Follow and improve the light before the darkness overtakes you. John Fox
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Leonardo da Vinci
Your new life will be tinged with urgency, as though you’re digging out the victims of an avalanche. Douglas Coupland
Get it right today, for today will never come again. Seyi Ayoola
You cannot prove your worth by bylines and busyness. Katelyn S. Irons
Don’t forget that people are dying in hundreds every day, hurry up, don’t take time. Abraham Guesh
The last quote from Abraham Guesh was one of dozens of comments posted on our twitter feed to our reporting on Friday’s Security Council discussion on the complex situation which has long been unfolding in Tigray. At this meeting, called by the US and hosted by France, UN Secretariat briefers highlighted the multi-polar politics and dire, violence-inflamed humanitarian needs experienced by many people living in this northernmost part of Ethiopia. For us, but much more for our commenters, it was largely a discouraging session.
In the Chamber, sharp differences on how the Council should proceed on Tigray, indeed even if the Council should proceed at all, were major takeaways from this session. The Ambassadors of Russia and China were insistent that, with due recognition of the need for humanitarian assistance and “political dialogue, Tigray was essentially an “internal matter” for the government of Ethiopia and its self-selected African and global partners to work out. China specifically expressed the concern that a failure of the Council to carefully “calibrate” response would run the risk of “making matters worse” in a place where “worse” is, quite frankly, a bit challenging to fathom.
For others on the Council, the impacts on the people of Tigray from eight long months of violent clashes, climate change, locust plagues and other threats of existential proportions were of primary concern. Led by the delegations of Ireland and Kenya, a focus was on urgently addressing what is now a longstanding humanitarian catastrophe as well as on the “tools” both within and outside the African continent that can be utilized to promote an end to the conflict and then, once peace is restored, more effectively help that region “heal from violence and deprivation.”
But as is the case with many sessions in this genre, it was not at all clear how or if the full Council was prepared to “hurry up” and do its part to open those pathways to healing. The US Ambassador, hosting a press briefing prior to the formal Council meeting, alleged value in letting conflict parties in Tigray know that “they are being watched.” Fair enough, but since when does “watching” in and of itself deter the violent abuses which are the precursor to humanitarian disaster? The Council is ostensibly “watching” abuses unfold in Syria, in Yemen, in Myanmar, in Palestine, in Libya, even in Cameroon. Is there reason to contend that Council “watchfulness” causes abusers to pull back, to reconsider, even to modulate their aggressions? And if not, are there other internal measures that we might be overlooking (or misusing) that can address violence at earlier stages without, as China noted, “making matters worse?”
Following this Council meeting on Tigray, our twitter account literally exploded with commentary from Africans that in some ways mirrored the Council discussion itself. Some were highly supportive of Ethiopian government actions and expressly thanked the Russians for having their back and affirming the “internal” nature of the conflict. Others pointed to what they (and not without reason) interpret as a full-on genocide to which the international community has, at best, been slow to respond. Still others focused attention on the access needed to more quickly and effectively alleviate humanitarian miseries which have festered and intensified over many weeks while also creating waves of human displacement, mostly into the Sudan. Some even raised the prospect of political independence for Tigray.
Amidst this cacophony of political and humanitarian concerns and remedial options, the common threads of response were on the need for peace and the urgency of global action. Even those touting the “internal” nature of this dispute understood that recovery and reconstruction will require assistance from beyond national borders. The politics of conflict may often be internal, but the consequences of conflict are not, including in the form of displaced lives and ruined infrastructure. Moreover, what does “urgency” mean to a conflict which is 8 months old and many more months in the making? If peace is the condition for effective humanitarian response, and speaker after speaker at this Council meeting (and on our twitter feed) affirmed as much, how can we better overcome the Council’s internal political divisions in order to respond more effectively and rapidly to escalating political conflicts within member states that continue to set off fires with deadly consequences across the world?
More and more, it seems, there are two factors at work which are in parallel creating unfathomable heartbreak for communities and credibility issues for the UN. One, as already noted, is the tendency to see conflicts as “internal matters” that Council decisions cannot resolve but can make worse. The other matter is related to existing levels of trust, trust that members of the Council are able and willing to put their own national political interests aside to do what is best for states on the verge (or in the midst) of conflict, that they are as committed to delivering on peace as they seem to be on ensuring humanitarian assistance when the peace, yet again and for a variety of reasons, fails to hold. It is also important to note in this context that Ethiopia is only one of many African states tiring of seemingly endless Council deliberations on African peace and security which to some smacks of a fresh and unwelcome iteration of colonial interference, despite claims by former colonial powers and other intervention-minded states that they are now “honest brokers” on peace which they surely have not always been in prior times.
Earlier on Friday, at the Integration Segment of the Economic and Social Council, the Vice-President of ECOSOC, Ambassador Sandoval of Mexico, delivered some kind and hopeful remarks seeking to remind his UN colleagues that our policy “must have a human face,” and that we must commit in practical terms to whatever changes we need to make in order to deliver on our promises to sustainable development, promises which are not only focused on poverty reduction, water access and food security, but on forms of governance (including at the UN) that can deliver on the protection of human rights, the provision of justice, and the promotion of peace, and to do so with proper levels of thoughtfulness and urgency, We are not always digging out bodies under avalanches, metaphorically-speaking, but there is much misery in our world, most all of it existing beyond our policy bubbles, and we must ensure that our delivery architecture at national and global levels remains ready and able to prevent crises or at least address them in the shortest possible time-frames, certainly shorter than the 8 months the people of Tigray have been crying for relief.
But the membership of ECOSOC knows, as indeed we all should recognize, the extent to which the silencing of guns is indispensable to the fulfilling of other commitments to sustainable development and successful humanitarian access. Members equally recognize that given current levels of armed threat, stoked in part by what appears to be growing levels of global distrust in the motives of our institutional system of security maintenance, it is no small matter to enable conflict hotspots to be allowed to cool, and to ensure that the coals of conflict are thoroughly raked such that a recurrence of armed violence is no longer an option. But this is our job. This is how we have chosen to earn our keep.
To my mind, such tasks are largely internal affairs, not in the jurisdictional sense but in the cultural one. As we push states (and offer them capacity support) to honor Charter commitments including to the protection of their citizens, our multilateral system and especially its Security Council must discern how to “prove its worth” to an increasingly incredulous global community, including to a growing number of states within the body of the UN. It must also discern how to engage states on their protection responsibilities in ways that do not undermine national and regional efforts nor pour flammable liquid on already raging fires. And it must be able to demonstrate, as a matter of its own internal growth, that the faces of conflict victims, the sounds of despair as lives and communities are ravaged, are essential to policy progress in ways that national politics and personal careers simply are not.
Indeed, as a matter of principle and accountability, we must all work in our various contexts to “improve the light” such that the darkness of violence afflicting too many in our world can finally be lifted. This is why we’re here. This is why we have made the choices we’re made. This is what we have given threatened constituencies a right to expect of us, that despite our own internal limitations we are determined to get peace “right” and that we are determined to get it right today, the only day that really matters to children and families, in Tigray and elsewhere, attempting to survive under a dark cloud of armed threat.
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