Archives for November 2017

Episode 172: Agnès Marcaillou Leads the UN’s Bomb Squad

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Daniel Craig, UN Global Advocate for the Elimination of Mines and Explosive Hazards. Agnes Marcaillou, Director of UNMAS, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Photo credit: Stuart Ramson/UN Foundation

Agnès Marcaillou is the director of the United Nations Mine Action Service. This is the UN agency that helps clear mine fields, defuse IEDs and clean up unexploded ordinance around the world. It is the UN Bomb Squad.

In this conversation, we discuss the problem of landmines and unexploded ordinance around the word, the work of UNMAS, and how funding shortages are preventing her agency from being maximally effective in places like Iraq, where UNMAS has received high praise for defusing a bomb-laden bridge in Fallujah to allow aid to enter the city following ISIS’ defeat.

Agnès has had a long career in the UN. Early in her career, as a junior staffer working on the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weaposn, Anges skillfully navigated the tricky diplomacy around these negotiations and ended up having a very big and lasting impact the resulting treaty. It’s a great story she tells in the episode.

Last month, I saw Agnès give an acceptance speech at the Global Leadership Awards, which is an event hosted by United Nations Foundation. The way in which she both described the work of UNMAS and her own long experience in the UN system compelled me to reach out to her for an interview.

This is a great conversation with a true bureaucratic entrepreneur.

To access to this podcast episode: subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or get the app to listen later

 

Episode 171: David Miliband

David Miliband is President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, the large global humanitarian organization that, among other things, serves refugees and advocates on their behalf. David Miliband is also, of course, the former foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, from 2007 to 2010, and served in several positions in the Labor government of Tony Blair.

His new book is called Rescue: Refugees and the Political Crisis of Our Time.  The book serves as a helpful entry point for anyone who wants to learn more about the global refugee crisis. It also offers a reflection on his family’s own refugee experience: Miliband’s mother and father were Jewish refugees to the UK who escaped Nazi controlled Europe. In our conversation Miliband describes how growing up the child of refugees influenced and informed his own career in politics and now as an NGO leader.

We kick off with a conversation about his new book and have a longer conversation about his life and career, with some fun and interesting digressions along the way.

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Zimbabwe and the fall of Robert Mugabe, Explained

Zimbabwe has had exactly one leader in its entire 37 year history as an independent country. That was, until November 14th Robert Mugabe was deposed in an apparent coup.

What happens next is still very much in the air. Right now, Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace are under an apparent house arrest and he is refusing to formally relinquish power, though he may soon be forced into exile. Meanwhile, his recently sacked vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa seems to be calling the shots.

On the line with me to discuss recent events in Zimbabwe and offer some deeper context in which to understand how, after 37 years, Robert Mugabe’s time in power has abruptly come to an end is Amb John Campbell, who is the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC.

Amb. Campbell explains how an intra-party rivalry over who might succeed the 93 year old Robert Mugabe seems to have triggered this coup. We also discuss Mugabe’s history as a singularly fascinating liberation leader who for a time presided over a booming economy, until, that is, he ruined it, for reasons Ambassador Campbell explains.

If you have 30 minutes and want to understand how the coup unfolded and what might come next, then have a listen

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How ISIS May Face Justice for Atrocity Crimes

Over the last several weeks, ISIS has been systematically losing territory. Its last stronghold in Iraq, the city of Hawija, was liberated in early October. A few weeks later, ISIS’ de-facto capital in Raqqa, Syria fell to US-backed forces.

ISIS no longer controls any major city in the region. Now, with the group mostly defeated on the ground, the international community is starting to think through some difficult and fraught questions of how best to bring ISIS to justice for atrocities committed during their brutal reign. In September, the Security Council approved a new probe into ISIS crimes in Iraq. Syria, though, is a different matter. There, the government is not as cooperative with the international community.

So what are the best pathways to justice and accountability?

On the line with me to discuss some of the options that the international community is weighing, and also some of the key obstacles for bringing to justice those who committed war crimes in Iraq and Syria, is Dr. Zachary D. Kaufman.

Zachary D. Kaufman is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and teaching at Stanford Law school — he is also, like me, a Humanity in Action senior fellow.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn how ISIS can be held accountable for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity–and why this is an important and urgent question–then have a listen.

To access to this podcast episode: subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or get the app to listen later

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Episode 170: Peter Galbraith

Peter Galbraith helped uncover and confront two genocides. As a staffer in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1980s, Galbraith compiled evidence of Saddam Hussein’s genocide against the Kurdish people. Later, as the United States Ambassador to Croatia during the 1990s, he used his position to call for more forceful intervention on behalf of besieged populations in the Balkans.

We discuss both these events, plus what it was like to be born the son of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated public intellectuals and liberal icons, John Kenneth Galbraith.

Peter Galbraith recently wrote a piece in the New York Review of Books about how the Trump administration is approaching the Kurdish situation. In it, he discusses some recent events in Kurdish region, including the Iraqi government’s decision to forcefully—and violently — respond to an independence referendum in the Kurdish region. This leads to an extended conversation that includes stories from Peter’s nearly 35 year engagement with Kurdish politics.   We also discuss Peter’s time in the Balkans and the unique way he sought to draw attention to ongoing mass atrocities there.

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The Crisis in Yemen Takes a Turn for the Worse

An internally displaced woman and her daughter look over the city of Sana’a, Yemen, from the roof of this dilapidated building they call their new home. Photo: Giles Clarke/UN OCHA

Yemen is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and it appears that the situation is poised to deteriorate even further.  At issue is a decision by Saudi Arabia to impose a blockade on the country–a move that was announced amid a significant shakeup in Saudi politics.

This blockade could have a profoundly devastating impact on the situation in Yemen, where nearly the entire population is affected by an ongoing conflict that is pitting an Iran-backed rebel group against the Saudi-backed government. The rebel group controls much of northern part of the country, including the capitol Sana’a and the largest port, Hodeidah. Saudi Arabia (with American backing) controls all sea and air lanes around the country.

Yemen is already the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with 7 million facing starvation and over 900,000 sickened with cholera.  If access to Yemen remained shut down, warns head of the World Food Program David Beasley, “I can’t imagine this will not be one of the most devastating humanitarian catastrophes we’ve seen in decades.”

On the line with me to discuss this all is Scott Paul of Oxfam America. Scott, who has spent time in Yemen and lobbies the US government on behalf of humanitarian access in Yemen, explains the situation on the ground right now–and as you’ll see there is a great lack of clarity about this apparent blockade.  We also discuss more broadly the political environment in the Yemen and the broader middle east that giving rise to the ongoing catastrophe in Yemen.

If you have 2o minutes and want to learn about the conflict in Yemen, its causes, and possibly solutions out of this mess then have a listen.

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How Trump’s Radical Approach to “Sovereignty” is shaping International Relations

Donald Trump’s approach to sovereignty is not unique in American history. There is a longstanding political tradition that seeks no compromise with the world and see’s all interactions with allies and adversaries as zero sum.

What is different is that no American President has held these views…until now.

Stewart Patrick is author of the new book The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World. The book examines how debates about sovereignty in the United States shape American foreign policy, and also the liberal international order –that is the patchwork of treaties and agreements and institutions like the United Nations that help set the rules of international relations.

We discuss the implications of Donald Trump’s apparently narrow view of sovereignty on American foreign policy. It’s a high minded conversation–and a good one.

Stewart Patrick is a senior fellow and director of the program on international institutions and global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He was a guest on the show last year for episode 116 in which he discusses his life and career.

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The International Relations of California

If California were a country, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world. Its population is greater than countries like Poland and Canada.

So what happens in California can very much impact the rest of the world. And one fairly direct manifestation of California’s global relevance is in the state’s approach to climate change. Earlier this summer, California revamped its Cap-and-Trade program. This is a policy innovation intended to curb emissions by creating a market around greenhouse gasses like carbon. Companies can buy and sell permits to each other to release set amounts of greenhouse gasses.

That’s one way California is having a global impact. There are others as well. On the line with me to discuss California’s global impact is California State Senator Ben Allen. Senator Allen represents about 1 million people in communities around Los Angeles and he has been in the State Senate since 2014. We discuss California’s approach to climate change, and also some strategies that Senator Allen and his colleagues are employing to blunt some of the effects of the federal government’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. We also discuss some other issues of transnational concern, like ensuring the eduction of immigrant children is not interrupted should they the get deported.

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