Tag Archives: trust

Trust Busters: Interrogating the “Blossoms” of Distrust, Dr. Robert Zuber

7 May

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough. Frank Crane

Trust dies but mistrust blossoms. Sophocles

When trust improves, the mood improves. Fernando Flores

How can people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown? Mary Renault

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. Toni Morrison

Trust, even when your heart begs you not to. Alysha Speer

To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Jeanette Winterson

Trust starts with truth and ends with truth.  Santosh Kalwar

This past week, under the Swiss presidency, the Security Council held a general debate on the topic, “Futureproofing trust for sustaining peace.”  This “debate,” chaired by the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave delegations the chance to both assign blame for the current, largely dismal, state of multilateral affairs, but also to be more thoughtful than is often encouraged about how trust-building is a more essential element in the success of such affairs than has often been recognized.

Amidst the cold winds blowing through the UN since the height of the pandemic, specifically with regard to NGO and civil society access, we have noticed more and more delegations taking up – in rhetoric if not always  in practice – the normative elements that we and others have been promoting for some time.  More and more it is recognized that the comfort we share within our UN bubbles is often not shared by constituencies at large; that our predispositions to craft language (especially on peace and security) watered down by a misreading of “consensus” and then foisted on a needy world with little or no interest in how such language is to be implemented does not appear to others to be quite the breakthrough that we imagine it to be in the realtive conform of UN conference rooms.  Indeed, there are, and likely shall remain, trust deficits which will inevitably occur in situations where the norm-makers have little or no responsibility to ensure that norms crafted can actually breathe hope and life into the communities ostensibly served, communities who generally have little or no say in their crafting.

As we know from our own training and investigations, and as this week’s Council debate reinforced, trust is no simple matter.  Indeed, like “love” and many other of our cherished normative categories, trust is far easier to invoke than to either define or maintain.  Indeed, in a world which seems at times to be spinning out of control, the tendency in policy is to focus too much on the criterion govering our own trust issues rather than on criterion for cultivating and enabling trust in others.  Moreover, in the context of multilateral relations, it is too easy to forget that the priority of trust-building has a history, one in part of colonial powers and other large states which has “borrowed against trust,” over and over again, throwing their weight around, imposing values that they do not always practice themselves, telling only the part of the truth which serves national interests, crafting agreements with abundant loopholes which preserve options for some and limit them for many others, insisting on ending impunity for smaller, offending states while dodging accountability for themselves, insisting on a “rules-based order” without a thorough vetting of who made those rules and the starkly uneven ways in which they are often enacted.

We should be clear here.  We have sat in UN conference rooms with laptops open and mouths closed for a generation now.  Despite the aforementioned “cold winds” which we experience on a daily basis, we continue to believe that the flaws in this system, flaws which impede the full-flowering of what is still a rather remarkable experiment, can and must be fixed.  Despite the extraordinary diplomatic and learning opportunities occurring routinely within its walls, we have long since moved past honoring the resolutions which are dead on arrival, the endless COPs and other of what Kenya referred to this week as our “ceremonial meetings” which too –often deliver even less than half a loaf, those diplomats who insist that the UN is solely for its member states without reminding the small but attentive audiences that the decisions which hopefully bind are made mostly in national capitals not in UN conference rooms, the often-fruitful discussions which are now more frequently webcast but which are more likely to raise constituent expectations than satisfy them. 

Despite calls by the African Union and several other delegations speaking at the “Futureproofing” event to bring multilateralism closer to the people, gaps of trust remain, gaps which cannot be written off as the fruits of vaccine inequity or the painful Russian aggression against Ukraine.  These are gaps of “good faith” as noted by Mexico this week, of the absence of justice as Ireland insisted, of promises made and then broken as suggested by China, including the promise to break down “the high walls over small spaces” that more and more states seem desperate to maintain.  For its part, Brazil warned of the rapid spread of resentment (and we would add “grievance”) which is toxic to trust-building as is (well-put by the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs) our current climate of unpredictability which causes some states to retreat into an unhelpful “nostalgia” and others to dig in their heels and refuse to budge on policy until their own (largely un-named) trust issues are duly addressed.

It is not so difficult for each of us to grasp the complexities of trust; we only have to examine our own relationships, our own mishandling of the truth including the truth about ourselves, the unexamined hurts we carry around in our hearts which impede both the risks of trust but also a clear-eyed examination of the hurts we have inflicted on others.  Trust is no simple matter, neither for institutions like the UN nor in our own domestic contexts.  Whether local or global we continue to “borrow against trust” in ways that only serve to shrink our personal circles and policy worldviews, narrrowing options for both promise keeping and service provision.  

During the Council meeting on “Futureproofing Trust,” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk (who doesn’t pull many punches) cited what he called “atrocious ruptures in the social fabric” which make trust in governing institutions a high hill to climb.  Unfortunately, this “high hill” also applies to our personal and domestic contexts as well.  Study after study has chronicled a growing sense of loneliness and isolation amongst many of our populations, people whose primary companions have become cell phones and social media outlets, people who tend to place more trust in apps than in neighbors, people who wouldn’t dream of talking to a stranger but will bare their all in front of a camera to be consumed by thousands of perfect strangers. 

The “atrocious ruptures” chronicled by the High Commissioner thus have implications both within and beyond multilateral structures, pushing peoples and their representative into harder positions and more well-defended spaces from which stems too-little hope, too-little confidence, too-little trust, too-little courage.  The “torment” which verily comes from living in a world characterized by staggering levels of mistrust now constitutes a metaphorical “superbloom,” one which coveys little beautfy but rather continues to narrow personal and policy options and perspectives. This torment is simply something we must choose to live without.

If we are to scale the peaks on which are very lives likely now depend, we will need to replace the interminable “code red” warnings of our hearts with heart-friendly investments, refusing to be lonely and isolated, refusing to make promises we have no intention of keeping, refusing to pay lip service to the trust that we desperately require at the core of our souls and institutions, the trust that can “improve our collective mood” and bridge divides of truth and action that threaten to turn gaps into the ruptures which we all would do well to fear.

Switzerland opened a door this week in an eminent policy space to reflect on a topic both exceedingly complex and largely neglected.  The takeaway is that we are running short of time to adjust our ways and means such that we might trust with greater courage and improve prospects for maintaining the trust of others. Trust in the end is the glue which can hold together our increaingly unglued societies and their increasingly bewildered citizens. We must continue to make spaces conducive to exploring and examinuing ways to build and share the trust on which our collective future likely hinges.

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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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Trust Funds: The UN Steps Towards a Culture of Integrity, Dr. Robert Zuber

6 Jun

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.  Mahatma Gandhi

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. Ayn Rand

It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.  Frank Herbert

Procrastination is also a subtle act of corruption – it corrupts valuable time. Amit Abraham

The aim of the old should be to ensure that the young grow up incorruptible.  Justin K. McFarlane Beau

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.  Clive James

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider.  Ernest Hemingway

I spent an hour last evening on a call organized by LINGAP Canada and featuring an indigenous activist from the Philippines seeking to protect the lands of local people from the onslaughts of both an international mining interest and governments at local and federal levels who enabled this corporate incursion. As is far too common, they offered police protection against the activists pushing back against operations which, in too many instances, have cover in the form of government contracts which are not transparent, which do not incorporate local needs and interests, and which confer large swaths of immunity as mining interests appropriate local water supplies, denude forests and destroy the social cohesion of communities and the biodiversity which once enveloped them.

In the rush to secure the precious metals and other resources that fuel lifestyles in the developed world, corporations are willing to drive hard bargains with government officials as they seek contracts that ensure maximum flexibility and only limited responsibility for the damage done to land and water.  For the governments, mining interests promote both “economic development” and, in the absence of genuine transparency, a reliable source of self-enrichment.   For the activists seeking to hold mining interests to a standard beyond their technically “legal” obligation, they often face both personal danger and the sad realization that the lands they love have likely been disfigured beyond the ability of any human or natural force to restore.  When the mining interests have extracted all there is to extract, the land they leave behind might be little more than a biological shell of its former self, a land now ill-suited to sustain the life it had previously supported for millennia. 

This story frames what was a busy week of intersected UN conversations focused on the multiple, negative impacts of corruption together with our still-uphill struggle to reverse climate change, avert a new round of biodiversity loss, preserve what remains of the health of our oceans, and heal our often-battered local ecosystems. 

The key here is “together.”  What was apparent during a fine UN Special Session (including side events) focused on “measures to prevent and combat corruption” is that corruption is both pervasive and “magnetic,” attracting unscrupulous and self-interested individuals like bees to honey, providing both opportunities and rationalizations for those among us more interested in exploiting fragility than helping it to heal.  What the president of the Economic and Social Council, Ambassador Akram of Pakistan, referred to this week as the “criminal misuse of resources” is an indictment that implicates many of us in our current world, a world in which integrity and transparency are constantly butting heads with that part of our nature which, as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador maintained, remains “purchasable.” 

As several speakers noted this week, including during an excellent side event organized by the president of the General Assembly, our current contexts make combating corruption a particularly formidable challenge.  The global pandemic coupled with the gross inequalities tied to our obsession with “wealth and power” are magnifying opportunities to divert resources from intended to unintended purposes, to maneuver contracts towards personal friends and business partners rather than to those providing the best and most cost-effective services, to deliberately direct vaccines and funds for pandemic response towards political supporters and away from political adversaries, to sign contracts that are full of loopholes enabling abuses and even kickbacks that ultimately rob citizens of development funds, undermine rights and even dampen enthusiasm for change.

But as the week’s events made clear, it is not only about the expanding opportunities for corrupt practices but the range of such practices – and their toxic consequences — that warrants prompt international attention.  Our former notions of corruption – of money in a brown envelope sliding under a table and designed to influence decisions — is still relevant but overly narrow.  We understand more now about the “trade-offs” that we are much too comfortable making, trade-offs that impede our path towards what the Holy See referred to this week as a “culture of integrity.”  We are too quick to rationalize behavior that we should readily challenge instead, thereby “consorting” with the structures of power that we know are often not operating in the public interest.  We know that, as Chile’s Ambassador stated, funds and lives are lost when we allow corrupt practices to flourish, when we accede to cultures of corruption that are within our grasp to shift.  We continue to allow people to “walk through our minds with their dirty feet,” making compromise with what Mexico declared to be a social “evil” more and more palatable, at least for some, just part of the cost of doing business as an “insider” in a sometimes unsavory world. 

And as one speaker after another this week noted, the consequences of corruption are dire, not only for the activists on the ground who must dodge unsubstantiated accusations and at times even bullets, but for the average citizen who still needs to believe that the large governmental and corporate powers that seem to run our lives have at least some of our best interests at heart; indeed that they are able and willing to play by the same rules that they expect the rest of us to play by.  The word that popped up over and over in this UN context is “trust,” a term which is hard to quantify and which diplomats are often fond of claiming for their governments without sufficient evidence; but a word which also continues to resonate deeply for many of us. 

Naively or otherwise, some of us still need to believe that, within the limits of human capacity and habit, that our public structures are trustworthy or can be made so; that mistakes are due to factors other than wanton malevolence; that the people who run the world operate on energies more diverse than riches and power; that leaders are willing and able to set a better example for those who might otherwise be inclined to join the parade of those convinced that the only way to “get ahead” is at the expense of others. And yet as the director of the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime noted with considerable alarm, too many of us have become “cynical” regarding both our responsibility and capacity to end corruption, to address an enemy “that shows little signs of retreating.”  Despite the contention of Latvia’s minister that his public at least seems be losing its “tolerance for corruption,” it still seems as though state and corporate entities are largely talking a better game than they play, thus setting a tone allowing too many of the rest of us to do likewise.

One of the things we might conveniently ignore in this context is the degree to which trust once betrayed is difficult to regain, in some instances more difficult than restoring a once-denuded Philippines mountainside. And this trust-busting incarnates a multitude of implications beyond government procurement and election results.  For instance, how do we as citizens and local communities get on board with healthy oceans, with greenhouse gas reductions, with rehabilitating eco-systems supporting healthier biodiversity if we can’t trust large state and corporate entities to do their part, to honor their promises, to use the resources at hand for public good rather than private interest?  How do we inspire sacrifices in communities when those who command the most money and power are reluctant to sacrifice anything of themselves, or even agree to play fair?

And what of the youth who, as one young contributor this week noted, must anxiously watch as their own futures are jeopardized by the corruption which drains public coffers of the funds that could be used – should be used – to clean up our environmental messes and put our economies on a more solid, greener footing.  Traditional means of fighting corruption, she maintained, are not sufficient to address levels of self-interested illegality which take up too much space in our current political and economic environment, indeed which are putting more and more young people in the unenviable position of needing to “sell their own integrity” to keep any glimmer of personal progress on track.

This week, Kenya’s president urged the UN community to “raise the bar” on integrity, recommending that states support more education for youth on “ethical values” in this effort.  But we must be sure, as the PGA noted, not to “kick this can down the road.”  Young people have much to contribute, especially at local level, to building trust and capacity for a more sustainable world.  But the rest of us need to set a better example, a more honest and transparent example, an example which communicates our resolve to identify and end all manifestations of corruption from our own lives, even to end the procrastination that rationalizes our putting off until tomorrow what we promised to address today.

The open and lifeless pits our mining interests leave behind are only one of the residual craters complements of our many self-interested and self-deceptive personalities. We have only a matter of years to demonstrate that we can rise to a higher standard, that we can return what has been stolen and then commit not to steal again, that we can repair some of what we’ve damaged and then commit not to damage further.  In this way, we might be able to convince other, younger persons that a fairer and more sustainable world is still within our grasp, and that the buying and selling of this world need not include the buying and selling of our souls.

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A Papal Pilgrimage:  Ramping up Hope at the Center of Global Governance, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Sep

As the Pope’s FIAT pulled up to UN Headquarters last Friday, it slowed just a bit so that Francis could wave at a group of children dressed in white and sitting on the stairs of (ironically perhaps) the Trump Building.  This was only the beginning of an outpouring of attention, enthusiasm and even yearning, the likes of which most of us have never seen at UN Headquarters.

Many have written about the Papal visit to the UN.  Twitter literally exploded with comments of all sorts, almost all of the ones I saw falling anywhere from cautiously positive to positively gushing.  The newspapers proclaimed that “hope had come to New York.”  (God knows we need it.) These reactions cannot be attributed to our embrace of celebrity or fame; neither are they a function of the rarity of papal visits.

This outpouring of positive energy was more likely related to a long-suppressed search for meaning as well as for the encouragement to abandon cynicism and despair, to recalibrate our emotional depth, to provide a genuinely viable future for our children, not merely an education, an IPad, and an allowance.

The Pope said some very helpful things from the podium in the UN General Assembly.   He took up the challenges of healing our climate and eliminating our weapons of mass destruction.   He spoke about us as biological beings that need to stop soiling the beds that we still need to lie on.   He reminded us that no policy, regardless of its textual nobility or comprehensiveness, is likely to succeed unless we recover the practices of listening and caregiving, while committing in policy and practice to the pursuit of fairness and an end to inequalities.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Francis on the substance of issues, it was clear from his speech that he sees in those many souls clamoring to hear his words what most of the rest of us at the UN cannot.   Francis was not trying to be clever or even strategic.  He was not “purchasing the surfaces” of things nor was he caving in to political expediency.   His words were largely measured, urgent, kind.   But most important, it was clear that he is looking at the world and its people differently.  His vision seems to penetrate deeper – deeper than our pretense and personal branding, deeper than our compromises and our rationales for each, deeper than our professional titles, entitlements and immunities.

This ability to see differently is extraordinary and most worthy of emulation. And to my own eyes, the speech was not the only extraordinary aspect of the Papal visit. Watching Francis move from one responsibility to another inside the UN, navigating the crush of well-wishers including political dignitaries seeking a momentary ‘audience’: the press of flesh and the multiple distractions of noise and perpetual movement seemed overwhelming.

And yet the Pope maintained his attentive gaze.  He didn’t look as tired as he must have been.  If he has any vestiges of claustrophobia, he found the grace to overcome them.   If he found all of the noise and crowding annoying, he never let on. Perhaps Francis throws things around his prayer room to re-establish his emotional equilibrium and vent his frustrations.  His time at the UN gave no evidence that he has this urge.  (His visits to both Harlem and Philadelphia have seemed downright joyful.)

Amidst the diplomatic chaos, Francis even made time to thank UN staff for their dedication and service, paying special attention to peacekeepers and members of UN country teams who lost their lives in the service of the institution, its values and constituents.

In some important ways, this demeanor of Francis was even more telling than his words.   If anything, the latter made the former more believable, more compelling.  There is a lesson here for all of us.   As our colleague Annie Herro reminds GAPW often, all of us at the UN are in one way or another “norm entrepreneurs.”   As such the success of our work, perhaps ironically, has less to do about money and status and more to do with trust building and other character concerns – the ability to be where we say we’ll be, to resist unthoughtful policy solutions that are destined to unravel, to practice courage and kindness so that we can get better at both, to be willing to give to others what we expect from them in return, to communicate hope to persons and communities in ways that do not excessively raise expectations to levels that we know are unlikely to be fulfilled.

Character issues are largely out of fashion, but they are not beyond relevance for good policy. At the UNGA on Friday, we had an example of someone whose demeanor prior to his UN speech – as well as the “depth” at which he routinely casts his gaze – gave added power to the words that eventually came out of his mouth.   The “social fragmentation” to which Francis pointed with alarm is closely related to a fragmentation of personal character that manifests itself as a proclivity to “dispose” of things and people, as well as to horde what we should share and destroy what we cannot easily replace.  These are some of the implications of our current policy and personal choices that Francis, by virtue of the quality of his living and his seeing, was particularly well placed to highlight.

The hope displayed by Francis at the General Assembly podium is imperfect. It does not by itself resolve political differences and logistical challenges, nor does it guarantee that we will find the courage to turn away from our predatory and self-interested actions to save this planet – and ourselves along with it.

But the thousands waiting for hours for a glimpse of the Pope in the Fiat, not to mention the many diplomats who rose to their feet to celebrate a man who presides over a faith often not their own, if these are any indication, then the hope of Francis is truly a hope we can believe in.

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