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
An Interview with Dr. Patricia Parker
by Dr. Patricia Parker
September 27, 2018
This interview with Dr. Patricia Parker, Chair at the Department of Communication, Associate Professor of Organizational Communication Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, and founder of the Ella Baker Women's Center, was conducted and condensed by frank news.
frank: Can you give us a bit of background on yourself. How you ended up where you are now?
Dr. Parker: There are many entry points to that story, but the one I think is most relevant to the work I'm doing now is my family history. I was born in rural Arkansas into a family of 13 children. I'm the youngest of the 13. I was exposed to an older generation that was very much involved in activism. One of my oldest sisters was the first African American students to enter the local liberal arts college that was just a few miles from the segregated town in which my parents and their parents were born and raised.
By the time it was my turn to go to college, that would have been in the late '70's, my sister and seven siblings had forged that path. My oldest sister, Jurlene, and her peers and the civil rights activists at that time had forged that path. That is something that stayed with me. When I went on to get my master's and PhD degrees in communication, I was introduced to some theories including Black feminist theory and other theories about power and anti-racist work.
I was always interested in organizing processes (perhaps because I was literally born into an in-progress organization that was my family!) and that brought me to critical organizational communication as a field of study within the larger discipline of communication. That solidified my interest in thinking about organizing processes and leadership.
At the time I was getting my PhD, there was a focus in the literature on women in leadership and it was very clear that the women they were talking about were particular women—White, middle class women. My dissertation research was focused on African American women executives who had made it to the top.
I did a study with 15 women across the country who were representative of the women who had made it to the top ranks including the women in the President's Cabinet. They connected their own success, as I did, with the communities they were born into and the influence of the Civil Rights movement and the role models there. That influenced the book that I wrote about African American women executives and thinking about re-envisioning organizational leadership from the perspectives of African American women.
It was a bold thesis, but my thinking was influenced by people like Peter Senge at MIT, and others who were thinking about organizing as a process that takes complexity into account. One argument was that leaders who are able to lead complex systems themselves need to to have the capacity to “see” complexity; they need to have engaged with complexity as a frame of reference.
That set me on this course of thinking about leaders and leadership and social justice activism as intersecting with that process.
Do you feel that the personal is political?
Dr. Parker: Absolutely. That is a foundation of feminism in general, but in particular after I finished my first book and I had done that historical study of thinking about the traditions of Black women's activism throughout history, I was thinking about precisely what you're asking. How are young women - how are contemporary girls able to make those connections in terms of looking at their personal context and being able to connect that to the larger structural conditions that might be shaping their lives. That's what my current work is and I think that it's absolutely crucial.
Doing that historical analysis was when I got introduced to Ella Baker, the human rights and civil rights activist whose work spanned 50 years starting in the 1930's. She's most well-known for being the advisor and really the catalyst that made SNCC happen, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee that's iconic from the '60's in terms of youth activism.
That is, we need to find ways to connect with the knowledge of people who are already living with and through particular articulations of oppressive conditions. Interventions become possible where there is an analysis of how capitalism and racism, and white supremacy, and so forth, are intersecting through people's bodies, in their everyday lives. Ms. Baker said, "If you give people light they will find a way." She also said that, "Strong people don't need strong leaders." Her meaning there was, people are already living through the impacts of capitalism and some of these other oppressions and that as experts, people who are doing scholar activism who have a particular analysis, our job is to work alongside the people who are already fighting it because they have a particular angle or vision. They have a particular knowledge that can be brought to bear in terms of social change initiatives.
My work with girls of color right now is founded on Ms. Baker's principles of what I call “catalytic leadership,” the topic of my next book due out in 2020 by University of California Press. Her approach is often referred to as group-centered leadership that is highly participative, but it is also grounded in a tenacious belief in community power. In Ms. Baker’s philosophy, organizing for social justice means catalyzing community power. My current work is founded on the staunch belief that girls are in the know. They know what's happening in their schools. They see the disparities in school suspensions and access to opportunities. They know what's happening in their communities because they're living it. Through the Ella Baker Women’s Center for Leadership and Community Activism, my students and I work with girls and their allies in communities to create space for girls to see their own power and to do some of the amazing things that they're already doing, but also support them with resources and mentoring.
The current cohort of leaders developed a project to focus on intergenerational storytelling. They planned and organized a “Girl Power Summit.” They decided that they wanted to have an all- women space for their mothers, their aunts, their grandmothers, their sisters, anybody who's interested in girl power, to come together to talk about their expereinces. To prepare for the summit, we did some of our critical pedagogy work, and the girls worked with arts activist Kayhan Irani to facilitate the gathering of about 30 girls and women in thinking about and telling our stories. They were amazing. These beautiful women, these grandmothers and aunts who talked about when they were teenagers and young women and going through their careers and some of the things that they faced, and this resonated with the stories that the girls were telling in terms of what they face in their classrooms, and some of the sexism that they face, or not being seen. It was just a really powerful convening of intergenerational storytelling. The girls decided that they wanted to expand on the project, so they are preparing to collect stories from women and girls in their neighborhood to do a more extensive action research project.
The personal does matter and it provides a route toward this kind of contextual understanding. This is actually one of the main themes of the book I'm working on right now — mapping these personal routes toward collective consciousness about social justice activism.
I think it's really astute to recognize that the people who you are trying to help are probably capable of helping themselves given resources — especially if you believe in this idea of power within ones own body and mind.
What do you think the younger generation should be focusing on? How can they take the lessons of somebody like Ella Baker and use them in 2018?
Dr. Parker: You know, it's a great question. It's the question of the day, right, because we have such courageous activism happening right now. The Black Lives Matter movement. I was just in conversation with the southern regional director for Black Lives Matter, a young Black woman. I don't know how many people know the three Black women, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, who created #BlackLivesMatter as a response to anti-Black racism. DeRay McKesson is sort of the face of Black Lives Matter right now, which is another story we can talk about that sort of harkens back to Ms. Baker and Dr. King. By many historical accounts, Ms. Baker was just as influential on the Civil Rights movement as Dr. King. She worked more with the grassroots, he more so at the grass tops. That's an oversimplification and I recognize the great work that Dr. King did, but it sort of gets to this idea of the context of social movements and the erasure of Black women’s labor. There are some things that don't seem to change.
Have you heard of misogynoir?
No.
Dr. Parker: When Leslie Jones, the wonderful comedienne from Saturday Night Live, was viciously attacked on social media in 2016 a lot of celebrities came out to support her and among them was Katy Perry, who used the term misogynoir to explain what was happening. It's misogyny but against black women's bodies in particular. The woman who originally coined the term back in 2008, Moya Bailey, is a queer Black feminist scholar who wanted to describe the particular form of racialized sexism that Black women experience, especially in online media platforms, but also in everyday life. Katy Perry’s reference sort of took it to this other level of visibility. All that to say, there are some things, like misogynoir, that seem to get reinvented in different contexts across space and time.
Black women figure prominently in keeping that narrative alive because it started in the time of enslavement in terms of having to have this violence against black women's bodies in order to justify chattel slavery.
With the advent of social media, there is more access... tools for people to connect.
I think that there are some foundational activist strategies that are grounded in anti-racist work that has happened, that are always emerging from indigenous communities. I'm thinking about the history of black women's activism. And indigenous women all over the world. These movements all over the world, really I think connect on a certain level to a fundamental strategy which is to have an analysis of structural power.
We have to start with analysis of how power is inserting itself into our everyday lives. For me, that has to do with these different dominating structures of power. But having that analysis, then we have to have the tactics of educating people about how that's happening in their communities.
When a girl starts to wonder, just asking a question, "Why is it in my school, Black kids are being sent to detention more than White kids?" I mean, it's just a simple question. When she is able to do that kind of research and then starts to ask those questions, that's a structural analysis. So having that structural analysis is important. And then it's a matter of asking what is the point of change? I think this is where we get some sort of divergence because I know that in the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been so much emphasis on direct action which is bold and courageous and in your face. I'm gonna shut it down, right? How does that strategy work over time in terms of change? It takes such an emotional toll to continue to confront these persistent restructuring of state violence.
On one level this gets to the importance of self care in activist work; but it is also about how are the tactics of direct action fitting in with the larger strategy for change? To me, that's the question that all of us have to engage.
This is where I think we have to come to bear, in terms of trying to determine what are the strategies. Where's the point of change? Is it in these direct action tactics, sort of the social media campaigns and so forth, or is there a larger political strategy? I think it's a complex combination of all of these, starting with a structural analysis and then educating people to empower people to be able to see that analysis and then mobilizing people according to particular strategies, whether it's campaigns, voting, direct action. So that's my take.
How do you sustain engagement and energy over time?
Dr. Parker: Well, that's a great question because it speaks to what I was just talking about in terms of what is the overall strategy. I am very clear about what my intervention is in the general project of social justice and social movements.
I think it's the foundation of our democracy — and I'm telling you that I have never in the ten years that I've been doing this work, I have never encountered a girl who wasn't excited about this project. Who wasn't excited about wow, I have a space where someone is going to see me. Someone is going to listen to what I think and what I think is connected to something bigger in the world. But that's the project. That is so important because so much has happened on a structural level that gives the opposite message.
Nothing against Anthony Robbins, but this is not about finding the giant within. This is about understanding your place in history and in a democracy. It's personal routes toward collective consciousness. I can't repeat that too many times because it is really recognizing how we're connected in this project of social justice and equity.
That to me is how we keep it alive. In that regard, it keeps hope alive. So that's part one. Part two is that it's highly contextual. Part of the project is to reclaim a set of commitments to our democracy. This is where my communication background fuels my work. I understand communication as helping us to really facilitate those conversations about, what are our agreements in this moment, and maybe in this moment in history, but just in terms of thinking about who we are as a country, for example.
As people say, "Let's stay woke." Let's understand what's going on. That's the structural analysis. Then I will fight to stay connected to you in this conversation—especially if we disagree. That's what's in it for me is to know what our commitments are and if I know that you're committed to the same thing that I'm committed to ... and to me those commitments have to do with our values as a democracy. What do we stand for as a free republic? I think we go to that level of commitment. It's also about decolonizing. There are commitments related to dismantling the structures of white supremacy embedded in our institutions, our laws, our policies. So it's a particular kind of commitment. Being tenacious about staying connected with all the people who are in that conversation. People who disagree, who might be radically opposed to each other but find productive ways to keep the conversation going forward.
Do you think there’s a danger now of people feeling like they're participating because it's so easy to like something or share something or post about something? The illusion of activism.
Dr. Parker: Again, I think it has to be highly contextual. With any social action, it's going to be within a particular context. I think people have to be aware of, what is a social media campaign doing in that moment?
You should do the work of making yourself aware of all the complexities that are creating a particular moment. I think education is the key. Having that education about a particular issue. For Ms. Baker, it was always about tilting the power toward the people who are most vulnerable. Not acting unless you are able to get the context from the people who are being impacted by that particular moment.
Her approach to social change was about teaching and learning. So in other words, people should be able to educate themselves and others in terms of how social media might be moving something forward. They should also be teaching and learning about traditional grassroots organizing. There is so much more to learn in terms of actually engaging with people on issues. Being on the ground with people and learning some of the approaches to social movements in terms of doing a direct action but understanding what you're learning about, how that is teaching you to build a particular muscle in social change.