interviews
Working at the Supranational Level
by Daniel Naujoks
July 31, 2019
This interview with Daniel Naujoks was conducted and condensed by frank news. It is part two of our conversation on The Mobility Mandala.
frank: Today, we often hear about a crisis of cooperation at the international level. It seems that many countries are reluctant to work together and many wonder about the place of the United Nations in today’s world. This is broad – but what influence does the UN have on nations today?
Daniel Naujoks: When we think about the influence of the UN it’s important to recognize that the UN isn't one entity. What we call “the UN” includes many different ways in which states interact with each other, often mitigated or moderated by certain entities of the UN. You have the General Assembly, which, for many people is the quintessential UN. And the Security Council – a highly political body and the only UN organ that has the power to take decisions infringing on states’ sovereignty. On the other hand, there is the UN of the many programs and agencies that have specific mandates and that work with governments and non-state actors to achieve something, like the UN Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, or the UN Environment Programme, to name a few.
When it comes to migration and displacement, we actually had several discussions on these topics at the General Assembly. In 2006, the UN organized the first high level dialogue on international migration and development, for which I was part of the organization team at the UN Population Division. In 2013, we had another high-level dialogue at the UN General Assembly. And after preparing and negotiating for two years, in December 2018, the global community adopted two new compacts. The UN adopted the UN Global Compact for Migration, for safe, orderly and regular migration, and the UN Global Compact on Refugees. These are non-binding agreements but the entire process of drafting these compacts was influential for spurring discussions among countries, between countries and civil society at the international level, and, even more importantly, at the national level.
Often we think of UN issues as matters at the supranational level, happening at the UN General Assembly hall here in New York or in Geneva. And that's true, that is an important venue. But, when we have a UN event or UN treaty, or in this case, a compact, there are also national stakeholders, human rights commissions, NGO networks, ministries at the national level, who have an interest in promoting certain issues. And they have consultations, the press picks up issues. Each country is a little different and it depends on the strength of certain stakeholders and their interests. For example, the U.S. government was largely absent from the process of the UN Global Compact for Migration.
Already in the beginning of the negotiations, the US declared, "We're out." Which, in my opinion, was not a very smart move, because even at that point, it was clear that it would be non-binding.
The risk of somewhat being held accountable would actually be low. And remaining in the discussions would have given the US a way to influence the content. But I think it was more about sending a political message to certain local constituents than an actual policy move in the international sphere.
What is remarkable is that even though the national government withdrew from the process, many U.S. cities said, "Can we be part of that?" New York, Chicago,and other cities really stepped in. Thus, in the end, there was a lot of participation in the U.S., even though the national government declared they don't want to have anything to do with it. So, sometimes, how the UN works is a little more complex than just what the official state department position is on an issue. And there are many venues. There are bilateral consultations, there are regional consultations on human trafficking, on labor migration and so on. There is a Global Forum on Migration and Development, the GFMD, which, since 2007, takes place every year. Governments come, they exchange notes on good policies, and on what can be done, mostly at the working level. At the working level, government officials cooperate and learn from each other. Again, it's non-binding. And the UN provides inputs, they chair sessions, they write background papers, they present case studies.
This is to exemplify that there are systems where policy learning happens in a much more informal setting, than through rigid rules-setting and treaty-making. This is something students in the UN Studies specialization here at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, that I direct, focus on when studying global governance. There are many different ways in which local and national governments, countries’ specific ministries, institutions, and agencies, international organizations, NGOs, and other groups negotiate and collaborate.
And then in the developing world, of course, the UN has a different role, because they are not just advising, they're working with local partners and in actual programs, like funding. And they're advising governments directly on how to do things.
But even there, what people from the outside often don't understand, the UN cannot work without the explicit consent of the host government.
So, when Kenya says that they want to close the refugee camps for Somalia refugees, UNHCR can plead, "Oh, please, refugees have rights and camps are bad." But, unless the Kenyan government gives UNHCR authority to work on certain programs, and provides UNDP consent to implement initiatives on livelihood strategies targeting refugees, these agencies can't do much. This being said, because of certain power asymmetries and donor interests, the so-called technical assistance from UN agencies in the Global South has the potential to influence policy decisions and exemplifies how the work of the UN can have an impact. But the political leverage of many agencies is not as large as is often seen. Which is why there's a lot of bargaining in the background. The things that you don't see that are not official.
Can you give an example?
DN: An example for the fact that the UN has to always ask for permission to work on certain issues is the persistence of the use of refugee camps. For the last 15 to 20 years, we know that refugee camps are not good for refugees. In the very short term, in the immediate aftermath of an atrocity, of a civil war, of a calamity, in the case of a sudden influx, camps may make sense to provide shelter and food and medical services to a large number of people. But, even in the medium term, they're very bad for the human development outcomes of people.
They lend themselves to a range of human rights violations, because people live in close vicinity to each other, people who are very heterogeneous among themselves. Just because they're all refugees, just because they're all from one country, doesn't mean they all get along well.
Camps generally don't provide sufficient economic opportunities for people, et cetera. That's why for some time now, we know that limited humanitarian responses to large refugee and IDP movements are not good for development. Definitely not for those people who are displaced, but mostly equally for surrounding communities. I actually developed a role-play simulation on the reasons for and against refugee camps and participants understand quite clearly the mix of international development and human rights logic with local politics and interests.
Addressing the shortcomings of classic humanitarian approaches, different UN agencies have been very strong in advocating for a more development-based strategy. For example, in the Syrian context, there has been the 3RP, the regional refugee and resilience plan, which is headed by UNDP and UNHCR, with I think, about 270 partners. It’s implemented in Syria’s neighboring countries, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. In addition to each country’s national plan there's a regional plan, which focuses not only on the humanitarian side but also development side. UNDP has been leading these efforts to provide livelihood support, skills, training, et cetera. But even there, we see that the implementation is hampered by a lot of challenges. Take Jordan. In the 2013 donor conference in London, Jordan pledged to give work permits to 200,000 Syrian refugees. They were very committed at the highest level of government.
But, a year later, there were almost no permits for refugees, and everyone asked why. We did a project with Better Work Jordan, which is a collaboration between the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. BetterWork Jordan published a report that my students drafted on why Syrian refugees did not get more official work permits. There are many reasons why employers couldn't employ refugees or couldn't expand their production. The refugees could only work in the export-oriented zones, mostly in the garment sector. They couldn't work in other areas. There was a distance they had to travel. Refugees often didn't want these jobs for a variety of reasons. There were many bottlenecks in the bureaucratic procedure to get work permits. In brief, there were many challenges at the supply side, the demand side, as well as on the bureaucratic transaction side.
These issues combined led to a situation in which this great policy that was mediated by the UN and other donors to actually empower refugees to be economic actors, didn't have the impact people had hoped for. While much of what the UN does can have important impacts, this shows that what can be done at the national level depends a lot on national priorities and politics. How politicians are afraid of negative impacts for the local voting populations. And then, of course, it has also to do with the commitment of the international donors to actually put in money to say, "Yes, we will not only give you minor funds to warehouse refugees but we will partner with you to empower them and your populations." Part of the agreement with Jordan that I mentioned was a pact with the EU. The EU said, "If refugees are employed you can export garments and other goods from export-oriented zones to us duty free." The idea was to use trade and the increase in production in the Jordanian garment sector as a way to increase employment opportunities for refugees. A great idea.
But, you probably need to do more to help Jordanian products to be competitive on the EU market. There's also a time lag. Even if you open up the market right away, these products may not satisfy the EU standards for garments. So, there are many things that the partners need to do to support these endeavors and to really make sure that local leaders are not afraid that if they open the labor market, if they open chances for local integration, that in two years, donors will pull out. And then, they will get stuck with the additional population without the support financial community. So, that's where the UN can help a lot. But, without real commitments from large donor countries or any countries to resettle and share the responsibility for refugees, there's only that much the UN can do.
Thank you so much for your time.
Image via Hannah Wallace Bowman (above).
interviews
Defining Terrorism
by Victor Asal
August 7, 2018
This interview was orignially conducted and published in frank on April 28, 2018.
This interview with Victor Asal, a professor and chair of public administration at Rockafeller College University of Albany, was conducted and condensed by frank news. It took place April 16, 2018.
My name is Victor Asal, I’m a professor of political science and Chair of Public Administartion at Rockafeller College at University of Albany, State University of New York.
I have three main areas of research. My first area of research is why people would go 400 miles out of their way to blow up people they’ve never met before. So criminal justice most times, most homicides are committed by people who know the other people. But going and killing people you’ve never met before, why would specific organizations do that? What are their strategies? That’s one area of research that I focus on.
My other area of research is why people are discriminated against by the State or by societies. Why are some people treated badly just because of the color of their skin, or their gender, or their sexual identity? I research all of those areas there.
These two areas of research are definitely connected.
My third area of research is the area of pedagogy in political science. What are effective ways of teaching students about political concepts, about the theories of politics? Specifically in the areas that I research. I’m a big fan of games, excerices, simulations — making a student a lab rat in their own experiment is much more useful than discussing why did Stalin do this? If I have an excersise where you are Stalin, and you did it, everyone else in class can ask you to explain it, it can be a different understanding.
Related to political violence I spent a great deal of time focusing on collecting new data that allows us to get traction under analysis on the organizational level, within a couple different contexts. The area of violent non-state actors. Why do certain organizations turn to violence? And when they do, why are some organizations much more lethal than other organizations? One of the things that I’ve found in my research is strong support for an argument that Ted Gurr made 47 years ago, about why men rebel.
There were a lot of people who disputed this and argued about this — but there's been growing literature that’s been focusing at the ethnic group level, that this is true, that this is one of the drivers of the use of political violence. I’ve been looking at this at the organizational level using a dataset called Minorities Risk Organizational Behavior dataset. And that’s ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa that claim to represent an ethnopolitical group, minority group. From the analysis, some of them are violent, some of them are not violent.
Can you tell me who some of them are?
Hammas, Amal, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), lots of different organizations, again some are violent, some are not, and some go back and forth.
That makes sense.
The other data set, that really is the genesis of myself and colleague, Karl Rethemeyer here at U Albany, is the Big Allied and Dangerous data set, which has the acronym BAAD. The BAAD Dataset is the dataset of organizations that have already turned to violence, that are using violence, and to be able to look at why some of them are so much more lethal than others, or use CBRN weapons [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear ] in terrorism and such.
One of the interesting things that we’re finding is that organizations that are networked tend to be much more lethal than organizations that are not networked.
What do you mean by networked?
Having allies. For example, how many things have you gotten by knowing somebody?
Nearly everything.
Right, so we’re finding that that’s true of organizations also. Organizations that have connections tend to be more lethal, tend to get a lot more done, in a lot of different ways. Friends can be very, very helpful.
The other thing that we’re finding is that organizations that are lethal tend to generate more rivals. There’s a cycle process. But there's another issue here, that really drives these organizations, and that’s ideology. There’s some really interesting theoretical and case study work by a guy named Mark Juergensmeyer. He talks about how ideology can compel organizations and people to kill. Because they have this power of othering…have you ever seen the movie Aliens?
No.
You should see the movie Aliens. It's a great movie. Our heroine, Ripley, she’s trying to protect this young girl from aliens. And the aliens are these sentient, intelligent creatures, that have this unpleasant habit of eating humans. Ripley stumbles into a nursery of baby aliens. I mentioned that the aliens are intelligent beings?
Yes.
If I can build an ideology that makes me the good guy, and makes you evil, or not really even human — that enables me to say I can kill as many of you as I want, and I can kill as many civilians as I want. So ideology, particularly religious ideology, has an important impact. And the combination of religious and ethnonaturalist ideology have a very, very important impact on the behavior of these organizations.
The issue of killing civilians gets at one of the core debates we are having about terrorism. Because the term terrorism can be used in many ways. And there are lots of people who use the term terrorism to describe any violent organization they don’t like. Those are the terrorists, these are the good guys. And if you’re trying to study this phenomena from an analytical, theoretical perspective, in my mind that is highly problematic. Because what that means is the definition of what we’re looking at is whether we like you or not. And that might be a great definition for seventh grade friendships, but not a great definition for doing analysis.
And there are big debates about what, and how we should capture terrorism, even if we’re talking about it in an analytical fashion.
How would you like to define it [terrorism]?
So I define terrorism not by if I like you or don’t like you. I define terroism by, are you a political organization, with a political motivation, who is blowing people up, and specifically targeting civilians?
Intentionally targeting civilians.
Yes. Intentionally targeting civilians, to hurt and kill civilians. Now, there are organizations that are insurgent organizations that target soldiers, there are organizations, terrorist organizations, that intentionally target civilians, and there are lots of organizations that do both.
It's one thing to shoot somebody in uniform, I don’t have to like it, especially if I’m wearing a uniform, but I would consider that very different behavior than blowing up a nursery school.
How do you feel about US military action, especially in the Middle East, where they are not fighting people in uniform?
When I say uniform I am using it prosaically — I’m saying fighters.
Any figher? Even if they happen to be a civilian?
If they are in a militia, they’re fighters.
Let me very clear here, there's another distinction about terrorism, when people talk about terrorism, mostly what they’re talking about is non-state actors. There is a whole discussion about State terrorism. In my mind, if the State is intentionally targeting civilians, they are involved in State terrorism. But again, that's a controversial topic as well. Which gets back to my other focus, which is political discrimination and political oppression. When it comes to violence, I primarily look at non-state actors. Both insurgents and terrorist organizations, and what factors are pushing towards targeting civilians and other kinds of behavior. But States can be pretty awful. And if we want to compare which kind of organizations, between non-state actors and States, which have killed the most amount of civilians, there is no contest. Russia did a phenomical job under Stalin slaughtering millions of people. Hitler. I mean, we could go on and on about States. There have been States that have been lax, and have killed civilians by being lax, and not paying attention. And there have been States that have intentionally targeted civilians, who they meant to kill.
Do you think your research can help inform policy or military action in dealing with these organizations?
I would hope so. One of the key aspects of the kind of data I’m collecting is that it can help you identify who to be most worried about. You should know that most terrorist organizations don’t kill anybody because they are fairly incompetent. And very few kill many people.
A really sad example of this is the invasion of Iraq. Where the U.S conquered Iraq and then fired the entire military, and put them out of jobs, and took them out of organizational structure, and that was a big mistake. Oppression in general is not a smart policy.
What are the fundamentals of understanding terrorism as you define it?
I think there’s normative components here, and empirical components. When it comes to thinking about terrorism,
Try to understand why these organizations are doing this, strategies to make them stop is important, and something we need to be paying attention to. And being able to draw a distinction between violent organizations, we may or may not not like their ideology, but they are not killing civilians. It's important to make the distinction between organizations that maybe you do like, that might be killing civilians. A concrete example is John Brown. His goal was to stop slavery. I am in favor of stopping slavery. John Brown slaughtered civilians. Intentionally. That makes him, in my mind, a terrorist, whether I like his ideology or not. Being able to make that distinction is important both analytically, but also normatively, for how we understand the world around us.