster and faster. Sarah Blake

Let us not focus on the chink in the canvas of the darkness but look at the light piercing through it. Erik Pevernagie

Where your attention goes, your time goes. Idowu Koyenikan,

A single moment with that empty spot causes excruciating pain. That’s why we run from distraction to distraction—and from attachment to attachment. Yasmin Mogahed

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

If our state were really happy, we should not need to take our minds off it in order to make ourselves happy.  Blaise Pascal

You understand absolutely nothing about modern civilization unless you first admit that it is a universal conspiracy against all interior life.  Georges Bernanos

I’m sitting in my living room early on a chilly Sunday morning having already woven a tapestry of distraction even before the sun rises on this first day of daylight savings.   I make coffee; I arrange the compost to take to the Farmer’s Market; I check the sports scores and the late-winter weather; I write short notes to some people whom I have neglected or to whom I have been unresponsive; I check my bank-balance to remind myself yet again of the perils of not having a salary; I obsess over what it will be like to re-enter UN headquarters after a two-year absence.   The sand of my attention has been steadily “dribbling out of the bag” and the sun hasn’t even graced the horizon yet. It’s not a pretty picture.

But of course, given our work in the world, my computer is open to the latest from Ukraine, a conflict which for a variety of reasons has sucked the oxygen out of the wider range of conflicts and controversies to which we attempt to focus policy attention.  From Afghanistan and Sudan to Myanmar and Yemen, so much of the conflict and climate-impacted misery facing millions in our fragile global community receives scant attention now as the Russian invasion moves into a third week and the justifications for the civilian-targeted violence are becoming increasingly absurd, calculated distractions rather than honest suggestions for resetting regional security arrangements.

The Russian invasion has been anything but surgical.  Russian troops seem largely unmotivated, resistance has been much more formidable than expected, and Russian leadership is clearly in over its head, a worrisome development given Russia’s “on alert” nuclear arsenal and its position as one of the primary guardians of a Charter-based order which it now flaunts with presumptions of impunity.   Russia is hardly the only large power which has used its coercion and position to expand its geopolitical influence, often in the face of massive international opposition, but that such unilateral coercive measures of choice continue to be rationalized is a testament to how fragile our vaunted “rules-based international order” has often been and remains until the present.

Consistent with other large-power disruptions to the prevailing global order, Russia has responded to the current tsunami of opposition with statements within and beyond the Security Council which continue to place the blame for its own actions on the actions of others – from NATO expansionism to allegations of biological weapons labs developed by the US and the presumed revival of Nazism within Ukraine itself.  Much of this blaming of course is also a strategy to create distraction – an attempt to confine discussions to the topic of who broke the proverbial dishes in the kitchen while ignoring the larger reality that one of the parties to the dishes dispute had no business being in the kitchen in the first instance.

And there is another factor here for those of us who spend much of our time discerning and assessing threats to the peace beyond Euro-centric theaters of conflict, assessing both particularities and commonalities of conflict and deprivation, but also the will and capacity of the international community to effect lasting relief, our propensity for making more promises than we honor, including the promise to remain seized of threats to peace and security whether or not they come to dominate the front pages of western media and their global colleagues. 

For while a needless war in Ukraine rages, so do manifold and even existential threats from climate change and biodiversity loss.  So do grave challenges to the millions worldwide who have had their lives and livelihoods turned upside down by unwelcome regime change in states from Afghanistan to Sudan.   So do impediments to health from vaccine inequity and fresh water supplies which are increasingly tainted and inaccessible. So do the development of weapons systems which allow us to kill many at a distance with only limited strands of accountability.

We in the policy world have many promises to global constituents over many years, promises to prevent conflict and promote development, promises to improve governance and narrow economic and social inequalities, promises to promote respect for rights and laws in tandem with those we seek to serve.

These promises require sustained interest and attention from the international community, indeed from all of us in policy, attention even more important in light of the current conflict in Ukraine.  Many of us are tired to be sure, tired of crises of choice, tired of having multi-lateral efficacy betrayed by narrow, partisan national interests.  But the stakes are high now, higher than they have been in some time, especially so for those legions of weary conflict victims in all global regions.  As we begin to assess the carnage multiplying now in Ukraine, we will also be tasked with assessing damage, yet again, to the UN’s battered reputation as its large powers refuse to play by the rules they liberally compel for others.  It is time for us to deepen attachments, but to broaden them also; to chide those who refuse to honor their responsibilities and to find and share the glimmers of light piercing still through these dark times.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has rightly set off many, well-worn alarm bells, including the bell which tolls for the looming threat to any pretense of shared commitments by states to a cleaner, safer, more peaceful, more equitable world.   When the erstwhile, Charter-mandated guardians of multilateralism demonstrate that national interest is still the primary catalyst for national action, the fear is that additional smaller states will also choose to line up to challenge international law obligations once they are confident of escaping consequences from ignoring Charter values.

To our mind, the one thing the UN needs to be discussing now is how to broker a cease fire in Ukraine followed by the swift withdrawal of Russian forces; and then to discern how best to repair this latest rupture to the shroud of credibility still covering parts of our multilateral system, a rupture with grave implications for the millions living with violence, rights abuses and food insecurity in conflict settings within and far beyond Ukraine.

All the rest, all of the recrimination and phony rationalizations, all of that is mere distraction.  We can’t afford the indulgence.

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

21 Nov
land reform | agricultural economics | Britannica

Agricultural Reform in our Distant Past

Enlighten yourself and then enlighten the world. Rashid Jorvee

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

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

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

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

The best reform is to repent.  Lailah Gifty Akita

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Summer Stock: Assessing Progress of our Conflict Priorities, Dr. Robert Zuber

29 Aug

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.  Carl Sandburg

Never confuse movement with action.  Ernest Hemingway

By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.  Rachel Carson

You’ve gotta know when it’s time to turn the page.  Tori Amos

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.  Rosa Luxemburg

Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. C.S. Lewis

Life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself.  Boris Pasternak

It is late August in what is finally a cool, if misty New York Sunday.  The UN, our principle “cover,” has been relatively quiet this past week as many NGO folks have fled the city and the diplomats who remain behind struggle to find even a bit of respite before their ministers and heads of state descend on New York in a few week’s time.

For those of us who have spent the month locked in place with eyes and ears tuned into the world, we are reminded yet again that crisis takes no holiday.  Those who watch helplessly as Hurricane Ida approaches New Orleans or the flames from the Caldor fire approach communities on the western shores of Lake Tahoe; those threatened with terrorist attacks at the Kabul airport while begging for passage on literally anything that can get airborne; those in places like Tigray longing for vaccines and other provisions while wondering when and how the abuses which now daily characterize their existence can ever be made to stop.

There is more, of course, more to consider, more to correct, more to assess, more about which to take stock of and, as necessary, change course.  For weary diplomats and burned-out NGOs the prospect of pushing forward on crises both urgent and stubborn is less than fully welcome.  But crises indeed take no vacation, nor do those most directly affected by them.  The wounds live with them daily as will the scars from struggles lost, childhoods denied, community livelihoods in ruins.  We who choose to engage at this level, despite our diminished August capacities (on top of our more generic limitations), recognize that a lack of vigilance on our part may well contribute to a lack of progress on peace elsewhere, that in some fashion our collective determination to push for real action and not mere movement might somehow, some way, facilitate guns being lowered, abuses being curbed.

Late August notwithstanding, there was much movement of a sort this week at the UN where five of the most painful and, in some instances, longest-tenured global conflicts were highlighted – Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Tigray (Ethiopia).  While each has its own context and history, and two of them (Tigray and Afghanistan) presented greater immediacy, all five of these have in common their residual sense that the international community doesn’t entirely know where it’s going on conflict prevention, doesn’t entirely know how best to reassure conflict parties and communities that we are in fact doing the best that we can –and more importantly all that we can – to silence the guns, restore livelihoods, protect civilians and bring perpetrators of grave abuses to account.

We mostly talk a good game, me included, but so many of our words lack impact or at times even sufficient substance.  We continue to double down on what are essentially “wrong turns” of priority or rhetoric, valuing consensus more than impact, including through our overuse of multilateral jargon which obscures intent as much as clarifies a way forward.   Such jargon premises the same objectives, over and over, but rarely offers a viable implementation plan or provides evidence of a thoughtful assessment of plans already in place, mostly guaranteeing that the same issues will present themselves to the Council and other UN bodies, month after month, quarter after quarter, misery after misery.

On Syria, on Yemen, on Iraq the briefings at the UN are frequent and frequently communicate a lack of progress on key indicators needed for successful political resolutions.  While the focus in Syria and Yemen is largely on enhancing humanitarian access and nationwide cease fires, there has been some movement reported by the SRSG in Iraq on securing viable elections (with the support of the UN Assistance Mission) for October and on implementing a new law recognizing and addressing the need for reparations due to grave violations by ISIL against the Yazidi people (this despite ongoing ISIL threats).  As for Syria, sporadic cease fire violations, severe water restrictions, arbitrary detentions and the continued presence of foreign forces and terrorist groups continue to impede political progress and “exhaust” Red Crescent and other workers seeking to maintain essential flows of relief.  As for Yemen, while famine has been averted for now, there are (as noted by UNICEF ED Fore) “few tangible signs of peace on the ground,” enabling still-grave consequences for children caught in the crossfire, children who have known mostly conflict and deprivation in their young lives. In addition Mexico, as they often do in these contexts, highlighted the seemingly unending challenge of arms flows that inflame violence, damage schools and other infrastructure, and dampen peace prospects.

And what of Afghanistan and Tigray?  Earlier this week, the Human Rights Council in Geneva met in special session to air human rights concerns as the Taliban completed its swift takeover of the Afghan government (see report on the session from Universal Rights Group here).  As were a number of NGOs, many Afghans themselves had to be bitterly disappointed in the results, including what Human Rights Watch labelled as an “insulting” outcome document that did not heed calls for a special investigative mechanism, that did not mention the Taliban by name nor sufficiently articulate threats from terror groups embedded in the Taliban’s loose confederation, and that did not specifically reference legal entities to ensure even a modicum of accountability for abuses committed, rights denied.  What it offered, in the words of Pakistan, was “solidarity,” an important principle to be sure, but only if it is incarnate in specific commitments to protect the vulnerable and alleviate suffering.

The Security Council discussion on Tigray was a bit more practical, if not always more hopeful, and included thoughtful messaging from elected members Kenya and Ireland.  Kenya’s Ambassador Kimani was particularly on point, noting that for too many in this world, “war is seductive” and reminding of the need to blend the short-term project of cease fire and relief assistance with the longer-term project of meditating aspirations tied to ethnic identities that seem forever on the cusp of conflict.  Ireland’s Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason highlighted the children who, in Tigray and elsewhere, are dying in wars “not of their making” and pointedly called out Council colleagues for forgetting that “we” are the international community that needs to take urgent action in this and other instances of conflict and abuse.

And yet, here again, the culture of the system we honor and into which we have long been immersed continues to showcase its limitations regarding its most fundamental responsibility – to a more peaceful planet.  In a system with funding and policy priorities provided by member states and with a seemingly unyielding regard for narrow definitions of sovereignty and consensus, it is common for states under scrutiny – including in the instances under discussion here – to highlight their principles rather than their practices, to push responsibility away from themselves and on to their adversaries, and in varying degrees to reject the notion that UN bodies have legitimate jurisdiction over their internal affairs.  This triad of responses has been commonly articulated in the instances of Syria and Yemen, but was also seen this week in the case of Tigray where the Ethiopian Ambassador shared a statement noting that Ethiopians “are people of values,” denying any accusations of discrimination based on religion, culture or ethnicity, pointing fingers at the Tigray People’s Liberation Front as the party exclusively responsible for the misery in that region, and seeking international support while “respectfully” affirming sovereign national interests.

In our view, this is a formula conducive to “movement” (including in the case of Ethiopia allegations of fresh military recruitment) but much less to progress on peace.  With all due respect for the bureaucratic limitations under which most Ambassadors serve, it is disheartening to listen to the same formulas day after day, witness the same wrong turns that we stubbornly refuse to abandon even when it is clear enough that we have, simply and collectively, lost our way.  We all know we can do better, but the halls of the UN remain populated by those who are often more skilled at upholding national or organizational interests than human interest. This can and must change.

This Monday, at the end of India’s presidency, the Security Council will discuss the Israeli-Palestine conflict.  We will watch this discussion unfold in real time, hoping for some fresh thinking, some new options for policy renewal, especially some sense that our collective tolerance of violence and illegal settlements, of intimidation and retribution, of hate speech and even more hateful actions, has finally begun to run its course.

I’ll let you know if any of this happens, but we’re not particularly optimistic. We’re tired.  The diplomats are tired.  The people facing violence in this world are especially tired. And yet they still seek more from us, every one of us, even those of us who are consigned to a role of providing advice that states are under no obligation to consider, let alone accept; of suggesting fresh ideas for pathways for progress that often drown under waves of protocol and consensus; of reminding those who make decisions of some of the uncomfortable truths about our world and those who perpetually suffer within it, persons to whom our policy decisions should offer more tangible, dependable support.

As we take stock of ourselves, and of the institution of which we have long been a part, we confess our own considerable limitations, but also the opportunities presented to think harder and act more decisively, to listen better and share more abundantly. And we’re holding out hope that the cooler breezes of fall will revive and renew; will dispel some of the fatigue and confusion that I, at least, have not been able to manage as effectively as in years past; and that we can all find it within ourselves to do more than merely stay the course, but reverse and redirect that course as needed in greater service to our fractured world.

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Smoldering Embers: The Fire of Violence we Fail to Extinguish, Dr. Robert Zuber

16 May
See the source image

Every day the community faces the possibility of breakdown — not from the forces of nature but from sheer human unpredictability.  Robert Heilbroner

The fundamental idea is not that of removing disturbing elements and letting things settle down, but that of introducing a peace-power among the disputants.  Vilhelm Grønbech

Endless numbers of speeches, publications, political debates do not have the function of getting at the root of important questions of life but of drowning them in verbiage.  Wilhelm Reich

A late justice is a lame justice.  Amit Kalantri

We protect ourselves to excess because we learned abruptly and painfully that no one else would.  Sarah Olson

There are innumerable ways to murder a person, but the most subtle and pernicious of these is to mutilate the soul of the innocent by denying or downgrading their uniqueness and their beauty.  Gerry Spence

Is not most talking a crazed defense of a crumbling fort?  Hafiz

Like others of my ilk, I am poised in front of a computer screen early on a Sunday morning waiting for the start of the Security Council emergency session following another long week of deadly violence in a conflict between Israel and Palestine that is as old as the UN itself.

The images from this recent, relentless exchange of hostilities have been heaped on top of so many others over many years, the fires we have addressed when they rage but which we never bother to completely extinguish, the embers of incitement and occupation, of intimidation and brutality that are one brisk wind away from igniting yet again, forcing the Council and other UN member states to public affirm their client interests or shrink into the background hoping that the red glow beneath the ashes from the last rounds of hatred and violence will somehow spare us all from what has almost become inevitable — more misery for the people, more trauma for the children, more narrow, nationalist justifications for occupation, more incitement to violence, more talking unattached to remedial response.

Amidst the disturbing images of buildings reduced to rubble with little warning for the civilians and media professionals who occupied them, the “iron dome” patterns in the night sky in response to missile attacks emanating from Gaza, the brutal measures adopted by Israeli defense forces on worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque at the end of Ramadan, the ecstatic jumping for joy of a group of Israelis as that same mosque was seen engulfed in flames, the young boy rushing to the head of a funeral line to say a final goodbye to his muirdered father. There is no shortage of heartbreak in these images of conflict allowed to rage, allowed to recur over and over. There never is.

Perhaps the most heart-tugging image of all was courtesy of a video widely circulated of a young girl surveying the wreckage from one of many air attacks on Gaza this week. As she held back tears, she remarked while pointing at the rubble “You see this? What am I supposed to do? Fix it? I’m only 10.”

She’s only 10, living in what some have called an “open air prison,” wanting to “help my people” but for now having to live with rubble both physical and psychological as she awaits her turn to serve and to lead, a turn which unless we cease this recurring cycle of misery might never come.

Sadly, as we know, hers is not the only story of childhood-denying misery, misery that will likely require herculean efforts to heal, misery which will turn a few children into heroic adults while leaving many others angry and despondent over years of having their beauty and potential denigrated, leaving scars that won’t easily disappear. Such scars represent a future in grave jeopardy for us all, a future for which we all bear some responsibility but certainly for the nations and institutions which continue to cover up abuses and other crimes, which continue to advocate for client states, simultaneously selling them weapons and undermining any timely prospect of accountability.

The UN earlier in the week gave good attention to another tragedy not as long on its watch, the genocidal violence committed beginning in 2014 by ISIL terrorists against the Yazidi people of northern Iraq, including mass executions of men and young women forced into conditions of sexual slavery.

There are differences between the situation facing the Yazidi and that now faces Gaza. While it may turn out to be the case that some UN member states have enabled ISIL violence through some nefarious back-channel means, ISIL itself has no visible state protectors. The violence which was inflicted against the Yazidi has been widely encouraged by the international community to be thoroughly investigated by UNITAD though this has so far not resulted in tangible prosecutions seven years after the occurrence of these abuses. Such investigations have only recently enabled the conditions for Nadia Murad and many other Yazidi to properly bury their murdered loved ones amidst a cloud of revisited sorrow, one piece of a relatively uncomplicated (if deferred) promise of some genuine closure, some eventual justice for perpetrators, some final resting place for the unimaginable pain inflicted over many months. Gaza currently experiences few such tangible promises.

And yet, there are several lessons from Iraq that could be applied to the violence in and around Gaza which as of this writing shows little prospect of abating: the importance of thorough investigation of abuses and competent justice mechanisms; the need for transparency regarding the political alliances and backroom deals that undermine the peace and justice we claim to want; the firm resolve to cease all arms sales and transfers into conflict zones; the importance of investigating and then sharing not only the specific consequences of armed violence but exposing the reticence of those tasked with ending violence to uphold their full responsibility to ensure that violence once constrained is not allowed to recur. In addition there is the lesson, largely unheeded, to put an end to a Council practice which enables the major powers to shield clients (Israel, Syria, Myanmar and more) from the legal consequences of the most horrific of their actions.

As the emergency Security Council meeting on the Israel-Gaza violence earlier this morning draws to a close, it is not at all apparent that we have learned the lessons which are now required of us. Despite some passionate and eloquent statements by Palestine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and his counterparts from Ireland, Jordan and Norway, it is unclear that the US will loosen the most toxic connections to its support for Israel; it is unclear that the “back channel” efforts to resolve the violence claimed by some states will ever see the light of public scrutiny; it is unclear that arms trade restraint will soon become the norm rather than the exception; it is unclear that states are uniformly willing to help the International Criminal Court and other legal entities apply the lens of justice now becoming operational in Iraq to bring closure to so many Gaza children and others in the region terrorized and victimized over so many years by a range of violent acts; it is unclear if states understand beyond their own rhetoric that putting out the Gaza fire is not the same thing as suppressing the immediate flames, but requires more attention, more hands-on action, more responsibility to address all aspects of our current cycles of violence.

And part of this responsibility requires a commitment to discernment that is often hard to come by in diplomatic settings, discernment regarding our failure, metaphorically speaking, to ensure that the “campfire” of violence is completely snuffed out, that those embers of future destruction which continue to smolder long after we have damped down the most damaging and obvious flames are no longer allowed to flare up again and engulf entities and citizens with what in our current circumstance seems like an otherwise inevitable renewal of their searing heat.

We have the capacity to turn current political impediments into peace power, a “power” that demands of us a determination to ensure that the fire of mass conflict has been fully and utterly extinguished. So long as the embers of our once-raging violence continue to glow, so long as they continue to threaten, we in the peace and security community simply cannot claim to have done our proper jobs.

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Night Mood: Ending Terror in our World and in our Dreams, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Jan
See the source image

You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a king to his knees. Grace Willows

I’m well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on.  Mark Lawrence

Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other’s heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?   Arundhati Roy

I don’t know which is worse. The terror you feel the first time you witness such things, or the numbness that comes after it starts to become ordinary.   Tasha Alexander

I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything. H.G. Wells

We passed from laughter to terror which, like love and hate, are close relatives.  Lise Deharme

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King, Jr

When I was younger, which in this past year has seemed like an eternity ago, I spent much time working on issues related to nuclear disarmament.  At the time, the UN was immersed in a high-visibility disarmament push and it seemed to me, aside from addressing the compelling and seemingly looming disaster of nuclear war, that this could also serve a “gateway” issue for me, a path to a wider “human security” engagement on environmental care and racial justice to mention just two other enduring concerns.

It was also a time when my subconscious life seemed to be running on overdrive, when my nightly sleep was punctuated by dreams of pure terror – of being out of control while falling from bridges, of pending disaster and the panic of not being able to successfully outrun the coming storm, including and especially the nuclear storm.  The infamous “doomsday” clock was always ticking away in my earlier dream life, always positing some existential disaster that I had ill prepared for and couldn’t manage to escape.

After years of what passed in my life for a higher level of sanity, complements of an apartment full of “dream weavers,” a remarkable church community, and some of the best friends and partners one could ask for, some of those terrors of the night have returned.   A year of running from COVID impacts and weighing in on a bevy of complex and daunting issues, global and domestic; another year of trying to contribute to what remains of our seemingly dwindling options on climate change and reconciliation among nations and peoples; another year of reminding people of what they don’t generally want to be reminded – that the ills that afflict us, including our now-pervasive political turmoil, are personal as much as structural – those fears that I once conspired to “bury in a dark cellar” are now leaking from their receptacles and finding their way back to prominence in my nocturnal affairs. 

These contemporary terrors of the night are different in tone from earlier iterations.  Not so much about being out of control as being frozen in response to looming threats, of not having the ability to counter whatever is “coming for me” or even being capable of moving to places of safety or like possums, playing dead.   In these dreams, “my reactions” are more like what rabbits do, freeze in place until an avenue for escape presents itself.  But in my dreamlife, there is no such avenue — only the sounds of danger getting louder and closer.  

I know that I am by no means alone in facing mental health challenges that seem mostly to play out after hours.  Especially people who are raising children and/or have jobs to which they need to travel and which often barely cover basic necessities have no choice but to retain as much functional sanity as they are able, to perform their daily duties and let their unconscious self sift through fears and anxieties once sleep has been able to descend. I know how much better I have it – have always had it – than so many in this world.  I never forget (though don’t always appreciate sufficiently) how many blessings have found their way to my door without being asked, like packages from the postal service I don’t recall having ordered.   I also know from many years at the UN and in the field the terror that is routinely inflicted on so many people in this world; those who need not wait to close their eyes after dark to experience threats that never seem to abate, fears of long-term pandemic ruin, of societies splintering at the point of a gun, of climate change that turns productive lands into dust bowls, of education for so many children put on hold, of fires of all varieties that rage on and for which we seem to have crafted insufficient preventive alternatives. 

For too many, the sounds of terror become louder and closer mostly in broad daylight, the guns that have yet to be silenced, the screams from too-many domestic abuses, the sirens of ambulances rushing COVID victims to what might well be their final earthly stop, the government helicopters whirling overhead designed to intimidate protesters at least as much as to uphold the law or protect citizens.  

As we in the US sift through the details (and its many enablers) of the recent assault on the US Capitol, an attack which more and more bears the marks of coordinated domestic terrorism, the UN has been assessing its own mechanisms and measures for identifying and addressing terrorist threat, as diplomats are fond of saying, “in all its forms and manifestations.” This week, under leadership from Tunisia’s Foreign Minister, the Security Council examined progress on countering terrorism since its landmark Resolution 1373 was adopted in the aftermath of the attacks on the US on 9/11. Key to resolution progress has been the work of the UN’s Office on Counter-Terrorism and its Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, bodies which have done much to ensure that the counter-terror measures adopted by states are coordinated (especially across borders), adequately resourced, sufficiently attentive to the causes and instruments of extremist recruitment as well as the means for successful reintegration of “foreign terror fighters,” and that any and all measures adopted are consistent with the UN Charter values and human rights obligations already assumed by member states. 

While levels of urgency regarding the need for more robust counter-terror operations varied from Council member to member, it was gratifying that so many of them, including Estonia, Mexico,  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Niger (which recently endured its own terrorist-related massacre), understood that the task at hand is not primarily about military confrontation with terrorist elements but of depriving terrorists of “oxygen” in part by restricting access to funding but also through policies and practices that promote sustainable development and what CTED referred to as “healing and justice.” Such counter-terror priorities also stipulate governance that is more effective in service delivery as well as more transparent and otherwise deserving of citizen trust, governance with the will and skill to eliminate what UN Special Representative Chambas referred to in another Council meeting this week as “the toxic influence of exclusion.”

Putting this bevy of good ideas and lofty rhetoric into collaborative practice requires high and sane vigilance of thought and action, the commitment to overcome all vestiges of the “sincere ignorance” which magnifies threats to the very lives it purports to help.  The manifold dangers  that constitute the waking lives of too many global citizens –including threats from heavily armed terrorists luring away children and robbing communities of dignity, livelihoods and even of life itself — warrant the full implementation of every preventive measure at our disposal.  For whatever reason, I remain convinced that at least some of the turmoil which punctuates a number of my own nights would be alleviated if the seemingly endless threats which punctuate the days of too many of the rest of us could finally attain some sustainable relief.

With whatever energy and mental health we can muster now, after a long year of lockdowns, physical distancing, political fragmentation and emotional challenges, I feel some assurance that our own lives will be a bit less stressful, our nights a bit more restful as we do what we can to help ensure that the days of many millions around the world are themselves less threatened, more prosperous.  If it is the case that we, together, have sufficient skill and capacity to “drive a saint to madness or a King to his knees,” we surely have enough to bring about an end to fingers trembling on the triggers of deadly weapons, an end to governance that serves the interests of only some and not of all, an end to terrorist violations and social deprivations that stop the development of children in its tracks and lead many adults to the desperate conclusion that they simply have nothing left to lose.

In my dream life, perhaps in yours as well, there is now an over-representation of numbness to terror, of frozen limbs amidst a growing sense of panic. But once the alarm sounds the end to another night of fitful rest, the demands of the day intervene, including the demand to do what we are able to lower the terror threshold that millions struggle mightily to escape regardless of the time of day, as well as the demand to ensure that we never permit ourselves to become numb to worldly deprivations we are well-placed to address. For me as for others, these demands are — and will remain — worth sacrificing sleep over.

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Capitol Offense: Fragility’s New Port of Call, Dr. Robert Zuber

10 Jan

You Are What Your Record Says You Are. Bill Parcels

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. Chuck Palahniuk 

Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! Ray Bradbury 

Every recorded event is a brick of potential, of precedent, thrown into the future. Eventually the idea will hit someone in the back of the head.   Anne Michaels 

Tomorrow was created yesterday…….And by the day before yesterday, too.  John le Carré 

The past sits back and smiles and knows it owns him anyway.  Barbara Tuchman

The evils against which we contend are frequently the fruits of illusions similar to our own. Reinhold Niebuhr

This past Wednesday at the United Nations Security Council, under the presidency of Tunisia, a debate was held to examine the relationship between “fragility and conflict.”

With statements from the heads of state of Kenya, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Niger and Tunisia itself, members of what are known in the Council as the “A3 + 1,” the Council focused as it so often does on the fragility of African states, the combination of widespread poverty, climate change impacts, COVID-19 vulnerabilities, threats from terrorism and insurgency, and weak structures of governance which conspire to create societies which in some instances seem forever hanging over a ledge. 

Several statements, including from the newly-minted Security Council members (India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway), indicated an appreciation of the diversity of fragility’s root causes as well as the tools and stakeholders that need to combine forces in order to address those causes, increase confidence in governance and help to build what Kenya referred to as “bridges of peace.”  The issue of “inclusion” was also noted frequently, especially by former president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the foreign minister of Ireland, both of whom rightly noted the degree to which doors to participation in governance by women, youth and all racial and religious groupings creates more reliable governments and helps to overcome legacies of colonialism, discrimination and militarism that continue to fuel fragility in the present.

But perhaps the most interesting statement during this debate was made by the US representative who, with no apparent sense of irony, highlighted fragility related to corruption, a lack of regard for the rule of law, and “authoritarian tendencies” which, he maintained, continue to sweep across the African continent.  And while lamenting the “politicization” of fragility analysis, the US diplomat reiterated the oft-stated claim by the US that it is Iran which, above all, is fomenting regional chaos and exacerbating regional fragilities, a statement which few Council members have ever accepted, at least not at face value.

To the credit of the US, I suppose, there was at least some recognition that fragility is not an African phenomenon alone, that once we get beyond economic indicators to what Niger’s president referred to as “the health of our governance and the cohesiveness of our communities,” then the fragility of many states and peoples comes into play. In that vein, the habit of Council members more than willing to weigh in on African issues but not place their own fragilities on the table, comes into sharp, if discouraging focus.

When this meeting was over, I had to pivot quickly, not to another UN event but to the unfolding assault on the US Capitol, an assault that had been brewing for months with the blessing and encouragement of the US president and a shocking number of state officials and federal legislators. The fragility which the US representative piously and oh-so-ironically outlined in his Security Council intervention a mere hour ago was now being played out on the streets, not in Tripoli or Juba but in Washington, DC.  The fragility which the US and other large powers have done much to stoke in other places when it was politically or economically convenient to do so could now be found lapping at the shores of the Potomac, threatening high officials with hanging and offering unflinching and unthinking support to a US president who successfully sold a pack of electoral (and other) lies in the way that such lies are often best sold – by repeating them over and over until the audience is ready to die for – or kill for – a narrative grounded far more in negative grievance than positive policy, aside perhaps from the “positive” for some of keeping the US president entrenched in power.

I strongly suspect that anyone reading this post has been fully immersed in commentary and analysis about these events which continue to evolve as we learn more about the players, instigators, fellow travelers inside of government, tools of organizing and much more that serve to appropriately complicate the narrative of the “unruly mob overwhelming Capitol police.”  I won’t presume to waste your time pontificating as one more, erstwhile “talking head,” aside from these few comments that are consistent with your expectations of me as an individual and us as an office.

The first thing to convey is perhaps the most obvious.   This isn’t over.  As I write, dispatches are being shared describing online chatter regarding fresh threats of violence following up on occupations which have now been rehearsed and confidently assessed, both in terms of the tools and strategies of violence and of the existence of sufficient “cover,” for now at least, in state and federal offices to ensure the unlikely event of a retributive bloodbath. Such “patriotic” violence will not, will likely never, incur the wrath inflicted on last summer’s protesters for racial justice, persons who would never have been allowed to get close enough to the US Capitol to see the windows, let alone smash them, even if they had wanted to do so.

Second, the fragility currently impacting the quality and reliability of our own governance is part of a larger pattern, one which the current pandemic may have done more to expose than any single other cause.   Food insecurity is higher than at any point in my lifetime.  Lost wages and livelihoods are only widening the distance between the rich and the rest.  Children across the country, as in other parts of the world, are having their formal schooling and other age-appropriate activities compromised with consequences for our future largely unknown. Masks have become almost grotesque symbols of “oppression” as arrogant dismissals of public health warnings have filled hospital wards and brought health care workers to their emotional breaking point.  Community cohesion is at best in a troubled state as partisan politics and alternative versions of reality conspire to turn neighbors into enemies and provide new incentives for people determined to care about little beyond the borders of their own domiciles and social circles.

Combined with fresh authoritarian indulgences, this stew that we have prepared for ourselves with its multiple ingredients of fragility, chaos and self-deception has been simmering on a metaphorical stove for some time, the toxic scents from which having sent our own version of Humpty Dumpty crashing to the pavement.  

As in the childhood riddle, our own Humpty’s injuries are severe, a reminder that “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” This inability to effect proper healing needn’t be our contemporary fate, but there are things required of us now, beyond the security fortifications and rushed impeachment proceedings, beyond the now-pervasive accusations and condemnations, matters related to our national character which we have yet to fully examine let alone adjust.

As with other national crises in my now-long memory, I am once again stunned by the delusional and self-righteous defaults of so many of our national commentators, including those representing my section of the political spectrum – the “I told you so’s,” the half-truth equivalences, the rolling out of the old national game of “light and darkness,” good and evil.  If our Humpty is ever to be reassembled, is ever to be made close to “good as new,” it is self-righteousness that we can least afford now.  We did not “all” storm the Capitol building, nor did we “all” pin our knees to the necks of black protesters or bring our health care system to the brink of dysfunction through our own willful negligence.  But each in our own way – my own way – we have helped bring this current crisis to a boil.  And while we might well “root” for punishment or sanction of the offending “others,” we need to also own our own mess, our own contributions to a social (dis) order that has never been as kind, helpful, generous and fair as we have more than willingly imagined it to be.

One large piece of what we need to “own” comes courtesy of a statement from president-elect Biden as well as others within and beyond his circle, that this current wave of violence does not represent “who we are.”  This tendency of ours to extrapolate a version of ourselves that conflates our aspirations and our practices is a habit that we simply cannot indulge at this thoroughly unsettled moment.  No, Mr. Biden, this is in fact who we are.  This is our record now.  This is what our history of choices has made of us. Indeed if you listen to the stories and voices beyond our elite centers of policy and their self-referential bubbles, this is part of who we have always been.  Part of our gender and racially-challenged national profile.  Part of the exceptionalist arrogance which we have too willingly inflicted on others in all global regions.  Part of the self-righteousness in which we have liberally bathed even when that water was obviously more polluted than pure. Part of the ample “portions” that we have enjoyed but that were not ours to take in the first place.

As a nation we have excelled at much, at times benefitting many through our universities, our technologies, our multiple forms of expertise and, at moments, our progressive values. But sadly this “much” also includes slinging often-demeaning allegations and indictments beyond our national borders, as well as beyond the borders of our intellectual and ideological comfort zones.  This isn’t going to work for us anymore.  The fragilities that we have patronized and misrepresented in other cultures and communities have found their beachhead here. And they won’t readily recede even with the shifting of the tides.

No, it’s not over and won’t be until we are willing to faithfully address the multiple fragilities now manifest in our institutions and in ourselves.  Our national iteration of Humpty is lying in pieces on the pavement.  It will take much more than political retribution and enhanced security forces to make it whole again. Indeed, it will likely take a national reckoning of sorts –an examination of historical patterns towards which we remain largely oblivious, the bricks that we don’t recognize until they hit us squarely in the head — if we are ever to firmly and fairly pursue the good that we have too often presumed and insufficiently practiced. We’ll see what we’re actually made of in the weeks and months to come. A large swath of the global community which is not laughing at our follies is now holding its collective breath.

I’m holding mine as well.

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Attitude Adjustment: A Thanksgiving Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

22 Nov
Manage Risk to Stay Safe for COVID Thanksgiving

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.  Thich Nhat Hanh

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. Maya Angelou

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.  Voltaire

It is a pity that doing one’s best does not always answer.  Charlotte Brontë

This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.  Michael Ondaatje

Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold.  Nadine Gordimer

The Major was silent. He was at once appalled and also reluctant to hear any more. This was why people usually talked about the weather. Helen Simonson

During this past week of political turmoil within and beyond the US, together with a pandemic that is spreading in some regions faster than butter on a hot biscuit, a singular image shook me to my core.

The image was of a boy in Cameroon, a country I have visited several times and which has been in the throes of civil conflict for too-many years now as the Anglophone region bordering Nigeria struggles to maintain autonomy from an increasingly tone-deaf and even brutal government in Yaounde.  

And while I’m skeptical of many posted images on twitter and other social media, this is one which could not have been photo-shopped, could not have its takeaways easily manipulated through the framing of the image.  Here, a Cameroonian boy, perhaps 10 years old, is lying in the street, having had his feet and lower legs shot off apparently by Cameroon security forces, or perhaps one of the vigilante groups “serving” alongside national military contingents.

The boy was bleeding profusely as he grabbed at pieces of his shattered limbs, tossing them aside in agony as he no doubt realized they were no longer of use to him.  If he survived the trauma and the bleeding, if there was anyone there to bind the wounds and ease the pain, he would never do again what had come most naturally to him a short while earlier – to walk and run, to explore and participate in the street life of a community that now seems so diminished, so impotent in the face of the overwhelming reality of a young life on the brink, a life that now at its best is as shattered as the shards of his own limbs scattered across a familiar path.

This boy can never “kiss the ground” with the feet he no longer has.

I have seen thousands of similar images in the course of this work, some in person and more through the media platforms on which we are now, sad to say, increasingly dependent.  Like that tune you can’t stomach but also can’t forget, I have not been able to put this gruesome image out of my mind. This is a problem for many of in this work who imagine ourselves stronger and more emotionally resilient than we actually are. These images remind us of why we must stay engaged. But they also accumulate like toxins in our cells, akin to a poison we don’t realize we have ingested.

As many around the UN recognize, as attuned to US calendar rhythms as UN folks tend to be, this is our Thanksgiving week, a time both historically dubious and emotionally potent, a time when people now must make hard decisions about who to visit, how to travel, whether or not to accommodate the pandemic and lay low for just this once, just this year, in the hope that loved ones — especially our elderly — can survive our physical absence until the viral coast is truly clear.

It is also a week to contemplate the dual invitations implicit in this season; the invitation first to appreciation for the many blessings which we have received, the blessings which should constitute the core substance of our prayers however (and if ever) we understand them. Added to that is the invitation to giving, one which in normal times many would happily accept. But this year, those calls are often drowned out by a cacophony of grievances, uncertainty and loneliness; thus the invitation to give more of ourselves, more of the treasure we are now tempted to forget we have, more of the sensitive and intimate underbelly that is now mostly encased in thick layers of ideology and self-protection, all of this seems up for COVID-inspired grabs like rarely in our recent history.  

This is a time when the whole world seems to be messaging what we usually leave to our advertisers – that our lives are somehow less than they should be because we lack those core ties to “normal” patterns of consumption and connection that had defined our lives in what is becoming for many, a romanticized, pre-pandemic past.   In the void left by the sudden departure of that normal, we are collectively spending more and more time indulging our evidence-challenged assumptions about each other, acting out our anxieties by “tearing into each other,” and this for reasons we can no longer clearly explain, if indeed we ever could.  

Even for those of us who imagine ourselves in the “peace business” there is a fair bit of explaining to do.  We have tried our level-best in many instances, but our best “does not always answer” the questions and concerns which the world anxiously poses. To some degree, we seem to have achieved little more than putting disasters “on hold, “ a modest sign of success to be sure, but one which seems at times akin to ensuring a ready supply of umbrellas as a tornado approaches. 

In the institution of the UN where we routinely make our case for effective policy and the human values needed to sustain it, there often seems to be a fair amount of measuring success by putting looming disasters on hold, in part as a legitimate effort to buy time to see if a more sustainable solution to disaster threats can be negotiated and implemented, in part as what seems to be a not-always-subtle maneuver to kick problems down the road in the hope that another generation can rise above the consequences of their elder’s follies.

That said, there were some good and hopeful signs emanating from the UN this week, including a supportive, “fingers-crossed” Security Council Arria session on the peace process in Afghanistan; an adopted General Assembly resolution on a death-penalty moratorium that continues to gain traction and another GA session on reforming the Security Council; an event on how the medium of radio can both inflame atrocity crimes and promote social reconstruction; and a joint meeting of the Economic and Social Council and the Peacebuilding Commission that promises more coordinated responses to the diverse, “root causes” of armed conflict. In addition, although the UN does not insist on specific forms of governance from its member states, there was much timely and welcome scrutiny and active promotion of democracy this week with International IDEA at the controls.

Friday was also World Children’s Day, a time to reflect on the many promises made to our children which still remain elusive. Despite often herculean efforts by child advocates, children are leaving behind educational opportunity and re-entering a dangerous workforce across parts of Africa and Latin American due to the spread of the pandemic. Some children in Syria and Libya spend more time dodging bombs and landmines than balls on the playground. Children in places like Yemen are being deliberately starved to such a degree that their full functionality as adults will be severely impaired even if they mange to survive the current onslaught. Children are being displaced, then trafficked, then abused in the major cities of the so-called “civilized world.”

And then there is that image of the Cameroon boy that I simply cannot put out of my waking mind. His unimaginable misery does not in any way make me ‘’feel better” about my own life; if anything it encourages a toxic temptation to avert my gaze, to “talk about the weather” or other matters both banal and distracting. But I and others can surely recognize that as anxious as many of us are, as frayed around the edges as we now admit to being, the need to stay the course on policy attentiveness and practical concern remains acute. Thus my own Thanksgiving prayer this year is to appreciate others in larger measure, to offer more of what is left in me to give, and to hold on tight to my portion of our collective focus.

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Partisan Appeal: Making Space for Conflict-Related Mediation, Dr. Robert Zuber

11 Oct

In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you’ve heard the other side.  Euripides

A judge, replied the Empress, is easy to be had, but to get an impartial judge, is a thing so difficult. Margaret Cavendish

It is not possible to completely eliminate mediation between you as an observer and the history you are trying to understand. Ken Liu

The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize.  Stanisław Lem

Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here and now. Sharon Salzberg

[We live] rather in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in fantasies and dreams. Ernst Cassirer

All roads taken lead us only to ourselves.  Kilroy Oldster

This was another busy and mostly virtual week at the UN in New York as all six General Assembly committees began their work to craft resolutions corresponding to core UN priorities:  disarmament and the rule of law, human rights and financing for sustainable development, special political missions and moving remaining territories towards self-governance.  Watching this process over many years, we lament that the relationship between these carefully-crafted global norms and concrete improvements in the lives of constituents is not always apparent and certainly could be made more so, especially to the constituents themselves.   

Beyond the committees, two events stood out for me given my own interests and biases.  The first was an event organized by our friends and partners FIACAT together with the European Union focused on cementing recent trends towards the abolition of capital punishment, a particularly noxious remnant of a time when we believed more fervently in the “value” of vengeance and retribution, when we acceded to the alleged “right” of the state to take life without recourse to accurate assessments of guilt let alone to the evolving sentiments of the public.  A case now in Oklahoma involving one Julius Jones who most assuredly did not commit the crime for which he is being held – often in solitary confinement – and for which he might actually be executed is only one of too-numerous instances demanding a rethink of an irreversible punishment within those dwindling number of states (including my own) that continue to employ it.

The other discussion of note took place in the Arria Formula format of the Security Council, wherein this week  Germany, Vietnam, Switzerland and Belgium sponsored a discussion on “Mandating peace: Enhancing the mediation sensitivity and effectiveness of the UN Security Council.”   Such mediation is encouraged under Article 33 of the UN Charter as one of the “non-coercive” tools available to the UN and especially to Council members  in discharging their duties to maintain international peace and security.  This particular discussion was based on a report crafted for this occasion by researchers at Notre Dame University with the same title as the event itself.

This Arria Formula sparked high levels of attention from the entire UN community.   As we have noted in the past, UN member states are becoming increasing nervous about a Security Council that is often frozen by its own internal controversies, by the willingness of the permanent members to ignore resolutions they seek to impose on others, and by conflicts that are not addressed at sufficiently early stages and thus require coercive responses when less coercive measures – including mediation – could have put out the fire at a point when it could more easily have been contained. 

States have increasingly embraced the language of conflict prevention, and this to our mind has been a welcome development, at least on the surface.  So much hunger and displacement, so many disruptions of educational and health access are due to conflicts about which we have collectively dragged our feet.  And when we have gotten on top of specific threats, our recourse to the language of “condemnation” and the threat of sanctions – both Council-approved and unilateral – has had a predictably polarizing effect on conflict parties.  In an era where trust is at a premium and political interests are highly partisan, states increasingly recognize that coercive responses are likely only deepen the distrust we need to overcome if progress on preventing and resolving conflict is to occur and, indeed, if our entire multilateral apparatus is to achieve more than rhetorical victories over all that now afflicts us. Sadly this “all,” Turkey and other states reminded the rest of us at this Arria meeting, remains headlined by the “scourge” that is armed conflict.

During this session, one state after another enthusiastically advocated for mediation resources and other, early-applied, less coercive measures in response to conflict threats.  In so doing, many states such Costa Rica and Italy recognized that the background of mediators is one key to success, advocating for mediation that is both gender-balanced and gender-sensitive.  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines took this one step further, noting that where the application of resources such as mediation are concerned, “neighbors know best.”  Indeed, calls came throughout this discussion for mediation that prioritizes “what is happening around us in the here and now,” with special attentiveness to, as Finland noted, the increasing “complexities” that characterize conflict contexts.  And if the Security Council can fully grasp, as claimed by SRSG Haysom, that “negotiated settlements must take priority over imposed settlements” (though both can unravel), then mediators must be given space for flexible responses to shifting conflict circumstances and Council members who might be overly addicted to coercion must hold in mind the importance of  isolating mediators from responsibility for any subsequent imposition of sanctions or other coercive means.

Amidst calls from Portugal and others for regular deliberations on maximizing the value of mediation and other “Chapter VI” responses, it is important that member states be clear with themselves about the often-profound degree of difficulty in maintaining the integrity and independence of mediators given the current avalanche of partisan views and “minds made up” long before all relevant evidence and context have been considered.   We are indeed inclined, perhaps more than ever in our recent history, to “jump to conclusions,” to bend facts to suit our personal and political interests, to live in a self-authorized realm of “imaginary emotions,” illusions and fantasies. We have substituted out honest inquiry with conspiracies and rooting interests.  We have cashed out insights that could benefit all for the sake of biases that elevate partial truths to universal status.  And we are amply suspicious of the motives of others, even when it is our own motives that require closer scrutiny.

I have seen a bit of this tendency myself in years of counseling.  At the level of conflicted couples and “neighbors,” suspicion is often palpable.  People are quick to assume that mediators who struggle hard to maintain independence are actually giving in to partisan values and outcomes, that once the curtain of “what is best” is pulled, it will surely reveal grave mis-readings of the “history” that mediators allege (and often honestly strive) to understand.  Indeed, many of us nowadays spend so little time listening to persons and ideas that threaten or oppose us, so little time exploring self-accountability for festering disputes small and large, that we can barely imagine what non-partisan engagement might look life.  Too often, we are simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the mediators or counselors to “show their hand” and commit the errors that reinforce our fears of and reservations regarding discussions mostly shielding biased revelations.

During this Arria Formula, a German minister wondered aloud, as a response to the report under consideration, whether Council mandates on mediation, including in the context of peacekeeping operations, are simply “too political to succeed?”  Certainly they are often seen as such by conflict parties, especially those whose biases and rationales for ongoing violence have also been allowed to harden.   But this points to an even larger problem, one we at GAPW strive regularly to identify, and that is the hard road that inevitably leads us back to ourselves.

In the end, as important as carefully worded resolutions and carefully crafted mandates might be, we must take time to address the social climate that we have conspired to create, one enabling the growth of hyper-partisan worldviews, a climate conducive to the insistence on unbiased perfection in our mediators that we are unable to guarantee in ourselves.  If we want less coercive, more inclusive solutions to conflict, and we certainly should, it will take more than discussions about our policy tools and options; it will also take discussions focused on our capacities to engender trust within a security and political environment that is now giving too many people sufficient reasons to withhold the risk of trust altogether.

Slowly, inexorably, our views and affiliations have calcified as dramatically as our arteries.  It is this hardening of hearts, and not a lack of UN Charter guidance on mediation and other non-coercive tools, that constitutes the greatest impediment to the development and implementation of flexible, context-specific, attentive, trustworthy responses to conflict threats. This “other” conversation, the one about our human capacities and barriers to progress we erect ourselves, is one that we would do well not to overlook.

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Waiting Room: Attending to Degraded Fields and Empty Bellies, Dr. Robert Zuber

20 Sep

Time was a funny and fickle thing. Sometimes there was never enough of it, and other times it stretched out endlessly.  J. Lynn

All night you waited for morning, all morning for afternoon, all afternoon for night; and still the longing sings. Ruth Stone

You know, life fractures us all into little pieces. It harms us, but it’s how we glue those fractures back together that make us stronger.  Carrie Jones

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.  Mahatma Gandhi

The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time. Elie Wiesel

This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Marshall Sahlins

I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something; until I realized the person I was waiting for was myself. Markus Zusak

As the UN prepares for a commemoration of its 75th anniversary this Monday, the mood around the UN community is uneven; honoring its staying power and ample (if often unrecognized) global contributions combined with a sense of urgency, even dread, as threats to institutional legitimacy and sustainability mount. Moreover, the global commons represented in good measure by the UN seems to be unraveling in the face of large-power hostilities, expanding domains of authoritarian governance, a global pandemic with multiple iterations, broad-based economic contraction, and a bevy of sustainable development goals and targets that relevant data suggests are clearly headed in the wrong direction.

The Security Council plays a role in confirming this sobering assessment of the UN’s uneven potential given its unenforced resolutions; its back-room arm twisting especially of elected Council members; its largely tepid acknowledgement, let alone active enabling, of the essential contributions of other UN agencies, justice mechanisms and treaty bodies; even the habits of the permanent members to play by a different set of rules than they expect others to abide by. 

And yet, thanks in large measure to the growing determination of its elected membership, the Council has been encouraged to examine the scope and implications of a new generation of challenges affecting its primary mandate to maintain international peace and security.   Through a growing roster of “thematic” engagements, it is becoming apparent in ways that even permanent Council members cannot deny that such “maintenance” is more complex and comprehensive than perhaps ever before in UN history.

On Thursday, under Niger’s presidency, the Council spent an entire day examining the consequences of environmental degradation and hunger for conflict and, conversely, the impact of conflict on nutrition and livelihoods, on access to clean water and health facilities, on educational opportunity and mental health for children.  As noted by the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Ibrahim Thiaw, links between “humanity and the land” are profound and apply in both directions. We have too-often been derelict, he reminded, in respecting and protecting the land; thus human livelihoods and the communities whose vitality depends on them have been allowed to succumb to fire and drought, to flooding and erosion, and to violence from armed groups which remains as the source of so much global degradation.

During these important Council discussions held in the shadow of upcoming UN 75th year commemorations, one briefer after another laid bare the dire circumstances facing far too many children and other vulnerable persons in this world.  Briefers also highlighted the degree to which efforts to address acute needs by UN agencies and other actors are routinely impeded not only by access restrictions by states and attacks by spoilers, but also by a lack of funds, in many instances due to states making pledges of support they have yet to honor. 

And so the most desperate people wait, waiting under conditions that most of us in the well-resourced, oft-impatient West cannot fathom, waiting for provisions that will hopefully preserve their lives for another day, waiting for a shifting of environmental conditions that might allow them to stay in their homes and care for themselves and their neighbors, waiting for an end to the violence that engenders fear and impedes local initiatives at many levels.  In this context one truly moving statement of this day came from Under Secretary-General Lowcock who quoted a child in hunger, cholera and conflict-ravaged Yemen desperately imploring his father, “Daddy, when will the food come?” 

When indeed?  As ICRC director Maurer noted on Thursday, people living under severe environmental strain and resource deprivation “do not want a handout,” preferring (as we mostly all do) a future in which they can live in “independence” and dignity. But in some parts of the world basic needs are becoming more acute, not less, and the wait times for relief seem interminable and increasingly consequential. Moreover, the “social contract” that binds us in common interest is clearly “fracturing” all around, as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lamented.  It is almost as though we are “losing interest” in each other as challenges multiply in all our lives and viable pathways towards the restoration of dignity and hope seem multiply blocked.

Clearly, we need to urgently raise the bar on the alleviation of human misery and the restoration of human potential, and there were a few clues offered on Thursday as to how this might become more feasible.  Belgium ably remarked that too much of our humanitarian response is now akin to a “fire extinguisher” rather than the “fire preventer” we need it to be.  And Ibrahim Thiaw wisely noted that, for all the remarkable work done by the humanitarian community, in the end “lives are saved but not changed.”

Such lack of change for people and communities, we might all agree, is simply not good enough, not for ourselves and certainly not for those now sitting more precariously than we will ever find ourselves on the precipice of ruin.   It may be the case, as Estonia stated on Thursday, that there is no “quick fix” for the messes we have gotten ourselves into, messes so dire that those most impacted cannot do much more than wait for someone to help attend to them.  Estonia also suggested a path forward that includes both increased diligence from policymakers and better access to relevant data to guide the practical renewal of energies and commitments to restore the land, restore livelihoods and restore hope. We need to keep those trucks and convoys moving as World Food Programme executive director Beasley noted.  But we must also more thoughtfully and and actively resist what he called a “toxic combination” of factors that threatens to undo all the gains on food security made over the past decade, dramatically decreasing the wait experienced by millions for some respite from what are often externally-imposed deprivations, with little more than empty stomachs and parched fields to mark the slow passage of time.

The untimely death on Friday of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was yet another painful reminder of how much we have all lost this year, but also how much time we have invested waiting for the fog of injustice to lift, the fires to die down, the jobs to come back, the pandemic death toll to abate. We are indeed facing an era of “hunger unprecedented,” for bread and health provisions, but also for the healing of personal and social fractures, for the return of some semblance of our collective sanity, for the restoration of our sense of solidarity, for the silencing of the guns on the streets of our communities.

For some of us, this is a time of considerable angst, even mourning. But for others, including for so many children in conflict settings, this is a time of agonized waiting for some urgent, sensitive and sustainable response from the rest of us. I know that I have not always made the best use of my pandemic-enforced opportunities to rethink our role in security and sustainable development and then play that out more effectively. Thus it is now well past time for me, and surely for others, to get off couches and computers, dust off the social contract, and help glue back together some of the many fractures stemming from this long and painful period.

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