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Richard Gowan The fish does rot from the head down. If you have this level of major power competition, then it is inevitable. The UN is not going to live up to the standards that we imagined.
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Honestly, I think that we are leaving times of make it or break it. (...)
Sanam That's Richard Gowan, UN Director of the International Crisis Group, and Maria Fernanda Espinoza-Garcez, linguist, poet, politician, and diplomat, former Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, and former President of the UN General Assembly, on If You Are In Charge, with me, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. Welcome, everyone. The show is brought to you by the Bijan Ghesar Foundation and my organization, ICANN, where, for 20 years, we've been working with women peacebuilders on stopping wars and violence around the world. Each week, as you know, I talk with other doers and imaginers about the tough issues they tackle. And on that note, we'd love to hear from you about other ideas and topics, so get in touch with us, info at ICANNpeacework.org, or our newsletter on the ICANN website, ICANNpeacework.org. But to today's conversation, it is about the state of the UN and multilateralism and all the good news, bad news, ugly news that we constantly hear about. And the conversation that I wanted to have in two parts, the first part, it's conversations that I had with Richard, who is working for an organization that does analysis of conflict and solutions for conflict resolution, and a lot of advocacy, often bilateral advocacy and advising work in terms of what could be done, so he's very much inside the system and knows how the system works from within. And also Maria Espinoza, who's been a politician, representing a government, but also part of the UN architecture and very active now on issues of sustainability. To hear from both of them what it's like from the inside and what could be done to reform and make the UN relevant to the 21st century. It's an issue that is close to my own heart, because back in the 1990s, when I first started in this field, we had a lot of faith. We thought that if we went to the Security Council and campaigned on a global scale to bring the voices of women from war zones to the Security Council, which was the hardest, you know, the most preeminent international, you know, space for addressing peace and security. We thought that, you know, if we can convince them and they understand the issues and pass a resolution as they did, that it would mean that there would be a filtering down and that it would actually get implemented and change in practice would actually happen. I think that many of us in different fields and sectors have felt frustrated and disappointed by doing the policy work and getting the, you know, having the evidence base, getting the policies passed, getting the resolutions passed, getting countries on board, all in writing, but then seeing an abrogation of responsibility at a political level and effectively a lack of accountability for implementation at the technical or the bureaucratic level for the solutions that have been put forward. So that's the conversation. That's going to be part of the conversation that we're having. Obviously, there'll be elements around also the question of political will and how big powers are playing the game at the UN and pushing their own agendas. Again, for me, very personal, because years ago when I first was researching the topic of preventive diplomacy, I came across a study that showed that the first time the idea of a space for open diplomacy, where countries could sit together and negotiate and also kind of both in terms of preventing conflict, but also trade and other issues, dates back to the 1500s. So it took us from the 1500s to the early 20th century to finally get the United Nations. Millions dead, many, many wars. And finally, we, in 1945, we have this architecture for global peace and security. Obviously, it's been flawed in many ways, but it's the only one we have. And what we see now is that it's almost as if the powerful actors are, you know, taking a baseball bat and whacking it at its knees or at its Achilles heels. And that's something that, you know, affects all of us, probably in ways that most people don't even understand. But it really does affect the smaller countries. And for them, whether they're in Europe or in Latin America or Africa or Asia, the UN space, the multilateral space, is incredibly important. We need to cherish the UN, but we also need to, you know, make sure that it's up to date and doing what it needs to do. And I can't think of two better people to talk about what they've done and what they're doing and what they could be doing if they were in charge. And specifically given many of the calls in the last few years that we need to have a woman as Secretary General. We've never had a female Secretary General of the UN and it's time. And so to have somebody like Maria Espinosa with all of her experience, actually, in this conversation is really a privilege for me as well. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. And on the back of it, I'll be having my regular check-in with Sole and her reality check for us. (.......) Hi, Richard. This is Sanam. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. What mental state are you in and how are you looking at the state of the world right now? (..)
Richard Gowan Well, I am mainly just very, very tired for a range of reasons. But I think I'm tired in a slightly more fundamental, maybe even existential sense, because the last three or four years have been a uniquely hard period to be working on the institution and especially the institution's efforts to manage wars and crises. And this sort of constant sense of crisis, seeing the Security Council regularly deadlock over these crises, (.) seeing the Council get very limited results even when it tries to do something, does take a toll. So I think something has happened to my soul in the last four or five years, and it's not all for the good. (.) I have been following the UN for almost exactly 20 years. I moved to New York in 2005. And it's worth saying that even at that time, the UN and the Security Council, you know, often faced failure. Even in the immediate post-Cold War period, there was Srebrenica, there was Rwanda, there was the Iraq War. But nonetheless, I think that, you know, you could invest some real hope in the institution. You could see that UN mediation and peacekeeping were working in countries like Liberia or Kosovo. And you had a feeling that you were building something up. And now it feels like a lot of what we were trying to help build has crumbled quite badly. I mean, the Security Council keeps on meeting, you know, almost daily. Some people say that it's paralysed. I like to point out that it is not fully paralysed by historical standards. If you go back to the original Cold War in 1959, the Council passed one resolution in an entire year. Even today, for all its problems, the Council is still a lot more active than that. But it is stumbling on the biggest crises that it faces. (..) This is not solely down to the positions of the major powers, but it is ultimately a symptom of a bigger global reality, which is that we have shifted from an era of broad major power cooperation to broad major power competition. And that means that, obviously, you know, you have Russia in the Council using its veto to block criticism of its actions in Ukraine. But it also means that you have China behind the scenes threatening its veto to block any serious UN engagement on Myanmar. And then you have the US absorbing a huge amount of criticism across the UN because it is protecting Israel over its actions in Gaza and the wider Middle East. And the fish does rot from the head down. If you have this level of major power competition, then it is inevitable that however much we talk about reform, however many summits we have, however many reports we write, (.) you know, the UN is not going to live up to the standards that we imagined, whether in the 1990s or at the turn of the century. And one thing that does, you know, continue to give me a little hope in the institution is that for all its faults and for all the widespread sense of gloom around the UN, I continue to meet a lot of diplomats from a lot of different countries, especially smaller and medium-sized countries, who say we have a fundamental existential need for a working multilateral system. It's an institution where it's remarkably easy to exchange ideas. Um, and I think one reason for that is that there are no secrets at the UN. There are spies everywhere. (.)
Sanam Well, you know that there are spies everywhere.
Richard Gowan Um, you know, it's, you know, it comes with the territory.
Sanam Yeah.
Richard Gowan And, uh, I mean, I don't know who they are, but they are. Everyone knows that. And lots of listening devices and so forth. And so everyone is actually surprisingly frank in discussion because there's, there's no point trying to hide anything. And that means that someone like me from the International Crisis Group, I mean, I think a well-respected NGO, but nonetheless an NGO, can go and can talk to, uh, quite senior diplomats now and have a genuinely, genuine, substantive conversation about what their concerns are, where the UN is headed, what their national policies are. In a way that I, I have often found it hard to do in other centres like Washington or Brussels. Um, and that is something I genuinely value about this organisation. And the other thing is, it's very striking. You'll go to dinner with a group of diplomats from completely different regions. And they'll spend a lot of time telling each other that there's a lack of trust, that there is a, you know, that there's a fundamental breakdown of confidence in the UN. And yet they're still, they're still chatting. And they're putting aside the fact that, you know, in the daytime they're arguing fundamentally different positions in the General Assembly or the Security Council.
Sanam It's almost as if when we create something, the minute it's created, it's taken for granted. You know, it's, it's like, I mean, when I started this work again years ago, I remember doing some research and the first, the first time in Western literature, the idea of a space for open diplomacy is kind of presented in a, in some scholarly work. It goes back 500 years and, you know, nations, and it was Christian states should be together and, and, and discuss security and trade. And it took 500 years to get to, you know, and multiple wars. And, of course, the League of Nations and stuff to get us to the UN. (.) But there is nobody alive right now in the world that doesn't remember or lived within the state of, you know, in, in, in the world without the presence of this international peace and security architecture. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's been in most of our lives. And it's like an invisible presence in so many ways, but it seems to be taken for granted.
Richard Gowan And I think what's really striking, you mentioned the League of Nations and about once every three months, some clever person comes to me and says, you know, is the UN going the way of the League of Nations? Is it going, is it going to collapse completely? And my response is, look back to the 1920s and look back to the 1930s. And, you know, one of the reasons the League lost credibility was that lots of countries walked out of it or were thrown out and stayed out. So Nazi Germany left, Italy left, but also countries like Brazil walked out of the League of Nations because they didn't think it was really serving their interests. That was a period where if you didn't like how the main international institution was working, you could just check out. And of course, the US never actually joined the League.
Soleh Yeah.
Richard Gowan By contrast, today, we are in a period of intense geopolitical competition, intense competition between China, Russia and the US. And they all want to stay inside the UN. They all want to actually have a greater say over how the UN is run. China, in particular, has really invested in gaining influence over UN technical agencies. dealing with things like development and agriculture, because they actually see that these bodies serve their global interests. And I think what that tells us is that we have reached a point of globalization where even in a moment of intense competition, no one can really imagine walking out of the UN as countries previously walked out of the League. They know that just to keep international interactions going at any minimum level, you need the UN system.
Sanam And yeah, you and also, I mean, you're raising the another sort of point that those of us who are within these systems know about. But but you take it one step further into the into the broader public and especially younger generations. And sometimes they don't they don't know the extent to which on health issues, on telecom issues, on maritime issues. It's it's genuinely a multilateral kind of architecture that people don't seem to get. Again, we maybe it's we take it for granted or it's just not presented so publicly. (.)
Richard Gowan Well, look, a lot of it's very boring as well. I mean, you know, and should be boring. You know, a lot of international cooperation is dulled by design because it's about facilitating various sorts of cross-border interaction that just need to be kept to the technical level. And the phrase I've been been using for a little bit is this is the Wi-Fi of multilateralism. I mean, we are all so used to having Wi-Fi that we don't notice it. You know, you turn on your phone, you turn on your laptop, you just assume you're going to find the signal when you don't find a signal. It is quite disturbing and quite disruptive. Similarly, you know, most of the time we just assume that the UN technical agencies are going to be there being helpful when that doesn't. For example, when the World Health Organization stumbled in the early days of the COVID pandemic, you suddenly realize it's very difficult to to work without these international organizations. organizations. And so, you know, just as we are used to Wi-Fi, we've got used to a UN system that's much broader and much more active than I think 99% of even policy experts appreciate. Secondly, I think we must keep in mind that there are a lot of countries, smaller countries, poorer countries, at least developed countries that have very limited presences of the UN. But the UN really matters to them. And it is, you know, the one place where they have a voice and a vote.
Sanam Oh, this is real. But what gives you the energy and the sort of sense of humor that you keep you
Richard Gowan maintain? You know, I do remember once being in a UN elevator with a North Korean diplomat who was taking a day marsh up, I guess, to Ban Ki-moon and just watching the poor guy clearly feeling deeply uncomfortable as he as he went up to the 38th floor document in hand. I mean, look, I mean, I would say firstly, I'm a sucker for the UN building and the modernist architecture. I think it's a gorgeous building. And it sort of captures the history of the organization. You do feel like you're stepping back into what the 1950s, 1960s. And I have come to really appreciate that. But actually, what what drives me to stick with the organization is a, you know, ironically, a sense that you don't walk away from an institution because it's going through rough times. You don't give up on a body like the UN just because it's not the 1990s anymore. And it's not achieving all the high, high and utopian goals that were once charted out for it. I mean, I'm a great believer that it's important to stand by institutions you believe in in times of difficulty. The UN is going through a period of great difficulty. policy. But the ethical thing to do is to stick with it and try and make the most of it. And remember that actually, you know, the UN is still pretty much the only agency, (.) the only actor that is on the ground providing assistance in Afghanistan after the Western pull out, for example, to cite a very difficult case that you noted. To remember that UN peacekeepers do still provide really crucial assistance in a lot of weak countries. That's what makes me keep
Sanam going back. If I were to ask you to lift your head and look into the, you know, and imagine that you were now in charge of the system, if you were in charge, um, at the UN, uh, or, or I would say in any of the more powerful states, um, how would you, what would you do to try and make the system more effective, more oriented towards peace and, and, you know, international peace and security, um, or the values of, you know, human rights and so forth? What would you do at this point? What
Richard Gowan would you advise? I think that if I was the next UN secretary general, um, and it's worth saying that we will have a new secretary general in 2027. So just over two years away, my, I think my first priority would be restoring a sense that the UN is a serious and impartial mediator, including as a mediator between the major powers. At the current secretary general, Antonio Guterres is an incredibly smart man. He has launched some important initiatives like the summit of the future. He's opened up UN thinking on things like artificial intelligence, but he is generally agreed not to have had, uh, a lot of traction when it comes to peace and conflict issues. Um, you know, he, he did play a role, uh, over Ukraine early on, um, with the black sea grain initiative, um, getting Ukrainian food onto world markets despite the war. But other than that, he's been marginal on Ukraine. Um, and he's been (.) very clear in condemning the situation in Gaza, but he hasn't had much traction politically, the Israeli Hamas war. And so I think the first task of the next UN secretary general should be to, you know, really be going to some of the big capitals and sort of saying, you can't treat the organization this way. If you want global strategic stability, you need the UN as a mediator, um, as a peacekeeper. And I think we need to sort of restore a stronger sense of the UN as a big player, not just on development, not just on human rights, but also on peace and security. Now I should say, however, that I, uh, I would not want to be secretary general, um, firstly, because it's a very hard job. Um, but secondly, because I think there's a, an absolute demand around the UN, which I a thousand percent support, which is that the next secretary general must be a woman. (...)
Sanam So that was my conversation with Richard Gowen. And as expected, very diplomatically, um, when I asked him what he would do in charge, if he were in charge, Richard, uh, pivoted to say, well, the next, um, uh, SG should be a woman. So on that note, I, my conversation is now with Maria Fernanda Espinoza Garces, who, uh, as I said at the top of the show has an illustrious background as minister of defense and foreign affairs of her country, Ecuador. She was the former president of the general assembly. Um, she's involved with GWL voices. She's the executive director, which is an, it's an NGO dedicated to achieving gender equality in the multilateral system. So I hope you enjoy this part of the conversation as well. (..) Hi, Maria. I'm so happy to have you with me on, if you were in charge, it's season two. And I'm so delighted that we were finally able to fit into your schedule and, and have you for this conversation.
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Sanam, I'm so happy to be with you today. We planned this and, uh, I think that we cannot be in a better, you know, uh, time to, to have this conversation. So delighted to be with you in this, if you were in charge space, which, uh, I follow and I really appreciate all the thinking that goes into this conversation. So wonderful to be here today.
Sanam Well, thank you very much. First of all, as I was kind of thinking about our conversation around the state of the world, the state of our multilateral institutions, the way in which gender equality, women, women leaders, all these things are being attacked. I mean, it feels like a wrecking ball is coming at us. I was, you know, and then I was, of course, thinking this is the conversation I have to have with you of all the people in the world. You have been at the forefront of dealing with this with GWL, right? The Global Women's Leadership Initiative. And you are all actively trying to mobilize support for more women in multilateral spaces. And of course, a woman secretary general. But what also struck me was that you're also a poet, which I think is wonderful. So, so I'm going to, we're going to talk about poetry and how it feeds our soul at various points. But let's get right to it. So, Maria, you were foreign minister of Ecuador. You were also the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UN and president of the General Assembly. So you have been inside the belly of the beast. You know how it all works. We are now coming to, I don't know, 80 years of the UN system, never a female secretary general. Why is that? What's the resistance?
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Well, I think that we have to understand the context. And the context is that we are still living in societies and institutional cultures. I would say in power structures that sideline women. Because it's a power issue at the end, Sanam. It's about power sharing. It is about I give you my space and I stay out in a way. Which is, which is, of course, not true. Because the more you share spaces of power, the more effective, the more impactful you can be. And that has been proven over and over again. And since the very inception and establishment of the UN almost 80 years ago, as you said, the world of diplomacy was very much, as it continues to be today, very much a male-dominated space. When the charter was crafted eight years ago, 79 years ago, to be more precise, in San Francisco, there were incredible women that were behind, you know, doing the writing, doing the thinking, and signing, very few even signing the first UN charter. And you had incredible women like Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit from India, Madame Bernardino from the Dominican Republic, the engagement of Madame Roosevelt, and many others that were hands-on. And at the end of the day, they were more the exception than the rule, because most of their entourage was male-dominated. And the story, the history of the UN continued to have women underrepresented. And why is that? Because if you have very few women in the diplomatic services, then, you know, to reach the top levels is more difficult. If you have less women on top positions in international organizations, it becomes more difficult. And that's the work we do at GWL, is that we do the tracking. And we show that there are so many capable women out there. And this is only a microcosm of a broader context of male-dominated spaces. And believe me, I have experience on that, having been Minister of Defense of my country, what a male-dominated space has been. And so I think that there are many challenges ahead of us. And I think that one of the big challenges for the multilateral system, but more concretely for the UN, is to be extremely serious about the raison d'etre of the organization, which is preventive diplomacy and prevent conflict. And just do everything in our power to not have conflicts. And once, you know, we are living in a world with more than 100 registered armed conflicts, where is the UN there? It's something that we really need to come back to in a big way, in a big way. And I think that women can also, on that front, make the difference.
Sanam We're looking at the next Secretary General coming up. It's in 20, uh, 2027. Is that, is that the year? Or is it? 2026. 2026. Okay, so we've got one more year to go. Am I allowed to ask you, if you were in charge, if we made you, or if there was a campaign and you made it as Secretary General, what would you, what would you do? What would you, and you've just mentioned preventive diplomacy, but what does that, what does that look like and feel like, you know, in terms of the change? (.)
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Well, you know, honestly, I, I think that, uh, we are living times of, uh, of make it or break it, kind of, in the system. I, I don't believe that the UN is going to cease to exist, uh, because we don't have a plan B. We, we need a global platform to discuss world affairs, uh, where the voices of 193 are heard, where you sit in the same seat and then you press the button and you're allowed to vote in the same way as everybody else. And, um, you need a general assembly, a UN general assembly, which is a sort of the world parliament of nations. We need that. And, and, and I also acknowledge the fact that the UN as an organization has done a lot of good to the world in terms of the humanitarian work that they do in terms of the health work they do in many other issues, uh, you know, to really walk together with governments as they, uh, uh, uh, deploy their efforts for sustainable development and the sustainable development goals and in the agreements on, on climate and a biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction in oceans, which was critical. People tend to forget in the non-proliferation treaty and in all the disarmament architecture, the human rights architecture, the kitchen of international law is the UN. So I don't think that we can say, okay, let's just delete, delete, delete. It doesn't work like that. But when I say make it or break it, what I'm trying to say is make the UN relevant or just leave the UN as an irrelevant body, you know, a self-operating machinery, you know, that continues to go, to go on. And, and I think that what we have witnessed in the past months and weeks, and, and I would say since the process of the summit of the future last year and the pact of the future, which was a consensual roadmap for the reform of the UN, I think that we need to take that seriously. And, and when we, we hear some countries say, you know, we don't think that the, uh, you know, the world health organization, we don't think that this body of this organization is useful. I think it's a wake up call to say, we, we need to do better. I think that we need to really come up with a whole new accountability architecture for the UN. And, uh, since I, my first encounters with the multilateral system and the UN in particular, and that was more than 30 years ago, you hear the UN is under construction. It's in reform. We have reached a point where the reform word has to really mean something more profound, more structural, more owned and led by member states, understood by the societies, because most of, uh, you know, if you go to the street, ask people about the UN, they don't feel that the UN is making a difference in their own lives. And, uh, and we know that even the resources for the UN are public resources. People want to see the UN deliver, the UN being accountable, the UN responding. During my presidency, I think we, we passed more than 327 resolutions at the General Assembly, which is, these are pieces of international law. And some say, well, but the decisions of the General Assembly, you know, are not binding. When 193 member states agree on something, let's take the example of the sustainable development goals. It's not an issue of binding, not binding. It's, it's a collective agreement of a roadmap towards an end. And the end is, in this case, to, to end poverty, for example, to end hunger, which I think are the fundamentals, the very basics. And perhaps we need to think about coming back to the basics on how is that we build societies based on the common good and, and, uh, in basically societies that are free from fear and free from want. These are the very fundamentals.
Sanam You know, on the one hand, you're saying we negotiate the sustainable development goals. And basically that means that any country that signed up to it, 193 is each of them has a responsibility in their own countries to further the goals, whether it's on education or health or on peace and justice. You're meant to, you're meant to take responsibility for your own piece of the world. So there's that part. Then there's the other part, which is the entity of the UN. So when we have 10 Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security, repeatedly, we say women, we have to design the processes to make it inclusive of the civil society peace builders, the civil society peace actors. And in all the years I've worked in this space, what I find is that no one is holding the staff at the UN, the senior leadership at the UN, the envoys, no one's holding them accountable for the implementation of these resolutions that have come from the Security Council. So yes, the, you know, the world has advocated on, and, you know, there are campaigns from civil society, but at the end of the day, if the council passes a resolution, the system has a responsibility and that responsibility resides with individuals. (..) There's such a gap in this. I mean, if you went to a dentist and, you know, they were really bad root canal, you know, dentist, and 50% of the time they failed, at some point you wouldn't go to them again. They'd be struck off the register. But in diplomacy or in this space, it's, I don't know whether it's the passing of the buck or whether, you know, there's the bad practice gets repeated, the good practice becomes ad hoc, right? So, so is that something that can be changed?
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Well, I think that that's the very core. That's the heart of the implementation deficit and the accountability deficit that I was talking about. And that's the reason why some societies, countries feel disappointed. They want to see movement. They want to see action. And they say, where is the action? And sometimes I have to also, you know, say that when we don't see major failures or major conflicts is because there has been some preventive work. So, therefore, it's not out there because precisely of that. But most of the time, then we have to react to the theta complete, to, you know, the situation when it happens. And again, because we're not good on preventing diplomacy, not only in terms of conflict, but in terms of, for example, securing supply chains in times of global crisis. COVID-19 was the perfect example. We were completely unprepared. We faced Ebola. The world was able to address the issue and do it reasonably well. But there was some teachings and learnings to do from Ebola that we did not use for, for COVID. Now we have forgotten. the lessons of COVID. And here again, the issues of accountability, of co-responsibility are critical. And I continue to say that the issue of social ownership on decisions at the UN are critical. Of course, the big responsibility lies on member states. This is an intergovernmental organization. But, you know, the voices and the agencies of all the other actors is absolutely critical. also, as you said, not only in terms of informing decision making, but also in terms of the accountability. So everybody knows what the UN is doing, what the UN is about. There's a lot of literacy that needs to go into that. When, you know, for me, the dream moment would be when citizens say, we need the UN in the street. We need it. We understand what they're doing. And it's useful. That would be the dream moment for a person like me that is fully trust that it is multilateral (.) systems and multilateral architectures and international cooperation. Yeah. That is, again, going to, you know, deliver for the common goods.
Sanam And it's some of the things, you know, how our mobile phones work. And these are all, this is also part of the multilateral architecture of the last 80 years. And people just take it for granted that it's there. So when it, when it exists, we take it for granted. You know, a lot of people around the question of Gaza were saying, and around the question of Ukraine were saying, oh, the system is failing. But I was looking at it and I said, I was like, look, 153 countries voted (.) against Russia's invasion of Ukraine or for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. 160 voted for Palestinian statehood. There is a stress test that's happening, but the world is coming together. It is the powerful states that are at the moment causing many of the difficulties. And so are we going to get to a point, as you say, where, where a collective of the smaller and medium states are going to be able to uphold and maintain those values and aspirations and, and the focus on, on prevention and peace and security that even if, you know, we've always had big, bad states, right? Or we've always had big, I mean, that's the whole point of having the UN is to try and mitigate some of the most powerful. So, so I, I think that it, I agree with you. I think it's, it's really important to have it. my question, maybe two things is, is one is, as I always ask my guests, um, if you were a billionaire, what would you be doing now? You know? And so if you were in charge is one thing, but, and, and if you were a billionaire, like in terms of resources, what are the things that you think should be supported or what would you do if, or, you know, how would you advise or, or if it was yours, what would you be doing with it?
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Oh my God. That's a very difficult question, Salam, because you know, it, it, it doesn't happen. And I, I don't envision that happening to me quite honestly. And, and I'm very proud that I have chosen to be, you know, an academic and have chosen to be a public servant. And when you make the choice of being a public servant, you make the choice of not being a wealthy person, especially in countries like my own. And, uh, and that's a very conscious decision in your life. And when you see that some public servants are, you know, very wealthy, then you start wondering where it's coming from. Why is that? Yeah. And, uh, so I'm, I'm very proud of the choices that I, that I have, uh,
Sanam that I have made, but let's see if I had, you know, billions of, but. And, and I just, I mean, I asked this question mainly because we live in this bizarre universe where you have a handful of individuals who now have more, you know, frankly, more money than the entire UN system, right? It just as individuals. And so, so I'm like, if that were you or, or me or others who, who have chosen, as you say, public service, imagine what you would, what you could do with it. And, and so, so it's just kind of an imaginative thing, but, but it's just a, you know, fun exercise as well as a serious one. (.)
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Well, it is a serious one because in most cases, and again, I'm being very, very frank, the problems that we face in the world are not the problems of lack of resources. It is not about having the billions and the millions, and it is about making the right choices. And it is about having the right priorities. And, and I think what it really needs to concern us as humanity is to see a world that is so unequal. Believe me, I'm always thinking that if some extraterrestrial being landed here, they, they would say, I mean, humans are very strange. They have the means and yet they allow people to suffer. This does not require the billions and the trillions. That I think requires a rethinking of humanity, of our humanity. It requires an understanding that we live in a planet that has boundaries, planetary boundaries, in that we need to recalibrate our relationship with nature because we have surpassed many of the planetary boundaries. We are really destroying the life-supporting system. of human, of human, of humankind. I think, you know, the human species, sometimes I keep thinking that it's, it's a very strange species because the principle of self-preservation doesn't work. We, we know that we are dying of extreme heat and climate change, and yet emissions continue to grow. And we meet every year at COPS and we decide on things, but emissions continue to grow. and then we say we don't have money to adapt. We don't have money to mitigate, to reduce our emissions. We don't have money for proper transition to renewable energies. We don't have, and it's, it's, we know it's not true because it's not a shortage of resources. So it's hard to say if I had millions, I would put it into ending hunger or having healthy children or having all girls of the world, they go to school or, you know, these, these decisions, you know, are beyond an individual choice.
Sanam If you don't have the people in place who care to actually make this happen, money alone isn't it. And again, so it becomes this question of what do we value, right? And how do we value those who have dedicated their lives to the betterment of the world and the planet and humanity? And we seem at the moment to be in a universe where people like that are not only devalued, they're being demonized, as we're seeing in the United States with what's happening. Do you, looking forward, do you think that 2026 will be a rallying call to have a female Secretary General for the UN in a way, precisely because of the kind of reaction we're getting in the US and, and, you know, from, again, from other authoritarian states, do you think this might be the moment where it galvanizes the world to say absolutely? Or is it going to be yet another disappointment if you had to predict? Well, what would be your
Maria Fernanda Espinosa sense? It's difficult to predict because of the way, you know, the mechanism of selection of the Secretary General. How is that? Can you give us a little sort of example of the summary of how that works? Yes. The summary is that it is not an election. It is a selection process voted by the 15 members of the Security Council. That's it. You know, with the possibility of the use of the veto power of the P5 candidates. Wow. And then the name selected goes for the endorsement of the General Assembly. The regional rotation says that it is the turn for Latin America and the Caribbean. There is, I think, like a common call to say after 80 years, it is the time for a woman. So it'll just be Latin American candidates that go into the Security Council? It's not a written rule. It's not a written rule. And we have to look at what happened the previous time. It was the turn of Eastern Europe. And very soon we had candidates from different regions and actually it wasn't Eastern Europe. It was Western Europe who got the job at the end. And it was a woman, as expected. It was a man that has been extremely pro-women and pro-women's rights to acknowledge that from the current Secretary General. But it's very unpredictable, very volatile. And I think that we need to continue to call for a female Secretary General. It is about time. And there are already rumors and names that are out there. But it doesn't mean that we should just relax. We need to continue to make the case and to say, yes, you know, after 80 years, why not? It is time. It is historical justice. It's demographic justice. But it is perhaps also the opportunity for a reset to the system and for rethinking the operation, the management, the effectiveness, the delivery capacity.
Sanam In 2006, Ted Turner said, men should be barred from public office for 100 years in every part of the world. It would be much kinder, gentler, and more intelligently run. The men have had millions of years where we've been running things. We've screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women. He said that in 2006. So maybe in 2026, it will come true. And then, yeah, as you say, you know, let's see it. The system is so, everything is in such a dire sort of state of...
Maria Fernanda Espinosa Yes. I mean, more, I would say, you know, the world, especially in the last decades, it's always on turmoil. You know, the financial crisis, COVID, you know, it's always, there is always this broke moment, as I call it, of volatility, of uncertainty, of complexity. I think that we need a reason to be hopeful, optimistic, you know, but realistic at the same time and understand the context under which we live in. You know, and on that question of being hopeful,
Sanam if you were to look back at yourself as a child and then, you know, your eight year old self looking at you now, what would you have thought is, was it imaginable in terms of what you achieved in your life and what's that gives you hope for the next generation? Well, when I was a child,
Maria Fernanda Espinosa my dream was to be a teacher, a school teacher. And in a way, during, you know, your lifetime, it's always there in you, you know, to share, enrich the work you do, talking, working, respecting interaction with younger generations. And my wish is that younger generations are better than what we were, you know, you know, able to do with the world, with politics, with, with everything else. I'm, I'm a full believer in, in the power of, of, of younger generations, but I'm also a true believer in, in real intergenerational, you know, power sharing that brings together the gray hair and the, the fresh and transformative energy at, at the same time in both ends of the spectrum. And I, I leave that in the work I do every day. I was, was it yesterday? I was at a university here in, in Madrid talking to 22, 23 diplomats to be from different countries. And you have no idea the clarity that they have on, on, on what are the things that need to be done, including on a rebooting and, and, and, and reimagining the UN and the multilateral system. There's a lot of creativity that needs to go into
Sanam that. That's great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Lovely to talk to you. And thank you, Sana. It was a real pleasure. Hey, Sus, how are you doing? Are you still jet lagged? Yes. (.)
Soleh I just got back yesterday, so. Yeah. How was your trip to Japan? It was very good. Yeah.
Sanam Fun. What was the best bit? I know these are really annoying questions, aren't they? I always
Soleh ask them. But I really liked, I mean, not very original, but I did really like Kyoto. Tokyo is quite overwhelming. I mean, Kyoto is full of tourists, but it's a bit nicer city, I found. Were the gardens
Sanam different to each other? Because I remember going 30 years ago and it felt like little magical spaces you'd walk into, the shrines or the gardens or whatever you call them. Yeah, it was, it was funny
Soleh because I think the, like, especially in Tokyo, so much of the city is so, like, overwhelming and overstimulating and so many lights and noises and stuff. And then there's, like, these shrines at the gardens and they're, like, silent. And it's, yeah.
Sanam Yeah. Again, when I remember that there was so much noise pollution, like you cross the street and it would jingle jangle at you and you go to the loo and it would, I don't know, there'd be music because they didn't like the sound of the flush or something, you know, and it was just like endless noise. But then I was completely illiterate. So there was a weird cognitive (.) imbalance because you're looking at signs, but you can't really read them. You look at an underground
Soleh map and it looks familiar. Yeah, I was pulling out my high school Mandarin, whatever characters I remember. Six, how many years of Mandarin? Six? Too many. Too many, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, at least it was useful. You could, you could make out one or two letters. Yeah, I could see on the, flush. It said big and small. Not that I know how to say it, but because it's pronounced differently,
Sanam but the character. Well, I'm very happy that was useful. And then actually topical for our conversation today, you went to Hiroshima as well, right? Incredibly well done. I had the like audio
Soleh guide and they had kind of, they were like all these items from individuals who were kind of affected by the, by the bomb, like caught in the blast. And they would have like parents or kids or something on the audio guide talking about the person who the item belonged to. At some point I was like, actually, I can't listen to any more of these. I can't. It's like, they're just horrible. And yeah, it is definitely haunting to see it all and hear it all. And yeah.
Sanam And, and the, there was like a, one exhibit that was the pavement with like somebody's shadow
Soleh melted into it. Yeah, the person sitting on the steps. Yeah. (.)
Sanam Anyway. So yeah. So I'm, well, I'm, I'm glad you saw it. I know that it was, it must've been incredibly difficult, so kind of going on your own. Did you do something nice
Soleh afterwards to treat yourself? Well, the park, the memorial park that they have is lovely. It's cherry blossom season. So I kind of walked around there. Cool. Good, good. Well, it, as I said,
Sanam it was topical for this particular conversation because our conversation was about state of multilateralism, what's going on at the UN, whether the UN is going to survive. Your thoughts, tell me what you thought about the conversation I had with Richard and then the one I had with Maria.
Soleh And with Richard, you start off really intense. You're like, like, how's your mental state,
Maria Fernanda Espinosa you ask, which I'm like, that's really an intense way of greeting someone. But okay.
Sanam And of course his mental state. Because all of us who work in this space are going slightly nuts,
Soleh but yeah. Of course his mental state wasn't so good. But I thought it was, they said,
Sanam how are you doing? I didn't say, how's your mental state? No, you said, how's your mental state?
Soleh Oh no, that's okay. I mean, from both of them, it was kind of interesting. I mean, they're both clearly like diplomats who are kind of holding their words, you know, like everything's very carefully considered. But it seemed like his main, main point was that, like, even though there's so many problems in the UN, like, it's still useful and people seem to, and like countries still want to engage in it, which makes it useful and makes it like the only option that we have. But it was also kind of interesting to hear, like, what he was saying about how it's changed. Like, he says it went from broad major power cooperation to broad major power competition. That now it's also being used by the countries, like, to be bullies, right? Because then he also talks about his point about, oh, they want to stay in because, because of these kinds of things like the broad telecom and whatever marine shipping things and all that kind of stuff that the UN does that we don't think about. And they want influence keeps, you know, someone like China within the UN.
Sanam You know, with the recent events, whether, at least, you know, some people will start with saying, oh, you know, Russia went into Ukraine and they broke all the rules with the UN, right? Because it's in one country invading another country. But a lot of other people will go back and say, well, actually, it started with the US invasion of Iraq, right? So the question of which of these five major, you know, permanent members of the Security Council, which are the five major powers, or they're not even the five major powers, it's the five old powers, because there's, the US is still a major power, China, Russia, and then France and England. I'm like, how come they're both still there, right? But, but they're there because of 1945. But they're, everybody's implicated in something nasty that they've done. And, and so it's, it's like the powerful are abrogating responsibility. That's how I, that's how I see them. Like the competition's always kind of been there, but it's how the gloves are off and nobody even pretends to be responsible for what
Soleh they're there for, which is to stop conflict. Yeah. I mean, with Gaza too, right? Like that's kind of the current biggest reason that people kind of are losing faith in the UN.
Sanam And, and, and that's, that's also an important one because, you know, the woe is me, you know, the multilateralism is failing argument is, you know, it's, it's definitely there. And I think with the way that the Trump administration is cutting back on, you know, funding for, for the big UN agencies and so forth, these, these, these are also issues. And I would also say that if you look at the voting, um, you know, out of 193 countries, 160 voted for Palestinian state would 153 voted for a ceasefire, 143 voted against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So, you know, again, it's the big, big powers kind of, you know, swaggering on stage, but when it, when it comes to actually kind of the majority of the UN United States, what we're seeing is that the majority are against the Ukrainian vision and
Soleh they're against the Gaza. I liked her answer to the, if you could be a billionaire, if you were a billionaire, what would you do? And she was like the, you know, consciously choosing not to be
Sanam a billionaire. I don't know. I thought that was kind of giving, basically giving it away for,
Soleh for good causes. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. But that, that she was like, you know, by becoming a civil servant, you're like, okay, well, I'm not going to be making any money. Like, yeah. And then that's, and then she talked about how it was about the lack of, like, it wasn't, it's not about lack of resources, but it's about the priorities and the choices. And so it's not even like being a billionaire wouldn't even, wouldn't solve the problems that we have probably.
Sanam It's so, so I think two things. One is the point about choosing to be a civil servant and knowing that, you know, you're not going to be going out there making tons of money. You know, you look back and I (.) I think it's a few things that people don't realize. One is that there is enormous satisfaction or gratification that comes from being, trying to solve problems in the world. Like being, thinking you're, you're dedicated to your life to actually helping someone or trying to sort of deal with big issues. I think that's one thing. The other is that somehow means that you get, you attract lots of very, I think at least, very cool people who also have the same value base, right? That, that, you know, you don't look at each other from the standpoint of what, what's your bank balance and you must be cool, but in terms of what have you achieved in life? And, and that's kind of, you know, that, I don't think you can put a price on that one basically.
Soleh Um, yeah, but, uh, yeah, unless if it was a little higher, it would be nice if it was a little
Sanam and if there were a decent, you know, if we had decent retirement. And as I say, especially in civil society, and, and I, as I go down, you know, as I look across my kind of landscape of the women I work with around the world and how they've committed their lives to, you know, dealing with violent extremism or right now, like one of my colleagues working on reconciliation in Sri Lanka and she's bringing together, you know, religious leaders and diaspora groups, the stuff that's really hard. And, you know, not, not only they kind of struggle to get the money to do their work, but (.) I don't think many of my partners have plans for their retirement, you know, and, and that, that kind of is scary. That is, you know, you just wonder why we don't value people in the way we should. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. And, um, thanks for the conversation as well. Okay. Talk to you soon. Talk soon. Bye. Bye. (.....) My thanks to the Bijan Reisar Foundation, my own organization, ICANN, and Africa Digital Audio for making these podcasts possible. If you have ideas for topics or for people that I should invite and have a conversation with, please let me know at info at ICANpeacework.org. info at ICANpeacework.org. You can also follow the events on our newsletter, which is on the ICANN website, same address. I really hope that the conversations, the ideas, the solutions, the hope and the inspiration that you've heard in these conversations keep you going over the next week and that you join us again. So stay well and see you soon. And I hope to hear from you. Thank you. Bye-bye.