Archives for April 2016

Episode 109: Tom Nagorski

Tom Nagorski is a longtime editor, reporter and producer for ABC news and is currently an executive vice president at the Asia Society

Tom’s career as a journalist spans some of the major world events of the last three decades, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, the first Gulf War, the war in the Balkans, Somalia, the second Gulf War, and many many other events. We discuss what it was like reporting on these events and witnessing some world historic moments from behind the camera.

This is a wide ranging conversation with Tom telling some fascinating stories from his career, but we kick off discussing the diplomatic relevance of Yao Ming, who was recently nominated for the NBA Hall of Fame.

Haitians in the Dominican Republic Face Statelessness, Discrimination

Richie Diesterheft from Chicago, IL, USA – One Too Many; 50+ Haitian Workers In Transit
Haitian workers being transported in Macao, Punta Cana

On the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, there is an ongoing and overlooked human rights and humanitarian catastrophe. In recent years, the government of the Dominican Republic has taken measures to essentially strip ethnic Haitians of Dominican citizenship.

New legal statutes have the potential to render about 500,000 people stateless. (For context and comparison’s sake that is roughly the equivalent of the number of asylum applicants in Germany stemming from the Syrian refugee crisis).

The roots of discrimination against Haitians in the Dominican Republic run deep, but these citizenship laws are relatively new. On the line with me to discuss this largely overlooked humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere is human rights researcher Ryan Bacci. He explains the contours of these laws, their human rights and humanitarian implications on the ground, and offers some important historical context to understand how this kind of discrimination could be enshrined into a country’s constitution.

Episode 108: Kevin Rudd

Kevin Rudd is the former prime minister of Australia. He served from 2007 to 2010, and then again in 2013. These days, among other things, he’s president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

I got to know the prime minister a little bit earlier this year when he moderated a panel on which I was a speaker. The panel was for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism which is putting together a set of policy recommendations for the next Secretary General. Rudd leads that commission and we kick off with a brief discussion about it hopes to accomplish before pivoting to a longer conversation about Rudd’s upbringing and career as a diplomat in the Australian foreign service.

Kevin Rudd is a fluent mandarin speaker and he discusses how and why he became enthralled with China at a very young age. We discuss his first postings as young diplomat and how he decided to make the leap from diplomat to politician.

Rudd is well known for his foreign policy acumen and nuanced understanding of Chinese politics and culture. This is a fantastically interesting conversation. Have listen!

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UN Secretary General Candidate Conversations: Srgjan Kerim

My guest today Srgjan Kerim is a diplomat with the soul of an artist, who wants to become the next UN Secretary General. Karim is the former foreign minister of Macedonia, was an official in the Federal government of the former Yugoslavia and also served as president of the UN General Assembly back in 2007-8.

He’s a self-described “citizen of the world.” He was born in Macedonia, but spent much of his formative years in Germany and has lived at various times all over the world. We discuss his unique upbringing, some of his academic work in development economics, and his experience during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. And, not least, he discusses how to create gorgeous photographs using a blackberry device.

This conversation is part of the Global Dispatches podcast Secretary General candidate conversation series. Check out our episodes with Vesna Pusic and Danilo Turk. There will be more to come as this race to lead the United Nations unfolds.

UN Secretary General Candidate Conversations: Vesna Pusic

Vesna Pusic is the former foreign minister of Croatia and a candidate to become the next UN Secretary General. She’s a sociologist by training. Politician and diplomat by practice and I caught up with her one day after she participated in hours of questioning by UN member states in what was essentially a very public job interview for the position of Secretary General

Pusic grew up in Zagreb in a household of intellectuals in the aftermath of World War Two, which was particularly brutal in Croatia where Nazi collaborators carried out acts of genocide and persecution. She became ensconced in academia and later turned to politics. In her twenties, she started the first feminist NGO in Yugoslavia, and she discusses that experience.

This conversation is part of our UN Secretary General candidate conversations. Stay tuned for more in depth conversations with the individuals who wish to be the next leader of the United Nations.

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Who Will Be the Next UN Secretary General?

Something extraordinary took place at the United Nations this week. For twenty hours, over three days, each candidate in the race to become the next UN secretary general submitted themselves to hours of questioning by member states and civil society.

This was a radical departure from how things were done previously. For the past 70 years, the Secretary General was picked pretty much behind closed doors by the five veto wielding members of the Security Council. It was a totally un-transparent process, sometimes you did not even know who was in the running.

This time around, that is not quite how things are going down. For one, there are actually declared candidates–9 so far. And each of these candidates faced two hours of questioning by member states, forcing them to go on the record on some hot button global issues.

And it was all webcast! I watched nearly all of it.

I would be lying to you if I said that it was all riveting political theater. But for UN nerds like me and my guest Richard Gowen the novelty of it all offered some insights into the inner-workings of the United Nations, what individual countries prioritize in deciding who to back for Secretary General, and a glimpse into the diplomatic acumen of the candidates’ in the hot seat.

So, because these hearings were new, and different and genuinely exciting for UN watchers like Richard and I, this episode is in two parts. We first spoke before the hearings even began about our expectations for this event and discussed what we would be looking out for. Then, on Thursday afternoon, just as the hearings were wrapping up, we spoke again about some of the highlights from the week and any tea leaves that could be read into both the questions that the member states asked and the answers given.

For anyone who wants to learn what these public job interviews for the position of UN Secretary General can tell you about the UN and international relations more broadly, have a listen.

UN Secretary General Candidate Conversations: Danilo Turk

Danilo Turk is the former president of Slovenia and one of eight currently declared candidates to be the next United Nations Secretary General. He was president from 2007 to 2012 and also served as his country’s ambassador to the UN for many years.

Turk was born in 1952, just seven years following the Nazi occupation of Slovenia. He shares how his mother’s experience of being sent to a forced labor camp at the age of 14 affected his own childhood. That included an intense focus on eduction. By the time he was 14, Turk was devouring the greek classics, like Thucydides. By 18 he was in law school, discovering concepts of human rights.

We have an extended conversation about the intellectual curiosity that lead Turk to human rights law and what it was like being a human rights legal scholar in the former Yugoslavia, which was then a communist country. We discuss his role during Slovenia’s 1991 secession from the former Yugoslavia and the brief war that ensued, and the tactics he used as Slovenia’s first ambassador to the UN to introduce this new country to the world.

I caught up with Dr. Turk at his hotel room in Dakar, Senegal, where he was chairing a conference about the intersection of water and peace. We kick off with a brief discussion about that issue.

In the next several months, the world will select the next Secretary General of the United Nations. There are so far eight candidates to succeed Ban Ki Moon, and this conversation is part of a special podcast series in which the candidates discuss the big moments in their lives and careers that helped to shape their own worldview. The idea here is to introduce the candidates’ personal and professional histories into the public discourse and hopefully illuminate how past experiences may guide their decision making as Sec Gen.

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A New, Old Crisis in Western Sahara

Ban Ki moon visited a refugee camp in Algeria that is home to people displaced by conflict in Western Sahara and he uttered remarks that created a diplomatic maelstrom.

Ban referred to the quote “occupation” of Western Sahara, by the government of Morocco.

UN Photo/Evan Schneider

Morocco responded with a massive government sponsored protest in the streets of Rabat, and also ceased cooperation with a UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, including evicting civilian members of that mission. It has also threatened to pull its own troops from UN peacekeeping missions worldwide.

All because of a word.

With me to put this current diplomatic crisis into the larger context of the decades old dispute over the proper status of Western Sahara is Fiyola Hoosen-Steele. She is not a disinterested observer of this crisis. As the UN representative of the diplomatic advisory firm Independent Diplomat, she works with political representatives of the Western Saharan independence movement, known as the Frente Polisario. She explains the roots of the conflict in Western Sahara and the current diplomatic obstacles to its resolution.

Episode 104: Mary Fitzgerald

Mary Fitzgerald is an Irish journalist who for the better part of five years has covered Libya, including the fall of Gaddafi, Libya’s fractured politics, and the the rise of ISIS. Mary got her start in journalism covering the conflict in Northern Ireland and she discusses how she applies what she learned studying that conflict to help her better understand Libya.

We kick off with an extended discussion about the current political situation in Libya, which is complicated, but fascinating, and Mary does an excellent job of breaking it all down. We conclude with a discussion of Mary’s current book project: exploring the social currents that drive three different generations of Libyan jihadists.

I’ve made this point before, but I do think that Libya is going to be one of the most important foreign policy crises facing the United States and Europe next year, particularly as the next president takes office. This conversation offers a great way to understand the drivers of conflict in Libya.

Archives for April 2016

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