Will a Woman Be Elected to Fill These Shoes? (Of UN Secretary General)

Susana Malcorra (Photo: UN)

By Sabrina Hernández

With the end of Ban Ki-moon’s term drawing near, election of the ninth secretary-general is underway. The early candidates included two women from the Latin American and Caribbean group, Susana Malcorra of Argentina and Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica. See  our coverage in the LADB News Service. Figueres has since withdrawn from the race.

Malcorra is one of four women who remain in the running for the post. The others are Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, Helen Clark of New Zealand, and Natalia Gherman of Moldova. No woman has previously served as UN secretary-general.  An important factor in the decision is an unwritten rule of “regional rotation," which would give the upper hand to the Eastern European group as it is a region that has yet to see UN leadership. Gherman and Bokova would both fill the gender and regional roles.

Christiana Figueres (Photo: UN)

So what does the UN Secretary-General do? Well, per the United Nations, the Secretary-General is “equal parts diplomat and advocate, civil servant, and CEO, the Secretary-General is a symbol of United Nations ideals and a spokesman for the interests of the world’s people, in particular the poor and vulnerable among them.”

Yikes! Add to this whopper of a job description the 1 for 7 Billion campaign (referring to one candidate to represent 7 billion people), and the magnitude and weight of this position can begin to be fully understood. Though broadly defined and open to interpretation, it is clear that whoever is elected later this year will have to stand at the forefront and work to address a hefty load of issues that will necessitate strategic leadership, managerial know-how, and efficiently and effectively navigate a plethora of priorities established by the UN’s member states.

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Photo: UN)

The 'poet' secreatary-general
A member of the Latin American and Caribbean group has previously held the leadership of the UN, with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru serving as secretary-general from 1982 to 1991 by A trilingual poet and grandfather, many were uncertain that Pérez de Cuéllar possessed the firm hand believed necessary for the job, which is to serve an emphasis on “world hunger and disease, abuses of human rights, the scourge of war, and the ultimate threat of nuclear catastrophe,”

One of Pérez de Cuéllar's most notable contributions during his tenure was in his home region of Latin America. He personally  became involved in negotiations between the government and guerillas in El Salvador on a peace pact, which brought to an end 12 years of violent civil war in a time of chaos for the region. (Read our coverage in LADB).

 Because of his achievements, some have called Pérez de Cuéllar the "greatest:" secretary-general who has served in the post. However, the recognition was not enough to convince the people of Peru to vote him in as president in South American country's 1994 election. 

In Pérez de Cuéllar we see a model for what it means to be an effective and esteemed secretary-general. In trying to get a solid grip on this expansive and often vague job description, the next secretary-general should not forget the lessons of those who held the seat before but also bring a fresh perspective and ideas to the table. Four of the nine remaining candidates are women, potentially bringing a new perspective to the job.

President Santos Four-Man ‘Peace Squad’ in Havana

As President Juan Manuel Santos and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) continue peace negotiations, the Colombian chief executive has had to deal with constant criticisms from the far-right and at the same time face the reality that the guerrillas have gained a political advantage have gained by declaring an indefinite cease-fire and then sticking to it. (Read more in this week's edition of NotiSur). This has prompted Santos to seek outside help from a select group of foreign advisors with expertise in peace negotiations.



In early January, the president’s Havana negotiators sat down for a closed-door meeting with four special guests: William Uri, a US mediation expert from Harvard University; Joaquín Villalobos, a former Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) guerrilla who helped negotiate El Salvador’s 1992 peace accords and has since become an outspoken critic of all leftist groups in Latin America; Jonathan Powell, a former British Cabinet chief who helped broker the peace deal with the Irish Republican Army (IRA); and Shlomo Ben Ami of Israel, an ex–foreign minister who played a leading role in the 1978 Camp David peace agreements with Egypt.

Santos seems to have covered all of the political bases with his four-man team of advisors. The four VIPs come from a very diverse background: a Salvadoran ex-guerilla turned British Foreign Service-sponsored peace negotiator and critic of the left in Latin America; a former Israeli Foreign Minister who negotiated for peace at the Camp David Accords; a former British banker and advisor to the Prime Minister who negotiated with the IRA; and a US author and social anthropologist who’s bestselling books have put him in the boardrooms of various peace talks and negotiations.

We thought it would be interesting to provide a bit more information regarding their biographies and their lifelong journey to the Havana Peace talks.

Photo: Fabrizio León in Observador Juvenil

Joaquín Villalobos: Perhaps the most enigmatic of all four, Villalobos began his career as a commander in the People’s Revolution Army, a left-wing Marxist guerilla army that emerged in El Salvador in the 1970s, eventually merging with other groups to form the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). During the bloody civil war that ensued, Villalobos fought against a US-Israel supported regime and paramilitary death squads. Conversely, he was also accused of participating in the murder of leftist poet Roque Dalton.Villalobos. His entire track record confronts this tension between fighting both for and against the revolutionary left.  Following the 1992 peace agreement in El Salvador, he was sent by British Foreign Service to study in England, and has acted as a major critic of leftist politics in Latin America since then. His main attributes seem to be straddling the line between the feared and ruthless left-wing guerilla commander of the 80s, and the right-of-center peace negotiator of today. Read his article,"La paz: cerca de La Habana, lejos de Bogotá"in El País  

Wikimedia Commons

 
Shlomo ben Ami:While the Israeli-supported Salvadoran government forces waged war against the guerillas in the 80s, Ben Ami was acting as the Israeli ambassador to Spain. A fluent Spanish speaker who was born and raised in a Mizrahi Jewish family in Morocco, Ben Ami began his career as a historian at Tel-Aviv University, concerning himself principally with studying the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. As Israel’s Minister of Foreign Relations, Ben Ami participated in the 2000 Camp David Summit. Since then, he has publicly supported the Palestinians’ decision to not accept the terms dictated by Israel. He now serves as vice president for the Toledo International Centre for Peace. .

 

Photo from Uri's Web site

 William Ury: A bestselling author of books on mediation and conflict management that deal with a wide range of topics. See his  official  Web site. “Bill Ury has the remarkable ability to get to the heart of a dispute,” former US President Jimmy Carter recently said. Trained initially as a social anthropologist in Yale and then Harvard, Ury founded and directs Harvard’s Program on Negotiation. He has participated in a wide array of peace talks ranging from family disputes to mediation for the Bushmen of Kalahari and the clan warriors of New Guinea.

from The Guardian

Jonathan Powell: An adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1995-2007) and chief British negotiator on Northern Ireland. One of Powell's chief accomplishments was helping the Northern Ireland peace talks to move forward, resulting in the Good Friday Agreement. Powell also had a close working relationship with former US President Bill Clinton, and participated in a US-UK-Israel project that brought Latin American figures such as Joaquín Villalobos to study in England. The diplomat has also had his share of controversies, including an accusation that he might have divulged too much information Russian officials about the activities of the British spy agency M16 in that country. After retiring from government service, Powell became a senior investment banker with Morgan Stanley in 2007. He left the banking sector to create Inter Mediate, an organization that participates in armed conflict negotiations around the world.

-Jake Sandler

Also in LADB on Feb. 18-20

• Brazil Prepares for Austerity Under New Finance Minister
• UN Report Highly Critical of Mexico for Failing to Address Enforced Disappearances
• U.S. Seeks Request for Extradition of Drug Kingpin Joaquín Chapo Guzmán
• Former President Ricardo Martinelli Faces Corruption Inquiry
• El Salvador Pardons Woman Sentenced To 30 Years For Abortion-Related Offense

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Blue Helmets on Mexican Soldiers

Daniel Košinár  (Wikimedia Commons)

If you examine the composition of UN Peacekeeping forces, you would be hard-pressed to find any Mexican soldiers.  That is about to change with President  Enrique Peña Nieto's recent commitment to provide military and civilian personnel to UN missions.
The Mexican president made that pledge during an address to the UN General Assembly during the last week of September.

Peña Nieto, of course, would still have to comply with the Mexican Constitution, which prohibits any chief executive from unilaterally offering Mexican troops for peacekeeping forces. The president would require the consent of the Senate. Convesrsely, Peña Nieto and other future president are allowed to provide military and civilian personnel for UN humanitiarian missions without a vote from the Senate. How was Peña Nieto's decision received in Mexico?  There were many supporters and some detractors.  Read more in this week's issue of SourceMex.

Marie Lan-Nguyen (Wikimedia Commons)

Let's say hypothetically that Mexico had committed troops to UN peacekeeping operations a while back. Where would these Mexican soldiers be located? Currently, there are 16 ongoing UN Peacekeeping Operations, including Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, several Middle Eastern nations, as well as nine countries in Africa, from the Western Sahara to Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There are currently over 116,000 military and police personnel working under UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), and although many personnel are armed and trained in military operations, the DPKO’s main purpose and protocol does not normally involve active combat, but rather helping local security forces to establish the proper conditions for end of conflict and lasting peace. The UN does not have its own military force, and relies completely on contributions from member states.

There is some risk in committing military personnel to an area of conflict. In its 66-year history, the DPKO has suffered 3,177 fatalities, with more than two-thirds occurring since 1993. Uruguay, Haiti, Argentina, Guatemala and Spain have lost dozens of troops, although the majority of the casualties have come from Sub-Saharan African and Northern European nations.  While armed conflict has been the major reason for the loss of lives, more than 1,000 deaths  have occurred because of illness. The two places with the highest incident of fatalities have been Lebanon and the Congo.
-Jake Sandler

Also in LADB This Week...

Transforming the Sales Tax into a Value-Added Tax in Costa Rica: President Luis Guillermo Solís has a plan to boost government revenues: transform the current sales tax into a a value-added tax (Read more from George Rodríguez in this week's issue of NotiCen). So what's the difference?  Diane Yetter explains in the Tax & Accounting blog  "Sales tax is collected on retail sales at the time of the sale to the final consumer, and only the final sale in the supply chain is subject to tax. Sales tax is generally imposed on sales of tangible personal property and selected services. Value Added Tax, on the other hand, is imposed on each stage of the supply chain and ultimately charged in full to the final purchaser."

Investment in the Dominican Republic. Officials in the Dominican Republic are pleased about a recent increase in investment, but critics worry that the trend comes at the expense of human rights and the environment.  Read more from  Crosby Girón in NotiCen.

Argentina and U.S. Lock Horns amid ‘Default’ Fallout: Argentina’s current "default" crisis, which began three months ago when a judge in New York ruled in favor of a group of "vulture funds"—lenders that in 2005 refused to participate in a restructuring of the South American nation’s foreign debt—has gone from being a dispute between a sovereign state and private interests to a full-fledged face-off between the Argentine and US governments. Read more from Andrés Gaudín in NotiSur.

Center-Left Coalition Expected to Remain in Power in Uruguay: Uruguayan voters will head to the polls Oct. 26 for the last in a series of South American elections that also includes contests in Brazil, to be held Oct. 5, and Bolivia, on Oct. 12. The Frente Amplio (FA), in power since 2005, is hoping its progressive model—introduced by former President Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010) and continued by the country’s current leader, President José Mujica—will earn the party a third-consecutive term. The FA’s conservative rivals, the Partido Nacional (PN or Blanco) and Partido Colorado (PC), are hoping to re-establish the political hegemony that kept them in power throughout most of Uruguay’s post-independence history (from 1830 to 2005). Read More from Andrés Gaudín in NotiSur.

Another term for Mexican Human Rights Ombud? Raúl Plascencia Villanueva, president of the semi-independent human rights commission (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH), is facing severe criticism from what academics and opposition legislators see as the commission’s deficient and inadequate job of defending human rights in Mexico. Will the Senate reappoint him for another five years or will human-rights advocates succeed in pushing through a change?  Read more from Carlos Navarro in SourceMex.

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Possible Role Reversals as Caribbean Economies Face Slow Growth

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Article from NotiCen, May 1

The Caribbean economy grew only 1.3% in 2013, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). This rate is half that of Latin America, and the 2014 forecast shows a marginal improvement to 2.1%. As a result, many Caribbean governments are pursuing public sector cuts to stave off high debts and declining revenues, whether from sluggish tourism or lower global commodity prices. In December 2013, Barbados announced the dismissal of 3,000 government workers in order to correct a high debt ratio. The layoffs began in March, along with salary cuts for remaining public sector employees. Also in late March, Jamaica passed its third International Monetary Fund (IMF) test in order to receive further disbursements from the multilateral organization. Gregory Scruggs Read More

UN Honors Mexico Environmental Advocate; Guatemala Seeks to Crack Down on Contraband Along Northern Border; Colombia Campesinos Strike

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen and NotiSur for October 2-4

UN Forces Linger in Haiti, Despite Calls for It to Leave and Despite Reduction in Its Numbers

The second ousting of then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom the US whisked away on board a plane in the midst of a rebellion led by the opposition Front pour la Libération et la Recontsruction Nationales (FRLN) in 2004, brought an international peace-keeping force to Haiti. Political instability led MINUSTAH to stay on, a presence whose need was strengthened by the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January 2010 Now, Haitians and international human rights advocates are calling for the UN force to withdraw. UN Blue Helmets in Haiti are held responsible for sexual abuse of women and girls and for the cholera epidemic, which has claimed more than 8,000 lives and sickened hundreds of thousands more since it broke out some nine months after the devastiating 2010 quake. -George Rodríguez  Read More

Oil Exploration, Renewable Resources to Help Uruguay Reach Energy Independence

Uruguay is working toward a major change in its energy mix by installing wind and solar farms, biomass energy plants, and a regasification plant--actions that will thrust it to the forefront of countries generating and using clean energy. The program spearheaded by the progressive Frente Amplio administration aims to make South America’s second-smallest country more independent from foreign energy sources by 2016. In addition, Uruguay has opened up oil exploration for the first time. Based on geological studies that indicate a probability of economically viable oil fields, Brazilian and Venezuelan state oil companies and the French firm Total have already lined up for onshore and offshore exploration. -Andrés Gaudín  Read More

UN Environment Programme Honors Mexican Environmental Advocate for Work in Creating Biosphere

In mid-September, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) awarded the Champions of the Earth prize to Mexican environmental advocate Martha Isabel Ruiz Corzo for her work in creating and developing the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve in Querétaro state in central Mexico. Ruiz Corzo, also known as maestra Pati, was one of seven people honored in 2013 for their environmental work. Ruiz Corzo was a co-winner in the inspiration and action category, along with Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food Italy. Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixera was a co-winner in the policy leadership category. Ruiz Corzo is the second Mexican citizen to be honored by the UNEP since the prize was first awarded in 2005. -Carlos Navarro   Read More

Colombia's Nationwide Campesino Strike Takes a Toll

Colombia is still coming to terms with a nationwide campesino strike, the first in recent history, that dragged on for 19 days, affected all sectors of the economy, and resulted in a painful number of deaths and injuries. The strike involved permanent roadblocks along dozens of routes and caused serious supply problems in the country’s principal cities. The events were triggered by a crisis that has left hundreds of families in financial ruin and is prompting a gradual exodus from rural areas. The campesino protesters blame their problems on the free-trade agreements (FTAs) Colombia signed in recent years with both the US and European Union (EU). -Andrés Gaudín  Read More

Crackdown on Contraband Along Guatemala's Northern Border

The Talismán-El Carmen border crossing between Mexico and Guatemala is a hub of activity. It’s 8 a.m. and a long line of Guatemalans on bicycles and cycle rickshaws are waiting to cross the border. Many are farm laborers who commute to Mexico on a daily basis to work on agricultural plantations; others go to Mexico to purchase groceries and other goods. Although these goods might be legally purchased in Mexican territory they are then sold in Guatemala’s local markets, which is a criminal offense as it creates a price distortion that affects local producers who are driven out of business. The Comisión Nacional Contra el Contrabando (CONACON), a multisector coordinating body that includes business representatives and various government security bureaus, estimates that some 30.000 Guatemalan families are involved in piecemeal contraband. -Louisa Reynolds Read More

Judge Questions Circumstances Surrounding Arrest of Teachers Union Leader Elba Esther Gordillo

In April of this year, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration published a decree in Mexico’s daily register (Diario Oficial) that clarified and expanded the use of the recurso de amparo (recourse for protection), which strengthens constitutional protections under the law for a person accused of a crime. The changes, approved by the Senate in March and enacted by the Peña Nieto government a month later, included modifications to Articles 103 and 107 of the Mexican Constitution. One of the first big tests of the modified law came in September, when Federal Appeals Court Judge Francisco Sarabia Ascencio granted an amparo to Elba Esther Gordillo--the deposed leader of the teachers union (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación, SNTE)--who was arrested in February on charges of corruption, money laundering, and racketeering. -Carlos Navarro Read More