Tag Archives: Terrorism

African Security in the Anthropocene: Book Discussion and Follow-up Interview, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 Jul

Dear Folks,

The following link takes you to an interview I did over the weekend with a South African investigative journalist, Chris Steyn. The interview followed a successful UN visit and book discussion led by Dr. Hussein Solomon of South Africa and Dr. Jude Cocodia of Nigeria. Their fine book, “African Security in the Anthropocene,” is one to which they graciously allowed me to contribute, albeit modestly.

The interview, which was very well handled by Chris and which includes a couple of “commercial interruptions,” was my attempt to link current events, including with regard to latest Wagner Group drama, to broader security interests which the book highlights and to which our New York-based work has long sought to contribute. It was an early-morning interview for which there was probably not enough coffee in my zip code, but I think there is some value here. I hope you will find it so. Bob

Tags: , , ,

Power Grid: Accompanying the Traumatized and Those who Serve Them, Dr. Robert Zuber

22 Aug
See the source image

To know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden. Goethe

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.  Sara Zarr

The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessings of the universe.  Amit Ray

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.  Amy Tan

I am weary of this frail world’s decay.  Murasaki Shikibu

I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.  Albert Schweitzer

When you don’t think you can, hold on.  James Frey

While riding the subway to and from our shared office this week, I noticed a new public service announcement among the placards which adorn each of the cars.   This one read, “connections are stronger than addiction.”  

This reminded me of what has now been years of accumulated evidence from neuro-biology that humans are, indeed, “hardwired for connection,” that as Dr. Amy Banks and colleagues put it over a decade ago, before the onset of a death-scattering pandemic and the systemic degrading of our politics, “we need to get back to the real basics of having relationships be at the center of our meaning.”

The implications of her work (and others in her field) lie far beyond the realm of the drug and alcohol addictions which were the sub-text of the subway messaging.  Indeed, one can make the case that our “addictions” are, perhaps even more than they always have been, much broader and more pervasive than substances alone: the stubborn habits of the heart that bring pain to ourselves and others but that we feel powerless to change; the ideas and values which we have allowed to ossify into conspiracy, becoming more and more divorced from any human realities they might once have been intended to address; the defensiveness that rises to the surface at the slightest provocation, indeed often absent any provocation at all; the paranoia which comes from social isolation (often now self-imposed) and which attempts to project on to others a malevolence which has often taken shape first within our own souls.

As at least some have been reminded during this seemingly endless pandemic, connection remains a good portion of the cure for what now ails us.  Unfortunately, it has also become uncomfortably clear across lines of age, of gender, of race, of culture, that we simply don’t know enough about each other — or perhaps even care to know — to nuance our responses to the complexities of other lives, to see the flaws but also the promise, to appreciate the contributions more than the inconveniences, to resist the rush to judge and to punish which often serves interests far darker than any alleged nobility of justice.   We have “wearied of the world’s decay” in part because our experience of that decay is less and less first-hand, a product of images that tell us less than we think they do, as well as accounts from diverse media that tell us mostly what some think we want to hear or, perhaps more to the point, that share only what they think “our hearts will allow us to know.”

If as the neuro-biologists increasingly accept, that we are “hardwired to connect,” then much of our current behavior constitutes a dangerous denial of our very essence, a particularly distressing challenge to those who seek to keep connection at the heart of their own life’s mission, but also for those have suffered in greater measure and who understand the degree to which the “ripples of kind hearts” are indispensable to their own healing, indeed to the full restoration of their own capacity for kindness and compassion. 

This week at the UN, amidst some appropriate hand-wringing over the fall of Afghanistan and its implications for everything from women’s rights to state corruption, amidst the latest crises of high winds and shifting earth heaped upon the already-traumatized people of Haiti, we gratefully joined with others in modes of reverence, mourning and connection.  At a series of events honoring the sacrifices of peacekeepers, UN field personnel and humanitarian workers (as part of World Humanitarian Day), an array of speakers paid homage to those who choose to place their life energies at the service of others, to stay the course and “hold on” when others would be tempted to flee the scene or lift their hands in desperate frustration, those who choose to remain at their demanding posts, insisting as one staffer boldly said this week  that threats from terrorist violence, a pandemic and climate-related factors often closing in around them are simply not enough to “deter humanitarian vocations,” are not enough to distract their attention from those “traumatized from attacks” including women made widows and children made orphans by weapons, famine or other forms of abuse.

While many in the audience resonated with the words of UN High Commission Bachelet honoring this “work of a lifetime,” to accompany survivors and raise our voices on their behalf, many also recognized that this is now, in places from Yemen to Tigray, much easier said than done.  Yes, we must learn better how “to support each other” along life’s journey.  Yes we must, as SG Guterres notes this week, place more services at the disposal of those facing unimaginable “heartbreak.” And yes, we must continue to honor and support the sometimes-incomprehensible risks taken each and every day by humanitarian workers in conflict zones — but this requires the rest of us to ensure an end to the violence which complicates every facet of their life-preserving work and which also claims the lives of far too many of the workers themselves well before their time. 

And then there were the discussions focused on the survivors themselves, survivors of often horrific terrorist violence which represented, as noted by the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, “attacks on humanity itself.”  As USG Voronkov acknowledged, there are times when our preoccupation with fighting terrorism “obscures our view of the victims who need more from us.” Indeed it can also obscure from view the testimony of victims who know for themselves what they need in order to overcome the trauma that generally lingers longer than they could possibly have imagined, trauma that, as one said, can change life dramatically “through no fault of your own.”

And what did they say they most need?   For starters, they need people around them who can resist the temptation to forget, to forget about the dark side of the what this world can continue to offer up once the remembrances have concluded and the symbols of honor have been stored away for another year.  Moreover, survivors of terror, or mass atrocity violence, or sudden displacement or tragic personal loss recognize that the pain can never be healed through social isolation, can never be restored by allowing personal trauma to metastasize into a life force, an addiction if you will, one which denies the core of our biological essence.  It was so encouraging to hear one survivor after another call for “platforms for healing and connection,” for “powerful victims’ networks” which can help restore something close to full functionality in this challenging world.  It was also encouraging to note the support expressed by survivors for the humanitarian workers who so often stand in courageous attention between those vulnerable persons for whom “time seems to be running out” and the person-centered services that can help them re-engage with more of the life which can still be experienced in many places as a kind of “inhabited garden.”

For those who doubt that lives of trauma can become lives of healing and purpose, for those who believe that the deep pain of violence and abuse is forever consigned to impede and isolate, we end as we began, with words from Amy Banks and her neuro-biology colleagues, those who understand that lasting change in our distraught human community is still possible despite all contrary evidence.  The key to this change, they make clear,  is within us, in the quality and steadfastness of our “motivation and interest in making different choices which will stimulate new areas of the brain and re-wire us.”  And as they know, and as the survivors of violence and abuse we heard from this week and those humanitarians who accompany them also know, there is no choice more impactful to healing and change than the choice to connect, to widen our circles, to reinvest in what we think we know of others including those we have already “given up on,” to have the courage let whatever kindness we have at our disposal flow to every corner of life that needs it, to refute the lonely conspiracy and paranoia that a life of isolation and distance is prone towards, to affirm what is most natural to us rather than investing in what are often vast quantities of energy required to keep connection buried under layers of resentment, suspicion and grievance.

Every once in a while in our UN spaces, the traumatized and victimized among us serve up reminders to those of us who seek to “re-wire” our national and global institutions, to both recover the core of why they were founded in the first place and help them meet current expectations. One such reminder is directed squarely at us; that we also can recover and nourish that capacity at the core of our human condition, the connection that alone can ease the deepest pain, stem chronic suffering, vanquish isolation, and restore that kind, human presence which can steadfastly rewire our institutions and refresh relationships with those they are mandated to serve.

The good news is that we still have what it takes to do this, though we must resolve to return to the path of connection without delay.  The longer we deny who we truly are, the longer we bury the power of our own hardwiring, the longer we will have to deal with the consequences of people and institutions being less, sometimes far less, than we need them to be.

Tags: , , , , ,

Fighting Terrorism in the Sahel Requires Democratic Governance, by Dr. Hussein Solomon

4 May

Editor’s Note: As those of you who frequent this blog recognize, Hussein Solomon has been our “go-to” for many years in helping us understand the implications of colonial rule on contemporary manifestations of African governance. The context for this piece is the recent killing of Chad’s president Deby Itno, a man who served several presidential terms and maintained the support of numerous foreign governments for his “anti-terror” contributions despite some very sketchy governance priorities. Clearly, as Solomon implies, we in the west need to think harder about our support for governments, in Africa and elsewhere, that maintain colonial legacies under the guise of rejecting them.

In 1905, John Ainsworth, a British colonial official based in Kenya wrote how the British administration governed their dominions first by finding a strong local personality who was also loyal to the Crown. They would then do everything possible to increase this person’s power relative to other “natives” and finally conspire to make this person’s continued rule totally dependent on the colonial power. This process was euphemistically termed “indirect rule”. This same pattern could be seen as colonial powers carved out other parts of Africa into their fold. The legacy of this colonial plan then was a type of local authoritarianism in which incumbent post-colonial elites were dependent on foreign powers in order to maintain the levers of their own power.

I reflected on this legacy as I recently watched tragic developments in Chad unfold. On the 19th April 2021, Chad’s president – Idriss Deby Itno – was killed while fighting rebels alongside his troops. His death was immediately lamented within the region as well as in some Western capitals as a major set-back for counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel. Chad, after all, is an integral contributor to the 5,000 strong Sahel G-5 force closely allied with French Operation Barkhane troops aiming to robustly engage and defeat Islamists in the region.

Unfortunately, the reaction in several quarters to the Chadian President’s death explains in part why counter-terrorism is failing across the Sahel despite the training and equipping of armed forces, the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars and the stationing of Western troops across the vast expanses of this desert region.

Despite being lauded for his counter-terrorism stance against radical Islamism, the late Chadian president, by his actions, actually served to fuel some of the fire of extremism in his country. Here it is instructive to recall that Deby had just begun his sixth term as Chad’s president. He originally came to power via a coup against the brutal dictatorship of Hissene Habre whom he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Following his ascent to power in December 1990, Deby promised democratic reforms and for a short period of time he was treated as a savior. Despite Deby and his Patriotic Salvation Front winning six presidential election and four parliamentary elections, all of these were subsequently alleged to be marred by fraud.

And the fraud alleged for this government went beyond the political sphere. Despite Chad having the tenth largest oil reserves in Africa, it is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking a measly 187 out of 189 countries on the Human Development Index. Much of the oil revenues were redirected towards Deby’s own pockets and those of his family and the wider Zaghawa clan which constitutes only 4 percent of the population. Other funds were redirected towards dubious purchases of weaponry while many of Chad’s citizens languished in abject poverty. Despite all this Deby maintained the support of the former colonial power France as well as other Western allies.

His exclusionary, corrupt and authoritarian rule encouraged rebellion as ordinary Chadians lost faith in the power of (and results of) the ballot box. Deby crushed rebellions to his rule in 2006, 2008 and 2019. In the midst of this chaos, various Islamist groups spread their pernicious influence among Chad’s Muslims who constitute 55.3 percent of the total population. It remains clear that a close relationship exists between terrorist expansion and the persistence of deep mistrust and even conflict among citizens and groups. In 2019, for instance, 96 percent of all deaths resulting from terrorism occurred in countries already experiencing such turmoil.

We now know that an effective counter-terrorism strategy involves more than merely focusing security assets against the threat posed by a particular terrorist group itself, but also must reduce impacts from conflict dynamics in the country as a whole. Effective counter-terrorism entails not only counter-insurgency but also conflict resolution, economic development, political accommodation and social inclusion. Conflict de-escalation not only includes short-term measures like the demobilization, disarmament and reintegration of former combatants but also entails structural and governance improvements to sustain reforms in the medium to long-term.

Across the vast arid expanses of the Sahel, there are worrying trends that political violence is becoming acceptable practice as groups feel that there exists no reliable institutional means for redress of grievances. This is especially the case where group grievance exists – whether the Kanuri in Nigeria, the Tuareg in Mali or the Fulani – and then are allowed to spread across the region.  The sad truth is that terrorism is often a reaction to the historical violence and exclusion associated with the state and should be understood as such. Consequently, governance must become less elitist and more popular. It must become more responsive, tolerant and inclusive – politically, economically and culturally. The influential Global Terrorism Index is emphatic that “…governance is the most important factor that determines the size, longevity and success of a terrorist group”.

Good governance is a potent antidote for the likes of militant Islamist groups exploiting local grievances, whether based on social alienation, economic marginalization or political disenfranchisement, as they seek to gain a pernicious foothold amongst the local population growing tired of an uncaring and unaccountable government as we have witnessed time and again across the Sahel. Rather than honoring and supporting despots seeking to maintain their power, foreign countries who seek to defeat terrorism in this troubled region should utilize their leverage over incumbent elites to open up democratic space and otherwise challenge – rather than reinforce — the malevolent legacies of colonialism.

Tags: , ,

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

17 Jan
See the source image

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: , ,

Turning the Page:  Recovering the UN’s Relevant Responses, Dr. Robert Zuber

28 Apr

UN Stamp

If we don’t all row, the boat won’t go. Unknown

If everyone helps to hold up the sky, then one person does not become tired. Askhari Johnson Hodari

Laugh as long as you breathe, love as long as you live. Nujeen Mustafa

Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving.  Albert Einstein

In the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism.  Naomi Klein

While contemplating the content for this post, I took a walk in a nearby Manhattan park in what has been a particularly lovely season for flowers and blossoms.   While strolling and admiring I came across a Parks Department worker and thanked her for making all of this wonder possible.

She looked a bit stunned, as though this simple recognition was akin to a message from Mars.  But I remember well a time when my jogs through this very park were exercises in reckless risk taking, when park benches and pathways screamed out for repair, when “security” was largely based on “street smarts,” when flowers bloomed in defiance of neglect rather than as the result of loving care.

Part of the “care” of this park now is a function of a largely-unfortunate gentrification. We didn’t “deserve” a functioning green space, apparently, until the neighborhood became “safe” enough to absorb copious quantities of downtown money.  But even so, the park is now a place where flowers are planted and benches painted, where playgrounds are truly playful for children rather than being the dangers they once were for their parents, where teenagers play ball near a pond with turtles, egrets and feral cats, and folks trying to get in better shape are encouraged to jog around the now-even pavement meandering around the park’s edges.

And I contributed to virtually none of these improvements, as I tend to contribute too-little to so many of the things I use and (too often) take for granted.

This is intended less as a “confession” and more as a punctuation to what was an exhausting and instructive week of UN business.   From indigenous people straining to protect biodiversity and achieve formal UN recognition to some policy-challenging conversations on identifying and addressing what the UN Office of Drugs and Crime called “chilling” threats from nuclear terrorism and the increasingly convergent interests of terrorists and organized crime, it was difficult for us to keep track of (let alone contribute to) these multiple challenges or identify threads of what might constitute an effective response.

Fortunately, there were other UN events this week where the positive potential was easier to spot.

One of these was in the Security Council where Germany (April president) reinforced a discussion on the security and humanitarian issues affecting Syria by scheduling a poignant briefing from Nujeen Mustafa, a remarkable young woman with a disability who, from her wheelchair, schooled Council members on the many persons much too “invisible” in times of peace who become even less visible in times of conflict.  She reminded all in the Chamber that the figures quantifying humanitarian need have human faces, and that some of these faces already experience grave difficulties in this world which armed conflict merely intensifies.

And in the General Assembly, President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés convened the first International Day for Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace.  While some delegations rightly lamented that such a day would even be necessary, and some used the opportunity to settle political scores, most understood that ours is a system that needs to be fixed rather than cast aside.  The president herself understands that a future for the UN lies in its ability to help build “a fairer world in practice, beyond our UN rhetoric,” a world that reaches persons living with poverty, with disabilities, with grave discouragement. And, as noted by the Finnish Foreign Minister, a world pointing to a future that does not belong only to “the rulers and the strong.”

In preparation for this post, I looked through my grandfather’s collection of UN stamps from 1951, the first year that UN stamps were issued.  The themes were revealing:  stamps highlighting the work of UNICEF and the ILO, stamps honoring the commitment of the UN to human rights.   And there were two others from 1951 of direct relevance to this post – one touting the UN’s commitment to capacity support and the other (at the top of this post) implying that the doors of the UN are open to all peoples of the world, and that it is the “common” people – and not only their diplomats and bureaucrats – who must be able to find something akin to an attentive and respectful haven in this place.

Taken together, this combination of hopefulness and tangible support is a legacy that is worth preserving, a legacy that certainly demands more of each of us, more thoughtfulness, more tangible contributions, more honesty, even more compassion.  It requires many more of us to commit to “hold up the sky” and row the boat, but also a willingness to burden-share, to refuse to “hog the oars” or avoid getting near the boat in the first place.

I recognize every day the degree to which our own little project has become a bit of a dinosaur, wedded to obsolete technology and pushing values that are important at one level but haven’t always served the global interest well as they should have. I also recognize that there is significant interest now in many corners of the globe to simply turn the page, to move on from rowing and holding, to dismiss the institutional arrangements of the past that have led to undeniable progress but also to exclusion and broken promises; arrangements that have allowed existential risks to become near-certainties, and that have extended cooperation with one hand while hording power and resources with the other.

Our fervent wish is for people to read the page before they turn it.

Read the page about the many issues – from sexual violence in armed conflict and nuclear terrorism to climate change and pandemics – for which the UN remains an indispensable point of policy reference.  Read the page about the people like Nujeen Mustafa whose “invisibility” is steadily giving way to recognition and respect.   Read the page about the many delegations reminded of their responsibility to both contribute more to the world they want and offer more tangible encouragement for the contributions of others.  Read the page about those who have dedicated their lives to protect human rights for those who labor and those who protest, for those who are mere bystanders to conflict and those whose vulnerabilities have compromised their very agency.   Read the page where coordinated pressure from UN agencies and member states has created conditions for the dramatic reduction of numerous human scourges, from torture and malaria to state corruption and the recruitment of child soldiers.

This page certainly contains its share of hypocrisy and protocol substituting for genuine gratitude and compassion, but it also contains evidence of a willingness to grow and change, to give a good-faith attempt to resolve its lapses of effectiveness and address the legitimate skepticism of some of its global public. We routinely spend 10 hour weekdays inside the UN, and there are days when we shake our heads so often that our necks become strained.  But we know that this place retains some capacity for self-reflection, occasionally even humor. Together we can fix this place, making it more effective but also more human, insisting that its constituent parts contribute more to the global commons and uphold more fully the values that gave rise to its existence 74 years ago.

At the General Assembly this past week, the Irish Ambassador spoke of the “problems without passports” for which the UN is uniquely if not yet fully equipped to address.  Hers is the section of the page we need to be sure to bookmark.

Tags: , , ,

Women’s Wear:  Sharing the Burdens of Those Who Defend and Inform, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Mar

Afghan II

 

To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs. Tom Rob Smith

Every human is fated to have one moment in their lives in which they can change their own destiny. Takayuki Yamaguchi

If I don’t help the women in Afghanistan, they won’t be around to help me. Cheryl Benard

It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women; that the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human.  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The end of this past work week was dominated by images that pointed human potential in vastly opposite directions.  In New Zealand, a mass killing in two mosques grabbed world headlines and caused many institutions – including the UN Security Council – to pause for a moment of silence, a moment that underscored both concern for victims and viceral unease at our collective inability to address — let alone eradicate — this “other terrorism.”  Indeed, the relative indifference evidenced by the government of the UN’s host nation stood only partially in contrast with the mostly muted levels of shock emanating from other states, shock perhaps due more to the startling location of this violence than to its severity.   We are collectively becoming numb to the incessant carnage, it appears, renouncing violence only when it hits too close to home, and often not even then.

On the same day, many thousands of teen-aged young people prepared to leave their classrooms and fill the world’s streets, taking adults like me to task for our negligence on climate threats.  Despite the warnings of insufficient responses, despite the scientific consensus on a threat more immediate and widespread than previously thought, we have mostly gone about our regular business as though our concerns were primarily grounded in rhetoric rather than in survival.  Moreover, we have inflicted this “business” on succeeding generations mostly stuck in classrooms and consumed with admission to next educational levels while the planet melts, millions are on the move, rights are being violated with impunity, and violent tensions are on the rise.

That said, it is especially good for all of us that young people take to the streets to protest some portion of the absurdity of “preparing for life” on a planet that might not be able to sustain life as we know it for that much longer.  Among their contributons, their presence on our avenues and boulevards is a reminder to the rest of us that the greatest gift to climate deniers is the lifestyle indifference of we who claim to accept the “reality” of climate threats, our unwillingness to reduce our ecological footprint, to care for the displaced and discriminated, to hold erstwhile “leadership” accountable for what is coming and not only what is.

The UN of course takes regular notice of threats from terrorism and violence even if it must often wait for states, especially powerful ones, to take up their own portions of global responsibility.  For this week, however, threats to and opportunities for women dominated the UN during the 63rd convening of ECOSOC’s Commission for the Status of Women (CSW), ably chaired by Ireland.  Thousands of women from around the world made the trek to New York, filling virtually every available UN space in plenary sessions and copious side events to discuss the merits of “social protection” and link “women’s empowerment” to sustainable development goals previously promised to the world through the 2030 Development Agenda.

The CSW is both a major branding opportunity and a bit of a “mixed bag” for the UN, which failed once again to secure guarantees from the host state for access by all the women registered, while also largely failing to provide levels of hospitality that women who have traveled long distances to participate surely deserve.  What these CSW delegates found instead is endless lines for coffee and basic sustenance, standing room only side events, and rest room configurations that had not been adjusted in any way to accommodate the thousands of women now in the building.  The security officers tasked with screening and providing direction for these women have often been no less stressed than the visiting women themselves.

Moreover, there is a sense in which delegates seem to have been led to believe that the CSW is breaking new ground for the UN in terms of ending impunity for sexual violence in conflict, ensuring women’s participation in political and peace processes, and guaranteeing educational opportunity and social protection for women and girls.   These matters already constitute a significant portion of our regular discourse here at the UN.  This is as it should be, with the caveats that our gendered jargon (how do we know when someone is “empowered?”) might actually impede a deeper, connected understanding of the many layers of exclusion that infect our collective interests.  For all the barriers faced by women in diverse cultural contexts, theirs is but one ample portion of a number of often-interlocked exclusions associated with race, religion, ethnicity, poverty, disability and social class. These factors contribute to complex and multi-layered patterns of discrimination that impact women to be sure, but hardly women alone.

It is in the CSW side events where the complexities of human lives – women’s lives – are mostly likely to find their voice.  Two such side events stood out for us this past week.  The first, “Current Challenges and Opportunities for Women Human Rights Defenders,” featured women from Syria, Myanmar, Sudan, Nicaragua and elsewhere who literally put their lives on the line to defend rights and public interests in places where most of us – including many who reside in our UN safe spaces – would not be anxious to tread.  The powerful and largely humble testimony of these women did not downplay either the threats they face in the field (including gender-specific threats) or the limited reach of UN protections against reprisals for their activities (duly acknowledged by the UN officials present).  Women defenders are expected to “navigate layers of power” while insisting that their own “layered” and often-traumatic experiences inform what one defender referred to as women’s rights discourse that has become “too predictable,” a “tool for repressive states,” alienating for many women on the front lines of change.

Another side event this week, “Journalism and the empowerment of women,” featured women journalists whose difficult work is both facilitated and imperiled by their deep connection to and reliance on “social media.” Such platforms have become havens for “anonymous” and mean-spirited trolling of the journalists who tell the public things they would rather not know, trolling sometimes accompanied by gendered threats of overt violence that, in some instances, morph into physical attacks against individuals and families.  One of the free-lance panelists who is dedicated to covering right-wing movements cited “staggering” amounts of anti-Semitic, derogatory responses on social media in response to her body of reporting. Another journalist capably extended the discourse on exclusion and abuse, noting that when you examine issues of race, “you put a target on your back,” a target for which there is scant protection, especially from online assaults. Male journalists, it was noted, are also subject to abuse, but are generally regarded as “hated equals,” a courtesy rarely extended to women in the profession.

I was so grateful for the women on both these panels who were generally able to speak clearly about the extraordinary pressures they face without demonizing others or minimizing the generalized impacts of the recrimination and violence that characterize much of our current social climate.  But I also wondered: What keeps them going when their energy and hope have worn thin?  What allows them to do their work, day after day, knowing that they and their families risk being “hung out to dry” by those of us in much safer spaces who can simply redirect our energy to other matters?   Is it pride and determination? Have they simply “stitched their fate” with those serially oppressed?  Do they feel the hurt that can only be healed through intention?   We need to know more about their motivations and feed off their examples.

With an absence of essentialist jargon and with the recognition that too much global policy is like rain that forms in the clouds but never reaches the parched earth, women defenders and journalists are boldly sharing stories and contexts that some want to kill and too many others ignore.  If we want a world where families are safe to worship and children are confident in the health of a planet that will house their adult aspirations, we must all pledge to do whatever it takes to offer mechanisms of protection and solidarity with the eye-opening and often life-saving work of these people of courage.

 

 

 

Tags: , , , ,

Pick Six:  The Security Council Bids Adieu to some Stellar Elected Colleagues, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Dec

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas Edison

When we create hope and opportunity in the lives of others, we allow love, decency and promise to triumph over cowardice and hate. Kirsten Gillibrand

If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. Milton Berle

I’m sitting in the office on a Sunday with my pulled-from-the-dumpster Christmas tree glistening in the background.   The tree is enticing me to pen a Christmas message today, but given that next Sunday is Christmas Eve, that message can wait just a bit.

There are many other messages emanating from the UN community this week that seem a bit more urgent, including new (and heated) discussions on responses to DPRK missile launches, preparatory discussions in Puerto Vallarta on issues affecting global migration governance, a Security Council warning to South Sudan’s leadership to take the renewed “Revitalisation Forum” convened by the InterGovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) with upmost seriousness, the decision by the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to activate jurisdiction over the”crime of aggresssion,” and an “Arria Formula” UNSC session devoted to the urgent linkages between climate change and global security.   Moreover, in keeping with a bevy of recent discussions and articles chronicling abuses committed against women, including the arbitrary withholding of otherwise well-deserved opportunity, a significant gathering in Lima sought “windows of opportunity” to integrate Latin American women into regional peace and security sectors.

But the end of 2017 also signifies the end-of-service for six elected (non-permanent) Security Council members:  Egypt, Italy (which is “sharing” a 2-year seat with the Netherlands), Japan, Senegal, Ukraine and Uruguay.  This has been an engaged and often thoughtful group in the midst of many difficult obligations and challenges.  Egypt, for its part, took leadership on many aspects related to the UN’s counter-terror response, including sanctions committees and educational events on related UN member responsibilities often undertaken in conjunction with the UN Counterterrorism Executive Directorate (CTED).  In addition, its public role with regard to stubbornly unresolved conflicts in the Middle East, now including unilateral declarations related to Jerusalem’s status, has been appropriately simmering and measured.

Due in part to its international prestige and excellent mission leadership, Italy was able to make its mark on the Council despite having only one year in this current configuration to do so, applying a steady hand to the urgent matters of preserving the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) and maintaining fair and effective sanctions, as well as drawing careful attention to the peace and security implications of climate change, food insecurity and forced migration. Italy also highlighted a problem it previously identified (with Jordan) regarding the discouraging destruction of cultural property and its resale by terrorists groups to fund their recruitment and resulting abuses.

Japan has been a particularly generous (and under-the-radar) contributor so to many dimensions of UN security and humanitarian relief efforts, and those contributions at times spoke with a more convincing voice than its routine Council statements or even its leadership of the sub-committee reviewing Council working methods.  However, steadily escalating tests and tensions in the Korean Peninsula, including DPRK missile launches provocatively sailing over Japanese air space, forced Japan into the spotlight as a major participant in DPRK-related discussions and, as current Security Council president, into a robust organizing and facilitating role for such discussions.

Senegal handled its Council responsibilities with understated dignity and grace.  Indeed, as so much of the Council’s agenda is focused on sub-Saharan states as well as on solidifying trustworthy arrangements with the African Union, IGAD and other regional players, Senegal’s importance to Council deliberations belied its size.  Indeed, on the many issues negatively affecting the peoples of the Sahel region and Lake Chad Basin, Senegal’s enabling logistics and wise counsel was indispensable, underscoring for us and for others the importance of protecting and enhancing active Council involvement by committed African states.

The quality of Ukraine’s Council participation also grew steadily over their two-year term.   At first, it seemed as though Ukraine’s election was largely a political response to Russia-sponsored military activity first in Crimea and then in Donbas and other areas of Eastern Ukraine.   And Ukraine rarely refrained from referencing “Russian aggression” and the human rights violations that have been (slowly) documented in and around Donbas.  But over these two years, Ukraine’s mission and growing appreciation for, investment in and leadership on a wide range of global security concerns far beyond the Crimea has been noted and appreciated by many.

And then there is Uruguay, one of those Council members to entirely eschew the use of twitter, which has made it a bit more difficult for us to tell them how much we have appreciated their efforts.   Uruguay has been a champion both of Council transparency and of the need to link Council actions to the concerns, interests and skills of the wider UN membership.   Ambassador Rosselli and his colleagues have often requested the floor in “public” session to clarify the stake of non-Council members in Council decisions, to rebuke permanent members for their political maneuvering and manipulation of Council working methods, to compliment and expand on presentations by secretariat briefers, even to debunk the alleged value of the more “secret” informal discussions in the “consultations room” to which Council members often retire.

While not all of their statements hit the mark, this small state took on tough positions in a visible way that, for us, helped to clarify the role we believe elected members can and must play in making the Security Council more effective and accountable.   While there are risks associated with this, risks which some delegations would never be authorized from capital to take, it is important that at least some elected members are able and willing to remind their colleagues that the Council is part of a larger system of states and agencies with which it must work more collaboratively; that statements of national position which fail to reference the testimony of briefers or the concerns of colleagues are little more than time-consuming show and tell; that too many conflicts finding their way to the Council’s agenda (not to mention situations like Venezuela or Cameroon that have trouble getting any traction) are the result of a failure-to-prevent that often predicts long and arduous episodes of violence and recovery; that we must address the unwillingness of states (especially permanent members) to thoughtfully assess decisions that large states have largely pushed for, including confessions of regret and lessons learned when situations (as they have certainly done) go horribly wrong.

To paraphrase an old American Express commercial, “membership does indeed have its privileges.”  But being on the Council is highly demanding work, especially for the smaller states, and most of those “privileges” as we know accrue to the larger, permanent members.   Where windows of privilege are opened for the others, allowing them to shed some light on violence that could have been but was not prevented; peacekeeping that could have protected more civilians but was not properly equipped to do so; tensions that could have been lowered if not for careless and inflammatory rhetoric; women who are often “subject matter” for Council meetings but whose voices around the oval are still woefully under-represented; then we must all do what we can to ensure such opportunities are properly utilized.

We honor these six elected members, as we have honored many of their predecessors over the past dozen years, because of the windows of opportunity they have seized, not only to improve the effectiveness of the Security Council, but to bring the UN closer to honoring its peace and security promises in an ever-more complex global landscape.  It may well be, as some commentators have alleged, that large-scale Security Council reform is mostly a pipe dream.  But it is our contention, born of a long and consistent engagement with the Council, that thoughtful, connected, committed, opportunity-minded elected members can still do much to push all Council colleagues to revisit and better honor the confidence that the UN Charter has placed in their work.

Thanks to all six of you for this important reminder.

Tags: , ,

A Distant Dawn: Sustaining Agency in Disconsolate Times, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 May

Deep Web 2

But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate.  And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care.  Rachel C. Lewis

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. T. S. Eliot

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Carl Jung

One of the blessings of this small office – indeed perhaps the only real reason to keep it open – is the extraordinary range of people who regularly grace it.  Scholars and diplomats, policymakers and activists, people from all over the world come for a bit of conversation, advice on how to navigate the UN system, or to share ideas for projects or publications that can open more space for productive policy engagement in the global community.

Many of these visitors are young people, young not only by my standards (which more or less includes everyone now in existence) but young in the sense of being on the cusp of challenges and responses that will be “momentous” for their own lives at least and quite possibly also for the planet as a whole.

Thankfully, if tentatively, most of our visitors seek a larger version of momentousness; they have bills to pay and obligations to family to meet, but they also want their lives to matter in a broader sense.   They come to offices like ours (and to the United Nations) in part to test their skills, in part to assess the state of the world, in part to see if and how they can best direct their energies so they can sustain both their livelihoods and the health of the planet on which those livelihoods ultimately depend.

So they walk through UN security, passes in hand, and they sit and they listen.  Some of what they hear is interesting; some is hopeful. Some makes them wonder if the (mostly older) people who manage the global community and dominate policy discourse inside and outside the UN are committed enough – perhaps even desperate enough — to change what needs to be changed, fix what needs to be fixed, such that peoples and cultures worldwide can survive the current gloom and even thrive once a fuller light finally returns.

The verdict on all of this is mixed. This week alone, our current group of young people participated in UN events as hopeful as the redesign of cities and the promise of new technology for sustainable development and as troubling as the acidification of our oceans, sexual violence in conflict zones, the abuse of children in detention facilities, and the implications of diminished funding for Palestinian and other Middle East refugees.

Perhaps most disturbing of all was a Security Council Counter-Terror Directorate (CTED) briefing on ways to prevent terrorists from acquiring deadly weapons.   The event focused in part on the so-called “dark web,” a largely invisible part of the internet devoted to promoting clandestine access to all kinds of illegally trafficking goods, including of course weaponry.   This excellent event (as are virtually all CTED briefings) was almost a metaphor for our times:  helpful strategies to combat access to weapons and funding by terrorists and other “spoilers” while failing to note other hard (and relevant) questions – including those related to the quality and potency of our governance structures and the reckless enormity of our collective weapons production. In the end, there was for our interns a lingering sense that the dark and ominous forces seeking to undermine what remains of our social order seem to be moving more nimbly than those seeking to stop them.

Though this is clearly belaboring the obvious, current global circumstances are more than a little overwhelming.  There are so many needs to be met, so many issues to interrogate, so many tensions to resolve, so many “fires” to manage.   There seems to be darkness of one sort or another lurking in every corner, layers below layers,  making it both difficult to trust the light but also one’s own ability to help shine light on those dark places (in the world and in ourselves) that threaten even the best of our treaties, resolutions and other policy responses to global threats.

One of the challenges of befriending and mentoring younger people in this space is how to modulate the input, pointing out hopeful signs without over-selling them, sharing the occasional dis-ingenuousness of our multi-lateral system without reinforcing cynicism, introducing them to the full “truth” about our current unsettled circumstances without motivating them to “abandon ship,” to retreat into narrower career and personal interests that are more “bite-sized” and then convincing themselves that “bite size” is all they can handle.

Sometimes the UN does the little things to help us make this “sale.”   Other times not so much.

This past Friday, the UN hosted an event on “Investing in African Youth” that offered some promise that the aspirations, skills and frustrations of some of the young people from this largest-ever generation on our youngest global continent would help inform our policy direction.   The event focused on the African Union Roadmap on Harnessing the Demographic Dividend, based on the contention that “a peaceful and secure Africa requires an empowered generation of youth.”

While voices of such “empowered” youth did eventually take the stage – one in particular was particularly “put off” by the proceedings – the opening panel had already drained the room of much of its energy.  One after another, older persons (mostly male dignitaries) had ignored the call for brevity to such a degree that this panel alone set the schedule back by a full 80 minutes!

When it was finally time for younger voices, they were all on yet another tight leash, having now to share their views in an “august” UN setting while also compensating for older people who, quite frankly, had abused both their positions and the protocols of their “pulpits” in ways that are simply too common in UN conference rooms.   As a result, we were honoring youth by stifling their voices; we were collectively admonishing ourselves to listen to younger people while dominating their space, stealing their time, blunting their opportunity to make their case and not simply air their impatience.

Watching with us this past week was Lin Evola, the founder of the Peace Angels Project which (among other things) has mastered the art of reuse – in this case transforming the metal from used weaponry into compelling and hopeful images.   While she was with us, Lin took copious notes which she turned into drawings that represented the vast disturbances of the week, the crises we have yet to resolve.

The central focus of the drawing Lin contributed to Global Action was of people – including young people — standing mostly emotionless behind barbed wire, surrounded by warnings of famine, violence, forced migration and abuse.  For me, and for the current and past interns with whom I have already shared the drawing, the irony was apparent.  People bearing the brunt of crises, but lacking agency; people whose legitimate voices have been isolated, even barricaded; people who can barely adjust to the storms that surround them, let alone contribute to minimizing global shocks.

Such all-too-common constraints on human agency are, for me, more frightening than the dark web, more disturbing than any Security Council briefing.   When we overwhelm instead of support; when we allow others to slip blithely into complacency or cynicism; when we stifle the energies and voices that can help us reach the dawn, we are merely extending the reach of our own collective darkness.  If they are to locate and sustain their own agency in these difficult times, the many talented people — young and not-so-young — who pass through offices like ours need and deserve better from the rest of us.

Tags: , ,

The Company We Keep: Discerning the Human Faces and Impacts behind the UN Policy Curtain, Dr. Robert Zuber

5 Jun

As I write, this is World Environment Day as well as the beginning (Monday) of the holy season of Ramadan.  The latter is an opportunity for Muslims (especially) to separate for a time from the demands and distractions of the world, to “recover themselves” and their spiritual moorings.  The former is an opportunity for us to reflect and act on the many ways in which we continue, in part via those same demands and distractions, to undermine the capacity of the planet to support the life on which we directly depend.

This was a short work week in New York, but the UN for its part managed to offer up a menu of significant discussions that offered opportunities to bridge gaps between the policies we craft in this place and our levels of concern for the people responsible to implement such policies or who find themselves (for better or worse) on their receiving end.

This past Friday, the Security Council under France’s leadership took up the matter of conflict-related sexual abuse and human trafficking.   In that “open” meeting featuring the Secretary General and his SRSG Zainab Hawa Bangura, more than a few states were able to get beyond the data and threats to reflect on some of the ways that they can add value and draw closer (and genuine) connections to the needs of those affected by conflicts that, as Nigeria noted, we should do more to prevent in the first place.  In this context, it is important to note efforts by the UK, Angola and other states to highlight the responsibility to address local stigmas that tend to heap ridicule and shame, thereby magnifying the abuses that women and girls already endure within conflict settings.   Other states pointed to the deep traumas that conflict related abuse creates, with the Netherlands smartly urging states to consider ways to more effectively “accompany women and girls in their recovery from abuse.”

For its part the General Assembly held a useful all day consultation on conditions for and ways to prevent the “radicalizing” of children and youth, an issue that President of the General Assembly Lykketoft  wished “we did not have to discuss.”  DSG Eliasson commented on this “sad subject,” reminding the audience of mostly diplomats that “youth are subjects, not objects.” Therefore, he urged us to work with youth to resolve threats of extremist recruitment and not plan around them.

At the same time, as USG for Children and Armed Conflict Zerrougui noted during this session, we must do more to “drain the swamps” we have created, swamps full of enticements for youth, but swamps also characterized by “toxicity” emanating both from a loss of hope in a better future, and  from international responses that are too much about the military and too little about restoring family and community connections.  Young people will be responsible for this world soon enough and several delegations noted that we must do what we can now to ensure that their transitions to leadership and responsibility are secure, hopeful and inclusive.

But for us, perhaps the most interesting and personal engagement came during a meeting with NGOs and the Heads of the 10 UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies, committees of independent experts that monitor implementation of the international human rights treaties that define this pillar of the UN system and its core responsibilities to global constituents.  This monitoring is an essential confidence-building measure in a UN system that – excluding the Security Council in its best moments – has few ways to enforce state compliance with previously agreed principles of state conduct.

We were invited to this meeting because of our long and fruitful relationship with Paris-based FIACAT in its work to promote the abolition of torture and capital punishment around the world.   The meeting was chaired by Argentina’s Fabian Salvioli with whom we have had good but sadly infrequent contact over the past few years.

There were some probing questions posed to the Treaty Body heads by the relatively few NGOs in attendance, given the reality that the UN’s human rights system is not yet functioning in the way that encourages full-confidence by global citizens.  At this meeting, Salvioli acted mostly as facilitator, but his and other interventions were important – urging more clarity, specificity and follow-up regarding NGO interventions and recommendations and in languages to which Treaty Body members have ready access.   But he also noted, as did others of his colleagues, that their prior discussions with states were too often acrimonious, with accusations of bias in the interpretation and application of Human Rights treaties topping off what sounded like a lengthy listing of state complaints.

For our part, we wished to reinforce the pragmatic concerns of NGO colleagues – especially regarding the growing problem of government reprisals against human rights defenders – but our primary concern at this meeting was with the “quality of life” of those tasked with upholding state rights commitments.  It is clear to us, surely to others, that the task of managing Treaty Bodies is needlessly difficult.   Budgets and staffing are fragile.  Reporting is politically complex and often draining. States are sometimes resistant, even hostile, in part because they don’t really understand what Treaty Bodies do, why they are deemed essential to maintaining the quality of so many human lives (not to mention the credibility of the UN system).  Nor do states understand the largely voluntary sacrifices that these Treaty Body leaders make (partially in honor of the sacrifices of so many advocates in the field) to keep this essential but highly challenging system working and improving.  In many ways, this is a labor of love — and not nearly enough of that love is returned.

In the aforementioned GA discussion on youth and extremism, the Mayor of Rotterdam (NL) noted that the question we should be asking is not “who is to blame” for situations in the world but who is to take responsibility? Being the responsible party is becoming a bit of a lost art, but there are still many places in our societies, including within the UN, where people are able and willing to look beyond immediate policy tasks and statements to take the temperature of the systems of which they are part, the leaders tasked with maintaining and improving those systems, and the many people worldwide whose lives are needlessly undermined when we fail to make honest and thoughtful improvements in the systems they have come to rely on.

Early last week, the Security Council convened to renew the sanctions and peacekeeping (UNMISS) activities in the still-fragile state of South Sudan.  During that discussion, the South Sudan Ambassador made an appeal to all who seek a better life in his country and all who support the current transition in his country to more fervently seek “reconciliation and forgiveness” in response to many years of a violent and “bitter past.”

This appeal implies intensely personal work, sharing stories of pain and longing that are not to be “used” for partisan political purposes; accompanying the victimized, the betrayed and the simply-weary; and providing more tangible support to those who labor on behalf of a more just world.  Thankfully, behind the “policy curtain” is a wealth of human capacity, even empathy, that we are only now starting to tap and that promises to shorten the distance from bitter to reconciled.

Tags: , , , ,

Defining, Protecting, Recruiting Youth: Security Council Members Revisit their 20s, Dr. Robert Zuber

13 Dec

This was quite a week for the UN.  A Climate agreement was reached in Paris.   Several contentious Security Council meetings helped to define its role going forward on Ukraine, Libya, Central African Republic and the DPRK.   The General Assembly took public responsibility for improving mechanisms for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.   And the human rights “pillar” took center stage with high-level events to remember victims of genocide and promote “Human Rights Upfront.”

But perhaps the most intriguing event of the week was not about climate or genocide, but about “youth,” that vague and fluctuating category of human existence to which we often pay too little attention unless we are trying to sell something – a product, generally, but also an idea, a policy, a value or even a lifestyle.

On December 9, with leadership from Jordan, the Security Council passed Resolution 2250 on “Youth, Peace and Security” (www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp symbol=S/RES/2250(2015). Modeled to some degree after SCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, this resolution represents a formal affirmation of the “important role youth can play in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and as a key aspect of the sustainability, inclusiveness and success of peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts.”

Other sections of the resolution pointed to the “unique demographic dividend” represented by today’s large population of young adults that can help build lasting peace and economic prosperity.  The resolution also cites the vulnerability of these persons to recruitment by terrorist organizations and urges more protection for them during conflict and post-conflict situations as well as their greater participation in “peace processes.”

On the surface there is little to argue with here.  Jordan, which has been a most influential non-permanent member over the past two years, has used that influence to sponsor a resolution that recognizes the significant peace and security contributions that can be made – and are now being made – by younger people.  Moreover, this resolution blends two of the major concerns voiced by Jordan during its Security Council tenure – promoting youth and countering terrorism – which we hope it will continue to take leadership on once Jordan “returns” to its place within the general UN membership.

Indeed, one of the important takeaways from the service of non-permanent Council members is defining the security-related issues that will exemplify their work at the UN going forward.   Nigeria, for instance, has taken leadership on Security Sector Reform.  Lithuania has been a compelling voice on gender issues as well as on countering foreign terror fighters and the ongoing security crisis in Ukraine.  Chile has done excellent work on UN-sponsored criminal tribunals and on the requirement of dependable international justice in general.   Chad has been a strong voice for the evolving security partnership that is developing between the Council and the African Union.   As with Jordan, we appeal to all these members to retain their voices on issues on which they have gained considerable expertise and diplomatic visibility during their Council tenure.  Each of them has earned this leadership and, like governments before them, we very much need them to exercise it fully.

Returning to this landmark resolution 2250, there are caveats that we would wish to pose to Jordan and other states and stakeholders regarding the definition, character and policy access of youth.

First, we should probably acknowledge that the term “youth” represents something of a controversial matter.  The resolution – following the lead of the General Assembly – defines “youth” as persons between 18 and 29 years of age.    As someone who was raised in a different time, who was on his own making some semblance of adult decisions (albeit mostly badly) prior to reaching the chronological starting line for this resolution, I have always found this definition a bit jarring.  Rightly or wrongly, I would have been appalled as a 16 or 17 year old to be patronized by a definition that seemed to be more about limiting my options than honoring what seemed at the time to be my best assets and interests.  That such a limitation could have been applied to me at 28 or 29 years of age is almost beyond comprehension.

I suspect it would seem that way to many “youth” now as well.  For instance, just yesterday, thousands of US navy and army cadets sat in a stadium in Philadelphia and cheered on their respective football teams.   These are all “youth” by 2250 definition, persons in their 20s who just happen to be well on their way to becoming officers in a huge military establishment, thus having much to do, for better or worse, with how the international community defines and implements security.   They are not looking for protection by their government, but are ostensibly offering protection to the rest of us.  Adults assuming adult responsibilities.

Clearly, the criteria for the youth “leadership” and “empowerment” we seek to promote are not immediately apparent either to young people or the rest of us.   There are many “youth” in the approved range who are now running NGOs, religious institutions, even political offices. Does “leadership” simply mean being in positions of institutional authority, or is something else involved, something related to character and maturity of judgment?  In a similar vein, does “empowerment” merely mean “having a voice?”  And if it is about this, does it matter what kind of voice that is, what its objectives are?  Clearly the Council doesn’t particularly want “voices” that promote terrorism or advocate its attractions.  What else don’t we want?  Do we want voices that promote sexism, xenophobia, or rampant consumerism?  Do we want voices that advocate the selfish hording of resources or the destruction of ecosystems?   Do we want voices that dismiss sustainable development or human rights as anachronistic artifacts of sentimental liberal states?

The implications of these questions are, at least to my office, very much worth considering.   As young people — especially from more elite environments — spend more and more time in school, the values of school resonate, which at least in much of the West include the commodification of knowledge, competitive careerism, peer obsessiveness, etc.   What school (and western culture at large) is not so good at, apparently, is providing tools for genuine independence of thinking and living beyond the expectations of peers and the wider culture.  Nevertheless, people in their 20s, despite the intense consumerist and institutional programming to which they have been subjected, retain essential elements of distinctiveness. They don’t all go to college, they don’t all leave their birth communities to pursue “opportunity,” they don’t all spend their free time in frivolous socializing, they don’t all embrace religious institutions or political ideologies, they don’t all stare into cell phones for hours a day, they aren’t all suspicious of adults who aren’t directly subsidizing their lifestyles.

In some sense, there is irony in having to encourage governments, as does SCR 2250, to pay more attention to a demographic that is so large in number and so close to assuming cultural and political leadership in their respective societies.  These erstwhile “youth” are adults, plain and simple.   As with persons in every other demographic category, they deserve policy attention from states and international institutions, in their case especially on matters of education (not only school-based) and employment. But they are generally not helpless, not attracted to every “bell and whistle” offered up by advertisers or terror groups, not “special needs” any more than other generation might be.

If our political leaders want to involve these “youth” in efforts to eliminate extremism and prevent conflict, goals about which we heartily agree, this would seem to require (at least) two ingredients beyond formal resolutions. First, a commitment to reopening inter-generational dialogue, dialogue in which older persons listen more and judge less, but wherein they also insist that “youth” in their 20s commit to no long hide behind age-specific, “essentialist” notions that both let them put off their larger responsibilities and keep them inching towards an adult status that they have mostly already earned.

And the key to this, in every one of “youth’s” diverse incarnations, is personal and policy respect, respect which recognizes and encourages multiple thoughts and aspirations, respect that allows young adults to breathe while meeting their responsibilities and finding their places in a world that is unlikely to heal without their full input.   If Resolution 2250 helps to cultivate higher quality, cross-generational relationships and more fully respected, policy initiative and leadership from younger people, it will become a truly lasting testament to Jordan’s tenure on the Security Council.

 

Tags: , ,

← Older Entries