Tag Archives: Tigray

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

29 Aug

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

Never confuse movement with action.  Ernest Hemingway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Internal Medicine: The Progress on Peace We Make and Need, Dr. Robert Zuber

4 Jul

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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