A quick reminder of how these straw polls work: All 15 members of the Council are given identical ballots to indicate whether they “encourage,” “discourage,” or have “no opinion” of each candidate. The ballots in this straw poll did not distinguish between the veto-wielding members of the Council and the other ten members, so we don’t know where these votes are coming from. But they do give an good indication of the strength of a candidate — the more “discourage” votes a candidate receives, the higher the likelihood that at least one of those comes from a veto-wielding member. And, on the other…

Read more

We are down to the wire in the race for UN Secretary-General, as seven candidates vie to lead the United Nations. They are a diverse group of diplomats, but one thing unites them: each has made revitalizing the UN’s role in peacemaking, conflict mediation, and conflict prevention a priority of their campaign. This reflects a broad recognition that the UN’s role and influence in these areas have waned in recent years.

So what can be done to restore the UN as a more meaningful player in global peacemaking? And what can the next Secretary-General personally do to promote peace and bring conflicts to an end?

I’m joined today by Jeffrey Feltman, a longtime diplomat who served as the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs and is now a senior fellow at the UN Foundation. We kick off by exploring why the UN has seemingly become less effective in conflict mediation and peacemaking in recent years. We then discuss concrete steps the next Secretary-General can take to revitalize the UN’s role in peacemaking and conflict resolution, some of which Feltman outlined in a recent piece for [Re]Group.

Our conversation is freely available here on Substack. An audio-only version will be published to the Global Dispatches podcast on Monday. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is produced in partnership with [Re] Group — A Playbook for Turbulent Times, a Substack from the UN Foundation.

Subscribe now

Share

Transcript edited for clarity

Mark Leon Goldberg: Welcome to Global Dispatches. I am your host, Mark Leon Goldberg. I’m joined today by Jeffrey Feltman. Thanks again for joining, Jeff.

Jeffrey Feltman: It’s great to see you, Mark, and I look forward to the conversation.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, by way of introduction, Jeff, you are a longtime American diplomat. You served as U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, as the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and also as an international diplomat. You served as the United Nations Under Secretary General for Political Affairs. I sort of liken that position to something akin to the UN’s Secretary of State or the UN’s Foreign Minister. How would you describe the role of the Under Secretary General for Political Affairs?

Jeffrey Feltman: Mark, I’m smiling because that’s how Ban Ki-moon, when he swore me in July of 2012, that’s how he explained the job. He said, “Mr. Feltman, you are like the Hillary Clinton,” who was then Secretary of State, “for the UN.” And I kind of looked around and I wondered, “Well, where’s my limousine? Where’s my protective detail? Where is all my staff?” But anyway, yeah, so the job is really dealing with the political relationships.

It’s not the humanitarian, it’s not development. It’s the political side, including conflict prevention, management, and one hopes, resolution. So yeah, and it was a great job. It was my favorite job of my whole career. And I tell you, even though you could say I was a political appointee, I got the job because I was a U.S. citizen, the United States was insisting that an American have that job, I took my oath of office on the charter in good faith. And neither the Obama administration nor the Trump, the first Trump administration, which were the two administrations that were in office when I was at the UN, ever put that at risk. They treated me appropriately as a UN official, and I was very proud of that.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So that’s all good background, and you mentioned your role was really on the political side, the conflict mediation, conflict prevention side. And I’m glad we’re speaking today, Jeff, because we’re in the midst of a real transitional period at the United Nations as UN member states choose the next secretary general. There are, really, a diverse set of candidates for the job right now, but one thing that unites most of them in their campaigns is that they seek to prioritize the revitalizing of the UN’s role on peacemaking, on conflict mediation, on conflict prevention, which I think reflects the broad sense that the UN’s role and impact in this area has waned in recent years.

I would be curious to learn your perspective on why the UN has seemingly been less impactful in conflict mediation and peacemaking. What’s your diagnosis here?

Jeffrey Feltman: Well, I mean, Mark, I think that it’s worth remembering though that the UN was set up primarily to prevent World War III, and that hasn’t happened. I mean, World War III has not happened.

Mark Leon Goldberg: By that metric, the UN has succeeded. I do say that to audiences that I speak with.

Jeffrey Feltman: Yeah, exactly. Of course, we know what’s happened. We have paralysis in the Security Council, not for the first time. There was paralysis in the Security Council during the Cold War, too. But the paralysis this time is a bit different. There’s also, member states don’t want to be on the Security Council agenda. Who wants to be, have that Security Council spotlight?

So when you have a conflict that’s brewing, it’s hard for the UN to get momentum in the particular country ‘cause they say, “Yeah, go away. We don’t want you there.” And I found when I was Under Secretary General for Political Affairs that our best key to getting into a place was saying, “We’re trying to keep you off of the Security Council agenda. We’re trying to prevent or help you resolve a conflict so the Security Council doesn’t have to think about it.” And there are quiet examples where the UN has continued, despite the polarization, to play a quiet role in helping to deescalate tensions that could have erupted into violence.

I can think of a couple that happened during my time. But right now you have Security Council paralysis. You have the current Secretary General, António Guterres, I think has taken a cautious approach to peace and security matters because of the polarization, because of not wanting to exacerbate differences or animosity among the great powers. But I left this year’s High Level week at the UN, the UNGA week, encouraged because I felt that there was universal backing for having the UN sort of revive a stronger peace and security role.

The UN played peace and security roles even during the Cold War when there was polarization, and I’m convinced that, that the UN can do more now. It’s not like the UN’s absent, but what the UN has been doing is playing a more quiet role, which is appropriate in some conflict situations, but in other places, I think you need to have a much more visible presence to elevate and amplify the issues.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And so to that end, you have authored a recent piece on Re[Group], and I should say you’re a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation. And this conversation is produced in partnership with Re[Group], which is a Substack from the UN Foundation. On that Substack, you identified some concrete ways that the United Nations can elevate its peace and security portfolio, and the incoming secretary general, whoever she or he might be, and the steps that she or he can take to revitalize the UN’s role in peacemaking, in conflict mediation. Let’s just talk through some of your suggestions. What is your top suggestion?

Jeffrey Feltman: Well, for the article that you mentioned, I focused on Sudan because Sudan’s the largest humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world. It’s one where there is a Security Council mandate already. But it’s one that I don’t think has gotten the global attention. So, the basic idea that I have is that the Secretary General may not, in the immediate term, be able to solve a crisis like Sudan, but the Secretary General can force the issue on the world’s agenda.

The Secretary General, by using convening power, using the power of appointment, using the ability to talk to the Security Council, can make it hard or impossible for the world to ignore this problem. So, a lot of the ideas that I expressed in the interview, um, that, that you mentioned were about how you elevate Sudan on the international agenda in a way that can lead to steps for de-escalation and things like that.

And even since that interview, I think there’s been even more urgency to the UN playing a role in this region because you have escalating tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea. They were there when I did the interview, but I didn’t talk about it. And you already have Sudan in a civil war. You have war across the Red Sea. You could have a contagion of violence that goes on both sides of the Red Sea, interrupting global commerce, causing mass displacement that’s even worse than now.

And the Secretary General needs to basically keep this issue on the front burner. I don’t think that Sudan leads the same sort of polarization you would see in Gaza or Ukraine or in Iran.

So I think that this is one where the Secretary General has the ability to take the initiative in a way that can have a positive difference. Part of the problem with Sudan has been that there’s, obviously, there’s a civil war. There’s front lines in the Kordofan region in Southern Sudan. You’ve got the country basically divided among two warring parties with other insurgent groups even complicating it beyond that.

But the humanitarian access has been wanting. Both sides are using permits for humanitarian access to deny life-saving aid to those in need. The Secretary General can start calling this out in a way that makes it more difficult for others that have influence to stay silent.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So is it a matter, therefore, of the Secretary General simply being more vocal, doing sort of the personal shuttle diplomacy herself or himself in ways that we have not seen from a Secretary General in recent years?

Jeffrey Feltman: Yeah. Yes, I think so. And of course, I’m talking basically about how you try to elevate this on the international agenda. You had a great piece yesterday that keeping it on the international agenda is not sufficient. We need to find ways to solve this. I fully subscribe to your recent piece, Mark, and I’m talking more about, at this point, just getting it on the international agenda. Let me take an example.

Antonio Guterres, in December 2023, the Secretary General, went to the Egyptian side of the Rafah Border Crossing, and with a lot of media visibility, demanded the Israelis to let the humanitarian assistance go in, and it was the right thing to do. It made the Biden administration very uncomfortable. It should have. Obviously not uncomfortable enough. I think they should have put more pressure on the Israelis when it came to humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

But the Secretary General did the right thing. He brought the world’s attention to that issue in a way that I think helped ease some of the restrictions on the humanitarian side. I wish he’d done the same thing with Sudan. I wish he had gone to Chad, to the Adre Border Crossing between Chad and Darfur, which the Sudanese Armed Forces do not control. But the Sudanese Armed Forces representing the recognized government of the United Nations said to the UN, “You can’t use that border.

You can’t.” Even though they weren’t physically there, they bureaucratically denied access across the border to get life-saving humanitarian assistance into Darfur. I wish the Secretary General had done the same thing he had done in Rafah, that he had gone to Adre with media and made it very uncomfortable for the Sudanese Armed Forces and their backers to continue that blockade. These are the sorts of things I think that can get attention and have an impact.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Let me maybe just play the devil’s advocate here a little bit because I agree with your diagnosis here. But I do wonder, again, playing the devil’s advocate, if you have a Secretary General who is very visible, very out there, and expending a lot of political capital to solve this complex crisis in Sudan, or even elsewhere, and the conflict is not resolved, what happens then? Does she or he therefore, having expended all sorts of political capital on this particular crisis, therefore, have not much juice left to do the other things that she or he needs to do around the world?

Jeffrey Feltman: I think the Secretary General needs to be caught trying, and the risk of failure is always there. Probably one would fail more than one would succeed in trying to resolve some of these terrible conflicts, but that is the role of the Secretary General. Now, the other thing you can do is have very high-profile envoys. Not every conflict needs a high-profile envoy. Some conflicts, as I said earlier, need quiet diplomacy.

But for something like Sudan, you have a very good envoy right now. Pekka Haavisto, the former Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Development, presidential candidate, and he knows the region quite well. But he’s a personal envoy of the Secretary General. He doesn’t have a Security Council mandate. You could have the Secretary General put options before the Security Council on creating a mandate that would make him a special envoy with a mandate, budget, and staff to be able to do the job.

And then the envoy absorbs some of the risk from the Secretary General. So I think that part of the new Secretary General needs to think strategically about the appointments process. Who can keep attention on a particular conflict issue, who has the credibility with not only the parties in the conflict, but those that are backing them, and can absorb some of the risk of potent-of potential failure for you.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, another idea on your punch list of things the UN and the Secretary General can do to revitalize the UN’s role in peacemaking and conflict mediation is that you propose something akin to an Helsinki process for the Middle East. Can you just flesh that out what you mean and then remind listeners, who are not familiar with the Cold War era Helsinki process, what it accomplished and why it ought to be potentially a model for dealing with the Middle East right now, including Iran?

Jeffrey Feltman: Yeah, the Helsinki process, as you say, it was a Cold War initiative, started in Helsinki 1975. It developed eventually into the Organization for Security and Cooperation for Europe, which still exists. The OSCE still exists. It’s Vienna-based. But basically, it was functional security architecture that was built even among enemies. At the height of the Cold War when Moscow and Washington were nuclear-armed to the hilt against each other, they and their allies, their partners on each side, I would say partners on the Western side and the sort of Warsaw Pact subservient partners-

Mark Leon Goldberg: The clients on the other side. Yeah

Jeffrey Feltman: ... clients on the other side. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Yeah.

Jeffrey Feltman: But in any case, it was an inclusive process that came up with ways to deal with the security problems of Europe at a time when there was no trust and it was between sworn enemies. Now, on the Gulf, and the current Iran war, I don’t see the United States turning to the United Nations to say, “Solve this war for us right now.”

I don’t see Iran doing it either. But there’s nothing stopping the UN from starting to talk about the day after. Because when this war ends, however this war ends, there’s gonna be deep mistrust, deep mistrust across the Gulf itself, deep mistrust between the Iranians and the United States. But I don’t think anyone’s going to want to see this to see a war reignite because of an accident. So can you taking the model of the Helsinki Accords, where you had sworn enemies sitting across the table from each other, they come up with security framework and sort of rules of the road, can you start to do that with the Gulf or Middle Eastern countries?

I would start with the eight littoral countries and their respective allies that are along the Gulf, which are the six Arab Gulf states plus Iraq plus Iran, to come up with, say, an incident prevention and response mechanism. Can the UN help these countries design some way that would prevent an accidental war because of miscalculation? How do you deal with maritime incidents? How do you deal with accidental violation of airspace?

How do you convey intentions? Can you have a understanding about large military exercises that would be announced in advance or something like that? The UN can start to talk about the day after, and how you would build a security architecture to minimize conflict. Now, I’m not talking about some grand principle thing. I’m talking about you start off with, again, incident prevention and response.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Can I ask, like, why the UN here? Because you already have like the Gulf Cooperation Council, which I know doesn’t include Iran necessarily. You already have Gulf countries that have diplomatic relations with each other. Why would it take, like, the United Nations with its 193 member states to be the architecture around which a platform, as you imagine, would coalesce?

Jeffrey Feltman: The reason why I think the UN should get involved in this is because of the principle of inclusivity that governed Helsinki. Now, the Helsinki process was not a UN process. But in the case of the Middle East, there are lots of Track 1.5dialogues, which means... Track 1.5 dialogue is when officials come together in a non-official capacity. There’s lots of Track 2 dialogues where people get together in sort of personal capacity, not officials, to talk about things, that are already sort of talking about this.

I’m not breaking new ground in talking about a Helsinki-like process for this region. But the problem is, in these Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues, these unofficial dialogues, inclusivity gets set aside. Like, some countries will say, “Yes, we need to have a Helsinki process, but no way can we do it with Iran.” Or others will say, “No way can we do it with having the Israelis around,” even though the Israelis also can contribute to war or peace in this region.

And so the UN can operate with the principle of inclusivity, bringing everyone together because everyone’s already a member state. Everyone has sovereign equality under the UN Charter, and so it makes it easier for these countries to get together that might otherwise try to exclude someone that needs to be in the room.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, another one of your priorities that you recommend the next secretary-general embrace is to take steps to revitalize international humanitarian law, the laws of war, which frankly, over the last several years, have been violated at seemingly an increasing clip. I mean, we know it’s one of the real shames over the last decade or so is the just constant ignoring of international law in how militaries conduct their warfare throughout the world. But what can the UN do, if anything, to re-strengthen the Geneva Conventions and other aspects of international humanitarian law? And why is that particularly an important priority for the next secretary-general to focus on?

Jeffrey Feltman: Well, I think it’s part of the peace and security elevation that we’re talking about is to revive interest in and commitment to international humanitarian law as part of civilian protection, as a part of basically the rules of war, the rules of conflict to try to minimize the impact on civilian life. I think that’s an important part of peace and security agenda for a new secretary-general.

And this is one where there’s a great group of countries that’s already been working on this. It’s one where the secretary-general can walk in and embrace the existing initiative. In 2024, Brazil, China, France, Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Jordan, with the ICRC, which is the International Committee of the Red Cross sort of the holds the international humanitarian law, and these countries came together and started a global initiative on reviving political commitment to the international humanitarian law.

A hundred and twenty-seven countries have signed up for this already. So it’s something where the secretary-general has a great group of countries that can back his or her commitment to international humanitarian law because they’re already starting that. And there’s a meeting in Amman. There’s a global, a high-level meeting on humanity and war by this group in Amman in December. They will come up with recommendations, presumably sensible recommendations. They are not rewriting or reopening humanitarian law.

It’s an important distinction. So, no one’s asking for additional commitments from member states. They’re asking for reviving political commitment to the existing Geneva Conventions. And so the secretary-general coming into office, presumably on January first, will have a fresh set of recommendations from an active group on international humanitarian law to make his or her own. And you apply it back to Sudan. Sudan, the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. You make it clear that humanitarian access and other aspects of international humanitarian law are the focus of the UN when they’re looking at Sudan.

Mark Leon Goldberg: I guess I do wonder, again, maybe to play the devil’s advocate a little bit, is how much power the secretary-general has to enforce political commitments on international humanitarian law. I mean, it seems not that much. So, what else can she or he actually do to convince governments around the world not to bomb civilians?

Jeffrey Feltman: No, you’re absolutely right. I mean, he or she doesn’t have any absolute power in this way. But man, he or she should be able to embarrass countries, make it hard for countries to ignore this. I mean, there has been a real sharp deterioration in compliance with international humanitarian law, whether we’re talking about bombing of ambulances or what have you. And the secretary-general can make it harder for countries to ignore this deterioration.

Basically, I think that the secretary-general, on the whole peace and security side, primary task is to make it harder for others to stay silent.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So lastly, I wanted to ask you about potential for the secretary-general or her or himself ,and the UN more broadly, to become more deeply involved on questions around artificial intelligence and security, and the intersection of AI and international security issues. When we started our conversation, you mentioned the kind of mood around the United Nations during High Level week, during UNGA, as being somewhat optimistic about the UN’s ability to actually tackle some of these problems, which I note is a shift from the kind of general mood in previous years.

And one of the central things that happened at the UN during UNGA this year was this meeting of the Security Council featuring Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and other AI leaders, and also people in the civil society space who are kind of warning about potential dangers of artificial intelligence. But this is a technology that’s firmly in the private sector hands right now. So what can the UN and the secretary-general her or himself do to advance safety issues around artificial intelligence in a way that would have like a meaningful impact in the real world?

Jeffrey Feltman: Mark, you mentioned High Levelweek, and one of the things that struck me, and I’ve been, like you, to many, many High Level weeks. One thing that struck me about this year’s High Level week was that the informal agenda, what everyone wants to talk about in the corridors over dinner, pull aside and things like that, and the formal agenda were unusually aligned. And AI was one of those issues that was both on the informal agenda, everyone wanted to talk about it on the sides, and it was also part of the formal agenda at the UN, including the Security Council meeting that, that you mentioned.

So I thought that was interesting because often the informal agendas and the formal agenda High Level week aren’t the same. And it was June or July, you had the global dialogue in Geneva, and then on artificial intelligence, and there is the-

Mark Leon Goldberg: And that was like a UN umbrella convened meeting that took place. It was an example of the UN’s inclusivity. It was a meeting about artificial intelligence that included most of the world and the developing world in particular, which are typically kind of excluded from these conversations.

Jeffrey Feltman: That’s right. And the next global dialogue of this convening is in May. And so the new Secretary General will be there. I think it’s important that you keep this global dialogue, which is, as you say, based on inclusivity, from becoming another GA, from becoming another one of these talk shops. And I think one way to do that is to focus on specific issues like health, like child safety, things that people can agree on.

So part of the UN’s role in AI is that global dialogue that’s a member state issue and has the risk of just becoming a talk shop. But I think the Secretary General can help manage that. But you’ve also got the Office of Digital and Emerging Technologies of the Secretary General. You have an international panel on AI that’s doing some important work.

I think that the United Nations, I mean, I’m not an AI expert, but the United Nations can look at sort of the open weight model, you don’t have to ask permission to deal with the open weight models, and start to try to come up with some protocols on safety and the like. I don’t think you’re gonna have a universal convention in the same way that you had arms control back in the Cold War.

But you can start to build a community on things like child safety, other safety protocols through the convening power of the United Nations. Because AI can increase the risk of conflict by the competition for water, for energy, for critical resources. The quest for supremacy between China and the United States could lead to conflict. One hopes, one hopes not. The technology itself can pose dangers.

This is just too big of an issue for the UN to ignore, and the UN’s going have to be de-dealing with this at several levels. The inclusivity one with member states, through the global dialogue, but also some technical things with like-minded member states on safety, etc.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, Jeff, is there anything else you wanted to bring into the conversation, mention before I let you go?

Jeffrey Feltman: No, just I would close on an optimistic note again because there is a sort of a consensus among great powers, small powers, medium powers, that peace and security is at the heart of the UN’s purpose, and there seems to be a commitment to revive and elevate that peace and security work under a new Secretary General.

Mark Leon Goldberg: All right. Well, we will leave it there. Jeffrey Feltman, thank you so much for speaking with me.

Jeffrey Feltman: Thank you, Mark.

Mark Leon Goldberg: All right. Bye.

We kick off with a summary of where things stand (which has not changed much since the polls closed). Joel argues that the results represent a profound rebuke of the coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, including its explicit policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

He then takes us deep into the complex parliamentary politics that will play out over the next few weeks as a new government seeks to form, including the implications of the strongest showing ever by Arab-Israeli parties. We then discuss what this vote means for Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza.

I think you will find this timely conversation to be an accessible but nuanced take on how to make sense of these historically significant elections.

Our conversation is free for all, but if you appreciate the kind of analytical lens that conversations like this bring to our common understanding of the world, please become a paid subscriber.

You can use the discount link below.

Get 40% off forever

Or you can support Global Dispatches at full-priced subscription.

Subscribe now

Share

At times, Trump has signaled support for Kyiv. At others, it has appeared to tilt toward Moscow. There was little rhyme or reason to whose side Donald Trump was supporting on any given day, and these erratic policy swings have injected a high degree of unpredictability into the once-solid Western alliance supporting Ukraine’s defense.

In recent weeks, however, Trump appears to have swung decisively in favor of Russia.

Trump has waived sanctions on Russia, from which the United States is now purchasing diesel. Ukraine’s defense has been undermined by restrictions on Elon Musk’s Starshield, a critical communications platform upon which the Ukrainian military relies. Trump has invited Putin to the upcoming G20 meeting at his club in Florida, and has stymied intelligence sharing to warn about incoming missile attacks from Russia.

My guest today is journalist Luke Johnson, proprietor of the Public Sphere Substack. Based in Europe, Luke covers the war in Ukraine, European politics, and the impact of American foreign policy on Europe. We kick off our conversation with the news that an American prisoner held in Russia has been released by Putin in what is being billed as a “humanitarian” gesture, but which, in effect, further solidifies the growing alignment between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Our conversation is free for all. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you list.

If you appreciate this kind of timely coverage of global events, please support my work with a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Get 40% off forever

Get more from Mark Leon Goldberg in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Anjali Dayal and Mark Leon Goldberg discuss Nusseibeh’s possible path through the Security Council, as well as the baggage that the United Arab Emirates’ activist foreign policy brings to her candidacy. Later, Mark speaks with Diego Salama, author of a new book about the UN in the Middle East, about the demise of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon and the potential security vacuum it leaves behind.

Our full conversation is available immediately below the fold for paying subscribers. Here’s a discount link

Get 40% off forever

Or use this link if to support To Save Us From Hell at full price.

Subscribe now

Read more

Get 40% off forever

As we sat down to record this episode of To Save Us From Hell, rumors were swirling that Lana Nusseibeh was about to enter the race for UN Secretary-General. Hours later, it was confirmed: the former United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the UN is officially in the race—and very much a top contender for the job.

Anjali Dayal and Mark Leon Goldberg discuss Nusseibeh’s possible path through the Security Council, as well as the baggage that the United Arab Emirates’ activist foreign policy brings to her candidacy. Later, Mark speaks with Diego Salama, author of a new book about the UN in the Middle East, about the demise of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon and the potential security vacuum it leaves behind.

Read more

Lana Nusseibeh is officially a candidate for UN Secretary-General. Her late entry into the race had been rumored for some time, and on Wednesday afternoon, the United Arab Emirates formally submitted her nomination.

Nusseibeh is well known in diplomatic circles and, by most accounts, well-liked and respected around the United Nations as a highly capable diplomat. She served as the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the UN for more than a decade, from 2013 to 2024, including a stint on the Security Council from 2022 to 2023. Since 2024, she has served as a senior foreign affairs official for the UAE.

In announcing her candidacy, Nusseibeh emphasized that she would engage in “quiet diplomacy” and prioritize smaller, localized mediation efforts that could be nurtured into broader peace deals. From her vision statement:

Lasting peace is rarely made in a single stroke. More often, it is assembled f…

Read more

The veto-wielding members were given identical red ballots, while the other ten members were given different colored ballots. On each ballot, members indicated whether they encouraged, discouraged, or had no opinion on each candidate.

The result: we now have a very close three-way race.

Rebeca Grynspan, Rafael Grossi, and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett are now the three leading contenders. To be sure, each faces opposition from two veto-wielding members, but compared to the other candidates, who face even steeper opposition from the P5, their odds look considerably better.

Of these three, only Costa Rica’s …

Read more

It did not receive much attention at the time, but one of the more consequential gatherings at the United Nations during UNGA was a high-level meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.

The meeting was intended to build momentum toward a global Pandemic Agreement that was negotiated at the WHO last year, but which left a few key issues unresolved. Chief among them is the creation of a so-called Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System, or PABS. The basic idea is that countries that share viral samples with pharmaceutical companies and researchers should, in turn, have access to the vaccines, medicines, and other products developed from those samples.

All of this was up for discussion at the UN meeting, but the United States ultimately blocked the adoption of a consensus outcome document.

Joining me to discuss what happened at this meeting, why it matters, and what comes next for a global agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response is Courtney Carson, Senior Director of Programs at RANI, an NGO.

Our conversation is freely available across all podcast listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Subscribe now

Share

Transcript is edited for clarity

Mark Leon Goldberg: Welcome to Global Dispatches, the podcast that helps you understand the world through conversations with the people who know it best. I’m your host, Mark Leon Goldberg, an international affairs journalist who’s been covering global politics for more than two decades. Enjoy the show, and please visit globaldispatches.org to learn more, sign up for our newsletter, and support independent journalism with a global perspective.

I am joined today by Courtney Carson, Senior Director at RANI, the Resilience Action Network International. Courtney, by way of introduction, can you tell us a little bit about what RANI is in your work?

Courtney Carson: RANI, as you said, stands for Resilience Action Network International, and we are an advocacy network that helps drive policy change to address societal resilience at the highest level and what that means in terms of being prepared for the intersecting threats that challenge our societal resilience. We were founded in early 2020 as Pandemic Action Network, and really trying to mobilize an advocacy community around response to the COVID-19 pandemic and building the systems and structures that were needed for pandemic prevention and preparedness going forward.

Over time, as we’ve all grown to better understand the intersecting threats to human health, global health security, and resilience, we’ve evolved to become Resilience Action Network International.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And, of course, you follow very closely the topic of our conversation today: ongoing efforts to create a pandemic agreement. And we are speaking about a week after the high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, which took place at the United Nations during UNGA.

Now, this meeting didn’t receive a huge amount of mainstream media attention, but within the global health community, it was considered a very significant meeting. Why was that? Why was this meeting so important?

Courtney Carson: High-level meetings at the United Nations serve a primary purpose, and that’s to galvanize political leader-level attention to pressing issues of our time. And that is the primary purpose of this high-level meeting is trying to resubmit high-level leadership and attention to pandemic threats. Obviously, this was top of mind during COVID-19. But as we’re all dealing with the aftermath of that pandemic, most leaders have been very keen to put these issues in the rearview mirror.

It’s lost public support and everyone is ready to forget about the lived experiences we all went through, even though most of the solutions needed to help prevent a similar type of health emergency from happening again haven’t been advanced or haven’t been advanced as much as they needed to be. So, the High Level Meeting served as an opportunity to refocus leaders’ attention and galvanize action to help fill the gaps that still exist.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And, it’s funny, as you said, if this meeting were to have to happen like five years ago, it would have gotten a ton of media attention, not just from Global Dispatches, but from like the New York Times, the Washington Post. But as you said, this topic really has fallen from media’s attention. But there has been significant progress over the years towards an international agreement around what to do sort of next time a pandemic hits.

And this culminated to a certain degree last year at the World Health Organization, where the World Health Assembly adopted a pandemic agreement. But part of that pandemic agreement was not agreed upon. And until this part of that pandemic agreement is agreed upon, the whole thing can’t be adopted. So, can you explain that dynamic by way of introduction for the audience?

Courtney Carson: So, in the aftermath of COVID-19, one of the major political rallying cries was around creating a pandemic treaty, is what it was called at that moment in time, to help outline sort of like the rules of the road for how we would act together for the common good if there were another pandemic threat and what steps might be taken to help prevent epidemics from blossoming into a full-blown global pandemic. And that was a process that moved through the World Health Organization and became known as the Pandemic Agreement.

Despite the leader-level attention to that process as it started, when the rubber started hitting the road on what does it actually mean to align on policies and priorities and financing to make sure the global system is better prepared for pandemic threats, the devil was in the details. And trying to find common ground between countries with different priorities and interests was a challenge, especially for really grounding the political agreement in equity and reflecting on the horrific inequitable access to COVID-19 countermeasures, including and beyond vaccines that we saw during the pandemic.

And that continues to be one of the sticking points is how do we actually operationalize a global system for equity? And what does equity mean in practice? And that’s where that process is still stuck, on the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System, also known as PABS.

Mark Leon Goldberg: That seems to be one of the key stumbling blocks right now: the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System, or PABS, as you said, that while most countries at the World Health Organization agreed to this pandemic treaty, there’s this annex that includes the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System that was not agreed upon. And until that annex is agreed upon, the whole thing can’t be sent out for ratification and adoption and can’t come into force.

So please explain to listeners who have never heard of this thing, what is PABS? Why is it significant, and like what are the stumbling blocks?

Courtney Carson: Right now, PABS is one of the most major mechanisms linked to the pandemic agreement to help operationalize more equitable access to countermeasures during a pandemic emergency. When the drafting of the pandemic agreement initially started, there were sort of other inroads to help advance more equitable access to tools. But as the political process developed, PABS sort of became, at least regarded as the primary pathway for equity in the pandemic agreement.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And what does it mean? What does it include?

Courtney Carson: Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System is the idea that countries or jurisdictions that help identify a novel pathogen or a novel strain of a pathogen, and when they share that data with other countries, with pharmaceutical companies, or whomever might use that data to help develop a countermeasure, would then in turn get benefits from sharing the pathogen data. And that benefit could be many things, but in this case, it’s linked to equitable access to the countermeasures that are developed as a result of sharing that pathogen data.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, for example, if a novel virus is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the DRC would send their samples to advanced laboratories elsewhere in the Global North or the West. And because they have done the right thing and shared this sample with wealthier countries with more capabilities to build vaccines or countermeasures, the expectation is that they therefore would be able to receive those countermeasures, those vaccines at some like reasonable price.

Courtney Carson: Or no cost potentially.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And so it’s this idea that we’re all in this together, right? That if you, as a countr,y do the right thing, you share your data, this virus data, with the rest of the world, the rest of the world is not just going to profit off of that. They’re going to also help you defend yourself, your countries.

Courtney Carson: Yes. And it’s also in part a reaction to what happened during COVID-19 when you saw countries like South Africa sharing data on new variants of COVID and facing economic isolation and other types of fallouts instead of more recognition of sharing how the virus has been developing, which greatly informed the future of vaccine candidates and different things like that.

Mark Leon Goldberg: I mean, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. Why is it, therefore, that some countries, I guess presumably in the global north, don’t want this agreement?

Courtney Carson: What’s happening right now is a challenge between balancing the access to information and what appropriate level of benefits are. And the big push from an equity perspective is to make sure that access and benefits are on equal footing. And that’s not necessarily seen as how the proposals are right now. It can feel that countries are being asked to give up more in the access they provide to information than they would be guaranteed to receive in benefits, or there’s caveats to the benefits.

And there’s also a push to have legal arrangements already drafted up so that there’s more certainty for what the benefits would be versus, “Well, we will do this if these following conditions are met.” And understandably, countries, especially those who feel that they had been burned during the COVID pandemic, are not looking to sign up for a system where they feel like they may be giving away information and not getting appropriate benefits in return, especially when they live that experience, to some extent, in the not-so-recent past.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, that seemed to be the kind of hang-up and the debate heading into this big high-level meeting at the United Nations last week, where, as you said, the intention behind these high-level meetings is to have very senior political attention at the minister level, the foreign minister, even the prime minister level, focus on these issues to try to resolve an impasse like this. So, what happened at this meeting?

Courtney Carson: Well, one of the things that RANI, in partnership with other organizations we worked with called the Friends of the High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response, had been working to was to help decouple, in some ways, this high-level meeting process from the processes that were happening in Geneva around the pandemic agreement and PABS negotiations, because one of the strong suits about addressing these issues at the United Nations in New York is that you take it out of purely a health realm and can address pandemic threats as a whole of society, whole of government initiative.

So, when there was a high-level meeting in 2023 on this topic, there was a lot of hesitancy on what could be in the political declaration because there was the pandemic agreement process still happening in Geneva. And leaders did not want to get ahead of the political process in that realm. But if we make the case that we’re in New York, this is more than a health thing, we can keep letting the PABS negotiations happen, and we can still make progress on other issues where there are gaps related to pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. That’s what this New York process should be for, not to relitigate what’s happening in Geneva or get ahead of what may be happening there.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And there was this intention, this idea that there would be a political declaration, which is the outcome document often of meetings like this, which is a consensus declaration of where we, all the countries of the world who are participating in this meeting, can agree on this particular issue. Yet, at this meeting last Friday, there was no political declaration adopted by consensus. So, what transpired to block that consensus that enabled the failure of this political declaration to be agreed upon?

Courtney Carson: I wouldn’t call it a failure right now, and we’re still hoping that the political declaration will advance this calendar year. But a lot of the policy-sticking details are some of the same ones that challenge the pandemic agreement process, and what are some of the thornier issues to come to alignment on, especially between countries in the global north and countries in the global south? Technology transfer and different aspects of that that touch on pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing are those that continue to be challenging.

And then when you bring things like this to a more general UN body, you start to see political tensions from other processes or other parts of geopolitics enter the arena. So, during the drafting stage of the political declaration, there’s a process where you have a text, countries negotiate on it, and then it’s open for silence procedure, where you say this is the draft. Countries have an opportunity to comment on it. If silence is not broken, we’re going to keep moving forward.

Unfortunately, with each iteration of the draft, silence was broken. And then in August, the co-facilitators of the process said, “Silence was broken again, but we feel this is the strongest document we can get from a consensus perspective. So, we’re going to keep moving it as it’s currently drafted,” in hopes that once it got down the line a little further, once there could be some bilateral meetings with different member states, some of the issues could be resolved so that people wouldn’t speak out against it. That did not totally happen in this case.

And there were still unresolved issues that prevented countries from being able to say, “We can advance this with a consensus process at the high-level meeting.”

Mark Leon Goldberg: Which countries? Because the reporting I saw suggested that it was mostly the United States and a handful of smaller countries that formally blocked consensus. What was the United States objections?

Courtney Carson: I think advocates, at least, were mentally prepared for the United States to come in with objections to this process, as they have in a lot of multilateral processes to date. And some of the objections are around issues like sexual and reproductive health and rights, which don’t necessarily need to come into play in this arena. But if it’s a health-related issue and it could possibly touch on those things, there’s an opportunity to lodge objections.

Part of it has to do with industrial policies and what is seen to be in the best interests of the United States. Some parts of it are around how much the United States engaged productively in the negotiating process of the political declaration versus just coming in at the end and saying, “Eh, we don’t like this.”

Mark Leon Goldberg: Which is, in my view, that’s probably what happened. And you’re nodding. But yeah, it did seem that the United States kind of made a show of blocking consensus. And it was around, as you said, seemingly mostly ancillary issues in the document of language that as a reporter covering the UN and many other of these processes, they just sort of routinely now, as a matter of form, just block consensus when there’s reference to reproductive health because they think it’s code for abortion or whatever.

And so, you did see at this HLM, this High Level Meeting, the blocking of consensus. But in the room, what was the overwhelming or overriding mood and view about where we stand right now on a process towards a global cooperative arrangement on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response? Because the U.S. is an outlier here, but it’s an outlier to what is seemingly a broader consensus.

Courtney Carson: And even when you listen to remarks delivered by U.S. diplomats, they start with the premise that we understand that pandemics are a global issue where we need to work together. So, I think, by and large, the recognition is there. It’s just where is the willingness to make the political policy and financing changes that are really needed to make the biggest difference. And I think financing is an area where we’re still not seeing enough progress as is needed.

And while you hear member states give remarks about how they are committed to global solidarity against pandemic threats, that diseases know no borders, and these are things that came up time and time again, not many, if any, countries were willing to go to bat for global-level financing that’s needed to keep the global community prepared. And we learned in the aftermath of COVID-19 that there’s at least a $15 billion annual gap for global-level financing for pandemic prevention and preparedness.

And though it was something that we and other organizations really pushed for, we could not secure language to that effect in the political declaration because geopolitics and the politics around financing in general are so fraught at this moment in time. Even acknowledging the gap, let alone committing to close the gap, was something that couldn’t be addressed even by member states who are very supportive of these issues.

Mark Leon Goldberg: You mentioned earlier that even though this particular meeting failed to adopt a political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, there is still an opportunity later this year for the world to come together and at least advance the conversation, advance the diplomacy on this issue. What is that opportunity?

Courtney Carson: I don’t believe that the sort of specific next steps have been outlined yet, but there will be further meetings of the General Assembly this calendar year where action can be taken to help advance the political declaration. As far as I know, there hasn’t been any determination as to whether that means the declaration text will be reopened and renegotiated to some extent, if it will be continued conversations bilaterally to help understand member state concerns and work to help alleviate them.

And it’s also not clear yet to me whether advancing the political declaration will necessarily mean that a vote is required or if there are still pathways to try to move this in more of a consensus way. But we saw something similar happen with the political declaration on non-communicable diseases last year. And though it was a protracted process, the declaration was still able to pass at the end of the year. So, from an advocacy perspective, we’re working with our partners to let member states know that this process is important, that they owe it to their citizens to advance this political declaration and not to let this fall through the cracks.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, it was at the High Level Meeting, though, that Dr. Tedros, the Executive Director of the World Health Organization, sort of urged member states to quickly pass that PABS annex and that PABS agreement so that the pandemic treaty, the accord, could start to be in a place where it could be ratified by governments and then come into force. Because, again, until that one Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing part of the agreement is agreed, it just can’t move forward. So, what are the opportunities then for the advancement on the PABS part of this whole matrix?

Courtney Carson: So, there are scheduled negotiations on the PABS annex for the rest of this year. But the sticking point is getting negotiators to come to the table actually willing to compromise. I think several experts around UNGA said it’s not really a negotiation when you show up and just keep saying your same points over and over, potentially a little louder or with different emphasis, right? We know what the positions are. There needs to be some effort to meet closer to the middle and show that there’s a willingness, potentially on both sides, to find common ground not just stick to your position.

So, that’s where the effort is needed is where can there be movement towards compromise, because if we keep showing up with the negotiations, with little room to move, the negotiations are going to continue as they have been, because even though this Pathogen Access and Benefits Sharing annex was kicked down the road after the adoption of the pandemic agreement, these issues were being negotiated during the negotiation of the rest of the pandemic agreement. So, this has been a long negotiation. The points are well known. We need to get past that towards what are the solutions.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, I guess then what could be like the diplomatic breakthrough that enables the kind of compromise that you envision that sort of enables governments to come to the table, not just reasserting their previously held positions, but being able to compromise?

Courtney Carson: I think it’s a really challenging question because it has to do a lot with how medical research and development is funded. It has to do with who are the players in medical R&D — where do profits come from? What are reasonable profits? What is considered a global public good? And can we all align on that? And there are so many complicated issues baked into that, trying to just say, “Well, of course, the pharmaceutical industry should guarantee access to vaccines during a pandemic.” Sounds like the easy solution.

But if we’re also not addressing upstream how the early investments are being made in countermeasure development, we’re not really solving the problem. We’re putting a band-aid on it. So, it’s a larger issue that needs a comprehensive solution, and we’re still trying to get at it in a piecemeal way.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Is there anything like another point you wanted to make, any question I didn’t ask?

Courtney Carson: I think the other point that I would make is that with the political declaration from the High Level Meeting, with the pandemic agreement, with the PABS annex, there’s still a lag time between getting something in policy and implementation. And while all of these political processes are important, many would still say they’re not at the depth that is truly needed to be transformative.

So, as advocates, we have a really strong push to say these political processes are important, but we cannot wait until the political processes are resolved or aligned or ratified to start making the changes, to make the policies, to make the investments that are needed to make our communities better prepared for pandemic threats. You can see what are in the outlines of these documents. Countries and regions can start implementing these things now, even if they’re not policy, and thinking ahead to what’s needed.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Courtney, thank you so much for your time. This was really helpful.

Courtney Carson: Yeah, thank you.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Thanks for listening to Global Dispatches. The show is produced by me, Mark Leon Goldberg. It is edited and mixed by Levi Sharpe. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, make sure to follow the show and enable automatic downloads to get new episodes as soon as they’re released. On Spotify, tap the bell icon to get a notification when we publish new episodes. And of course, please visit globaldispatches.org to get on our free mailing list, get in touch with me, and access our full archive.

Thank you.

In the first segment of this episode of To Save Us From Hell, Anjali and Mark break down the implications of Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize — and why it was significant that the Nobel Committee chose to honor the South African jurist when it did.

As it happens, Navi Pillay also spent nearly a decade as a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC). On the same day she was awarded the Nobel, the Trump administration announced new plans to impose sweeping sanctions on the entire court. We have an extended discussion about the implications of this move for the ICC and how the court’s defenders might respond.

Finally, we unpack the latest developments in the race for UN Secretary-General, which has come down to just two candidates.

Our full conversation is available exclusively for our paid subscribers. You can access it directly below the fold.

Subscribe now

Get 50% off forever

Read more

Get 50% off forever

The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and chair of the UN body that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the first segment, Anjali and Mark break down the implications of Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize — and why it was significant that the Nobel Committee chose to honor the South African jurist when it did.

As it happens, Navi Pillay also spent nearly a decade as a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC). On the same day she was awarded the Nobel, the Trump administration announced new plans to impose sweeping sanctions on the entire court. We have an extended discussion about the implications of this move for the ICC and how the court’s defenders might respond.

Finally, we unpack the latest developments in the race for UN Secretary-General, which has come down to just two candidates.

Read more

Navi Pillay has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.

I know her best from her time as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. But she had a long history of human rights work in her native South Africa, where she served as a lawyer defending key members of the anti-apartheid movement, including Nelson Mandela. She also served as a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which tried perpetrators of the 1994 genocide.

But it’s her more recent work investigating atrocities committed during the war in Gaza that likely convinced the Nobel Committee to confer this honor upon her when it did.

Subscribe now

Pillay chaired a UN Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses committed in Israel and Palestine that produced a series of exhaustive reports on violations committed by both Israel and Hamas in the context of the Gaza war. These reports are extremely detailed, and often quite gruesome.

In September 2025, the Commission issued a legal analysis of its factual findings and concluded that the war crimes and crimes against humanity it had documented over the previous two years amounted to genocide. That is, the Commission concluded that these crimes met the threshold of intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular national, ethnic, racial, or religious group that distinguishes genocide from other mass atrocities.

“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention,” Pillay said upon the release of the report.

“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza. The Commission also finds that Israel has failed to prevent and punish the commission of genocide, through failure to investigate genocidal acts and to prosecute alleged perpetrators.”

So, when you sometimes hear that “the UN” has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza, this is the report people are referring to. Pillay chaired the Commission that produced it.

Israel, naturally, rejected the report’s findings and dismissed allegations of genocide as an antisemitic blood libel, referring to the medieval antisemitic trope that Jews use the blood of non-Jews in religious ceremonies. (We don’t! It really is just red wine.)

In the few hours since the Nobel announcement, the Israeli government has pulled from that familiar playbook, accusing Pillay of bias and blasting the Nobel Committee.

“The Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass,” reads a statement from Netanyahu’s office. “It has awarded its highest honor to a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”

On Twitter, Israel’s ambassador to the UN asked, “What comes next? Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Hamas and al-Qaeda terrorists? This disgraceful decision is an insult to the Nobel Peace Prize, its values, and the legacy of leaders who dedicated their lives to achieving genuine peace.”

Subscribe now

Israel’s denunciation of both Pillay and the Nobel Committee is not unexpected. It fits a broader pattern in which the Israeli government attacks the credibility of individuals and institutions that criticize Israel, rather than reckoning with why its own actions have attracted such widespread international condemnation in the first place.

But in honoring Pillay, the Nobel Committee has effectively called Israel’s bluff. The Committee was no doubt aware of the attacks Israel has repeatedly leveled against Pillay. Rather than being deterred, the Committee strategically chose to bestow upon her one of the world’s most prestigious honors, elevating her stature and lending even greater moral authority to her work. In doing so, the Committee has undermined the very campaign to discredit her.

Israel has spent years trying to demonize Pillay. Now, it must contend with the possibility that those very denunciations helped her win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Subscribe now

Get 50% off forever

Share

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced tomorrow. As we await the results, it’s worth revisiting an argument I have made for the past two years: Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms should win the Nobel Peace Prize!

Sadly, the civil war in Sudan has only gotten worse over the past two years. And as the conflict has deteriorated, this network of Sudanese humanitarian workers has become even more important. So, below, is my case for why Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms should become this year’s Nobel Laureates.

To learn more about Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, please take a listen to this 2024 Global Dispatches podcast episode with a member of this group. We discussed how this system of mutual aid works and how the Emergency Response Rooms have created a network of people of conscience who are building the foundations for peace in the midst of war. You can find that interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

Subscribe now

Get 50% off forever

Who Are Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms — and Why Should They Win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms are a grassroots network of humanitarian aid groups operating in the midst of a war in Sudan. These groups sprang up almost immediately after war erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

In the three and a half years since, Sudan has plunged into chaos. Famine had spread in parts of the country and there are credible accusations of genocide committed by the Rapid Support Forces in Darfur. By the numbers, Sudan is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Some 12 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes, and over 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Yet even as the country unraveled, ordinary Sudanese citizens mobilized. Many were young professionals who had led the peaceful 2018 protests that toppled a 30-year dictatorship and briefly ushered a transition to democracy. When war came, they organized Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) across the country. These Rooms run schools, soup kitchens, pharmacies, medical clinics, even restore downed power lines. They adapt to whatever their communities need most, and with limited resources these volunteer groups are saving lives in the most difficult conditions imaginable.

“The terrifying diversity of this conflict demands a diversity of approaches,” Hanin Ahmed, External Relations Officer for Sudan’s ERRs, told the Clinton Global Initiative last year. “In one locality, a Room is a telemedicine hub. In another, it’s a women-led collective distributing seeds and tools. In a third, it’s youth volunteers providing lifesaving activities. This hyper-local, agile model is our strength. We saw early on that the most effective response wasn’t coming from outside. It was rising from within — from the courage of local volunteers: teachers, engineers, students.”

Mutual aid after disaster is nothing new. Neighbors tend to help neighbors in need. But what makes Sudan’s ERRs remarkable is their scale and coordination. A national network connects these local initiatives, and in so doing sustains a fragile social fabric in defiance of warlords determined to rip the country apart. The ERRs are not only delivering aid in the darkest circumstances, but also building the architecture of peace from the ground up. The ERRs are both saving lives and laying the foundations for peace that can help bring this awful war to an end.

They are beyond deserving of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Subscribe now

Share

In these ballots, all 15 members of the Security Council are asked to indicate whether they “encourage,” “discourage,” or have “no opinion” on each candidate. The ballots do not distinguish between the five veto-wielding permanent members and the other ten members.

As in all previous straw polls, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan remains in the lead. But her lead narrowed considerably since the last straw poll on September 29.

Following that poll, she was the clear frontrunner, with 10 “encourage” votes, three “discourage” votes, and two “no opinions.” This time, she received nine “encourage” votes and six “discourage” votes. In second place was IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, who received six “encourage” votes and seven “discourage” votes. The other five candidates fared poorly.

Here are the full results.

So Where Does The Race for UN Secretary General Actually Stand?

This ballot did not distinguish between the preferences of the veto-wielding members and the rest of the Security Council, but the next straw poll — tentatively scheduled for next week — probably will. At that point, we will see the extent to which the P5 are supporting or opposing each candidate, including the frontrunner, Rebeca Grynspan.

But discouraging the advancement of a candidate right now does not necessarily mean that a P5 member is unwilling to compromise. What really matters is how strongly a P5 member may oppose a candidate. It could be that a member of the P5 would prefer someone else but could still live with the consensus of the rest of the Council. Here, for example, is how one analyst at the right-wing Washington, D.C., Think Tank described the situation:

Ben Cohen, who focuses on international organizations at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Ms. Grynspan was unlikely to be Washington’s first choice. But she could emerge as a compromise candidate if the five permanent members of the Security Council reject the other leading contenders and agree that they could accept her, he said.

That sounds right to me. But another, entirely different scenario is that Grynspan is strongly opposed by one or more members of the P5 and that none of the current crop of seven candidates is a viable contender. If that is the case, we are likely to see new candidates emerge after the next straw poll.

So, bottom line: Rebeca Grynspan is still very much in the lead. But her fate will come down to whether she is opposed by a veto-wielding member — and how firmly that opposition is held.

We will know more next week, and I’ll be back to update you all.

Subscribe now

Get 50% off forever

Share

The ripple effects of the Iran conflict may help unleash a new civil war in Ethiopia.

Here is the connection: A group of rebel factions in Ethiopia’s northern region recently formed an alliance against the federal government. This alliance, led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, is backed by the government of Eritrea.

Eritrea has long been an international pariah. It is sometimes referred to as the North Korea of Africa for the sheer degree of repressive control the authoritarian state exerts over its population. Even in a region known for bad governance and human rights abuses, Eritrea stands apart.

The Biden administration slapped sanctions on its government for its role in a brutal civil war in Ethiopia from 2020 to 2022. But Eritrea is suddenly quite important to the Trump administration. The country sits across the Red Sea from Yemen, where Houthi rebels are now threatening international shipping along a route that has become more valuable as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been throttled. With a keen eye on needing Eritrean support to ensure that the Bab el-Mandeb Strait does not go the way of Hormuz, the United States, on September 18, lifted sanctions on Eritrea, including its military.

Just two days later, this new alliance was formed, and intense fighting has since broken out in northern Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government accuses Eritrea of backing these rebels, which is a reasonable assumption and is supported by evidence. Despite the fact that Eritrean and Ethiopian forces fought alongside each other against Tigrayan rebels in the previous civil war, the Tigrayan forces and Eritrea have since made amends. Meanwhile, tensions between Eritrea and landlocked Ethiopia have been building in recent years, as the Ethiopian government has made clear that it has designs on gaining access to Eritrean territory on the Red Sea. Eritrea and the Tigrayan factions have now found it convenient to have a shared enemy in the Ethiopian government.

The recent aggression by the Tigrayan-led rebel group is fueled by the fact that it can now rely on external support and a steady flow of arms from a government no longer under sanctions — and, in fact, one whose cooperation is needed to keep vital shipping routes open in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, other outside forces, including Egypt, Sudan, and the UAE, are fueling chaos across the Horn of Africa region.

To understand why this is so dangerous, it helps to remember what happened the last time Ethiopia descended into war.

Subscribe now

From 2020 to 2022, the Ethiopian government fought a brutal war against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which had long been one of the most powerful political and military forces in the country. Eritrea joined the Ethiopian government in that war and sent its own forces into Tigray.

The conflict became the deadliest war of the 21st century. Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have died, with some estimates putting the toll at around 600,000. Most of those who died were civilians who succumbed to starvation and other deprivations of war. That war formally ended with a peace agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa, in November 2022. But many of the underlying disputes were never fully resolved — and now the pressures stemming from the war in Iran have introduced a new variable, adding to the danger.

This conflict is also drawing in many other countries in the region, including Sudan, Egypt, and Somalia. If a full-blown civil war erupts in Ethiopia, it could become one massive, interlocking regional conflict, pitting various factions and their outside supporters against one another. For example, Egypt and Eritrea back the Sudanese Armed Forces in their war for control of Sudan against the Rapid Support Forces, which are in turn supported by the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia.

Because the stakes of this conflict are so high — both in terms of the sheer number of people whose lives could be lost or upended and the potential for a wider regional war — I wanted to take podcast listeners in depth with a conversation with someone who knows the region and the conflict dynamics driving this situation.

I speak with Dr. Jalale Getachew Birru, the East Africa Regional Expert with the conflict-monitoring nonprofit ACLED, who explains the complicated web of factions and alliances driving Ethiopia toward a full-scale civil war. Our conversation is a timely explanation of this incipient civil war — and what, if anything, can pull the fighting back from the brink.

I publish Global Dispatches to help those who care about people and places normally overlooked by Western media better understand the forces shaping their lives, and why events in one part of the world can have consequences far beyond it. The unfolding conflict in Ethiopia is well worth putting on your radar.

Our conversation is free for all. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also support my work using the buttons below.

Subscribe now

Get 50% off forever

Christian Wenaweser is a legend around the United Nations. He has served as Liechtenstein’s Ambassador to the United Nations since 2002 and, despite representing one of the world’s smallest states, has an impressive record of diplomatic achievements. He played an instrumental role in the development of the International Criminal Court, including efforts to define the crime of aggression. He has also spearheaded several important initiatives at the General Assembly, including the creation of a mechanism to collect and preserve evidence of war crimes in Syria and the “veto initiative,” under which any veto at the Security Council triggers a meeting of the General Assembly.

These may sound like fairly technical diplomatic maneuvers, but they represent something much bigger: an innovative way of thinking about how small and middle powers can work together to overcome great-power gridlock and achieve substantive goals at the United Nations.

We spoke one week after UNGA — a defining theme of which was the banding together of small states and middle powers in the face of intransigence from some of the world’s great powers. This included the launch of a new Partnership for Multilateralism and a political declaration on frontier AI, both of which Liechtenstein joined.

In our conversation, Ambassador Wenaweser explains the emerging dynamics of an alliance between middle powers and small states at the UN, what they can actually accomplish, and why they these countries are suddenly asserting themselves.

Our conversation is free for all, and was produced in partnership with [Re]Group, a substack from the UN Foundation. You can watch directly in Substack or listen to the audio-only versions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Subscribe now

Share

Transcript edited for clarity

Mark Leon Goldberg: Welcome to Global Dispatches. I am your host, Mark Leon Goldberg. I am joined today by Liechtenstein’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Christian Wenaweser. Ambassador, welcome.

Christian Wenaweser: Thank you. Good to be with you. Thanks for your interest.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Today’s episode is produced in partnership with [Re]Group, which is a Substack hosted by the United Nations Foundation. And, Ambassador, I want to kick off by noting- correct me if I’m wrong– but you are the longest-serving ambassador to the United Nations of all member states. Is that right?

Christian Wenaweser: That’s correct.

Mark Leon Goldberg: When did you first come to the United Nations?

Christian Wenaweser: I came to the UN literally the last century because I was deputy first. And now I’ve been here as ambassador for 24 years, later this week. I have an anniversary coming up, 1st of October

Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, happy anniversary. As we’re recording this on Tuesday, September 29th, two days ahead of your nearly quarter-century anniversary as perm rep of Liechtenstein to the United Nations, maybe just kick off by asking you, what’s the biggest difference you view between the United Nations of 2002 and the United Nations of today?

Christian Wenaweser: Well, look, when I first started, it was probably the peak and the heyday of multilateralism. And it was a time when sometimes the sky seemed to be the limit. There’s a lot that we were able to do, a lot of standard-setting. We created new institutions. We created the International Criminal Court, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Human Rights Council. And obviously, as you know, today is very, very different. Today is more a fight for multilateralism to remain at the center of policymaking.

Mark Leon Goldberg: As you said, I like that the sky is the limit. I’ve been covering the United Nations not quite as long. I started in 2005. But the biggest difference I see between then and now is that, as you said, there was this kind of infusion of the idea that the United Nations could be the platform to solve a variety of problems, whether that be advancing sustainable development, women’s rights, the idea of human rights expanded to include gay and lesbian and transgender people.

But now we’re at this moment where the scope of what’s possible at the United Nations seems to be shrinking a little bit.

Christian Wenaweser: Yes, that’s totally correct. I think the reality is we’re playing sort of defense on many of these topics and themes. We’re happy right now if we can hold on to what we have. Now, admittedly, we have, in many areas, really, really good and high standards so that the moment comes that we have to defend them is maybe not all that surprising. But it’s a very different time, and we are in a very different policy space.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So we’re speaking just at the end of High-Level Week of UNGA. And fitting along that theme of defending what we have, at the outset of UNGA, there was an op-ed in the Financial Times, co-authored by Mark Carney of Canada, Lula of Brazil, Ruto of Kenya, and von der Leyen of the European Commission, announcing a new partnership for multilateralism. Liechtenstein quickly joined this partnership. Can you explain, what is this thing, and how do you foresee it working?

Subscribe now

Christian Wenaweser: We joined so quickly because it is essentially what we have been asking for for a year or so. If you look at our speeches last year, we already said it’s important that the states that we believe are the vast majority of the UN membership, who believe in multilateralism, who believe in international law, that they come together and form an alliance and also overcome the differences that we do have with respect to international law.

But I think the baseline that we can all easily agree on is that A, we want international law, and B, actuall,y a narrative very important for us, we need international law, which is really the case for small states. So, when we saw this happening and after analyzing the declaration, the brief declaration that we were given, which we think is a really good text and less anodyne than these things typically are. So, we felt it was a good moment for us to join. So, we had, I think, a good event on Monday evening.

I don’t know if you were there. But it was a pretty lively, interactive event. We also had speakers on the podium that had not co-authored the op-ed, in particular Brazil. No, not Brazil. In particular, India. Brazil had been a co-author. So, we are hoping that this is the beginning of a beautiful movement. But it’s only been one week, so we’ll see where it can be taken.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, that’s sort of my next question. So, you have India, the world’s most populous country, in the same coalition with Liechtenstein, one of the world’s smallest countries; what do you hope that this seemingly incongruent collection of countries can do?

Christian Wenaweser: We are hoping to see an alliance of states that say, “Look, whatever our differences may be, and we have to talk about them, and we have to address them, and maybe we can overcome them, but we all want international law to govern international relations.” I mean, that’s the basic statement for us. And then there are various areas where you see that is necessary. And we would most like to see a movement that has sort of overlapping circles of states that focus on specific issues. So, there’s the issue of use of force, for example, which is at the heart of the throat of the United Nations, clearly under massive pressure today.

Then there’s, for example, the law of the sea cluster that is under pressure now: the Strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab, maybe other waterways, Black Sea. So, with sort of champions among states for specific issues, but a really broad movement behind it supporting that. We think that is how it could most effectively be taken forward.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, so it seems like the elephant in the room here is certain actions by larger states, including the United States in Iran, Russia in Ukraine, using force not in accordance with international law. So, what can this collection of small and mid-sized powers do to prevent something like that from happening again, to forestall future breaches of the use of force in violation of international law?

Christian Wenaweser: The main thing is that I think we have been quite complacent and often silenced ourselves on these issues in the last 12, 18 or more months. And I think the first step is to come out of that and to just call out what we see and also have a conversation that at least there is political accountability. That people say, “Okay, well, there’s a use of force going on, clearly. Can we talk about the legality, be it in the Security Council or in the General Assembly?”

And that would be a huge step to just say the Charter says the following — the Charter says the use of force is illegal except in two circumstances: if it’s authorized by the Security Council or if it’s carried out in self-defense. Typically, in the cases that you’ve mentioned, we know there was no authorization by the Security Council. So, if it’s supposed to be legal, it has to be the latter. So, please explain to us how this was self-defense, and let’s have a conversation about that.

If you look at how states have reacted in the past, they have been quite sort of reluctant in a way to really call out what they probably perceive to be violations and have been, in my view, too timid in saying, “Hey, we need to enforce the rules that are in the charter because that’s the foundation of our order.” That’s the first step.

Mark Leon Goldberg: It’s interesting that you characterized, historically, in recent years, there has been this timidity, as you said, in calling out some of the big powers for actions they’ve taken in contravention of international law. And to me, one of the interesting themes I think that ran through UNGA this year was that it seemed to represent almost like a vibe shift in how smaller and middle powers approach these issues.

The timidity that you just described seems no longer to be the dominant narrative. That the advent of this partnership for multilateralism, and other partnerships we’re talking about, seem to have injected this idea that small and middle powers banded together, can have agency and can affect the trajectory of countries’ relationship, international institutions’ relationship with multilateralism. Do you agree that there was this vibe shift?

Christian Wenaweser: I do agree with that. I mean, for us, that’s one of the main takeaways from last week. That’s what we put in our political analysis after High-level Week. It’s what we had been hoping for, for a while. And as I said, we talked about this a year ago. And very glad to see that it’s happening now, because it certainly would have been nice had it been earlier, but certainly not too late.

Mark Leon Goldberg: To what extent do you credit Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for injecting this kind of new momentum into these new coalitions that are forming around multilateralism and amongst small and medium powers?

Christian Wenaweser: I think he certainly does deserve credit because his speech in Davos was a moment that really galvanized people in a different way. I think, interestingly, he said what a lot of people were thinking, but he said it and he didn’t just think it. And I think that made a difference. But I think also, fair to say, it’s not his baby or creation. It required a lot of people you know to follow up and to come together and say, “Look, we need to come together and take this forward.” I would say catalytic role in a way, maybe not beyond that.

Mark Leon Goldberg: It seems that another manifestation of small and middle powers grouping together to advance multilateralism that we saw last week at UNGA was this remarkable and, to me, sudden political declaration on frontier AI, which Liechtenstein was a signatory. Can you just describe what, first, tell me the backstory of that. How did that come together? And what does that political declaration imply?

Christian Wenaweser: Well, it was co-authored by a number of leaders. And I think the Finnish president in particular has his name on it, and the Norwegian prime minister. These are countries we feel very close t,o and they’re our close partners. I mean, again, I think they kind of put together what people are just thinking anyway.

I don’t know the entire backstory. It was probably accelerated by the very rapid developments that happened immediately before High-Level Week with the talk that, oh, now we’re all going to die because of AI and the CEOs coming out with their statement. And this became a dominant theme of High-Level Week, really. I mean, the Security Council meeting on this with the CEOs is one of the more remarkable meetings that the Security Council has had. So, the statement essentially says we’re not doomers, so we see the positive potential that AI has, but there are enormous risks, and we want to see guardrails and regulation, which I think is, for us, the baseline common sense approach to this.

And that’s also why we joined it relatively quickly. It will be interesting to see where this is taken, because this is an area that is a bit different than other areas because the reality is the AI conversation, of course, is dominated by two states, really. And they have both not shown any interest so far in doing what we are asking for.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And specifically, what are you asking for?

Christian Wenaweser: Well, what I said guardrails and take seriously the calls that have come from the industry themselves, and think about regulation together, really, just the beginning of a conversation. So, the question here is, who is affected by AI? The answer is very simple. It’s all of us to varying degrees. But ultimately, we’re all very strongly affected so we should all be part of the conversation. I think that the declaration, more than anything else, is an ask to say we don’t want to be on the menu; we want to be at the table.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, you did note that two countries, China and the United States, dominate the industry, but so dominate it that very few other countries have much to do with frontier AI. I guess I kind of come back to that question earlier I posed about how middle and small powers banding together might affect the trajectory of how larger powers decide to use force. In this instance, how tactically might these small and middle powers- there’s over 20 of them right now that have signed this declaration- actually affect the trajectory of AI development, understanding that it falls really squarely within the remit of these two countries?

Christian Wenaweser: No, I mean, look, I think that is the question. Because, as I said, it’s quite a different scenario than in other areas. If you talk about the use of force, you can say, “Look, here’s this little blue book. It’s called The Charter of the United Nations. You have signed on to this. Can we just talk about if what you’re doing is legal?” Here you have nothing. Here you’re asking for something that those who control the conversation at this point don’t want. So, I think numbers are certainly important. So, we need to have many more states to say we want this one way or the other, and we have to try to bring the UN into the conversation.

I think that’s going to be very hard, to be honest. At the moment, there is more of us, then we have a better way of exploring what our leverage actually is. Because so far, in my view, our leverage is extremely limited. We can say what we think is right, and we can say all these other people and people who know more about this than we do have said the same thing. So, certainly the call has a certain power behind it, but we certainly need more numbers to find out what our actual leverage is.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, one of the points of this political declaration was to begin discussions on a potential new international institution to regulate or prevent AI disasters in one way or another. Didn’t get very specific on what this international institution might do, but the idea, it seems, is to have some sort of international institution that might prevent the excesses of AI from destroying humanity. Seems like a good idea. You’ve been there for the start of other institutions. You mentioned the International Criminal Court before.

You were there at the very founding of it. How do you foresee the advent of a new international institution to regulate AI in one way or another?

Christian Wenaweser: I think the analogy that was given by the president, still, I believe it was, was the IAEA. And he said we would love to set up something that is analogous to IAEA. So, the Atomic Energy Agency that oversees control of nuclear proliferation, nuclear weapons. He also said, yeah, but I guess that’s not going to be possible. But he said that’s the ideal and that’s the vision, and that’s what we should aim for.

And I think we should think about together those who believe that should be done, how that could look like and take the conversation from what is relatively abstract now to something more concrete. That does not mean it’s going to happen. It also doesn’t mean that we can start a process inside the UN because right now, in my view, politically, we don’t have the support that we require to start a process in the UN.

But I think it’s important to also explain to people what that actually would do and how that would look like because the reality is a lot of policymakers are out of their depth here. Very few people are AI experts. And they have to rely on what they are given by those who know more, and the advice given is not unified. You hear everybody here from the CEOs who spoke in the Security Council, you also hear different things from other CEOs or from other people.

So, it’s a question of also getting solid, reliable information and explain things better to people.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, UNGA is really the start of a year at the General Assembly. I’m curious to learn from you, what are some of your priorities as this year at the United Nations, the 81st Assembly, gets started?

Christian Wenaweser: Well, the so-called UN80 process is for us a high priority. And that’s the process that SG Guterres launched to make the UN leaner, more effective, more relevant. And that’s a process that is on the way. We think it’s enormously important. We very strongly believe in the UN. We think the UN is irreplaceable and indispensable. But we’re also very critical of parts of its performance.

And we all know that the UN is not a very efficient organization in terms of human resources, in terms of financial resources, and that we can do better. But we are not looking at this as a cost-cutting exercise. We don’t think the UN is too expensive. We think the UN is not focused sufficiently on what it should be doing and what people actually expect the UN to do. So, we’re doing a lot in our daily business that I don’t think people in this call find interesting, let alone our parliamentarians or other people.

Mark Leon Goldberg: I love it. I’m a UN nerd, though. It’s my favorite thing to talk about, UN reform.

Christian Wenaweser: No. UN reform, but you’re probably not excited about the International Day of the Potato or things that happen in the General Assembly. So, we think for us, the UN is a peace organization. And I think that’s what people feel the UN is at its core. And we think the UN has failed too often and too regularly, in a way, in efforts to create peace and security. And I think the reality is the UN has almost given up on that.

And we should not accept that. And we should say we want to see a political UN. We want to see a UN that plays a role in the major conflicts of the world. We want to see a UN that puts a situation like Sudan on the agenda in a different way than it is now; that plays the role that it has under historic terms in the Middle East and so on. So, we want the UN enabled to do this. And we also want to see a secretary general who takes a leading role in this respect.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, Ambassador, thank you so much for your time. This was helpful.

Christian Wenaweser: Great. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And just a note to those of us who joined live — we will be editing the two videos together, apologies for the technical difficulty, later in this week. Subscribe to Global Dispatches and to [Re]Group Playbook to receive that video and this conversation in full when it’s ready later this week. But thank you all, and thank you, Ambassador.

Christian Wenaweser: Great. Great seeing you, Mark. All the best.

Subscribe now

Share

Rebeca Grynspan is one step closer to becoming the next Secretary-General of the United Nations. The Security Council held its fourth informal straw poll to test the viability of the seven candidates for Secretary-General — and this is now the fourth time in a row that Grynspan has been in the lead.

Each of the 15 members of the Security Council was given a ballot and asked to indicate whether they “encourage,” “discourage,” or have “no opinion” on each candidate. To win, a candidate needs the support of at least nine members and must not face opposition from any of the five veto-wielding powers: the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom.

Grynspan emerged decisively on top in this vote, with 10 votes in favor, three “discourages,” and two “no opinions.” The other candidates were far behind. In a distant second place was Guyana’s ambassador to the United Nations, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, who secured eight votes in favor but six “discourage” votes. At this point, she and the other candidates, including IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, probably face insurmountable opposition.

Adding to Grynspan’s tailwinds is the fact that her numbers are improving. In the last straw poll, taken earlier this month, she received five “discourage” votes, compared with three today.

But her improving prospects — and her rivals’ declining ones — do not mean that Grynspan is a shoo-in.

The ballots in this round did not differentiate between the votes of the five veto-wielding members and those of the other 10, so we do not know whether her opposition comes from the P5. And if one or more of those “discourage” votes does come from the P5, we don’t know whether that position is firmly held or whether it’s just posturing. (More on that below the fold!)

Subscribe now

Who, exactly, is Rebeca Grynspan?

Grynspan is well known around the UN. She’s an economist and former Costa Rican politician who has risen through the ranks of the UN system to become head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, a Geneva-based UN body focused on helping developing countries use trade, investment, finance, and technology to support economic development.

It was from this position, in 2022, that she emerged as a prominent international negotiator.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year, food prices around the world soared. Ukraine is a global breadbasket, but its agricultural exports were effectively trapped. Grynspan became a key player in the UN-led negotiations that produced the Black Sea Grain Initiative and a parallel agreement aimed at facilitating Russian food and fertilizer exports. The resulting arrangements enabled Ukrainian grain to once again reach global markets. She has touted this experience as an example of how the UN can mediate even in the midst of a devastating conflict.

Grynspan, notably, is also of Jewish descent. Her parents were Jewish refugees from Poland who settled in Costa Rica. Grynspan, who is 70, often invokes her parents’ experience by calling herself a “daughter of peace.” This spring, she told the General Assembly: “Peace is what made it possible for my parents, two refugees from the Second World War, to find respect and dignity in a small country, Costa Rica. And they rebuilt their lives. I am the daughter of this peace, a demonstration of what peace makes possible and the principles which underpin that.”

So can she actually survive the cauldron of the Security Council and become the first woman to serve as UN Secretary-General?

Below the paywall, I look at where her opposition may be coming from, what the P5 may be bargaining for — and why the eventual winner may not even be in the race yet.

Subscribe now

Get 50% off forever

Read more

We kick off with an extended conversation about President Trump’s speech to the United Nations, including what it says about the future of U.S. foreign policy and American engagement with the United Nations. We then turn to a number of the key themes emerging from speeches, meetings, and events around New York this week.

We wrap up with a discussion of António Guterres’s legacy at the United Nations and a speech he delivered that we all agreed encapsulates his 10-year tenure as UN Secretary-General.

Subscribe now

President Trump delivered his annual address to the United Nations General Assembly, kicking off a week of speeches from presidents and prime ministers from over 100 countries. In this special edition of Global Dispatches, I am joined by Anjali Dayal, my To Save Us From Hell co-host and a professor of international relations at Fordham University, and Harshani Dharmadasa, Senior Director at the UN Foundation and a veteran of the UN system.

We kick off with an extended conversation about President Trump’s speech to the United Nations, including what it says about the future of U.S. foreign policy and American engagement with the United Nations. We then turn to a number of the key themes emerging from speeches, meetings, and events around New York this week.

We wrap up with a discussion of António Guterres’s legacy at the United Nations and a speech he delivered that we all agreed encapsulates his 10-year tenure as UN Secretary-General.

Our conversation is freely available right here on Substack and will be available soon as a podcast episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. This episode is produced in partnership with [Re]Group: A Playbook for Turbulent Times

Share

Subscribe now

Hello from the United Nations! It’s been a busy two days. I wanted to share some of my quick, unvarnished thoughts about what we have seen around the UN, including Trump’s speech, how this is becoming the “AI UNGA” — and why this seems to be shaping up as a key inflection point for middle powers.

Quick programming note: Join Anjali Dayal, Harshani Dharmadasa, and me at 3 p.m. ET here on Substack Live for a breakdown of our key takeaways from the United Nations.

Subscribe now

Trump’s Speech

This was a low-energy Trump speech, which was probably a relief for those around the United Nations. Yes, he predictably railed against “globalists,” but his tone was restrained.

I’d say three things stuck out from his speech.

First, he threatened to annihilate Iran! The presidents of Iran, the United States, and Israel are all in New York this week, so there was some speculation that UNGA might spur diplomatic progress in the Iran war. Not so. This line seems to have ended any notion that the UN might be a place where progress is made on de-escalating the U.S.-Iran conflict.

Second, he bragged about exploiting the natural resources of a country whose leader he deposed! “To the victor go the spoils,” Trump said of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. I know it’s hardly unusual for Trump to say something like this, but it’s worth mentioning just how aberrational it is for an American president to make a statement like this on the grounds of an institution premised on preventing the kinds of wars of conquest that wrought the devastation that led to the advent of the UN 81 years ago.

Third, Trump’s remarks on artificial intelligence reflect his zero-sum view of the world. “Whoever wins Super Intelligence, wins,” he said, suggesting once again that he opposes guardrails that might slow progress on frontier AI models, fearing that any restrictions would give China a leg up.

This sentiment very much goes against the grain of the prevailing mood around the UN, which is that guardrails are needed to avoid the potentially calamitous consequences of runaway AI. Indeed, a succinct counterpoint to this worldview was offered yesterday by Finnish President Alexander Stubb. At an AI-themed event I attended, he said of the race for superintelligence: “It doesn’t matter who ‘wins.’ We are all screwed.”

AI Takes Center Stage

The big AI event is tomorrow at the Security Council. France is convening a meeting that frames AI as a potential threat. The first line of the meeting concept note circulated by the French says plainly that “recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence are a major international peace and security challenge.”

OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei are expected to address the Council. There will not be any specific outcomes from this meeting, but I will be watching to see what these two leaders have to say about the need for international rules of the road or standards around the research and deployment of frontier models. It will be equally interesting to see how stridently the members of the Security Council, other than the United States, respond with their own calls for guardrails and regulations.

Just yesterday, a group of about 26 middle powers (ranging from Norway to Kenya and dozens of others) released a first-of-its-kind joint political statement, unequivocally calling for:

1. Companies to develop transparent safety protocols, including mandatory pre-deployment testing and independent evaluation, with qualified evaluators granted sufficient access to assess risks.

2. Governments and regional organisations to further develop and coordinate common standards, strengthen transparency — including shared reporting of serious safety incidents — and ensure that countries across all regions have access to scientific capacity, expertise and trusted evaluation.

3. UN member states to build on existing international mechanisms and explore creating an international institution able to set standards, enable verification, and convene states when capability thresholds are crossed.

Again, this puts these middle powers in conflict with the United States, which has explicitly rejected these kinds of guardrails. That leads me to my final observation about UNGA which is…

…Middle Powers Have Suddenly Realized They Have Agency

This is the UNGA where middle powers realized that they need not be passive participants in a world order dominated by the United States and China. Rather, they can take matters into their own hands. Credit here goes to Mark Carney for lighting a fire under the seats of the world’s middle powers.

On Monday, he announced, alongside Brazil, Kenya, and the European Union, a new Partnership for Multilateralism, which they billed as a flexible platform in which middle powers can come together in support of international law and the United Nations Charter, and use multilateral platforms to advance their common interests.

This joint political statement on mitigating risks from frontier AI is a remarkable example of that kind of middle-power diplomacy in action. I suspect we will see many other examples of this throughout the week, and that this UNGA will be remembered as the launching pad for a new era of middle power diplomacy.

That’s it for now— but I’ll have more soon from the UN. Please tune in to the livestream at 3pm ET for continuing coverage of UNGA.

Get 40% off forever