Let us not rest on our laurels

I’m on my way back from four days in Barbados, for the ninth and final workshop of the initial series of what is now Regions Refocus 2015. This Caribbean meeting was one of the best in a process bookended by small island states (with the Pacific meeting first, in June) with each meeting full of incredible people, good food, interesting side trips (Machu Picchu, for one), and truly interesting and productive meetings.

Let us not rest on our laurels, intoned the Barbadian representative of the Ministry of Finance during the opening of the regional workshop, upstairs in the cricket hall at University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. (The walls were decorated with the cream of the crop of Barbados’s cricket stars, black and white photographs of “the quintessentially elegant” King so-and-so, descriptors of the players’ prowess at batting and consistently sharp style. The IGDS professors wore ankara dresses and summarily dispatched the crispest moderation I have yet to witness -- informing us that no, the internet does not work, end of discussion.) And following that instruction, the workshop got right to the point. It tackling difficult issues (the narcotics industry, divisions between the women’s rights movement and that for LGBT rights) and innovative ones (a somewhat un-PC descriptor of the Caribbean’s comparative advantage in tourism, the business potential for regional expertise should the US completely legalize marijuana). Scholars and activists from a lot of sectors, ages, and countries came up with concrete proposals and energized plans for the way forward.

At lunch the first day, I had an interesting (and somewhat concerning) conversation with the head of the co-sponsoring institute at the university. I was telling her about our project, about some of the workshops we’ve co-organized and places we’ve gotten to go (nine regional meetings, eight sub-regions, nine months). Rather than asking about the project, she turned to me and said how incredible this must have been for me, and asked how it feels to travel the world learning about the negative effects of American policies on other places. I told her I feel very grateful (for the first part) and consistently disturbed (re: the second), and said I don’t know for sure, but I think I’ll probably end up working on American policy eventually. As an American, you’re only allowed to learn for so long before you have to go do try to something about it, I said. She agreed, with a slight nod of her intricately dreded head.

So, I’m incredibly proud of our project and of having helped to start it, thrilled about where it’s going and where it might take me, and gearing up for a whole lot of work to launch the first phase and continue with the second. But as Chris, our bespectacled taxi driver, responded while being grilled by one of the most impressive and intimidating participants, ideas are the number one thing that’s missing in the leadership of Barbados and the region. Our project is contributing to amending that deficit, at the global level. I’m contributing some of it, especially in the report and in the planning of phase II. But let me not rest on my laurels either, in terms of my own responsibilities and in outlining my career. We may have lay on the beach this trip, but our laptops sat squarely in our laps.

The Barbara Paper Is Finished (Confronting Development, published by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)

I spent most of the past five months working on this paper with Barbara Adams, analyzing the SDGs. It's finally finished, and published! 

In the year 2000, the world’s leaders assembled at the Millennium Summit to affirm their commitment to an ambitious development agenda, later distilled into eight “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs). The summit famously called, among other demands, for concrete and time-bound action to eradicate extreme poverty. Criticized from the outset for being crafted without broad consultation, for an excessive focus on “measurable,” quantitative goals, and for lack of accountability—especially for rich countries—the MDGs’ accomplishments have been dubious and uneven. As the MDGs’ expiration approaches in September 2015, their failure is unavoidable.

With this deadline approaching, the United Nations are presently considering what the world’s development agenda should be post-2015. In September, two distinct UN processes—the Open Working Group and the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing—are expected to converge in the 2015 Global Summit. These processes have been the fulcrums so far of efforts to shape the future agenda. They have benefited from wide-ranging substantive contributions and expertise, and have also generated diverse approaches to participation and engagement.

These parallel processes are taking place in a broader context defined by the Millennium Development Agenda, 2012’s Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, and the Financing for Development conferences. As the MDGs give way to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is necessary to ask, what is it that makes them sustainable? Who are the main actors shaping the goals, and what are their main interests? What role do business interests play, and what opportunities exist for member states, civil society, social movements, and others to shape these goals?

In this study, Barbara Adams and Kathryn Tobin give their take on the post-2015 process and suggest how various actors can intervene to shape these goals. Trained as an economist, Adams has spent decades working in (and writing about) international politics both in and out of the UN, including at the Quaker United Nations Office in New York, the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS), and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Tobin is an independent consultant for several UN-based organizations. She has previously worked for UN-NGLS as well as for NGOs and educational institutions in New York and Uganda.

The Sustainable Development Goals will help shape the global development agenda for years to come. They will affect not only the UN’s Secretariat, funds, and programmes but each member state as well as non-governmental organizations and the private sector around the world. If these processes converge to create an agenda that is universal and effective and which holds governments and others to account—that is to say if the UN lives up to its founding values—then it will reassert itself as the unique multilateral forum for addressing the many conflicts and crises that cannot be resolved by individual nations. Such an accomplishment would have implications not only for development work but across a whole spectrum of issues, and it is not too late for the United Nations—that is the organization, member states, and international civil society—to make it happen.

FULL TEXT (English) 
FULL TEXT (German)

Regions Refocus 2015, a new initiative fostering regional and feminist solidarities toward justice

In 2015 the world’s governments will define a global agenda for sustainable development, amidst global trends of rising inequality, declining economic growth rates, and mega public-private partnerships accelerating the scramble for resources, assets, and markets. In this context, a new initiative housed at the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation – Regions Refocus 2015 – fosters regional and feminist solidarities toward justice.

Please join us on 26 January for the launch of Regions Refocus 2015, at the Ford Foundation Headquarters or online via live webcast at www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus. This event and collaborative publication will present experiences of advancing progressive public policies based on nine regional workshops held over the past nine months in partnership with civil society, government, sub-regional alliances, and the UN. Just as negotiations get underway for the Third Conference on Financing for Development and the Post-2015 Summit, this launch will feature regional perspectives on overcoming global obstacles that impede structural change for justice.

We hope you will be able to join us in New York or online for the launch of Regions Refocus 2015. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter @ReFocus2015 and join the conversation using #ReFocus2015. More information is attached and on our newly launched website, here: www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus

Regions Refocus 2015
Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
Website: www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus
Twitter: @ReFocus2015
Email: team@regionsrefocus.org
Register: https://regions-refocus.eventbrite.com
Share this event on Facebook and Twitter

a little colder

Happy Sunday night, the first beautiful fall Sunday of the year. I spent it huddled in the garage, typing with fingerless gloves and (eventually) drinking one of my brother's Coronas (after I turned the heat on). Still working on my SDGs paper, which is alternately depressing and fascinating and boring and hard. It really needs to be done soon though, both because of the deadline and because, drumroll please,

Full-time work on the DHF project starts tomorrow! We're planing five regional meetings between now and the end of the year, the first in Lima, Peru on financial transparency. (After which I am going to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, yay.) More updates coming soon after we implement our very exciting solid comms plan and website.

I've been thinking a lot about The Future, especially since apparently all long-term planning sends me into spirals of anxiety. (Last night I dreamed I had to move my entire apartment out to the street without assistance, piece by piece, and last week I dreamed my friend C* and I were randomly in charge of two tiny babies at an orphanage. Gasp, adulthood awaits!) Spending a week in Mexico working as rapporteur for the RESURJ retreat was an incredible experience in lots of ways (made friends, drank tequila, spent lunchtimes lying in a beach chair, sent baby turtles on their way into the sea, etc) but mainly admiring this incredible group of women and their shared activist path. I was jealous, I wanted to be one of them, I wanted to have a thing that I care about more than all other work things and to be working towards one singular goal. But I don't see myself as an activist, exactly, just a facilitator with an activist bent. And I'll have to figure out what to do with that in life... I'm sure I'll think of something.

But in the meantime, I am so grateful that this project has become a full-time gig and I can't wait to see what comes of it. And in other exciting news, my sister Becky is getting married! So this large blonde muzungu will have to get myself in a gomesi for her introduction ceremony in Uganda in December. Yay.

Some parting thoughts:

ixtapa sunset (mexico)

and the album/song I can't stop listening to:

An important reminder

Double standards beget cynicism, apathy, corruption and deterioration of democratic life and the very social fabric that holds communities together. Double standards also motivate people to raise their voices, organise, demand transparency and advocate for change. Therein lies our hope.
                            - Roberto Bissio, Prologue, The Social Impact of Globalization in the World (2002)


Reading through old Social Watch reports for the paper I'm writing...



Another observation, this one from 2008:

In October 2008, when the crisis hit the financial institutions and stock markets of the OECD member countries, their governments started a massive and unprecedented programme of government intervention, nationalizing banks, injecting massive subsidies into ailing institutions and re-regulating their financial sectors.
This response sits in direct contrast to the austere neoliberal policies pressed on developing countries by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and developed countries for the past 30 years. Governments in the South, as abundantly documented in this report, have been pushed to liberalize trade barriers, deregulate financial and labour markets, privatize national industries, abolish subsidies, and reduce social and economic spending. The State saw its role severely reduced. 
This double standard is unacceptable. The international financial system, its architecture and its institutions have been completely overwhelmed by the scale of the current financial and economic crisis. The financial system, its architecture and its institutions must be completely rethought. [...]
                                                      - Roberto Bissio, Rights in the Time of Crisis (Introduction) (2008)


And also, we're still waiting for the results of this point, depressingly prescient and as relevant now as in 2008...

The developing countries have been affected by the falling prices of their export commodities, the devaluation of their currencies against the dollar, the rising interest rates on their debts, outflow of foreign investments and lack of credit. If the world is plunging into a global recession the result will be unemployment and with it an erosion of the rights and the standard of living of workers everywhere.  [...]
It is therefore critical that all countries have a say in the process to change the international financial architecture. No equitable and sustainable solutions to transform the current system will come out of gatherings that are rapidly-prepared and exclude many developing countries as well as civil society. Such efforts are in fact more likely to further undermine public trust and confidence, and to further disenfranchise countries that are already opting for regional solutions over a stronger, more coherent and fairer international financial system. [...]
Many difficult issues will have to be addressed and agreed upon in the transition from the current system – which has fostered instability and inequity – towards a just, sustainable and accountable one, which yields benefits for the majority of the world’s people. In such a system human rights must be the starting point and not some distant goal in the future, and a rights-based approach to development (with gender equality, decent work and human rights at its core) must be the main guiding principle. 

www.socialwatch.org 

Living the dream (?)

I'm currently working on my first commissioned article - as in, the first article I will get paid to write, as a product in itself rather than just part of my job or an item on an invoice. It's pretty exciting, in theory... the subject of the article (an overview of the SDGs) less so.
I am so sick of hearing about the SDGs, which is problematic given that the real negotiation process for post-2015 hasn't even started (and won't for months) and I seem to be locked into this scene given that it's where I've spent the most significant part of my career. Not that I'm not grateful - I am, extremely, especially when I think about the people I've met and the things I've learned and the concepts I now understand. I'm grateful for having gotten to go to Rio+20 and then cover the SDGs process, grateful that I'll still be around, probably, to see what happens next and keep doing work with some amazing organizations around this process. This "package" of the UN's work encompasses an incredible amount of interesting issues, and will potentially affect a lot of people's lives.
And hey, I get to write! I've always said all I wanted is to write... so I need to go write the article, dammit, and then draft the interview for the one after that, and pull together some pieces for the paper after that. It's an August full of writing, which is exactly what I want. And of traveling, my other favorite activity. First Uganda, then London (on miles, yay) - to squeeze my godson, see friends, eat Nile perch and posho, buy things I don't need at Banana Boat, spend quality time with my host fam, and sit outside in a plastic chair drinking a Tusker and listening to reggae. Yes please.

squeezing my godson, Aug 2012

squeezing my godson, May 2013

Update

squeezing my godson, August 2014

Mercy Global Action Advocates at the UN for the Right to Water and Sanitation

As part of my ongoing consultancy for the Sisters of Mercy/Mercy International/the Mining Working Group at the UN, I wrote the article below, about the important work on the human right to water and sanitation that my colleagues have led over the past few months. Even though the Open Working Group won't end up including the language we want - including the explicit mention of the right - in its report, we're proud of our efforts and will keep working. 

In accordance with the Sisters’ of Mercy great concern with the future sustainability and availability of water for all, Mercy Global Action has focused much of our recent advocacy work at the UN on the human right to water and sanitation.

Davide Restivo. under CCO

Particularly through convening the Mining Working Group at the UN, we have been advocating for the inclusion of the human right to water and sanitation in the ongoing discussions of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our message to governments, UN officials, and fellow civil society organizations has consistently focused on the need for the SDGs to prioritize – for present and future generations – the human right to water for health, life, food, and culture over other demands on water resources.

Over the past few months, the Mining Working Group has made a series of oral statements in OWG meetings, submitted detailed recommendations for text amendments to subsequent iterations of the OWG draft, and written a series of advocacy letters – to the UN Secretary-General, to the co-chairs and government representatives of the Open Working Group, and to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. We have met with almost 30 governments at the UN, tracked their positions, and targeted several groupings of member states based on the progression of their views on water and sanitation.

Significantly, the MWG and the Blue Planet Project spearheaded a joint letter on the urgent need to protect and promote the human right to water and sanitation in the Sustainable Development Goals. This letter was sent to every UN government on June 13, and has so far been signed by more than 300 civil society organizations all over the world. 

Through Mercy Global Action, Sisters of Mercy and our partners in mission have strongly engaged in this advocacy effort, sending letters to their national governments in anticipation of the OWG meetings and signing on to the global letter writing campaign. This letter is available online, along with the list of its signatures, on the World We Want web platform.

In accordance with our universal approach to analyzing systemic, structural and root causes of poverty and injustice, in our advocacy around the OWG we call for the promotion of a hierarchy of use that places potable water and sanitation, small-scale food production, ecosystem needs and cultural use before large-scale commercial use. We insist that the SDGs must take a people-centered approach, categorically rejecting the commodification and privatization of water. In line with our consistent advocacy for a rights-based approach to natural resource management, we advocate for a human rights-based approach that explicitly names the right to water and sanitation, aligns targets to the human rights framework, and guarantees non-discrimination, accountability, and public participation in decision-making. We insist on a meaningful commitment on the human right to water and sanitation must include indicators that accurately measure safety, affordability, accessibility and acceptability of water and sanitation services from the perspectives of rights holders. Our advocacy is grounded in the experience of Sisters of Mercy and our partners in mission in their work all over the world, fighting against the poisoning and destruction of watersheds from Cajamarca to Patagonia to Newfoundland.

As the Open Working Group nears the end of its mandate and its thirteenth and final session nears, it remains to be seen whether its report will in fact include an explicit mention of the human right to water and sanitation, as we have advocated so strongly for over the past months. Either way, Mercy Global Action will continue our work at the UN setting to hold governments accountable for the commitments they have made. Moreover, we will continue to promote a sustainable and forward-looking global agenda that prioritizes people’s human rights and the protection of the environment in all regions of the world.

Read the original article on the Mercy World website here.

Recap of Pacific Partnerships to Strengthen Gender, Climate Change Response and Sustainable Development

In early June, I got to go to Fiji for a meeting on Pacific Partnerships to Strengthen Gender, Climate Change Response, and Sustainable Development (as I mentioned earlier). The meeting brought together a total of 60 participants - most of them women, most of them from the Pacific, and pretty much all of them amazing - for five days of strategizing, capacity-building, and collective planning towards the SIDS, post-2015, UNFCCC, and relevant regional processes.

here we are

The set-up of the meeting - two days CSOs, then two days CSOs with national women's machineries, followed by a high-level dinner and final day - was the best-designed of any I've been to. All of us staying in the same hotel the whole week, sharing meals, drinks, swims (not to mention the unexpected presence of the entirety of the Fijian national rugby team) built an incredible atmosphere of camaraderie and collectivity. 

me with the amazing rapporteur team - representing GIZ/SPC, Pacific Youth Council, DIVA for Equality, & SPC

The participants worked hard on two outcome documents: a civil society/social movements/Major Groups statement, and a joint outcome agreed by both the civil society and the government representatives present - the first of its kind, with strong language on climate finance, structural issues of trade and the international financial system, and gender equality as a cross-cutting regional priority. 

The statements were presented by participants at the high-level dinner and have already served as advocacy tools in the second SIDS prepcom, held the week before last in New York. 

For more on the meeting, see its Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube page (don't miss my fairly awkward recap of my presentation) and stay tuned - this important intersectional analysis, led by the Pacific itself, will continue to be taken forward in key regional and global fora. 

Pacific Partnerships on Gender, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development (why I am in Fiji)

Tomorrow we start getting ready for Pacific Partnerships on Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development, a five-day regional meeting bringing together civil society, women's machineries, and heads of state. Dag Hammarskjold Foundation is funding it and A and I are supporting it, but she's had to go home on a family thing so it looks like I'm about to learn a whole lot real fast.

I spent the past couple of weeks putting together background documents for the meeting:

- an overview of government positions based on the OWG and the Asia Pacific HLPF regional meeting http://bit.ly/1q4RIm5
- an in-depth document looking at the OWG Zero Draft and Member State positions, as they pertain to our meeting http://bit.ly/1pltggK 
- an in-depth document that provides an overview of the Asia Pacific HLPF regional meeting as it pertains to our meeting http://bit.ly/RUv3gm 

Sharing here in case they're useful! Follow updates from the meeting via its Facebook page, here: https://www.facebook.com/PPGCCSD 

And now off to put aloe on my sun rash and hop into bed! The 16 hour time difference is no joke. 

Fiji is better than Bali; or, I feel really good about my recent life choices

Ni sa bula from Nadi, Fiji, where I have returned after three days in the Yasawa and Mamanuca islands, having pretty much the best possible solo holiday. Snorkeling, beach-lying, beer-drinking, friend-making, sun-sitting, and no wifi - AT ALL - until yesterday evening. I read (and left behind in the Fiji traveler universe, passed along to whoever may appreciate them) both of Teju Cole's books. In my humble opinion, Open City is more profound but Every Day is for the Thief might be a little better.

My backpack died a slow and painful death in LAX. It accompanied me through hell and high water, Ethiopia to Bali to Vermont, and served me well in the 10+ years since I stole it from Manda. Rest well, old friend.

Last night I stayed on the Mamanucas' "party island," Beachcomber, which my guidebook promised me was the "Club Med for the under 35 set on a budget." Not so! It was nearly empty, but blasting great music (including this Nigerian gem, the world is a funny place), and had a pretty awesome (and pretty airless) phone booth where I took a two hour conference call with New York. I was half asleep and sitting barefoot on the floor, watching a cockroach walk by:

Tracking the Open Working Group (It's Target Time)

A few weeks ago, I attended (almost all of) the 11th session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG on SDGs). It was useful for all three of my consulting jobs - I took 102 pages of notes and highlighted them according to a color scheme: one for the Fiji meeting, one for Beirut, one for the Mining Working Group, and one for the privatization of post-2015 work I'll be doing when I get back. Then I did one tracking who said what on civil society - always good to know your allies.

Now that I'm finally finished, I figured I would share this work so that all of these hours of my life served as many purposes as possible. Also, I'll be in Fiji and Beirut for the informals and 12th meeting of the OWG (respectively) so I won't be able to contribute much around the next one... unless I decide to be really insane and watch all the webcast archives when I get back.

To read some (I hope) useful info, which I have already shared with a few civil society colleagues, please click the links below:


Positions of the Group of 77 and China (G77/China) as of OWG11

Positions of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as of OWG11 

Positions of the African Group as of OWG11

Mentions of Civil Society during OWG11


and let me know if you want the whole 100 pages of notes. I'll sell them to the highest bidder. :)

Soundtrack to a rainy work day

It's crunch time! This week, next week, and the following are all I have left before my trip to Fiji and Beirut, which is now confirmed. A + I will be supporting two civil society meetings, on gender and climate change (Pacific) and social protection and tax policy (Arab States). I'll also be doing some traveling (pointers welcome!) - my guidebooks came yesterday and I'm already making lists.

My main task this week, which I've been plugging away at at Regus business lounges (shared workspace = genius idea, with added perk of eligible bachelors, apparently), is to compile background documents for the two meetings based on ongoing sustainable development processes at the UN. It's involved a lot of shuffling documents and copy and paste, so I've been listening to music while I work. My iTunes hasn't been updated in a while, so this has involved lots of flashbacks: Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor (high school), and the Kronos Quartet cover of this one (early college):

Peaceful Societies Reflection and Strategy Meeting - Summary and Thoughts on Next Steps

On April 25, I moderated a Reflection and Strategy Meeting at the conclusion of the Thematic Debate of the President of the General Assembly on "Ensuring Stable and Peaceful Societies." (I already wrote about it a little.)

I've finally finished the summary, which is excerpted below and available in full here.

On Friday, 25 April 2014, at the conclusion of the Thematic Debate of the President of the General Assembly on Ensuring Stable and Peaceful Societies, a Reflection and Strategy Meeting was held at the UN office of the Baha’i International Community. This event was co-convened by Global Action to Prevent War; Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s New York office; the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA); and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Alongside myself as an independent consultant, these groups sought to bring together diverse constituencies, as a starting point for potential collaboration between civil society organizations, diplomats, and UN representatives around a wide range of post-2015 development and security priorities.

The event, drawing a full room of 35-40 participants, began with introductions and reflections from civil society representatives on the Thematic Debate: Rosa Emilia Salamanca González, of Corporación de Investigación y Acción Social y Económica (CIASE) (Colombia), Richard Smith of Action Support Centre/Action for Conflict Transformation (South Africa), and Laura Ribeiro Pereira of Global Partnership to Prevent War and Armed Conflict (GPPAC) (New York). These reflections were followed by a group discussion on priorities and strategies moving forward across the intersections of peace and security and development priorities, through various pieces of the UN apparatus.

From my perspective as moderator, Rosa Emilia touched on two issues that are at the heart of both what was discussed at the Thematic Debate and of the current state of the post-2015 discussions more broadly. The first is the question of the relevance and legitimacy of the UN – how to ensure that lived realities of people on the ground, e.g. civil society, meaningfully influence this global intergovernmental space. The second is how to resolve the tension between the three pillars of the UN (human rights, peace and security, and development) and the three dimensions (economic, social, environmental) of sustainable development. As raised by Ambassador Gert Rosenthal of Guatemala during the Thematic Debate, how can it be that the UN’s other two pillars must somehow be kept separate from its development work – especially at this moment when we are setting a universal and global agenda?

Richard’s remarks pointed to another central tension of the Thematic Debate, in my view: the issue of whether the global sustainable development agenda should address the internal factors related to peaceful societies, more external, international factors, or both. Focus Area 16 of the Working Document of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG on SDGs) is currently framed in terms of national issues of organized crime and violence, in response to Member States’ argument that only the issues of peace and security that directly relate to development should be covered. As Ambassador Antonio Aguiar Patriota of Brazil (also on behalf of Nicaragua) raised so pointedly during the Thematic Debate, this narrow definition of the factors contributing to peaceful societies ignores issues of disarmament, embargoes, sanctions, military spending, and claims of “exceptionalism” by certain countries with regard to international law. While I understand the argument made by Magdy Martinez-Soliman of UNDP during the Thematic Debate that “a line must be drawn” at some point, Ambassador Patriota clearly and effectively reminded us that the broader, international dimensions of peaceful societies can affect development to an even greater extent than the internal ones. It begs the question, at least for civil society organizing around these issues: while Member States or UNDP may indeed have to draw a line, do we? And are we drawing the line where it most needs to be drawn?

Regarding the terminology of “peaceful societies,” I was particularly taken by Ambassador Sofia Mesquita Borges of Timor-Leste, who identified the usefulness of this approach as a non-linear, comprehensive alternative to business-as-usual and a way to capture the connections between development and security through encouraging national institution and capacity building. Timor-Leste has spoken strongly in favor of a “peaceful societies” goal, while Bangladesh and other Member States have pointed out the conundrum of the “chicken and egg” problem: if development and peace are mutually reinforcing, which should be addressed first? In the context of the Open Working Group, these States call for a strict adherence to the mandate of Rio+20 and the three dimensions of sustainable development, while Ambassador Borges used her country as an empirical illustration of the need to simultaneously integrate both concerns, and indicated that post-2015 provides the opportunity to “recalibrate” the global approach to peace and development.

A significant portion of the discussion focused on addressing roadblocks in the SDGs negotiations. The UN representatives who spoke at the Thematic Debate addressed several issues that have come up among Member States, among them potential difficulties in the measurability and universality of a “peaceful societies” goal and how it might negatively affect national sovereignty, including through the imposing of aid conditionalities based on a country’s progress in this area. These are legitimate concerns, the latter in particular, and one thing that the pro-“peaceful societies” countries will have to do is figure out how to assure (the mostly South) countries that this goal would not establish a new “condition” for development assistance. Canada offered that assurance at the Thematic Debate, but so far I haven’t heard the “how” – and if I were a “fragile” or “conflict-affected” Member State, such assurances would not be particularly convincing anyway. That said, it was a bit disheartening to hear the UN reps, particularly Sarah Cliffe, ASG of Civilian Capacities, assuring those present at the Thematic Debate that the inclusion of “peaceful societies” would not be used to signify “external criticism, conditionality, or additional reporting.” I worry that in the desire to reach consensus, the UN as well as the Member States will reach a “lowest common denominator” that reduces this concept to the point where it is no longer meaningful. Figuring out how to make this norm robust without establishing new conditions will be key to ensuring the inclusion of a “peaceful societies” goal, but even more, to ensuring one that has any potential at all of making a difference to communities worldwide.

Read the full summary of the Reflection and Strategy Meeting here. 

only a phase, these dark cafe days

They put up scaffolding on E's and my favorite cafe, and now it's too dark to work there. We tried a different one and it's also dark, but also pretentious and vaguely irritating. I have become an old lady since moving to the suburbs - it's too loud in here!, etc. 

In other news, I have had this song stuck in my head pretty much since leaving my job: 

A Rights-Based Approach to Resource Extraction in the Pursuit of Sustainable Development (my advocacy brief is finished!)

Since literally ten hours after leaving my job, I've been grateful (really, not in the #humblebrag kind of way) to be doing consulting work for the UN office of the Sisters of Mercy/Mercy International and the Mining Working Group at the UN (MWG).

As part of their ongoing work around the UN's Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG on SDGs), the MWG has focused on promoting a human- and environmental-rights-based approach to sustainable development, including natural resource management and particularly extractive industries. In other words, the MWG is trying to convince governments and other players at the UN that sustainable development means focusing on people, and on communities affected by mining and other "development" efforts that prioritize making money over any (health, environmental, security) cost. During the process of figuring out the global "post-2015 sustainable development agenda," the MWG wants to remind the UN of this opportunity to prioritize the lives and realities of people whose involuntary sacrifices allowed a lot of (Northern, corporate, stock-owning) people to get rich... and to inform the UN that no, this is not "development."

The first project I've done for the MWG is an advocacy brief, which I drafted based on a longer report by a key MWG member and which was professionally laid out by a graphic designer (!). It outlines a rights-based approach to resource extraction and highlights some important pieces of the MWG's recent sustainable development-focused work. It's here: http://miningwg.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/advocacy-brief.pdf 

Maria Gunnoe, organizer on Kayford Mountain stripped of coal from top-down. Credit: OVEC (via Mining Working Group)

#peacepost2015

Today was both my first event as an independent consultant and the end of my last tie to my old job. Our Reflection and Strategy Meeting on Peaceful Societies - the culmination of months of planning and what felt like thousands of emails - was held this afternoon, and I am proud of how it turned out. The room was full - with more peace/security/disarmament people than development people! - and the mood was dynamic and honest and thought-provoking. Peggy Kerry (sister to John, NGO liaison at the US Mission) was there, and the DPR of Liberia had the final word. There might be an appetite to continue this convening with an informal listserv and hashtag and, we hope, some follow up meetings. We will see how people react after they've had a chance to process. 

I'm happy I got to work with this pretty amazing group of people and organizations, on an issue I really care about and want to work on, and that the event happened (and I chaired it) even though I lack an "institutional affiliation."

Also got a good piece of advice from an experienced UN media hand: "An independent consultant should always have a business card. You never know who might want to hire you!" So I'll add business-card-making to my weekend plans, along with yoga, running, hiking, and (I hope) lying in the sun.

Photos via Twitter: @Peace_Women & @Shafferan

UN Pride

I was proud to work at the United Nations. Proud when I got offered the job, proud when my first consultant contract got renewed, proud most of all when after 20 months of hard work, I was hired as a staff member. I bought UN bumper stickers (for my non-existent car) and a UN peace mousepad. I sailed through the staff entrance (no more security check-in!) proud and thrilled to work there, to be part of something so important, to dedicate my time to an organization that represented all of my most closely held ideals: universality, peace, diplomacy. I marveled at the many languages and cultures I witnessed and how each block between UN HQ and Grand Central brought me back to a more New York New York, from this hybrid and multiple territory. I loved everything I got to learn – it was like school, I said! – and I showed up on time to events for a full year, clutching my notebook and looking around expectantly, waiting for the work to start.

Within this giant and overwhelming behemoth, as I learned and re-learned its never-ending acronyms, navigated around its renovations and shuttered entrances, there was one tiny piece of it I loved the most: my own organization. A difficult mouthful of a name, a confusing (lack of) mandate, a semi-autonomous structure meant it took me six months to figure out what we did, exactly; staff turnover and two offices separated by the Atlantic Ocean and half of Europe meant my responsibilities were constantly shifting and my title never quite a good descriptor of what my actual job was. We were externally facing, tasked with information and communications, with planning events and building relationships and swimming through different pieces of the UN structure depending on what we were asked or who we tried to help. We were flexible, nearly always about to run out of money, all of us on one or two month contracts, with technology that never wanted to function and mountains of work that would never be finished. I loved it. 

And I was proud of my office, too, proud that we straddled one of the most progressive edges of the UN, that we worked on innovative finance and rights-based development and renewable energy. Proud of myself, that when the New York boss left I kept it afloat, along with a colleague I never agreed with who was only a few years older than I.

Most of all I was proud of the relationships I made, of the people I got to know in and around the UN, whose trust I earned and whom I learned from. My work community included all kinds of people, of all ages and from all corners of the world. They were smart people, good people, complicated people, with egos and dysfunctions just like anywhere else. I was proud to be one of them.