By M.G. Oprea
Friday, October 07, 2016
The United Nations Security Council unanimously voted
this week to nominate António Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General.
Guterres, a member of Portugal’s Socialist Party and prime minister from 1995
to 2002, will replace Ban Ki-moon and become the ninth secretary-general of the
UN since its founding.
Guterres is a renowned humanitarian activist, and there’s
been general excitement about the concern he’ll show for humanitarian crises
throughout the world, specifically those involving refugees. Human Rights Watch’s
Louis Charbonneau called Guterres “an outspoken and effective advocate for
refugees with the potential to strike a radically new tone on human rights at a
time of great challenges.”
But it’s this very same quality—and his history working
with refugees—that raises concerns about how Guterres will handle the largest
migrant crisis since WWII, and a Middle East that seems destined for war and
disaster.
Guterres Ignores
the Violence Causing the Refugee Crisis
Guterres served as UN High Commissioner for Refugees from
2005 through the end of 2015. He oversaw much of the European migrant crisis
generated by ongoing Syrian civil war. During that time, Guterres appealed to
the conscience of the international community, referring to our “collective
responsibility” and specifically to the “responsibility of the European Union”
to welcome and provide aid to refugees.
In an April 2015 op-ed in Time magazine, Guterres wrote, “We can’t deter people fleeing for
their lives. They will come. The choice we have is how well we manage their
arrival, and how humanely … It’s time for Europeans to abandon the delusion
that we can isolate ourselves from this crisis.”
Guterres was quick to recognize our responsibility to
take in refugees fleeing horrific civil war. But he has said very little about
taking preventative action or intervening in Syria itself. He hasn’t
acknowledged any responsibility to intercede on the behalf of civilians
slaughtered by the Syrian government, in order to prevent further refugees from
having to make the dangerous journey to Europe.
In a Huffington Post op-ed from August 2015, Guterres
wrote that global escalation of forced displacement over the past six years
demonstrates that “we live in a world in which the capacity to prevent
conflicts and to resolve them in a timely fashion is practically non-existent.”
Does the UN secretary-general-elect so despair of the potential for no-fly
zones or military interventions to prevent or resolve conflict? Is there
nothing that can be done to, in his words, “deter people fleeing for their
lives”?
The UN Should Do
More Than Just Damage Control
Guterres seems to suggest that all we can do is to
provide aid in the aftermath of violence. No doubt, the UN has a duty to
provide assistance when a humanitarian crisis arises. But its more fundamental
purpose, as outlined in its charter, is to prevent war and conflict. Sometimes
that means taking action before
there’s a refugee crisis.
In the 1990s. the UN Security Council helped end
conflicts in places like the East Timor—but today, says Guterres, relations
among the great powers are less clear, thus engendering “impunity and
unpredictability.”
But some of this “impunity and unpredictability” is not
just due to a mysterious change in power dynamics. It’s also due to President
Obama’s “leading from behind” foreign policy, so much in vogue in the West
today. This has helped embolden countries like Syria, Iran, and Russia. Less,
not more, of that approach is needed at the UN.
Guterres isn’t wrong that international conflicts have
become increasingly complicated. They now tend to involve multiple layers of
players—armies, international forces, ethnic and religious groups, militias and
“bandits”—but this is a reason to be stronger, not weaker, in pressing for
international stability.
Certainly there are benefits to having a UN
secretary-general who understands and is sympathetic to human suffering and the
plight of refugees. But the danger is that Guterres might not acknowledge the
need for military action to stop refugee crises like the one flowing from
Syria.
Europeans’ Concern
About Refugees Isn’t Just Xenophobia
In the same Huffington Post op-ed, Guterres writes about
Europe’s specific responsibilities for taking in refugees—ignoring the fact
that many of the migrants arriving are not, in fact, refugees. He laments the
rise of xenophobia in Europe, which according to him, is due to “a lack of
understanding of the values of tolerance and diversity—and a lack of
recognition of the fact that all societies are becoming multicultural,
multi-ethnic and multi-religious.”
Perhaps he means well, but Guterres risks inflaming the
very real xenophobic elements of European society by dismissing the legitimate
concerns many Europeans have about this sudden influx of conservative Muslims
to their countries. He also makes a mistake that others before him have made in
underestimating the extent to which European countries remain predominantly
based on ethnic majorities.
Will Guterres be able to balance the need for
humanitarian aid with an understanding of the unsustainable number of refugees
overwhelming Europe? And how does he plan to protect those still suffering
inside Syria?
Can Guterres Help
Bring Stability to the Middle East?
Guterres is inheriting the UN in the midst of a crisis of
diplomacy over the Syrian civil war—and a Middle East that has grown increasing
volatile since the 2011 Arab Spring revolts. Thanks to the help of the Obama
administration, Iran is reemerging as a regional power, threatening Saudi
Arabia and fanning the flames of the Sunni-Shia conflict.
Guterres must ask himself how the UN can help stabilize
not only Syria, but the entire Middle East. If he truly cares about the plight
of refugees, which is grave indeed, he will focus as much energy on stopping
these crises as he does on tending to the humanitarian disasters they leave in
their wake.
No comments:
Post a Comment