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Word Play: Expectations Fit for a World in Crisis, Dr. Robert Zuber

Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack. Brandon Sanderson

If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. William Shakespeare

Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. Paulo Coelho

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. Jane Austen

It wasn’t that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn’t expect. Lev Grossman

After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Tom Perrotta

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. John Steinbeck

Earlier this week, my dear friend and Green Map colleague, Wendy Brawer, sent me a photo of a group of young people staging a “die-in” in front of UN Headquarters to protest the lack of movement on climate change from the world body and, more specifically, from many of its member states.

This protest occurred on a week when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report which reached conclusions more discouraging than shocking – that at our current rate, we will not only fail to reach the Paris Climate agreement goal of remaining at or below 1.5 degrees C, but that we are likely to exceed 2 degrees C of warming leading to a bevy of unwelcome consequences including exceeding “critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health.”

The Secretary-General, as is his want, warned states yet again of the “insufficiency” of current efforts to reduce emissions, proclaiming that we are running out of time to do so while acknowledging in public (as we and others have been warning for some time) that the COP 26 climate conference scheduled for later this year in Glasgow carries “a high risk of failure.” Indeed, we have been concerned for months that COP 26 might well generate more emissions than its outcome document will mitigate; moreover that we don’t need yet another major conference to underscore the urgency of the moment, an urgency well documented in a bevy of UN reports as well as at prior COP events which, collectively, do not seem to have yet inspired anything akin to a proportionate response.

The young people lying on First Avenue are certainly taking climate warnings seriously. Their youthful years already compromised by a raging pandemic, personal debt burdens and shrinking economic options, these activists recognize a threat to their future that may soon reach a point of no return, the effects of warming that will keep their adult lives pivoting endlessly from one crisis to another, from drought to flooding, from farmlands which no long yield their bounty to pandemics and hurricanes creating fresh human emergencies with equal frequency.

That they chose to lie down in front of the UN was, to my mind at least, communicating a dual signal; on the one hand a recognition that the UN as a body has not met expectations, has not converted the warnings it liberally proclaims into tangible and proportionate responses by many of the member states which pay its bills and authorize its policy commitments. At the same time, there is a sense that, if only it could speak with one voice, the UN is still a place where aspirations for peace, equity and environmental health could be converted into something more concrete and results-oriented than large conferences making even larger promises unlikely to be kept.

Assuming that I have this pegged correctly, this dual assessment by these youth activists closely mirrors our own. As we start to wind down nearly 20 years in and around UN Headquarters we are inspired by the range (and sometimes depth) of issues on the UN’s agenda, but also discouraged by how many of those issues get bogged down in matters both political and procedural. We are dismayed at how often statements by governments are as likely to cover up key truths as to magnify them, how often the things left unsaid are more significant to the future of the planet than what states actually share, how much easier it is for states – whether on climate or armament, whether on vaccine distribution or aid to Yemen — to make pledges than to honor them.

Like others around this UN system, our assessments are largely a function of our expectations. We know that people can observe, even without preconceptions, the same institutional circumstances at the same moment and come away with quite different assessments of their value and significance, depending of course on their expectations of those institutions in the first instance. If we expect little and those expectations are exceeded, assessments are likely to be positive. If we expect much and such expectations are not met, assessments are likely to be considerably more pessimistic. And if we expect too much, more than the UN or perhaps any institution can bear without cracking apart altogether, we risk deep disappointment much more inclined to cynicism than to activism.

We have long been in this second camp and sometimes had to struggle not to be in the third. We have always been of the belief that the UN community –including we NGOs — has been insufficiently willing to match policy to urgency, has been insufficiently willing to convert its institutional processes and commitments into actions which demonstrate that we truly understand the times we face, the burning of forests and bridges, the flooding of waters and excessive armaments, the states that talk a better game on multilateralism than their domestic political situations allow them to play. We have witnessed, time and again, states verbalizing support for urgently-needed policy change or even institutional reforms only to undermine either when the time comes for the UN to meet the moment. We have also witnessed, more than we would ever wish, states equating national interest with global interest or other stakeholders assuming that one single policy lens or set of recommendations would ever be suitable to reset a world now characterized by such cultural, economic and ideological disharmony.

But to be fair, there are pockets of forthrightness in this multilateral system which give credence to higher expectations that the UN itself continues to both encourage and frustrate; states, UN agencies and NGOs insisting that we talk about reducing the production of armaments and ammunition as well as about arms diversion and trafficking; states and others insisting on fair and equitable representation in Secretariat offices and even in the Security Council; states and others which have shown the way on sustainable energy and ocean health critiquing those still addicted to fossil fuels and/or oblivious to biodiversity loss; states and others urging “readiness” for future pandemics even as we struggle mightily, if unevenly, to contain the current one.

As this strained planetary moment unfolds, we are compelled to honor all who dare to elevate levels of expectation for the UN system. To that end, one of the signature events of this UN week was the handover of the presidency of the General Assembly from Turkey’s Volkan Bozkir to the Maldives’ Abdulla Shahid. During his final remarks as president, one which we felt he was a bit sad to relinquish, Mr. Bozkir provided what characterized his entire term, what he himself called a “blunt” assessment of our planetary conditions and the role that the UN should play – must attempt to play – in shaping a more peaceful and sustainable world. He noted here as he did throughout the year the heavy lifting which must be assumed by this “most representative” Assembly in meeting our responsibilities to sustainable development, to peace and security, and to the reduction of global inequalities. He implored colleagues to abandon nationalist lenses and “go it alone” approaches, including on climate change, and urged greater attention to how this “unique body” can be used more effectively in the pursuit of a sustainable peace. And as though any of us around the UN should ever need this reminder, he reminded us anyway that “words are not enough.”

Not nearly enough. Not now. Not at this precarious moment in history. Not for the millions of global constituents longing for peace and the development “dividends” which peace brings. Not either for youth lying prone on First Avenue hoping both for a voice in global policy and for a clear sign that those working a stone’s throw from their street protest can match the urgency of the moment with leadership and resolve to take at least some of the grave threats facing these young people off their collective plate.

If such an expectation is too much for the UN system, if the bar of an inclusive and sustainable peace proves to be just too high, then we would do well to wonder if the institution will ever be, as we say over and over, “fit for purpose.” Whether we are strong enough to pursue this or not, whether the UN is ultimately able to assume a loftier mantle or not, that “purpose” now is nothing short of saving us from ourselves, of peventing the symbolic “die ins” of our activist youth from becoming an omen of our collective future.

Tags: climate change, expectations, sustainable development, youth

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Speech Therapy: A Youth Lens on Urgent UN Discussions, Brady Sanders

17 Aug

Editor’s Note: A student at Georgia Institute of Technology, Brady spent part of the summer with GAPW on what turned out to be a completely virtual internship. While not what he had hoped for, and not what we hoped for him, Brady was a diligent follower of summer UN processes, asking good questions while not allowing the steep learning curve which the UN often presents to newcomers deter him from engaging with complex issues in the Security Council and, especially, in the ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum.

When signing up for an opportunity with GAPW at the end of May, I was very anxious at first, as I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I expected a lot of dialogue on subjects that I knew very little about, people talking too fast for me to understand – as New York has a reputation for being all hustle and bustle, and meetings consisting of solely legal or technical jargon that I would not know how to digest.
For the first few days, I was lost and thought everyone was repeating each other. So much was going on with the High-Level Political Forum — my very first UN engagement — that it was hard to keep all of the countries and their agendas straight, especially for someone who has no prior experiences with these countries. However, once I began to look in on more meetings and learned about some of the counties’ histories, the subtleties made more sense, and I could then fully digest what the delegations were discussing.
Of the meetings I attended, my favorite ones discussed climate change, hunger, and the crisis in Myanmar. While these topics are interesting to me in general, I feel like these were the best presentations: not only because of the material, but because of the speakers themselves. They rallied their respective audiences by talking with us instead of to us. For the food security sessions, Mr. David Beasley was by far the most compelling speaker. He was able to rally the room behind what he said because of his level of enthusiasm which most other speakers did not seem to have. Another speaker I enjoyed was a diplomat from Colombia who talked about her experiences with the cartels there. She brought in very personal details and accounts of how her life changed due to the violence from the drug trade. By being vulnerable like that, she was able to form an emotional connection with people in the meeting, which made what she had to say so much more impactful. In my opinion, finding speakers like this is singlehandedly the most important thing the UN can do to garner support from people in the wider world.
While there have been many things that I thought the UN did well, there are a few things I thought could have been improved upon. One of which is the UN’s stated goal for youth involvement. While the UN encourages youth involvement, they seem to talk more about this than acting on it. Sure, there were two days during my internship when youth leaders held meetings, but besides that, there was not much evidence of youth participation. Additionally, these meetings simply highlighted the work already done by young adults rather than a discussion with young adults about what they want to see done now, what they are eager to do now. So, to the UN, include more young adults in your discussions instead of just highlighting how we have been trying to change the world. This is our future at stake, so it would be proper if we had a more substantial influence on what happens to it going forward, the priorities that will shape the future.
To close, I want to talk about one more concern I have witnessed from the meetings. Delegations are, to put it frankly, moving too slowly. While I understand treaties and resolutions take time to complete, action must occur rapidly when our future is at risk. Climate change won’t slow because delegations need time to talk about the wording of resolutions. Rising hunger rates won’t slow because delegations need time to talk about wording. Terrorist organizations won’t slow their advances because delegations need time to talk about wording. If we want our future to be peaceful and equitable for all, we must demand that delegations work more swiftly to actively and practically address looming crises. Because on matters such as climate change we will soon pass a tipping point, and then no resolution will be able to stop what is now well in motion.

Tags: United Nations, youth

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Kid Rock: Youth and the Struggle for a More Harmonious Planet, Dr. Robert Zuber

15 Aug

Magazine.Columbia.Edu

One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again. C.S. Lewis

For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile. Alvin Toffler

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. H.L. Mencken

I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. Meg Rosoff

“Sure, everything is ending,” Jules said, “but not yet.” Jennifer Egan

That’s the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old. Philip Pullman

When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick. George Burns

This was a week when many members of the UN family took a bit of rest from the grind of multilateral diplomacy, a time to restore at least a bit of the energy to the “batteries” which seem perpetually in need of a charge.

The world, however, doesn’t privilege holidays. Indeed, our community was peppered this week by news both urgent and discouraging: a massive earthquake in “snake-bitten” Haiti, the discovery of new Ebola cases in Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire, the rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and their enablers, an enhanced potential for civil war in Myanmar, even an increase in piracy and other crimes against maritime trade and the very health of the oceans themselves as acknowledged during a High-Level Security Council debate on Monday hosted by India’s Prime Minister Modi.

Added to that, surely the most discouraging news of all; the release this week of the “Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report is difficult to wade through (despite its inclusion of an interactive Atlas) and the main conclusions of the report are even more difficult to process: that even if we are able to somehow meet our climate targets, the patterns we now experience are sure to endure: storms of increasing violence and frequency, fires raging on multiple continents depleting even more of the forests we need to absorb excess carbon, water scarcity becoming increasingly the norm in a number of global regions, biodiversity threatened at multiple points on the chain of life endangering both agriculture and human health.

There is more of course, more to be concerned about even than these. The SG’s response to the IPCC report, a “Code Red” for the planet, was widely disseminated throughout the global media. The response of the young people around our office as well as those who gathered online this week to acknowledge UN “International Youth Day” was equally firm in the insistence that more can and must be done to “reverse the trend” (as our office colleagues would say), that the speed of our lives, the speed of global changes, must be matched more than has been done to date by the speed of our own responses, our own adaptations, our own resolve and, where appropriate, our own leadership – all of which beckons the skills and energies of young people at its core.

If this indeed is “code red” for the planet, it is surely “code red” for the future of young people, a future already compromised by high levels of economic uncertainty and even higher levels of social inequality and armed violence. There is much to love about the world, beauty within people and in the wider planet which our short-term and self-referential decisionmaking has not yet managed to eradicate. But the vantage points of too many elders suggest trouble; the lack of wisdom and discernment that such folks too-often bring to policy, the “advice” we are happy to dispense (often unrequested) without a similar acknowledgement of the crises made more dangerous on our watches, the fires we have not extinguished and which will continue to consume after we have passed on from this life, the frustrations that will keep spinning out of control as more and more people see through the half-hearted, overly-politicized efforts of many of the powerful and affluent to attend to the needs and aspirations of the desperate.

The times may seem a tad distressing, but the social and technological options which govern life in our times remain in healthy motion. We face problems which are unprecedented, but we also have access to avenues of response which are unprecedented as well, technologies which can remove plastics from our oceans and carbon from our atmosphere, communication tools that can help broaden the stake and integrate hopeful responses from youth and others geographically isolated from the global centers of policy. While people like me press the buttons on our smart phones and just hope for the best, while others attempt to sentimentalize a past that was never as good as we claim it was, many young people are staking out a fresh, hopeful reality which, remarkably, does not reject the ideas, anxieties and suggestions of their elders as much as they might. As a rule, they know better how to adapt the problem-solving and communications-rich technologies at their disposal to make issue linkages and identify new stakeholders. They are often more comfortable in multi-cultural settings than their elders were and they are assuredly more comfortable in front of cameras than people like me who can barely stand to have their own picture taken.

Many young people are also, and thankfully, fairly well attuned to the need to mirror changes in technology with changes in persons. Many seem to understand at some level that neglect of character in pursuit of social change is likely to lead to the same ends as the generations which proceeded them, a world with too many weapons, too little water, and health and other quality-of-life indices which strain existing resources and provide yet another rationale for armed violence. It was reassuring that the interns of Reverse the Trend (RTT) who met with the Kiribati Ambassador to the UN this past Friday on our “patio” seemed inspired by the kindness and hopefulness of his words, but also energized by his resolute stance that young people from every continent and every culture must come prepared to participate meaningfully in the affairs that characterize these times, prepared not only with their skills and ideas, but with their compassion, discernment and creativity.

Such RTT and other youth may not be quite ready to once again take up fairytales, but they well understand and convey the importance of cultural expression to peacemaking; they recognize that poetry, dance and painting are not auxiliary aspects of an intentional life but are rather fuel for that life.

During a typical week, we hear from (and respond to) a good number of young people from various cultures and on diverse life paths. Some of these youth are discouraged; some are angry; some are thoughtful and determined; some are anxious that the current uncertainties will ultimately consume their potential contributions, that the wildly unequal access to resources which defined current generations will characterize yet another one. And yet, despite their anxieties, we are heartened by how some young people have chosen a path not always taken, a path that calls them to invest in persons even younger than themselves, persons even more uncertain about their identities and threats from a world in turmoil. Together they plant trees, they clean riverbeds, they grow healthier crops, they resolve conflict, they support victims and they presume to call on current leadership, including those rightly skeptical of the wisdom of age, to use their positions to better enable that transition to youthful energies which most UN diplomats now advocate.

We too, support this transition in every aspect. And just maybe, we’ve influenced some transition recipients more than we think. One of our more active twitter followers is a young man (known only as “Sam”) from Côte d’Ivoire who recently wrote: “The values of a servant leader are the same as the values of a mentor: integrity, humility, respect and truth.” Servant leadership, a concept and practice core to our own mandate. On those rock-solid values espoused by Sam, on those promises he strives to honor, we can surely build a movement for health and harmony that can truly sustain itself, that can blend inspiration and technology in new and life-enhancing ways, that can serve and be served beyond the boundaries of status and hierarchy, and that does not wait for official permission to share and to act.

And maybe, just maybe, Sam and his young colleagues can sneak in a bit of time for fairytales, or at least for the wise stories and accumulated imagination that remind us all why human life and human community remain so precious.

Tags: climate change, harmony, servant leadership, youth

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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.

Tags: corruption, General Assembly, mining, trust, youth

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Revise and Consent: Enabling a World of Change, Dr. Robert Zuber

18 Apr

We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves. Margaret Atwood

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein

Improperly documented history, or more precisely, fraudulent versions of history not only deprive the victims of pasts injustices due recognition of their suffering, but also rob the living of a fair chance at a future free from the dangers of repeating past injustices. A.E. Samaan

We have learned primarily by tinkering. Curt Gabrielson

In talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. William Maxwell

If we don’t have real answers, it is because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. Jeff VanderMeer

It is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from common sense and its logic, that we know the world to be good. Vladimir Nabokov

Thanks to the confidence placed in me by a colleague, Barbara Adams, I recently published an article in a journal of development policy entitled “A Volatile Context: A Revisionist Lens on Good Governance.”

I’m not going to invite you to read the piece. It’s not dis-similar to the themes of this weekly post, but it is longer and surely more dense. It also reflects an assignment which I only accepted due to the editorial staff’s embrace of the “what if.” What would the world look like if our structures of governance were devoted to fostering care and equal access among constituents? What if governance were as competent and transparent as it often claims to be? What if governance were as concerned — in terms practical more than rhetorical — with the needs and aspirations of constituents as it is with its own protocols and power dynamics?

These and other, similar questions punctuated my piece, for better and worse. To be honest, I’m surprised it got published at all. In an age driven by data and branding, by professionals seeking control over smaller and smaller domains of human experience, speculative writing of the sort I indulge in has become a bit of a reach, and not an altogether welcome one. People in our governance and educational bureaucracies are rather preoccupied — and not without reason — with the accumulation and management of data, data that can establish trends and help ensure that, in the realm of policy and to the extent we are able, human and financial capital are directed towards the holes in security and justice that need to be filled and can be filled.

But it is clear in many places, including at the UN, that data of varying levels of sophistication and reliability does not always bring us closer to governance that is caring, responsive and trustworthy. Indeed, the pursuit of data can be its own endgame, accumulating “information” that in many instances is untethered to strategies to both unlock and incarnate its power to effect change; moreover, such data is often in flux as its gaps are only slowly recognized and fresh experiments are conducted that render the previous “truths” subject to a revised consent.

One of the smartest statements coming from youth climate activist Greta Thunberg was when she said, “don’t listen to me, listen to the science.” Yes, listen to the science, listen to those with data pertinent to the rendering of what are often dire predictions for our common future if we do not mange to revise our ways. But as Greta already knows, as any of us who ply our wares in the halls of global governance knows, such governance is as likely to render the power of science to something akin to a “petting zoo” as it is to unleash its full and furious influence over all our actions.

Simply put, we now know more than we do. Just this week, several good UN events underscored the degree to which having accurate data and incarnating relevant policy commitments are still at loose ends. We “know” that hording vaccines is ultimately detrimental to both the global economy and to the suppression of future variants — as noted this week in a special, high level event on “Vaccines for All” hosted by the president of the UN Economic and Social Council — and yet our commitment to equitable vaccine access remains well short of the need. We “know” as was stated often during an important UN event this week on “Financing for Development,” that a combination of debt burdens, limited investment access and illicit financial flows has made pandemic response and recovery a mere pipe dream, and yet our commitment to a revised, more inclusive financial system remains more the subject of speechmaking than practical application. We “know” as a civil society advocate from South Sudan testified in the Security Council this week that the wide availability of often-trafficked arms fuels so much of the violence and abuse in her country (and many others), and yet our addiction to the production and trade in deadly weapons shows little signs of abating. We “know” the many thousands in Yemen whose lives remain threatened after years of war by famine and economic collapse, and yet the Security Council remains largely impotent to end the violence let alone the impunity to which it has given rise. We “know” that we are unlikely given our current course to forestall the biology-altering consequences of a rapidly warming planet, but we continue to take more credit for our limited climate responses than to earnestly prepare to enact what the president of the UN General Assembly this week urged: “a greener and more equitable recovery that can keep our SDG commitments on track,” including and especially our lagging climate actions.

These disconnects between knowing and doing should not be laid at the feet of scientists, many of whom have no doubt had more than a few sleepless nights over these past months as emissions continue to rise and policymakers continue to defy reasonable, pandemic-related limitations in the name of disinformation or “freedom.” The same scientists who developed safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time and implemented health protocols to keep many more virus victims alive than was the case last spring — including no doubt many COVID-deniers — know that such measures alone won’t end the pandemic if large segments of the public remain uncooperative and revision-phobic, and they certainly won’t help us prepare for the pandemics sure to come as we continue to wantonly disrupt the planet’s biological safeguards.

It may be the case, as suggested above by Curt Gabrielson, that we learn primarily by “tinkering,” through small-scale revisions to what is known and seen, small-sale adjustments in what is given. But for the policy community such revisions at small scale are no longer suitable, if they ever were, as they don’t sufficiently address the diversity of threats facing our current world. They don’t sufficiently address the barriers that keep so many human skills — of youth, of cultural minorities, of women, of persons with disabilities — on the sidelines of policy deliberations and decisions. And they don’t address the deficits of trust which are themselves a legacy of promises deferred or ignored, assistance barely rendered, entitlements and privileges not shared or even acknowledged.

If we are not careful, if we are not sufficiently vigilant, the “bubble” that institutions like the UN are accused of operating within will morph into an “island” to which we in the policy community might well be exiled. Such exile would complicate positive change as it would cut off large swaths of the global community from a UN system which still connects, still convenes, still calls attention to looming threats and policy options — and often with considerable skill. But the threat of exile looms, primarily from constituencies who feel that they can no longer believe in us or in the words we speak, who display an eroded confidence in our ability to distinguish between what can be counted and what counts, to prioritize those responses that truly matter to human and planetary well-being.

In this regard, I worry most about any potential erosion among the youth, this large and diverse generation trying to organize their lives and dream their dreams under clouds of pandemic, climate change, weapons proliferation, and massive debt. Despite all the outreach the UN does to young people, do they –will they — find the UN sufficiently responsive, sufficiently committed to their future, sufficiently savvy on matters from technology access to policy inclusion? Will they find value in our answers to compelling crises let alone consent to at least some of the questions we are actually willing to ask? Will they find in their interactions with us evidence that the world is good and beautiful, and will they continue to feel that it is worth their time and energy to preserve that beauty and extend that goodness?

On this the jury is out. Among the formal events on the UN’s calendar this week was a side discussion, organized by the Youth4Disarmament initiative of the UN’s Office for Disarmament Affairs, which brought together diverse young people — including several of our colleagues — to examine that elusive “what if,” their dreams of a world that is fit for the aspirations and well-being of both this large generation and those who will come after. What if nuclear weapons were abolished? What if emissions could be brought firmly under control? What if the discrimination and incitement to violence highlighted by France and others this week could finally be stricken from the human register? What if our grand institutions — so often stuck in the mud of their own cultures and working methods — could be made to truly breathe again, breathe the air enveloping a human race which finally understands that care for the planet and solidarity with each other are practices, not premises?

At this “what if” event, the invitations to youth were sincere: to share stories from diverse contexts that need to be heard even if those stories (like many of my own) wouldn’t always pass the muster of fact-checkers; to envision (as High Representative Nakamitsu invited) what the world might actually look like if we spent less on weapons and more on people; to imagine as well (as Costa Rica’s Ambassador Chan advocated) a world “where “people no longer felt compelled to take up weapons in the first place,” where we were able to educate every child, where climate change impacts could be mitigated and even reversed? Can we envisage and then build a world where (as Pakistan noted) “power rivalries are disavowed,” where impacts from human selfishness are not a foregone conclusion, where injustices and atrocity crimes are no longer in mortal danger of endless repetition?

As the older speakers at this event noted, the policy and legal groundwork has been laid for such aspirations, including at the UN. But many traps have already been set in the form of crises we should have seen coming, crises that we failed to prevent in the first instance or forthrightly addressed in the second. There is still much for us to revise in our institutions and in ourselves, much in our own, sometimes “fraudulent” versions of personal and cultural history to clarify and confess, much in the stories of young people — especially those compelling “what ifs” — that can guide and inspire their practice but that must be better honored by the rest of us if they are ever to achieve their full flowering.

For better and worse, prospects for a more caring, trustworthy and visionary governance are still in old and worn hands like my own. We who are attached to such hands must undertake the revisions that history and circumstances now demand of us, revisions to our institutions and to ourselves, as we seek to deposit data and dreams into the anxious, younger hands of others.

Tags: climate change, revisions, United Nations, youth

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Planting Season: Young Advocates as Seeds of Peace, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Jan

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. Dinos Christianopoulos

It’s senseless to disarm the hands, if the heart remains armed. Bangambiki Habyarimana

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. E.B. White

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller

If things don’t work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again! Sarah Dessen

Art cannot change events. But it can change people. Leonard Bernstein

In some ways, the United Nations represents the epitome of an “if at first you don’t succeed” institution. Important discussions on emerging global issues occur long before resolutions are tabled and adopted. And many adopted UN resolutions appear in similar form, year after year, in the hope that additional states will “get the message,” on matters from capital punishment abolition to ensuring greater protection for journalists, “getting” indicated not only by support for the resolutions themselves but for the policy change at national level that the resolution seeks to promote.

And its not only with respect to UN resolutions, these carefully negotiated documents by diplomats trying to navigate between instructions from capital and the compromises needed to move policy priorities from possible to actual. In the realm of peace and security where we invest much of our attentions, change can be painfully – even deliberately slow, in part because of a lack of consensus regarding the direction that change should take, whose interests are served, how the consequences of change should be managed. This leads to some severe policy bottlenecks, such as with respect to Syria and Yemen as well as some stunning ironies such as this week when officials in the city of Bangui, Central African Republic were forced to declare a state of emergency just one day after the Security Council met to consider how best to confront armed groups determined to undermine and even reverse recent presidential election results.

Within the domain of weapons and weapons systems, there is also ample room for frustration with occasional if welcome, bursts of sanity in the form of resolutions and treaties which promise, albeit with significant caveats, to regulate or even prohibit altogether the weapons that continue to threaten human communities, even human civilization. These include weapons locked in silos or placed on submarines, weapons trafficked across borders or carelessly allowed to leak from government control into a vast illicit market, weapons placed in outer space under “dual use” cover, weapons designed to explode primarily in heavily populated areas; weapons with new “bells and whistles” manufactured at still-staggering rates and shipped off to states with dubious human rights records or without much of a clue regarding what to do with the weapons – still deadly – that are set to be replaced by newer models.

These are not, for the most part, new issues for the UN nor for the many NGOs gathered around headquarters with a keen interest in promoting a disarmed world. Their determination to find ways to end the threat from nuclear weapons has persevered, a threat which has only grown as the weapons themselves display greater precision and payload and as unresolved global tensions have provided ready (if not convincing) excuses for states seeking to hold on to their weapons stockpiles or even develop their own nuclear capabilities. Some of my closest UN colleagues, have invested a professional lifetime of thought and organizing energy in a valiant effort to solidify the relationship between disarmament and non-proliferation obligations, including obligations under international law, as well as to examine political obstacles to “general and complete disarmament,” and to remind governments and citizens of the overwhelming humanitarian imperative to keep these weapons out of harm’s way until they can be eliminated altogether.

I also have a long history with disarmament obligations and issues, which I won’t unpack here, except to say that nuclear weapons issues proved to be a “gateway” concern for me, one which I have never renounced or discarded but one which has made space for other “human security” concerns to which we are now linked by a bevy of excellent institutional partners who focus on torture and climate change, racial discrimination and biodiversity loss, atrocity crimes and incarcerated children, terrorism and corrupt governance, unsustainable cities and food insecurity. While making it clear that we endorse the specific concern of our nuclear weapons partners – that human security priorities must not be reconstituted as security “conditionalities” which excuse neglect for nuclear disarmament obligations – it remains our view that security linkages can lead in the best of circumstances to mutual security investments that can, among its other benefits, strengthen support for the disarmament we all want and need.

While more and more of my older disarmament friends and colleagues have moved towards a more nuanced security framework, especially with regard to gender, race and climate, our younger colleagues have embraced such linkages as a matter of course. This week’s entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) (for the treaty in multiple languages, click here: Ch_XXVI_9.pdf (un.org)) bears the broad policy and preambular concerns of several progressive states (such as Mexico, Austria and Costa Rica) along with youthful leadership from around the world who together brought the treaty into existence While holding on to the hope that the core promise of the TPNW – that nuclear weapons rendered “illegal” by this treaty will lead to concrete disarmament measures – we nevertheless applaud the degree to which the treaty’s prohibitions and positive obligations for ratifying states are certain to “shrink the space” for the influence of nuclear weapons, impeding security cooperation with nuclear-armed states in part through the rejection of longstanding “nuclear umbrellas” and related security arrangements.

The TPNW should perhaps be understood more as a stage than a solution, but it is a hopeful and welcome stage, one which seems to have unleashed some positive and inter-linked initiatives by young advocates who are well-suited to organize online and across barriers of identify and culture in this age of COVID. One initiative close to home is “Reversing the Trend,” which was also launched this week by a diverse group of young advocates with support from the diplomatic missions of Costa Rica, Kazakhstan and Kiribati. In a virtually seamless manner, the leaders of this initiative, including our office-mates Christian Ciobanu and Danielle Samler, have fashioned a format for discussion and advocacy that brings together youth from diverse cultural backgrounds but also links the nuclear weapons issue to other powerful impediments to their future (climate change and racial discrimination among them). They have also opened a space for creative contributions (fashion design and visual art so far) that not only help to contextualize nuclear weapons threats but allow young people to blend policy leadership and artistic expression as they navigate the personal, structural and ideological minefields that older folks like me have not done enough to clear.

These youthful advocates are skillful, articulate and determined. They know that their very future is on the line as pandemic variants continue to spread, as ice caps continue to melt, and as weapons continue to modernize and find new hiding places. They also know that tinkering with the existing frameworks is not likely to be good enough; they recognize that they must locate a healthier balance between “changing the world and enjoying the world;” and they are determined that efforts to “bury” their ideas and influences are destined to fail as these young people represent, indeed, the seeds of future well-being for themselves and so many others.

And the diplomats are paying attention. For instance, Ambassador Maritza Chan of Costa Rica, a longtime champion of the TPNW and advocate for “human security” lenses on contemporary threats, was one of those welcoming the Reverse the Trend launch. She reminded the largely youthful audience that security is ultimately “not based on military competition but on human cooperation,” that multilateralism is key to progress on peace, and that diverse voices worldwide, including a new generation of experts on human security and the rule of law, remain dedicated to ending what she described as a “perverse” arms race. For his part, the Kiribati Ambassador was more cautious, noting the longstanding and stubborn resistance to disarmament by the nuclear possessing states but also reassuring the audience that, in part due to the TPNW, nuclear weapons threats can still be overcome under UN auspices.

My own hope for initiatives like Reverse the Trend is that they can help examine and assess, together with the rest of us, which models of governance can be fixed and which need to be replaced; which skills and voices must get closer to the center of discussions about the “world we want” and not just the world that seems most likely ; which threats most impact their future and how can such threats be robustly identified and then addressed in tandem; which “seeds” these young people are keen to plant, may already have planted, and how we can all do more to help nurture a successful crop; which global problems are most likely to resist resolution and how can we best inspire perseverance across generations until they are finally sorted.

And perhaps we could add to that a bit of youthful guidance regarding a task that, certainly for my generation, has proven even more daunting, even more elusive than forging resolutions or negotiating limits on weapons and weapons systems: the task of disarming our own hearts as we seek to disarm the world.

Tags: disarmament, United Nations, youth

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Altar Call: Holding Ourselves Answerable for Her Future, Dr. Robert Zuber

13 Sep

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present. Albert Camus

It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. H.G. Wells

Deep under our feet the Earth holds its molten breath, while the bones of countless generations watch us and wait. Isaac Marion

There had to be another way and I owed it to my daughter to find it. Adrienne Brodeur

The trees waited for each generation to be born, to keep them company as they watched over us from high above. Anthony Harkins

Love is the only future God offers. Victor Hugo

When I see a photo like the one above, I wonder what is going through that girl’s mind. A solitary youth with her sign, making a statement to political leadership and their followers, some of whom find such pleadings annoying at best and, if rumblings from the UK and other countries this week are any indication, a potentially criminal offense at worst.

That she could sit by herself on a bench calling attention to a threatened future to which those who pull the levers of economic and political power seem often indifferent speaks both to her power and likely also to her frustration. Girls increasingly have a voice now and we can only celebrate that epiphany and wish for more of the same. And yet we know that having a voice is not quite the same as moving the pile, and while we recognize that there are monstrous piles yet waiting to be moved, we seem to have depleted much of our reserve of energy, commitment, compassion and wisdom needed to find that “other way,” a way that can inspire sufficient confidence in the girl on the bench such that she can prepare more for her future and despair less of it.

Her generation is certainly not the first to grow up in unsettled times, but is perhaps the first to grow up amidst an avalanche of jarring, even dystopian images: of a pandemic which has robbed children of grandparents and classrooms, stoking both physical distance and social suspicion; of fires that have consumed vast groves of trees that can no longer “watch over them” and “keep them company” as they sojourn through this life; of adults who should know better choosing to shed dialogue for conflict, reconciliation for enmity, truth-telling for lies and conspiracies.

It is a long and discouraging list of threats in part from climate and weapons but also emanating from our diminished selves; of our cautious engagement with issues to which we have largely acclimated ourselves but which must seem overwhelming to many young people; of the ways we continue to deceive ourselves regarding the depth of our “sacrifices” to make the world a safer, healthier place for those already poised to follow.

Indeed, hardly a day goes by when we have not been diminished yet again by some discouraging falsehood or other: manipulating COVID data, the stock market and election preparations to mask our health, economic and democratic failings; hyping the “virtues” of plastic by tying it to false promises about its recycling potential; demonizing people and ideas we don’t understand and won’t take the time to understand; indulging a relentless collapsing of general interest around our own private concerns.

Given all this, it must be a bit lonely for that girl on that park bench, now distanced both from classmates and perhaps also from trust in those of us older folks locked in ideological and theological struggles that offer little to her future but compromise much. That “come to Jesus” moment where we older folks must account for the decisions we have made and the consequences those decisions have produced; but also to answer for the anxieties of all those children on all those park benches trying in their own way to alter what appears to be the dire course of their future — that moment of gravity and accountability largely continues to elude us.

While not quite the “moment” we seek, the UN for its part had a pretty good week where children and youth were concerned, highlighted by discussions on the role of youth in peacebuilding and on the nefarious practice of targeting school buildings and educators by (mostly) armed insurgents. An Arria Formula meeting convened by the Dominican Republic highlighted the importance of involving young people directly in policy decisions that could determine in large measure prospects for their own future. One key to this, as suggested by a former UN Youth Advisor in Somalia, is through promotion of inter-generational dialogue, communication that is on a level playing field that can and must involve youth from diverse economic, ethnic, educational and religious backgrounds.

But the most compelling discussions of the week focused on the increasing phenomenon of armed attacks on schools and school facilities perpetrated by those seeking to intimidate students and teachers from pursuing a different path. What Germany rightly deemed “crimes against our future” are being perpetrated, often with impunity, by persons whom Niger accused of preferring “ignorance and obscurantism” to learning and truth-telling. UNICEF director Fore reminded the audience that the future will surely require diversely skillful youth and that such skills are in danger of being lost in large measure if we cannot stem the multiple impediments of COVID infections, poverty, the digital divide and school attacks.

While the UN week featured a (Security Council) presidential statement and a welcome affirmation of the value of the Safe Schools Declaration (click here), it also featured a bit of partisan bickering and limited practical measures (what Niger as Council president referred to as “rehabilitation and reconstruction” projects) that fell a bit short of what the President of the General Assembly highlighted in one of his final statements in that office – that at the end of the day “peaceful coexistence remains as the foundation for sustainable development and climate action.”

Such essential co-existence remains elusive at best. We adults continue to stoke the flames of misunderstanding and mistrust, flames burning as intensely as those now raging in the woods of the western US. We continue to spin the truth, telling only the parts that serve our interests and not the parts that also call us to account. We continue to act like we know what we’re doing, and then refuse to apologize (or amend our ways) when the limits of our collective wisdom have clearly been exposed.

The girl on the bench sees all of this. They all do.

As many of you recognize, this past Friday was the 19^th anniversary of the infamous 9/11 attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers in New York. This is surely a day to remember, especially the sacrifices of First Responders whose valiant attempts to free persons trapped in the collapsing towers cost many of them their own lives.

But 9/11 is also a day to assess. What has changed/not changed over 19 long years? Are we any closer to reconciliation among nations and peoples? Have our preparations for armed conflict been any less active (or expensive)? Are today’s children any more likely to inherit a sustainable, peaceful planet in which it is safe to go to school and then share with the world what they have learned there? Have we done anything close what we could be doing in this pivotal moment to stop the fires decimating our forests, the melting of our ice caps, the biological carnage associated with yet another cycle of preventable extinction, the bombs that intimidate normal life and learning? Have we done enough to swap out deception and hatred for honesty and love? Have we given enough of ourselves to the present to locate the “other way” that can ensure a safer, healthier future?

It turns out that, even in our centers of global policy, we have much to account for regarding our values, our choices and our actions. The future for the girl on the bench depends on such an awakening.

Tags: conflict, future, schools, youth

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Gold Rush: Ending the Confinement of Youth Voices, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 May

eni

It’s going to take some time, this time. Karen Carpenter/Carole King

What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability. Charles Bukowski

This is the age you are broken or turned into gold. Antonia Michaelis

Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten. Rob Sheffield

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. Hermann Hesse

The adult mind can lie with untroubled conscience and a gay composure, but in those days even a small deception scoured the tongue, lashing one against the stake itself. Daphne du Maurier

This past Friday I was privileged to log in to a presentation by students of Otis College of Art and Design as part of a class directed by Gina Valona and focused on creating conditions for “inclusive governance” and “environmental stewardship” through their organization T.I.A. — Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable government for all.

Her coaching of these young people has clearly been superb, and the results were stunning. Despite the COVID-inspired disruptions, limitations and discouragements, these students created a series of hopeful projects which, if they could be funded and duly implemented, would better connect the people of Los Angeles with their natural and built environments, helping them make healthier decisions, connect more effectively with government officials, and engage a much wider array of stakeholders in the longer-term, post-COVID work of sustainability. From mobile curriculum and “Green Mapping” to design for a TIA Mascot and a Los Angeles Environmental Center, these young voices were determined to be recognized amidst the gloom of an isolating, stealth virus and an economy on the brink.

This isn’t the only youth-energized project that we come across. We have extraordinary young people passing through our joint office regularly, many working on initiatives dedicated to lifting the veil of weapons-related policies that have been allowed to continue threatening entire societies. And we have written previously about the (#1MillionTrees2020) eco-leadership of Burundi’s Emmanuel Niyoyabikoze which actually attracts more attention on our twitter feed than any other initiative we cover.

As we surely recognize, there is plenty more where that came from: Caring for the planet and its diverse communities. Living for others.

From our vantage point there are many good reasons to lend whatever coaching and publicity we can to youth initiatives. We recognize the need for our political and social leadership to get younger, more diverse, more attentive to the values and aspirations of generations now and those to come, more sensitive to the unique constellation of obstacles and limitations – from pandemics to climate threats – that force too many young people to sit on their often-legitimate impatience rather than directing their abundant energy to more personally satisfying and socially productive ends.

From those whose early lives have been dominated by the aspirations of schooling to the even greater number of young people seeking more immediate employment opportunities to keep their families fed and safe, we struggle still to make space for young people, to exit the ride we’ve been on for some time and let the next group of younger ticket holders take their seats. Their collective clock is ticking and too many of us seem deaf to its ominous warnings, more akin to a time-bomb than a travel alarm.

The UN struggles at times to hear as well, as do many of the governments which form its membership. But this past Monday, under the leadership of April’s president Dominican Republic, the Security Council revisited its responsibilities to promote and ensure participation through its Youth, Peace and Security agenda (Resolution 2250). Among the more compelling statements was the one delivered by UN Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanayake who questioned whether governments are up to the challenge of creating a viable, multi-generational, change framework. As Belgium made clear, rightly in our view, if the lives of young people are to bear the scars of climate change and pandemics, hate speech and economic upheaval, shouldn’t they also be consulted?

The Youth Envoy made additional reference to the frequent media images of “irresponsible youth” while lamenting what she sees as the less frequent images of young people renouncing violence and caring for the needs of their communities. Her statement points to one of the problems with discussions of this sort, the endless struggling over stereotypical imaging that mis-defines entire groups of people, indeed in this instance, entire generations; theirs of course, but my own and others as well.

The larger truth is that efforts of young people to find their voice, to find their place, to move past the obstacles that often seem both formidable and endless – these are often very personal, even intimate struggles embodying dimensions both individual and generational. They are struggles now buffeted by pandemic distancing and economic uncertainty, but also by gross inequalities that represent a large and hostile foot on the necks of millions of young people who will never be invited to policy discussions or consulted about the path forward in this seemingly impediment rich and opportunity poor world. If this is indeed the stage of life, as it was for me long ago, where we are either “broken or turned into gold,” we have for too long accepted “broken” as the inevitable outcome for so many young people, ensuring that their often-considerable idealism and rightful sensitivity to the hypocrisy of we older folks who purport to “lead” them will be forever buried under a virtual avalanche of survival-related concerns.

At the UN on Monday, one of the most successful statements was delivered by the Ambassador of Niger, during which he pointed to the remarkable “optimism” expressed by many youth in his youngest of the world’s continents despite impacts on their young lives from violence, disease and unemployment. I have been in many parts of this “youngest continent” and have seen the talent taking shape in many forms and at many levels. I beheld as well the frustrations related to forms of economics and governance that are not making sufficient space for youth nor are they doing enough to nurture the skills and aspirations of young people, including those for whom displacement remains as likely a prospect as a university degree. How long will governments interpret youth advocacy and energy as a threat rather than an engine of social renewal? How long can this youth optimism possibly survive when the “gold” they might well become is so often ignored or dismissed by their elders?

It is surely a “weary” time for many of the world’s young people, a time when levels of trust in older folks are often lower even than levels of opportunity. One of the blessings of youth has been, and surely remains, its varying but considerable levels of resilience, especially to disappointment. We have all made messes in our lives, fallen out of line, suffered pain and heartbreak, sometimes self-inflicted. Many of us have made decisions about labor and love that resulted in less than we imagined but from which we were able to move on rather deftly, to learn what we could and head out again on an uncertain, unpaved path. Many of us have boxed ourselves into corners but managed to escape their confinement and resolved never to find ourselves in such a place again.

But this time seems different, different of course from what people like me experienced long ago, but also different in terms of what is required of the youth of today. In this age of viral loads and climate meltdown, of mountains of debt and economies too strained to service them, the message to youth too often is that we expect them to remain patient while keeping their lives on hold, restraining their tongues, deferring their dreams, and socially isolating in confined spaces. It makes me sadder than I can communicate to think of so many energetic young people stuck in a starting gate with no clear sense of when the horses on which they are sitting will be released.

I know that the release will come. The obstacles will shift. The mean-spirits that dominate our political discourse will give way to kinder, more honest voices. The economic addictions that have imperiled the planet will evolve into a softer consumption. And the recognition will grow that young people are neither saviors nor narcissists, but people of varying portions of optimism, skill and energy who are often quite able and willing to help us all make the transitions we in our socially-distanced, stay-in-place realities are now so desperate to make.

But sadly, much of that is unlikely to happen as soon as it should. The old habits and fresh challenges of the moment seem much too daunting. We must all keep working at ending the confinement of youth voices, youth potential; but also warning them honestly.

It’s going to take some time, this time.

Tags: sustainable development, youth

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Forwarding Address: Enabling Escape from Desolate Places, Dr. Robert Zuber

16 Feb

Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch to lay him down and die. Charles Dickens

The things that currently keep us busy and occupy most of our time do not necessarily give us purpose or leave a legacy. Terence Lester

A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, “Get a boat!” Daniel Quinn

What we fail to realize is that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place. Mike Yankoski

One of the great blessings of this job is the openings it is constantly creating for us to connect with people making hopeful change in diverse community contexts, from sustainable agriculture to art that inspires peacemaking. Indeed, it is a priority of ours to maintain such connections with projects that correspond to each of the many issues we monitor and weigh in on at the United Nations. The point of this is simple – to foster engagements with people and issues as they play out beyond the policy bubble in which we spend most of our time. This constitutes a “reality check” of sorts for us. If the people doing good work in these diverse contexts don’t feel connected to this policy space, don’t feel inspired or challenged by what goes on here, don’t care much for what we and others attempt to do here, then this is a huge problem for us, a problem of basic connectivity that we have pledged to address and don’t always address well enough.

In this context, one of our most cherished connections is with the Institute for Leadership & Entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech University where, thanks to the encouragement of Dr. Robert Thomas, I am privileged to speak to students of business and engineering at least twice a year. The Institute houses many interesting and inspirational initiatives including a favorite of mine – models of “servant leadership” that can re-calibrate the way businesses (and other institutions) are organized, helping them to become less bureaucratic and more “horizontal” in the ways in which employees and their ideas are regarded, supported, even cherished.

At some level, this would appear to be odd connection for Global Action — an NGO that can barely meet its basic expenses — addressing students who can easily be compensated more in their first year of employment than I have ever been compensated in any year of employment. And yet there is synergy evident here, a welcome desire among many of the young people to make the skills they have developed serve more than a personal interest, to have a greater outcome on the state of the world and their own communities than the size of their homes and bank balances — to find a purpose as well as a career.

This is never an easy conversation for even the most issue-enthusiastic students, who often have their social aspirations tempered by parental expectations and ever-ubiquitous loan payments. Moreover, with regard to the UN buildings in which we attempt to do our own work, they exhibit both intrigue and skepticism. They are often cautiously interested in what takes place at the center of global governance but they primarily seek connections with problems a bit closer to home, problems for which their skills and aptitudes are both needed and well suited, problems which present themselves in direct ways that can sustain the interest of students and their peers, raising the hope that they might actually — someday, somehow — be resolved once and for all.

During these lecture sessions, I generally resist telling them too much about what goes on at the UN. It would be too easy to dwell on global problems that we try in our own modest way to address every day – from climate change and human displacement to weapons of mass destruction and the Middle East – but about which the students can currently do little. It might be interesting to unpack the situation in NE Syria, cyber-threats to peace and security, or the US “deal of the century” on Israel and Palestine that has generated far more skepticism than support inside the UN, but it might also be a distraction from what these skillful students seem to be looking for – pathways to their own participation that can result in meaningful, tangible change.

One possible pathway to making a more sustainable world has been a focus theme this week of the UN’s Commission for Social Development — Affordable housing and social protection systems for all to address homelessness. As many of you already recognize, housing is an issue that is fundamental to meeting our responsibilities to the Sustainable Development Goals, especially to those left “furthest behind.” It is also an issue with both local and global implications that presents abundant opportunities for practical applications of kindness and justice. From the people lining the streets of the Tenderloin district of San Francisco to people relegated to tent cities and makeshift shelters from Tripoli to Cox’s Bazar, the vast (and growing) numbers of people who have been shut out of a resource that most of us cannot imagine ourselves without should surely be a matter of our most sustained concern.

That more of us cannot find in ourselves the stamina and kindness needed to engage these “shut out” persons and others who now find themselves in “desolate places” is in part an indictment of our compromised capacity for practical compassion. But it also reflects our diminished sense of confidence that we possess the emotional and worldly skills to make deep, meaningful connections and contribute to real relief for those who have literally been “uprooted” by conflict or climate change, by abuses of rights and threats of further abuse, by sudden changes to marital or employment status, or by other personal circumstances often beyond their control. This is challenging work, plain and simple, and it is easy to delude ourselves regarding our fitness to engage it.

And impediments to competence are diverse. While at the Institute earlier this month, I read one of the student groups a quote from the ever-thoughtful Alison Taylor. Commenting on the current ethical lapses of the business community, she highlights the “disconnects” that exist as corporations brand and “manage their perimeters” as a way of keeping the core of their operations largely intact. Taylor highlights the sometimes-vast hypocrisy of policies that, for instance, tout environmental commitments “while funding trade associations that lobby against climate change efforts” or employing contractors who work without either healthcare coverage or a livable wage.

These nefarious gaps between “rhetoric and action,” these efforts to defend the perimeter as a strategy to keep from having to change our “core ways” are not news to Institute students nor are they confined to corporate interests. Indeed, it is getting harder and harder for any of us to believe that there is substance underpinning the rhetorical flourishes we encounter, whether personal or institutional. But we must find a way past this if we are to sustain the change that we need and that a new generation of students seeks to impact. We must commit harder to establish our credibility at core level while we find pathways to compassion and kindness and the application of skills that can turn empathy for those hanging on amidst exposed and vulnerable conditions into housing (and related) needs solved.

The issue of housing and homelessness in all its dimensions is one that should surely motivate more of our concern and interest. It is, thankfully, an issue that seems well-suited to the skills sets of many of the young people who cross our path. However, like many issues of this sort, response to the of a growing legion of dispossessed is an affair of the heart as much as the head, a heart of compassion and attentiveness to the staggering, existential differences that separate the conditions and life options of those with a stable home and those without one.

For virtually all of my adult years, I have been blessed with a secure apartment, functional appliances, heat (more or less) in the winter, a hot water shower, and an address where people have been able to reach me (and my guest room) reliably over several decades. The life that I live, the commitments we make, the sometimes dubious mental health that I enjoy, the people who honor the work we do with their words and contributions, all this would be virtually inconceivable lacking these basic assurances.

Around the corner, around the world, such assurances are, indeed, woefully lacking. For those in policy but also for younger voices seeking a greater, compassion-based purpose in an often-hurting world, we invite you to invest more in securing the stable dwellings for others that we so utterly rely on for ourselves.

Tags: corporate ethics, homelessness, Social Development, youth

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Our Time: Leveraging a More Sustainable Unknown, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 Feb

Wilderness

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. Jane Addams

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground. Frederick Douglass

Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored? Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

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

I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again. Sojourner Truth

In principle, therefore, the more dizzyingly diverse the images that are propagated, the more empowered we will be as a society. Patricia J. Williams

As January in New York drew to a (blessed) close, and despite rumblings regarding the spread of the coronavirus, a massive Caribbean earthquake, and the launch of a Mideast “peace plan” more likely to cause than resolve regional violence, we had to acknowledge that this has been a good week for our tiny organization. We welcomed new interns and re-welcomed older ones; we have fresh evidence that our writing and advocacy (even our media work) is helping people in various global settings find their footing; and we have celebrated the formation of new partnerships with persons and organizations earning newly-enhanced status at the UN and with a demonstrated ability to open doors to policy and service that we could never open on our own.

The week for us was bracketed by a long interview with Global Connections Television on Monday and a Friday evening reception for younger advocates in our small, shared 49^th Street office. In between, there were numerous UN meetings on issues from the unresolved security threats plaguing Libya and the Central African Republic to discussions on appropriate measure for countering terrorist threats as well as how best to integrate our collective commitments to sustainable development and peacebuilding.

As is typical for UN conversations of this sort, the discourse in most of these conference rooms was earnest but not particularly urgent, competent but not particularly determined. Those of us who have had some time at the policy controls have presided over a period of significant successes but have also not done enough to reverse the deficits of trust that continue to plague multilateralism. We who speak with increasingly frequency (as do current Security Council members such as the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) about the need to incorporate more youth voices into global policy continue to experience discomfort when the hands of youth reach out to share the steering wheel, or when young people wave their metaphorical tickets impatiently (often anxiously) in the hope that we older folks will recognize that we’ve used our own privilege to stay on the ride longer than the rules permit, that it is time to make the seats available for a fresher set of “paying customers.”

I get the sense that we who have been in this “business” (perhaps too) long sometimes forget what it is like to face an uncertain future, to prepare to jump into an unknown that is one part scary, one part exhilarating, regarding which younger persons know (as we once knew) that at some level we are simply unprepared to manage (let alone control) what comes next. Will we experience the start a new war whose outcomes and consequences we can’t handle? Will we be able to adjust to what are now virtually irreversible climate threats? Will we have the strength of character to welcome the increasing number of displaced who are likely to show up on our shifting shores? Do we have what it takes to ensure that “the good we secure for ourselves” can be made available to others? Can we, as Mexico and Ireland suggested this week in different UN meeting rooms, create viable action plans on peace and sustainable development to supplement what is often mere “thinking and believing” on our part?

The young people standing in line waiting for us older folks to get off the ride can’t escape the dizzying heights and unsettling tremors that they are set to experience. That so many of our younger colleagues are still prepared to have their tickets punched for this uncertain journey is both laudable and gratifying. As we all shared together on Friday evening, I was reminded of a favorite song, “This is Our Time” by WILD, a tune about finding the light that shines somewhere up ahead in the “open wide,” about running straight into the unknown instead of holding back – or stepping out of line altogether. If you’ve only heard snippets of this song as background for an automobile commercial on US television, I invite you to have a listen. In its entirety, it is a lovely reminder of the courage that life requires, now more than ever, the courage to face an “open wide” that seems as likely to swallow young people whole as to set the table for their own great adventure, the courage that we older folks have largely domesticated in ourselves and too-often sought to domesticate in those who will follow.

But as we cautiously prepare to share the controls and ultimately relinquish them altogether, we still have work to do, work to make the “wilderness” of life a bit more predictable, a bit more fair; to open up more space for innovative thinking and determined action by a greater range of stakeholders; even to enable policy relationships that can refresh the whole of the created order and not merely one or more of its constituent parts; policy to help ensure that the unknown to which young people are destined can still yield forests instead of brownfields, gardens instead of mine fields.

In that vein, earlier this week I was honored to help a friend prepare a talk to be given on Monday focused on the human rights dimensions of sustainable development. This linkage might seem abstract to some, but as is recognized in policy discussions from counter-terror and peacebuilding to disaster risk reduction and food security, a human rights lens is essential to ensuring that the “promise” of sustainable development results in more — much more — than development alone. Indeed, we recognize that the sustainability of any development is clearly threatened where social and economic inequalities remain rampant; where journalists and civil society leaders face harassment and arbitrary arrest for doing their jobs; where governments feel free to divert public resources from common to restrictive uses; where impunity for abuses fuels lasting trauma and deep despair; where weapons flow like tap water from erstwhile “licit” uses to instilling terror in local populations; where people of modest means in small island states continue to bear the brunt of lifestyle choices made in the richest nations; where children are denied an education — even a childhood — via the decisions of powerful (mostly) men and women in faraway places.

These and related problems are ones to which older folks can (and must) continue to make valuable, even life-saving contributions. And, yes, we can “agitate” for a healthier planet without “clinging to the reigns” or taking up seats on rides that have long needed to be vacated for others. Moreover, we can keep ourselves open to policy and other innovations that pave the way towards solutions to pressing global problems that have largely eluded us in our own time, solutions that demand greater policy integration together with a more “dizzyingly diverse” array of active contributors.

As the first draft of this post was being completed, the bells of nearby Riverside Church were pealing, calling some to put on their clothes and come to church services, but seemingly calling the rest of us within range to make a more hopeful and sustainable future come alive, to commit to “ploughing the ground” that is ours to cultivate such that we may continue to harvest a range of metaphorical”crops” with which to maintain our own lives and share with others.

Such sharing in all its dimensions must be sure touch the lives of our “younger others,” those whose breathless journeys into the “open wide” are only just beginning.

Tags: future, sustainable development, youth

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