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The Norwegians Inspire, the U.N. Not So Much
By Ian Williams
ALL THAT IS NECESSARY for Israel to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Sadly, good men, and women, seem hard to find now when across the world important people frown at Israeli actions but fawn on Israeli leaders. That makes the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee’s accolade to the International Court of Justice’s courageous Navi Pillay stand out, both for defying the international lobby and, by implication, shaming all the mealy-mouthed mainstream politicians.
To compound the Norwegians’ courage, they also defied President Caligula’s clearly expressed, truly deep and sincere yearning for the award. In recognition, I propose the Nobel committee en banc should take over the functions of U.N. Security Council or at least nominate members from it to measure themselves against the team in Oslo.
On this theme, U.N. Human Resources, rather than Human Rights, are in the forefront again. There has always been some privilege in the organization, but the current Secretary General’s lap-dogged self-effacement means that even as a figurehead he is missing. No one can see which course the organization is heading—although there is an increasing suspicion that it is heading for the bottom.
PERSONNEL SHUFFLING
As an example to set against António Guterres’ ritual congratulations for Pillay, consider the limp-wristed response of the U.N. Secretariat to the U.S. war on the International Criminal Court and its staff. The feebleness of the response from other members of the U.N. is manifested in the failure to protect Francesca Albanese, the human rights rapporteur, from U.S. persecution and sanctions and in the connivance of most countries in the ousting of Prosecutor Karim Khan in the face of an obvious pro-Israeli campaign of denigration. It had nothing whatever to do with his managerial behavior and everything to do with his perseverance in investigating the Israeli prime minister.
In the same vein, Ben Davis, a veteran development worker with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was “let go” at the end of September. He was a U.S. citizen, but since his loyalties were to the U.N., he cannot anticipate much diplomatic support from Washington, not least since his offense was joining his staff in support of the Palestinians of Gaza in line with U.N. resolutions and the FAO’s own reports which he helped compile.
FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu, a Chinese apparatchik shoehorned in by Beijing, had said he would not allow officers to “play the game…of human rights,” and he threatened that anyone who did would be “fired” regardless of seniority. He did indeed fire Davis proving that it is possible for senior U.N. officials to keep their word. Oddly enough, the People’s Republic of China itself is strongly in support of the principles of Palestinian rights, even though it is a major trading partner of Israel, but presumably it is human rights in China, such as for the Uighurs, that is the issue here.
INDIFFERENCE TO THE U.N. CHARTER
So on to odious comparisons. While Davis was promptly let go, Yahav Lichner is still on the payroll. Drop Site News revealed that Lichner passed on confidential U.N. documents to Israel while he worked for the U.N. Population Fund. Since 2018 he has been working for the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), but after the allegations surfaced, he was suspended although apparently still on the payroll months after. As part of his duties with UNICEF, it seems he was negotiating with Israeli officials about access for food to Gaza! Did he hear voices in his head? Last we heard, the U.N.’s equivalent of the Keystone Kops, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, has not even opened an investigation. That is probably in part because it might reveal the part played by the Israeli Mission and the U.S.-appointed management at UNICEF in securing his U.N. job.
Yet another specter haunts the U.N.—the impunity and pervasive interference by countries that are indifferent to the U.N. Charter. In the face of President Donald Trump’s inability to hold the respect of friends or foes, impunity allows lesser powers to dress in a little brief authority, confident that no one will call them out.
So Morocco defies 50 years of U.N. resolutions on the Sahara, Argentina makes threatening gestures at the Falklands and Trump threatens Greenland. Iran is condemned when it fires back on countries that facilitated the U.S./Israeli attack on it. And it strongly condemns the Ansar Allah in Yemen for deplorably firing rockets at Saudi Arabia but chose silence in response to the U.S./UK-backed bombings against Ansar Allah-controlled areas of Yemen, which reportedly killed over 20,000. Above all, Israel, which by its own complaints has more U.N. resolutions against it than any and conducts state-backed pogroms across the West Bank while it destroys and pulverizes Gaza, does not suffer any consequences.
AN EVER-SPINELESS SECURITY COUNCIL
The Security Council’s reaction is to deem kosher the “Board of Peace,” which is the equivalent of the League of Nations giving Italy a mandate over Abyssinia. But they do not even bleat when Israel ignores the ceasefires and when it now unabashedly declares that the board cannot build the tiny token garrison post that was to be a token U.N. blue fig leaf over the naked aggression.
This background makes the current election for U.N. Secretary General increasingly surreal. One is almost tempted to shrug and ask, “What does it matter?”
Thanks to the veto wielded by the permanent five members of the Security Council, any successful candidate must excel in the basic test of diplomacy—duplicity and creative mendacity.
To win, a candidate for the World’s Secular Pope needs to demonstrate, whether tacitly or explicitly, an ethical flexibility. To avoid a veto, they must disguise any over-zealous support for internationally accepted principles of the U.N. Charter or International Law. They need to overlook veto-holders’ ethical aberrations while feigning a plausible enthusiasm for the U.N. Charter.
In recent weeks the field has been winnowed down, in part by some dubiously ethical maneuverings from candidates. The field is down to two front-runners so far. Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana has come under attack by traditional U.S. neoliberal conduits precisely for agreeing with U.N. positions. Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan, according to disgruntled staff at U.N. Trade and Development, has used the office she headed as a campaign team even while ostensibly stepping down from her directorship. Her staff noted her silence about Israel, since her absent authority has allowed the agency to continue to sit on its latest unpublished report on the Occupied Territories. This report is certainly not going to reflect to the credit of Israel.
In her fulsome campaign materials, she is taciturn about studying there and her sister is reported to be a West Bank settler, so it does not bode well for approach. Her approach to Saudi Arabia does evince diplomatic skills of the Machiavellian kind. In contrast to her relatively dispassionate statements on Gaza, she launched a full-throated roar about the Ansar Allah raid on Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Airport. But even a stopped clock is right occasionally. It appears that Trump does not like her and is prepared to veto her.
But then he has made noises about Gianni Infantino, president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), presumably in hopes of getting a special U.N. Peace Prize! Across the world, people have great faith in the U.N, but this last year suggests that it is its principles, not its principals, that inspire. n
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is president of the Foreign Press Association of the U.S.He is the author of UNtold: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).
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