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Relentless: The UN Doubles Down on a now-Familiar Foe, Dr. Robert Zuber

Desert

The melody of your ears must not be the cries of the powerless. Shahla Khan

Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic. Richard Matheson

Many also bear their cross of imagined deprivation, while their fellow human beings remain paralyzed by real poverty. Anthon St. Maarten

Yet we must choose each step we take with utmost caution, for the footprints we leave behind are as important as the path we will follow. Lori Lopez

In the desert, the only god is a well. Vera Nazarian

One of the things that our interns notice quickly about life inside the UN is the extent to which issues are often raised but not routinely resolved. From development financing and ocean health to efforts to restrict the production of small arms and the recruitment tactics of terrorist groups and criminal elements, most key issues on the UN’s agenda are certain to “come around again” before too much time elapses. This tends to frustrate onlookers, especially the young, who yearn to see greater levels of intentional movement towards more reliable resolutions to today’s multiple threats, some of the “footprints” which we older folks would do better not to leave behind.

However, given the degree of difficult associated with many global problems, this doubling-down is mostly appropriate. As any good therapist (or parent) knows, naming a problem accurately is only the first stage in a successful outcome, not to be confused with the solution itself. Many problems we confront in policy, much like problems within ourselves and our families took a long time to evolve into their current forms. Like a ball of yarn, we wind ourselves and our societies into tight, if destructive habits that cannot untangle overnight, if at all. If they are indeed to untangle, such will require us to engage over and over in a complex “dance” that includes elements of sometimes-painful honesty, careful assessments, legal accountability, and a continual renewal of our intent to see these processes through to a healthy conclusion.

And yet we in this UN space habitually seem to over-simplify what it takes to sustainably resolve global challenges. We pass resolutions, year after year, without attaching assessments of why so many of these resolutions have so little impact. We continue to raise the right issues in diverse conference rooms without also raising the stakes on success – integrating honest and careful analysis of what we’ve learned since the last time such issues came up for consideration and what we now must resolve to do differently. In essence, we “double down” on our consideration of global challenges without also doubling down on both our reflection and our resolve, as though the solution to our current stable of grave threats requires little beyond ratcheting up a bit of additional political will to do more of what we’ve already committed to doing.

One of these “come around again” threats was examined on Friday during a Security Council “Arria Formula” on how accountability for crimes can serve as a contribution to prevention. The specific context for this Arria is the often-horrific violence perpetrated mostly against women and girls in situations of armed conflict. Led by Germany with the endorsement of most current Security Council members, the event was a reflection of a problem to which much energy has properly been devoted, but where progress has been elusive (or even non-existent) as was reinforced by prosecutors of the Special Court established to deal with such abuses in the Central African Republic. Women especially remain the “currency of conflict” as claimed by Ireland’s Ambassador noting that we must refuse to separate the physical security of women and men abused in conflict zones with what she referred to as “other forms of security” including of the social and economic variety. In a similar vein, the director of the Global Justice Center reminded delegations that the genesis of much abuse can be laid at the feet of our persistent and toxic inequalities, including of gender, reinforcing our own view that we must do more to “level the playing field” before it can properly be groomed.

This broader security must also integrate accountability for abuses already committed, as several states and the always-thoughtful Tonderai Chikuhwa of the UN Office on Sexual Violence in Conflict duly maintained, underscoring the importance of ensuring that, however painful it might be for some, such crimes must never be stricken from the “historical record” of states.

But if we must, as Chikuhwa and others insisted, double down on accountability for these humiliating crimes, Council members and others insisted that our lens must also focus on related matters, specifically the call by Germany and other speakers for more victim services to help minimize prospects for “re-traumatizing.” Indeed, states including Côte d’Ivoire and Chile, insisted on the priority need for “healing” — in part a function of services and reparations but in part a function of ensuring that there is a “cost” for such abuse, a “cost” that can be made consistent across states and that can be employed to help citizens remain mindful of the deep trauma suffered by far too many.

In listening to this good discussion with one of our interns, two things came to my mind. First was the “relentlessness” of the dehumanizing abuse which casts a fog over human life that never quite seems to lift. In the relative triviality of my first-world bubble, I have encountered only episodic stalking – by a few people who wanted things from me I was unwilling to give them or through exposure to online hackers demanding ransom in exchange for keeping silent about alleged behavior which, thankfully, never took place.

And yet even within these limited and mostly modest bouts with our sometimes frayed and predatory social system, one now defined by a largely “fallen” and self-authorizing morality, I could revisit some lessons about the unrelenting nature of more grave abuse, specifically the degree to which external violations leave “footprints” within us that continue to hijack our best selves long after the physical or psychological violence stops: those remaining in hyper-vigilant mode for signs that stalkers might be close at hand; those refusing to communicate unless completely sure who is on the other end; those dreading turning on the computer because of yet another virus ready to inflict mayhem in ways much like the “virus” of conflict-related abuse — doing its dirty work now from inside the systems on which we must rely and changing how we engage the world in ways that we are more likely to defend than to carefully examine.

And the second, related insight comes courtesy of the 2030 Development Agenda which is filled with positive implications for those who might otherwise risk humiliation in conflict zones, but which insists to all who participate that we must not only “leave no one behind,” but that we must reach “those in greatest need first.” It is difficult and at times counter-productive to create priority lists for human need, and yet there must be some special dispensation, some special accountability in situations where grave crimes have been committed against women and girls, men and boys in too many conflict zones, crimes more akin to slavery than to the “first world” dramatics that we far too routinely indulge.

I confess that my own patience for “first world problems” is now even lower than before, not because growth and change in own my life are no longer needed (they are), but precisely because I acknowledge more deeply an unearned privilege allowing me to trust (albeit with gratitude) that my own fog is destined to lift, my “well” is largely close at hand, my erstwhile “deprivation” is almost entirely imaginary. The “cries” of the powerless don’t always penetrate my thick skull as they should, but neither have they become the “melody” that transforms sexual violence as a tactic of war and other traumatic circumstances from something preventable and accountable to something that we simply accept as part of the price tag for getting on with the “world’s business.”

The “paralysis” of many trapped in poverty or in cycles of dehumanizing despair must never become acceptable to those of us ensconced in the policy world, including “accepting” that the drama of our own lives constitutes some rough equivalent. We at Global Action were deeply appreciative of the reminder provided to us on Friday by Germany and other Security Council members, a reminder that while many windows of opportunity seem always to be open to us, such windows are still largely and even serially impaired for persons humiliated or otherwise traumatized at the point of a gun.

Tags: humiliation, Security Council, sexual violence

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Cool Spa: Endorsing Emotions Appropriate for Urgent Times, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Jan

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to. Kazuo Ishiguro

But there’s another sort of terror: the terror of failure, of being blamed for some disaster, or of assuming responsibility. David Weber

The two of them, the smart ones, the clever ones, the great defenders of truth and fairness and justice, had done nothing while others had worked themselves to exhaustion. Michael Grant

It’s a cruel fact of war that it takes little more than applying pressure to one finger to end another person’s life. More than that, it’s a cruel fact of life that we are hardwired to follow the crowd in a moment of panic. Trevor Richardson

This was potentially a tide-turning week for the world and the UN found itself at the epicenter of much of it.

Yesterday the Security Council held a rare Saturday session to focus on the situation in Venezuela. The conversation attracted numerous ministers and other senior diplomats, both Council members and many interested regional states, and featured the presence of US Secretary of State Pompeo who stuck around long enough to bash Cuba and issue a warning to countries still on the fence regarding the legitimacy of the Maduro presidency that it is “time to choose.” He was replaced around the oval by Elliot Abrams of Iran-Contra infamy who was making his debut as chief adviser on Venezuela to the current US president.

The optics of this were not ideal for the US, for whom the presence of Abrams and the bullying tactics of Pompeo underscored fears of some states that the US is now resurrecting a modernist version of the Monroe Doctrine and its “backyard” justifications for aggressive intervention. There is still vast, lingering pain throughout the region regarding prior “arrangements” between the US and its client states, governments at times willing to throw their own people under the bus to enable the policy objectives of its larger neighbor over which they essentially have no say.

And yet, many states were clear that the current situation in Venezuela, one which has resulted in mass displacement, rights violations and widespread economic ruin, has conspired to delegitimize the Maduro government. European states at this meeting went so far as to propose an “eight day” window within which Maduro must arrange for new elections, a proposal subsequently mocked by the Russians. Others preferred the “path of negotiations” approach with facilitation offered by Mexico and Uruguay. Regardless, emotions were raw during much of this five hour session. Tensions among states seeking to transition the situation in Caracas and do justice to the many thousands of currently displaced (and the neighboring countries hosting them) as well as among states fearing the return of a more hostile US “backyard” remained consistently high.

Surprisingly a bit less “raw” was Friday’s Council debate on the climate-conflict nexus organized by January’s Council president the Dominican Republic. In a discussion that spanned eight uninterrupted hours and involved 82 state speakers, both the urgency and the politics of climate response were on display. While there were no “climate denying” statements made (the US spoke effectively on disaster response but failed to utter the “C” word), many states (including Germany and some Council colleagues) noted that while climate change might not be the cause of conflict, its impacts have a “multiplier” effect on political and security tensions, adding flooding, drought, storms and other “disasters” to a worrisome global mix characterized by still-too-high levels of poverty and mass displacement, too much plastic in our oceans, and too many hands grabbing at the “cookie jar” of dwindling natural resources. While some states shared concern about Council energy being “diluted” by excess attention to this particular “thematic obligation,” the Fiji representative rightly noted that we have reached the “tipping point” on climate, echoing Japan’s call for climate considerations integrated “throughout the conflict cycle” and Ireland’s call to explore the climate-conflict nexus across the spectrum of UN policymaking.

Beyond the UN this week was the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, bringing together the elites of the planet –complete with their copious entourages and private jets — to deliberate on the fate of a world they (in the aggregate) have done much to destroy on behalf of global citizens about whom too many of these “leaders” seem to actually care little. This toxic (in my view) event which draws media attention as though this were the policy equivalent of a Super Bowl or Academy Awards, provides yet another reminder of the residual “vertical” dimensions of global governance, placing on display guardians of the planet who, so far as we can tell, are principally skilled at guarding their own privilege. Media coverage this year focused on the “gloom” of Davos as elites contemplated the uncertainty of these times – as though much of the rest of this largely “exhausted” planet doesn’t cope with higher levels of uncertainty all the time!

But something did come out of Davos this year that grabbed considerable media interest and not without reason. Perhaps my favorite quotation of the entire week came from a Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, whose warning to the Davos elites seemed to prompt at least a bit of soul-searching:

Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.

Preaching panic and culpability to generations (including diplomats and elites) that so often go out of their way to “keep cool,” that too-often misconstrue the difference between “keeping your head” and willful indifference to anything that might cause someone to actually and practically care, surely seems like risky business. But in these times it is also essential business.

Let’s put this “panic” in some perspective. The “playing it cool” game, like most other games we now indulge, has positive and negative repercussions. To the extent that it implies keeping your head while others around you are losing theirs, this is surely a skill worth cultivating. But the degree to which “cool” and its attendant platitudes become the mask behind which we hide from seeing, from feeling, from responding, then such “cool” becomes merely the latest iteration of a narcissistic pattern that too-easily hardens into inattention and dismissiveness; indeed into a potential “disorder” in its own right.

A similar distinction can be attributed to “panic.” If panic is, as it so often is these days, a sub-set of our now-chronic anxiety, then it is related primarily to our perceived incapacity to control outcomes and/or to recover our brand from ill- advised movements “on the chess board.” Panic in this sense is more likely to drive an irrational herd than to drive productive outcomes, concerned more with finding “spas” and other niches of personal relief and escape than urgently using those skills and capacities available to help resolve whatever crises make their appearance before us.

As much as we might like to think otherwise within our bastions of “cool,” there are many times when “panic” represents the more accurate reading of circumstance: the parent hovering over a desperately sick child; the homeless person on the cusp of a deadly hypothermia; a family evading traffickers as they seek fresh water and arable farmland, or escape from political instability; an entire nation watching helplessly as melting ice caps raise ocean levels, breeching fresh water supplies with salt and shifting fish stocks away from the access on which local populations depend. These circumstances are not diminishing in frequency; indeed they threaten to carry us to our collective demise unless we grasp both the urgency they represent and our still-potent (for now) capacity for contructive response.

If some of the “small island” and other states who participated in Friday’s Council debate on climate change and conflict are correct; if their growing and still-unheeded concerns are indeed justified by circumstance; if the warnings uttered in Davos by Greta Thunberg have the merit that many seem to think they do; then “panic” in its most urgent and productive sense is fully warranted. Not the panic of the herd, but neither the “cool” detachment of persons who don’t (or refuse to) understand that the metaphorical house fire whose potential and implications they fear has long been burning.

Tags: climate, Davos, panic, Security Council

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Heavenly Rest: The UN Pays a Holiday Health Visit, Dr. Robert Zuber

23 Dec

Doctors_and_Nurses_at_War

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane. Kurt Vonnegut

Surgeons can cut out everything except cause. Herbert M. Shelton

Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves. Naomi Klein

A sad soul can kill you quicker than a germ. John Steinbeck

If you would live long, open your heart. Bulgarian saying

On the Sunday before Christmas I am staring at my worn and trusted crèche scene, a holy family “guarded” in this instance by replicas of cats and hippos and camels as well as by the more traditional barn animals. For me, this scene represents a brief respite in a season that seems to have followed our cultures off a cliff of sorts – trading in the expectation of “heavenly rest” for the expectation that what “really matters” will magically appear at our front door or under a decorated tree.

Except that magic is at a premium. I walked for over a mile yesterday down Broadway between rendezvous with good friends, past the high-end stores north of Canal Street before turning east towards the vegetable markets that line several of the streets of Chinatown. The streets were packed. The winds were howling. The car horns were blaring. Children were in the midst of emotional meltdowns. The looks on the faces of most of the people I passed stretched beyond the usual wary impatience that characterizes so many in this city so much of the time. This was stress of a different order, or so it seemed, the stress that accompanies the determination to make Christmas “matter” for someone at least, to make one last push through the crowded streets, through the racks of clothes and toy bins, through the long check-out lines, to satisfy an opaque longing that has everything to do with advertisers and virtually nothing to do with the message in the manger.

People in this city really do seem unhappy much of the time –and I would often add myself to their numbers– but especially so in this “joyous holiday season.” It is though we have lifted a bandage covering the wounds of the year only to discover that the infection is worse than we imagined, that we are less healthy in mind, body and spirit than we ourselves, and our bartenders, therapists, pharmacists and yoga teachers, have allowed us to believe.

One verse of a well-known Christmas Carol ends with “sleep in heavenly peace.” For too many of us, sleep in any form has become a virtual luxury, a deficit that directly and at times severely impacts the quality of our lives including the depth of our compassionate and active engagement with the world. Our stressful societies have created for us a kind of double-whammy – distractions by day and restlessness by night. We have become addicted to bombardment from outside ourselves and increasingly oblivious to the toll this is taking on our inner resources.

Regardless of our political affiliations or religious dispositions, we know that things are not right. Too many of us work too hard to sustain lives that yield too few joys. Too many of us cover our sorrows and anxieties with substances and diversions that are about as effective as painting a bathtub with watercolor. We fret about the “state of the world,” even lament the blood that occasionally appears on our collective hands, but soldier on as though the contents of the next smiley Amazon Box will heal what ails us, will restore our serially damaged relationship between longing and gratitude.

Institutions such as the United Nations have actually begun to take health issues a bit more seriously. Here in New York, the UN has done important policy work on preparing for pandemic outbreaks as well as identifying remedial options for addressing the “non-communicable diseases” and even road hazards that continue to ravage communities and shorten life-spans. Even the Security Council has gotten in on this act. Just this past Friday, as one of its final contributions as an elected Council member, Sweden convened an excellent Arria Formula discussion focused on the most immediate implications of health for peace and security – issues of access to medical care in conflict zones as well as the growing danger to medical practitioners operating in such zones, persons and facilities increasingly targeted by state forces and non-state armed groups in fundamental violation of international law.

These are matters crucial to any and all efforts to preserve and promote the peace. It’s bad enough that we aren’t more successful in preventing conflicts, in part through a clearer examination of the “interests they serve,” but to actively prevent persons already-devastated by armed violence from receiving the modicum of care available to them in conflict zones is beyond reprehensible. Wars have rules, we are told, most of which are related to the treatment of non-combatants, but these rules are constantly in various states of violation. As Swedish Ambassador Skoog put it, the gaps between “what is said and what is done” on health care access and the safety of health care workers continue to be large. In this instance as in others, our “humane ideas” must come attached to more humane practices and, as France noted during the session, greater accountability for perpetrators of abuses.

Fulfilling this “sacred responsibility” to conflict-related casualties requires, as Peru’s Ambassador noted, a “homogenous approach to protection” with uniform standards that are both upheld and guaranteed by the Security Council and other UN member states. Such guarantees are frustratingly hard to come by in this current phase of human existence. As we were reminded by a panelist from South Sudan, the degree of difficult in field surgery is sent through the roof once the bombs resume falling. Surgeons, it appears, “can cut out everything except the cause.”

We must, as many speakers noted, be more attentive to the needs and resources of those who make such sacrifices to bind together those who have been maimed by violence in its many facets. But genuine healing is even more comprehensive than the bombs we prevent, the destruction averted, the injuries avoided, even by eliminating the trauma that impacts confidence in life, including the confidence to seek out treatment. It is also a function of getting our institutions right, of making certain that we are doing what we can to optimize our performance in the world, in part by insisting on more healthfully engaged colleagues. The UN itself still has things to learn in this regard.

We must take our collective health more seriously, in all its dimensions. Our “sad souls” and the things we do to cover that sadness are collectively doing us in, making us more “cranky” than we need to be, isolating us socially and spiritually, but also shutting down our practical empathy for others – the needy in our immediate midst, the migrants at our borders, the victims of our thoughtless policy choices, those whose bodies have been mangled and psyches traumatized courtesy of our overly politicized and militarized international engagements. We don’t need to be this way; we don’t need to bury our own wounds while simultaneously inflicting wounds on others. Whatever you understand “human nature” to be, this isn’t an example. This isn’t inevitable.

The call to the deeper health advocated here is not satisfied by going to the gym or swallowing our meds. And it is not satisfied through pious calls to “take care of ourselves,” as though most of us actually know what that means. The health we would do well to seek instead, that indeed this season calls for, is a collective and comprehensive endeavor – a commitment to maintain and share in what Wendell Berry once called “the feast of creation,” a feast fully open for a time only to the few while impeded for the many by the artifacts of our often thoughtless predation.

Whether particularly religious or not, I wish each of you a portion of “heavenly rest” this season, a time of uninterrupted sleep, inspirational dreams, successful self-reflection and ultimately a renewed commitment to the health and well-being of others. Rest assured that we will all sleep more soundly in a world of greater hospitality for refugees, an end to threats against health and humanitarian workers, the cessation of bombing raids and all indiscriminate killing –especially in the places where children live and learn –and far fewer, less intrusive, external distractions of all kinds.

May this soon come to pass

Tags: Christmas, health care, medical workers, Security Council

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Five of a Kind: The Security Council bids farewell to a thoughtful and determined class, Dr. Robert Zuber

16 Dec

11738694-heart-royal-flush

No permanence is ours; we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds. Hermann Hesse

The eye that saw only the strife, the war, the decay, the ruin, or only the glory and the tragedy, saw not all the truth. Zane Grey

What, indeed, if you look from a mountain-top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare. Virginia Woolf

People tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. Viktor Frankl

For many of us, this holiday season is a time for gifts, for restoring frayed connections, even for resolutions (most later to be broken). For the Security Council it is also a time to turn over five of its elected members, replacing Bolivia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands and Sweden with Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa.

Turnover is in some ways the bane of the UN’s existence. Just as diplomats get a handle on this complex and often-frustrating system, they are called back to capital or reassigned to another diplomatic post. The high rates of turnover ensure that institutional memory is not embedded deeply enough into policy – the work of predecessors taking on more of the character of “placeholder” than inspiration engine. The UN’s culture – given its many habits and protocols – rarely changes enough to suit the times in part because so few have been around long enough to assess its past and direct its needed improvements.

Within the UN family of offices and agencies, the Security Council has its own distinct “culture,” one characterized by power imbalances, a failure to keep national and Charter interests distinct, and endless statements in national capacity that generally do little to define the Council’s direction or inspire confidence in its processes. Among the permanent members, some questionable patterns have manifested themselves yet again over this past year – from the US’s preoccupation with “exposing” Iranian evil intent while at the same time seemingly arming the cosmos, to China’s insistence that dialogue and development are the singular antidotes to protracted conflict, or Russia’s rightful calling out some of the games that resolution pen-holders play while failing to own up to the gamesmanship in which it also excels.

The Council is a culture where, much like the current world at large, “everyone else” is wrong. There are few admissions of responsibility, even fewer apologies for recent behavior that – from the arming of Saudi jets over Yemen to the impertinent (at the very least) blocking of Ukrainian sea vessels – have reminded those who follow the Council regularly, and even those who do so episodically, that this Chamber remains dominated by states much too willing to violate the so-called “rules based international order” to which they seek to hold their UN colleagues.

Our view has also long been that the key to Security Council reform lies in reorienting the culture of the Council as a constituent part of the UN system and not an exception to it, utilizing diverse UN capacities to overcome our almost generic inability to identify and resolve conflict at early stages, a failure that inevitably puts enormous funding and humanitarian pressure on the entire UN system. And key to this more systemic approach to conflict prevention and resolution are the elected members joining the Council for 2 year terms in groups of five, groups exhibiting varying degrees of success in putting pressure on Council colleagues – especially permanent members – to do the full job entrusted to it, to spend less time protecting their own privilege and more time protecting those made vulnerable by festering armed conflict and its many insidious consequences.

The group that is leaving the Council at month’s end has been remarkable in many respects, beginning with the decision by Italy and the Netherlands in late 2016 to split one two-year term. While both had their distinct priorities, these two missions navigated a seamless transition that allowed them to show leadership both within the open Chamber and within the subsidiary bodies. (Ambassador van Oosterom even introduced a habit picked up by others within and outside the Netherlands Mission of confining his statements to “three points” which lent clarity and focus to what are often drawn out and redundant proceedings.) Also hopeful and noteworthy this year were press events by the “elected 10” calling for the permanent members to get beyond their politicized lenses and veto threats on situations such as Syria and Yemen; joint statements by the “A3” (Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire and Equatorial Guinea) calling for more dependable funding for African Peacekeeping Operations; Kazakhstan’s relentless pursuit of disarmament across all weapons categories; and leadership from Sweden and Kuwait on resolutions strengthening humanitarian access in conflict zones.

But what set apart this now-departing group of five elected for me was their collective concern to preserve the general health of multilateralism; their willingness to stand up to permanent members when they disrespected their colleagues or spun events to suit their political purposes; their ability to hold firm on matters of importance to the vast majority of UN members including women’s participation in peace processes and the relevance of human rights to conflict prevention; and their enthusiasm for security-related policy emanating from other UN entities, especially from the General Assembly and Peacebuilding Commission.

And their collective thoughtfulness about their own role on the Council and their deep sense of responsibility to the greater community of nations and peoples were also so very welcome. While all five missions contributed much to this confluence of heart energy and sound policy, I must single out the delegations of Bolivia and Sweden, and especially their PRs Sacha Llorenti and Olaf Skoog respectively. Over the past two years, both have given memorable presentations that have simultaneously clarified responsibilities, aired frustrations with the slow pace and inadequate oversight of much Council action, reminded permanent members of their role (such as in Libya) in creating some of the violence they now seek to end, and called the Council back from its often narrow and politically-charged rhetoric to a more comprehensive and person-centered view of peace and security, a view that maintains the potential to both heal Council divisions and restore the luster of a Chamber that doesn’t seem to fully recognize the creeping diminution of its own legitimacy.

I will miss this group, specifically their collective, daily reminder that this policy space can and must do better for the world. They have felt both the misery and the urgency, gazed upon a larger portion of the truth, and played the cards they were dealt as skillfully as any. They embraced their “impermanence” to take strong and principled stands and pave a more effective and powerful way for those who will come after.

They will be a tough act to follow.

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Ukraine’s Multi-Faceted Saga, by Claudia Lamberty

29 Nov

Editor’s Note: Since May upon her graduation from Skidmore College, Claudia has been a frequent presence in UN conference rooms, including in the Security Council chamber. While she and her GAPW cohort continue to assess the value and relevance of the UN for their generation’s future, all have been encouraged to think and write about areas of special interest. For Claudia, the situation in Ukraine is one of those areas.

The Russian occupation of Ukraine continues to fuel hostility in an already adversarial international climate. In late October, then Security Council President Bolivia organized a meeting to address the situation in eastern Ukraine – the first of its kind since May 2018. The meeting was followed by a side-event to further elaborate on human rights abuses in Crimea. Despite the supplementary meeting’s low attendance the event organized by Ukraine was poignant and persuasive. When it comes to permanent members of the Security Council, there simply is no room for systematic violations of the UN Charter and other relevant frameworks. And yet, less than a month after this meeting, Security Council President China was forced to confront the latest of Russian provocations.

In October’s Security Council meeting the Undersecretary of Political Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, briefed the council on the situation in eastern Ukraine. Since 2014 Russia’s occupation of Crimea and its fueling of conflict in the Donbas region have fostered social unrest and impeded efforts towards a sustainable peace. The meeting was organized to hold Russia accountable for the humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine and scale up efforts in the aid process. Despite expressions of decisive support towards reconciliation and while noting a general decline in levels of violence, the situation continues to breed uncertainty and instability in the region. Ambitions to demilitarize the zone of conflict in Donbas must not lose momentum among Security Council members.

Ukraine’s objections to the preparation of elections in Crimea and elsewhere in the east of the country remain consistent. The Minsk Agreement (2014), the first negotiation of peace regarding Russia-Ukraine, dutifully addresses the scheduling of elections. According to DiCarlo’s briefing, “Any measures taken outside of Ukraine’s constitutional framework would be incompatible with the Minsk Agreement.” Russia cannot demonize our democratic modalities in order to gain or maintain control.

Infringement on Ukrainian political will is only exacerbated by the humanitarian crisis faced by local residents in the region. According to the Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 70 disruptions of local water supplies have occurred since 2017. Deliberate destruction of infrastructure obstructs civilian access to resources. The safety and health of civilians must be a priority for all parties to the conflict and Russian collaborators have failed to prioritize the needs and livelihoods of at-risk families. It was made clear that more can and should be done to support civilians and the internally displaced.

Russia’s occupational and administrative tactics in the region continue to violate measures intended to preserve human rights and thwart international aggression. As highlighted in the Security Council and the related side-event, accusations against Russia appear to be firmly supported by its violations of the Minsk Agreement, the Paris Charter, International Humanitarian Law, the Helsinki Accords, Law of the Sea, and the Law of Occupation. During this turbulent time it’s unfortunately starting to feel like commitments to multilateralism are too much to ask for. Russia must be held to the highest standards of international diplomacy as a permanent member of the Security Council. Instead military occupation seriously impedes diplomacy and the dwindling integrity of the UN continues to be fueled by the P5.

Instances of censorship and non-commitment to transparency are also serious red flags in the escalation of conflict. For example, Russia’s refusal to accept UNHCR monitoring of the Donbas and Crimea regions opens the door to new violations of what are legally binding frameworks. The silencing of Ukrainians seeking their full entitlement to land, resources and ethnic identities will only lead to a worsening of conditions. When given an opportunity to defend itself in the Security Council, Russia responded with blatant and stubborn rejection of any accountability. As the Ambassador to Ukraine poignantly stated, “Elections are only a stepping stone to a new cycle of Russian aggression.” The broader UN community must not allow the continuation of textbook human rights abuses especially when the accused sits in the Security Council chamber every day and evaluates the behavior of others.

Very recently at the UN, an emergency meeting in the Security Council addressed the latest act of alleged Russian aggression against Ukraine. The event in question took place on November 25^th under a Russian-built bridge in the Kerch strait. The strait is the only passageway between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, which is located northeast of Crimea and borders both Russia and Ukraine. Russian warships blocked the strait and proceeded to ram into and open fire on 3 Ukrainian vessels. Several Ukrainian seamen were injured in the attack. The event proved to be another chapter in Russian’s persistent annexation of Crimea and disregard for Ukraine’s navigational rights. According to the Ambassador of Ukraine, the incident was a clear violation of the Law of the Sea, as well as other treaties that assert the neutrality of the Azov Sea. Ukraine has officially declared martial law for thirty days as a result of escalating aggression: a political strategy that will perhaps only further summon Russian militancy.

Once again, Security Council members scrutinized Russia’s provocations and its refusal to take responsibility. When given an opportunity to address the situation, Russia denied any references to Crimea within the Minsk Agreements and yet again played victim. The current situation continues to jeopardize the integrity of legally binding agreements and calls into question UN handling of fragile circumstances. Unfortunately, the outcome of the meeting did not measure up to its urgency. While Security Council members condemned the act of violence, little progress was made in scheduling consultations or providing tangible measures to mitigate the conflict. Hoping for political solutions is not the same as creating the conditions for them.

The weakening integrity of our political infrastructure can only be curtailed once our permanent Security Council members stop pointing fingers and take responsibility for their own actions. During this divisive moment in our global politics, acts of operational, administrative, and economic aggression in the name of one or another major power are increasingly common and unfortunately fail to surprise. The dwindling integrity of our global institutions cannot afford to be fueled by the P5. Existing legal and political instruments can be better utilized to prevent conflict and restore the dignity of those who continue to be bullied by powerful states.

Tags: Security Council, Ukraine

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

4 Nov

People and Planet 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Multilateralism, Repurposing, Security Council

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Thin Ice: Coping with the Planet’s Many Demons, Dr. Robert Zuber

28 Oct

Societies in decline have no use for visionaries. Anais Nin

Civilized people don’t put on airs; they behave in the street as they would at home. Anton Chekov

When humor goes, there goes civilization. Erma Bombeck

One person’s ‘barbarian’ is another person’s ‘just doing what everybody else is doing.’ Susan Sontag

We are made to be crazy by other people who are also crazy and who draw for us a map of the world which is ugly, negative, fearful, and crazy. Jack Forbes

This piece is dedicated to the memory of the former Ambassador of Palau to the United Nations, Dr. Caleb Otto. Dr. Otto was a man of integrity and faith, a gentle soul who understood the frailties and limitations of the human condition but who continued to nudge us in the directions of sanity, integrity and health. He was one of the best diplomatic friends that Global Action has ever had.

I have been sitting and listening to a press conference by some of the officers who had the unfortunate assignment of responding to the carnage from yesterday’s shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The shooting, predictably, captured a news cycle that had been dominated earlier this week by the mailing of suspicious packages to political opponents of the US president.

It has been a week when what seems as the last, thin layer of wrap which we foolishly believed would keep our demons “in their place” has finally been peeled away. And now we are experiencing the normative version of a jailbreak – angry, isolated, weaponized people seizing the recently-granted permission to take their long-shunned and often-ridiculed values and ideas into the streets, into our synagogues and mailboxes, into our schools and statehouses.

Despite protests from senior government officials seeking to brush off any implications of responsibility, we have clearly failed the collective culpability test. Our leaders have taken refuge in a strategy that is sadly all too familiar to the rest of us – cope with anxiety and remorse by pushing blame as far away from ourselves as possible. It’s never my fault. I have nothing to apologize for. It’s them, over there.

As evil genies circle around us like vultures feeding on souls instead of carrion, we have blithely forgotten that a “civilized” response takes into account what our words and actions permit, and not only what we ourselves do. And what we now permit has crossed the line from appalling to numbing: the shooting that stole the home page from the suspicious packages, that in turn stole the front page from the “caravan” of Latin American people we allegedly “don’t want,” that had stolen the radio news headlines from the butchery of the journalist Khashoggi or the children already forcibly separated from desperately anxious parents.

There is a lot of anger in my country — and not my country alone — but also an epidemic of deep restlessness at our apparent decline alongside what a dear friend has called “preventable sadness.” We claim over and over to be “better than this,” but it is no longer clear what the “better” entails, what the benchmarks are for civilized living in these times. We have lost both our focus and our sense of humor. We justify patterns of concern that are deliberately circumscribed and often self-interested. We shout out the part of the “truth” that serves our own agendas rather than speak the truth that might better serve the general interest. More and more of us have retreated into private conversations and deepening skepticism guaranteeing that we remain out of the fray, beyond the prospect of direct accountability, ducking the demons as it were rather than daring them to a proper wrestling match.

For those of you who regularly read this post, this is surely beginning to sound like an Advent message rather than a UN reflection. But it is a UN reflection as well. As the suspicious packages were being delivered and the Pittsburgh gunman was readying himself to “go in,” the Security Council was struggling with its current “big three” responsibilities – Syria, Myanmar and Yemen. Each deserves a lengthier dissection than I could test your patience with here, but each also demonstrated some of the limitations and self-deceptions of the times, the way in which issues are maneuvered to conform to national interest and allegedly help to keep everyone “blameless.”

And despite the fact so much of the credibility (and even fiscal viability) of the UN is tied up with the success of the Security Council in these three and other areas of security concern, it remains challenging at times for observers such as ourselves to find kernels of hopefulness amidst the avalanche of tepid policy commitments or half-hearted acknowledgments of responsibility. The three contexts are different of course: In Syria the government is now (predictably) balking at a formal UN role in forming a Constitutional Committee. In Myanmar, the Council struggles with if/how to ensure accountability for state abuses while guaranteeing safe and voluntary return for the staggering number of refugees that have too-long been under Bangladesh’s care. In Yemen, in many ways the most frustrating of the three crises, governments continue to wring their hands over the staggering humanitarian crisis while refusing to publicly acknowledge the massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia that have thus brought Yemen to the brink of a desperate famine that simply cannot be justified by geo-political references to curbing the regional influence of Iran.

It is not all negative and disingenuous of course. The UK and France made passionate statements this week on why the UN must play a major role in a sustainable peace for Syria. Bolivia and others continue to remind Council members of mistakes previously made as well as new factors (such as shrinking water access) that influence current security crises. And the Netherlands raised its voice after a deeply disturbing Yemen briefing to remind Council colleagues that, as essential as humanitarian relief is, their primary task is to end the conflict, to stop the bombing and its violent retaliations.

Nevertheless, it is interesting and often unsettling to watch the ways in which the deep anxiety of these times is affecting Council members and other UN entities in much the same way that it is affecting the rest of us. We’ve collectively become downright prickly and hyper-sensitive, dismissing any and all criticism of our values or directions, but in a larger policy sense reacting to the shrinking spaces for free expression and the application of human rights law by pointing to and attacking only the demons outside ourselves, the ones who allegedly threaten and annoy us, but also the ones who blockade and occupy, who carve up adversaries and rob children of their futures.

But there are plenty of candidates for fits of barbarism now, plenty of leaders and citizens willing to get in lockstep with the worst of our impulses, justifying our own bad behavior by the bad behavior of others. Our racism, their greed. Our violence, their indifference. Our interference, their aggression. And so it goes. And goes again.

As the late Ambassador Otto would clearly have recognized, we have let so many evil genies out of their bottles in recent times and given them such permission to swirl and confuse that we must no longer delude ourselves – in our living rooms or our policy centers – that we are exempt from the evils we say we contend against. If we really are “better than this,” then our task now is to define anew that “better,” make sure it’s benefits are available to all, and commit to the struggle to keep our baser instincts at bay.

But the ice we skate on now is still too thin. The “map” towards our human future that we have currently been drawing is, indeed, too ugly, fearful and crazy. It is past time for all to revoke the permission we have recently lavished on our lesser selves and envision another map that can help us define a higher and more honest calling as prelude to a kinder and more sustainable global path.

Tags: anxiety, demons, Security Council, sustainability

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Storm Center: The Bookend Messes Defining Modern Armed Conflict, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Oct

Storm

What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. Chris Maser

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau

We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone’s arguing over where they’re going to sit. David Suzuki

Who would want to live in a world which is just-not-quite fatal? Rachel Carson

Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony–Forgive me; how could you be my enemy? Erich Maria Remarque

One of the welcome aspects of our work is watching the peace and security agenda expand beyond specific weapons systems and country-specific conflict configurations to examine the spectrum of causes and consequences that bracket the horrors of armed violence.

This is no mere academic exercise. As we have noted often and colleagues of ours have more recently been emboldened to acknowledge, our task in this policy space is not manage armed conflict, not to soften its often horrific impacts, but ultimately to eliminate it. This objective may well be the stuff of some fantasy-induced misinterpretation of the human condition – based on an assumption that human beings are actually capable of walking back from the brink of ruin, that we are capable of loving this planet as much as we love our aspirations and aggressions on it — but such is the lot we’ve chosen.

And this lot requires a lot – including a willingness to examine both causes and consequences, to assess and profess the things that we do collectively that compel (or excuse) people to pick up arms as well as the often-devastating consequences to people and planet in conflict’s aftermath. Indeed, if armed violence and the evermore sophisticated weaponry with which it is conducted are ever to be put to rest, those causes and consequences must be burned into our consciousness in much the same way as the health of our own child towards whom we rightly invest much practical worry, hoping to sidestep illnesses with consequences that can run the gamut from inconvenient to heartbreaking.

The bad news here is that we seem more determined in these recent days to let our predatory nature run wild, eschewing legal and legislative restraints on our acquisitive and competitive dispositions and pushing concern about a possible day of reckoning to the furthest reaches of conscious life.

The good news, though, is that there are pockets of policy resistance to this trend, states and their representatives that both seek to grasp the full complement of causes of conflict and work to highlight the consequences to future generations of “looking away,” consequences both psychological and ecological as our capacity to humiliate and destroy continues to exceed our skill in healing traumatized children and restoring denuded landscapes.

The UN was the scene this week of good faith efforts to explore both causes and consequences of conflict, focusing in this instance on environmental dimensions that attracted considerable and welcome interest. On Tuesday, Bolivia (current president) directed the UN Security Council on a discussion of how “the control, exploitation and access to natural resources have been a catalyst for the outbreak, escalation and continuation of armed conflicts.” In a hard-hitting concept note, Bolivia acknowledged the “multidimensional and complex” roots of conflict but also noted the long history of conflict that has been fueled by disputes over the control, exploitation and access to natural resources, highlighting “foreign interests, multinational companies, elite actors and armed groups monopolizing control over resource revenues at the expense of local citizens.”

In fairness, there have been solid international efforts to curb state corruption (through the UN Office of Drugs and Crime and other entities) and apply human rights standards to the potential exploitation of natural resources including with regard to the diversion of profits to organized crime and terror groups, and the forced labor of people fueling the supply chain in ways that mostly serves to make life more comfortable and abundant in national capitals. Australia and other states are promoting standards that address what have been for much too long abundant violations of rights in supply chains, standards that promise better governance, fairer labor standards, reduced incentives to conflict, an end to the human trafficking and even slavery that have long stoked hostility and frustration at local level.

At the other end of this spectrum are the environmental consequences of the conflict we fail to prevent, the ruined homes and farmlands, the denuded forests and polluted water supplies, the damaged infrastructure and wasted social capital that compromise any reasonable hope of healing and restoration. The sometimes-devastating “ecological footprint” of military activity – from basing and training to illegal occupation and full scale military assault – has long been a concern of our policy community. And, thanks in large measure to leadership from Finland and the International Law Commission, this linkage has remained acutely in our collective policy consciousness.

This matter includes but goes beyond remnants of war that include the ongoing impact of landmines and other explosive devices whose lurking presence deters persons displaced by conflict seeking to return home and “save what’s left.” Indeed, as armed conflict becomes more resistant to legal restraint and more destructive in its creativity and technological flexibility, its environmental and other “human security” impacts are increasingly pushing us across the threshold of remediation in all its aspects. The displaced have less and less to “save” at home, the traumas of conflict deepen and too-often remain untreated, and more people feel that they have little choice but to turn their backs on their now-contaminated fields and domiciles-in-rubble for uncertain futures elsewhere.

In an all-day seminar this past Thursday, the “protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict” kept a small group (including my interns) riveted for hours. This event covered environmental impacts across the conflict cycle, including the issue of establishing “liability” for conflict-related environmental harm. Highly-qualified speakers highlighted the tools at our disposal to monitor and assess environmental degradation related to armed conflict, as well as the degree to which increasingly scarce natural resources such as water and precious minerals – a major conflict trigger in our time – might actually increase the incentive for cooperative discussions on how to manage resources fairly and effectively prior to conflict such that the potential for such conflict is effectively minimized. And while there were calls to the international community to prepare better for the environmental impacts of climate and conflict threats, there was also a sense in the room that viable, cross-border conflict-prevention measures together with normative principles and legal mechanisms of accountability for environmental damages — including often-grave damages inflicted by occupying forces — is likely to constitute our most productive way forward.

The point of which we must constantly remind ourselves is that the misery of warfare does not end once the guns finally go silent. No matter how we might justify recourse to armed violence in political or strategic terms, the fact remains that once the missiles fly and the bombs drop, our capacity to address already-strained human and environmental challenges diminishes significantly. The “mess” of armed conflict perists amidst even our best, good-faith efforts to restore what we have been quick to destroy.

If the UN can continue to shine a bright light on both the environmental causes and consequences of violence, highlighting the degree to which armed conflict is and remains a major inhibitor of sustainable development and human well-being, we will be further along in our quest to create a planet fit for children and other living beings, a planet filled with people who finally and firmly grasp their diverse “contributions” to armed conflict as well as the increasingly scant prospects for healing and wholeness that follow in modern conflict’s wake.

I sometimes worry that too many of us seem resigned now to live in a world that “is not quite fatal.” It is still possible to reverse this pessimistic course, but the brick wall towards which we have been blithely hurdling looms closer than ever. We must quickly slam on the brakes, recover our enthusiasm for what can still be an exciting and abundant journey, and find a safer route to our collective destination.

Tags: armed conflict, environment, Security Council

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Weather Vane: Gauging Directions of Multilateral Threat, Dr. Robert Zuber

16 Sep

Weather

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Benjamin Franklin

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice; we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dislike in yourself what you dislike in others. Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib

When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles. bell hooks

This has been a tough week for many. As storms in the Atlantic and Pacific lined up like aircraft at an international airport, two of them created a special havoc – one in the Carolinas and another in the Philippines, two of the seemingly growing number of places in the world frequented by storms that, over and over, undermine lives and livelihoods.

Though my own inconveniences are minimal, I like others have friends and family in these stormy places. I have also done work in those places and helped others do their own. In many of these communities, a lifetime of struggle to raise families and improve living conditions has been drowned and battered yet again by forces that humanity as a whole has done plenty to unleash but to which these residents, themselves, have contributed little. For them, displacement might become their storm-driven outcome.

The uneven misery from these climate events was underscored by a local reporter covering what is now only the first wave of Florence’s impacts on the Carolinas.

In most disasters, the poor suffer disproportionately, and it is no different here. The neighborhoods struggling to rebuild after Matthew are the same neighborhoods most at risk to flood again. Haggins was barely getting by back then, crashing with friends. After the water receded, she tried to go collect the little she owned from her friends’ houses, but they’d all flooded and everything she had in the world was gone.

Most of us — even those of us who should know better — have a hard time grasping the concept of “everything gone,” indeed often have a hard time grasping the degree to which those bearing the brunt of horrific storms this week were barely “making it” while the sun was still shining and the breezes were gentle. There is little justice where climate shocks are concerned, no court to hold the likes of Florence and Mangkhut accountable. There is mostly just a bevy of folks trying to save what’s left amidst the sobering outlook of more storms revving up their deadly engines and blowing away any reasonable prospects for recovery.

But while we can’t hold these storms and their climate incubators responsible, there are mechanisms of justice (however imperfect they might be at present) that promise some hope for persons victimized by neighbors, insurgents and governments — humans whose collective predation seems recently to have exceeded in intensity and intentionality anything that we have yet witnessed elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Inside the UN, there has been a steady recognition that impunity for the most serious crimes represents a stain on our collective system of justice; that the failure to hold individuals and states accountable for their crimes – committed against many of the same people victimized by climate shocks – is a glaring mark against the rule of law that undermines what remains of our robust multilateral system of governance.

To its credit, the UN recognizes the danger and is doing its part to build or restore competent, impartial justice systems and create special criminal tribunals from Haiti to Central African Republic, partially in keeping with the general belief that such justice competence is essential for building a world consistent with the our 2030 Development Agenda aspiratons. The UN has also pushed for accountability on chemical weapons use in Syria through the General Assembly; has created a “residual mechanism” to handle pending cases from the criminal tribunals established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; and has (largely through the Security Council) worked to ensure that the use of coercive sanctions is more carefully targeted to punish perpetrators without endangering civilians. The UN and many member states have also continued to vocally support the International Criminal Court despite challenges (including some testy moments with the ICC Prosecutor) from some permanent members of a Security Council which issues ICC referrals and (ostensibly) ensures that states cooperate with the Court’s investigations and warrants.

Unfortunately, we are now in danger of turning our current political “climate” of ethno-centrism, border defensiveness and general suspicion into an art form, leading to a host of double standards – including at the UN – regarding divergent levels of accountability for actions undertaken by powerful states relative to “lesser” countries that simply find it hard to protect themselves from large-state whims. As evidenced by this week’s tirade by John Bolton, the US is fully committed to joining the ranks of prominent states seemingly “doubling down” on advocacy for an international “justice system” predicated less on the rule of law and more on narrow perceptions of national interest.

Efforts by the International Criminal Court to level the accountability playing field has incurred the wrath of some of the more powerful governments seeking to justify and preserve that age-old entitlement utilized in a somewhat different form by parents content to push their children into a lifetime of therapy – “we do what we want, you do what we say.”

Through dedicated efforts from states (including current and soon-to-be Council members) and civil society organizations, the ICC has in fact improved its investigative and prosecutorial procedures while expanding its focus into the realms of conflict-based sexual violence and, most recently, the crime of aggression. It has successfully prosecuted criminals such as in the recent (albeit controversial and expensive) case of the DRC’s Bemba Gombo, and has recently accepted jurisdiction on matters related to the forced deportation of Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh. It’s Trust Fund for Victims has reinforced on the international agenda (despite current funding limitations) the need to ensure reparations and psycho-social support for those victimized by the atrocity crimes that are still much too pervasive in our world.

The ICC’s limitations and growth edges are widely known, and include the aforementioned limitations of state and Security Council cooperation and the Court’s inability to gain traction on crimes committed by the world’s major powers. That said, it must be noted that the ICC is intended to be a “court of last resort,” to be invoked only in situations where domestic courts are unable or unwilling to prosecute war criminals and other purveyors of mass atrocities. If John Bolton, for instance, were more interested in ensuring that the conduct of US military operations was in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law, the alleged jurisdictional threats and related “power struggles” involving the ICC would be quite less alarming.

Nevertheless, these attacks on the ICC remain dangerous at multiple levels. They undermine confidence in international law, especially on the part of victims whose avenues for redress are already far-too-limited. They undermine confidence in international peace and security still the province of largely unaccountable state powers. And they undermine confidence in the international system that now seeks to build commitments to action on a wide range of fronts – and specifically to address the climate threats which have this week turned fertile areas of the Carolinas and the Philippines into unusable swaths of water and mud, motivating many to consider abandoning communities that had nurtured their families for many years.

It has been a theme of this space for some time, but it bears repeating here. We are responsible not only for what we propose, but for what our proposals enable for others, the consequences that ensue when others “take up our cues” and apply them in other contexts. This week’s ICC-focused “cue” from Bolton is one that the causes of international justice and multilateral effectiveness on climate and other global threats could well have done without.

Tags: climate, ICC, justice, Security Council

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Sorry Day: The Security Council’s Misplaced Vision, Dr. Robert Zuber

9 Sep

This Way

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from. George Eliot

You have the power today to reset your boundaries, restore your image, start fresh with renewed values and rebuild what has happened to you in the past. Shannon Alder

And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. Herman Melville

The question is not, are we sorry? The question is, what lesson have we learned? The question is what are we going to do now that we are sorry? J.M. Coetzee

Like many others, this past week pulled the UN in diverse directions. An important inter-governmental conference to protect Marine Biological Diversity and a mood-altering celebration of “staff day” was offset for us by some controversies over NGO access during a busy September and a couple of Security Council sessions which underscored divisions both political and normative.

The US has taken over the presidency of the Security Council for September and thus will be in the chair during the soon-to-open 73^rd session of the UN General Assembly, a time when heads of state and their ministries fill the UN building beyond capacity. US Ambassador Haley, who has made her reputation as someone willing to speak her mind — even when that mind at times deviates from her political superiors – as well as someone who is often dismissive (and least in formal settings) of contrary points of view, is handling the presidency deftly to date.

But deft leadership is surely not sufficient in these perilous times, not for the US delegation nor for the others who, given the Council’s “provisional” acceptance of seemingly endless, largely repetitive statements in “national capacity,” fail to address the need for a larger, more reassuring narrative on peace and security. “Where is this going,” is a concern uttered by our interns at various points, young people who appreciate their access to the space where the Council muses over its puzzle pieces but who also wonder what the end game is, what the puzzle would look like if all the pieces were finally made to fit?

As many of you know, the current Monthly Programme for the Security Council was issued late due to a controversy over including Nicaragua on the agenda in accordance with US wishes. The issue here was not whether images of unrest in Nicaragua warranted the attention of the international community, but whether or not such unrest has risen to the level of a threat to international peace and security, thus demanding Council attention? On this there was serious disagreement among members, in part because there is no clear guiding definition for such a threat level, and certainly no definition that presumes to encapsulate transgressions committed by the permanent Council members themselves. Why are Kosovo, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia still matters of recent Council attention when events in Nicaragua and Cameroon struggle for recognition and Yemen needed to be shoved on to the agenda after a long and bloody wait? And why do Council members, especially the permanent ones, continue to soft-pedal their own violations of Charter provisions while (often selectively) holding other UN members to theirs? Why do they (and other states of course) continue to bend the arc of justice to suit national interests and then claim that they are simply upholding some version of the “rules-based international order?”

And in areas this week where the Council rightly recognized clear implications for international peace and security – the use of banned chemical agents as weapons and the fate of the already-displaced residents of Idlib, Syria who now anxiously watch the skies to see if they are to become the next to be sacrificed in the “war on terror” – the Council has threatened much but delivered only modestly. We still have no ironclad method for ensuring compliance regarding the use of banned weapons. We still have no method for ensuring that counter-terror measures are conducted in accordance with human rights standards. We still have no method for ensuring that the erstwhile “guarantors of the international order” also abide by its prescriptions and limitations.

Indeed, as many others have noted, we have no way to ensure that those tasked with maintaining Charter values on peace and security are actually demonstrating a commitment to their fulfillment. For all the talk by most Security Council members (and rightly so) about the importance of ending impunity for international law violations, impunity still persists among Council members themselves. For all of the diplomatic skill and at times good will around the Council oval, that body remains the most political and least-accountable space in the UN system and probably well beyond. There remains this palpable sense that the Council continues to prioritize rearranging the furniture – albeit tastefully at times — while the house continues to leak from above and rot from below.

If the Council were to hold occasional discussions focused on fulfilling the vision of the 2030 Development Agenda, surely the broadest and most hopeful vision this system now embraces, members might be compelled to examine the ways in which inaction and mis-action on peace and security jeopardize the fulfillment of that Agenda as little else. Unless we can stem the current propensities to violence in all its forms – from economic inequalities and gross rights abuses committed against civilians to out-of-control arms production and modernization – the odds are that no amount of corporate funding, big data or ocean-cleaning technology is going to rescue us. Council effectiveness is critical to what has become the UN’s most comprehensive and inspirational vision, whether it wishes to acknowledge that in formal session or not.

In a few hours New York time, Rosh Hashana will begin, a time of repentance for our Jewish sisters and brothers with much to teach the rest of us. A good bit of the commentary I have read early this morning points to the great difficulty we have enacting what should be a regular element of work and personal life. It is, indeed, hard for us to admit our wrongs, to grant those we have aggrieved the acknowledgment they deserve. But it is especially difficult to move beyond the rhetoric of repentance to the practical matters of amendment, to use our mistakes as the text for a shift in our attitudes and priorities that is more sustainable than ceremonial.

Repentance in its best and most sustainable sense is partially about shifting our vision, but even more about shifting our course, about resetting our boundaries and priorities. The person who seeks forgiveness but fails to adjust direction toward a more accountable and hopeful horizon, who fails to plot a viable “escape” from the lazy and hostile habits of the past, is more likely to find rejection than relief. This is true of our institutions as much as our families and communities of faith.

Repentance, in the end, requires a larger vision of who we are, what we are capable of, and what we can become. The 2030 Development Agenda – an agenda not imposed on states but painstakingly negotiated by them — provides evidence that the UN system understands both the momentousness of the times and our still-potent capacity to adjust our ways. The Council simply must find a way to bring its sometimes petrified mandates and politicized policymaking into conformity with that vision, at least to understand their own pivotal role in making that vision achievable.

We don’t need sack cloth and ashes. We don’t need wailing and gnashing of teeth. What we need (as noted by the SG and others) is a clear, consistent and actionable understanding of the ways in which the impediments and inconsistencies in our peace and security architecture compromise larger commitments to a healthy and prosperous planet. What is arguably still the single most important room in the world would do well to incorporate (not seek to control) the larger vision of the 2030 Development Agenda and the conflict prevention and resolution strategies that will give humanity the best chance of saving us from ourselves.

Tags: SDGs, Security Council, vision

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