International Organizations

Supply Chains Take Center Stage at International Labor Conference Of the $26 trillion in commerce flowing around the world, over 70 percent are intermediate goods. This reflects the rise of global supply chains. The International Labor Organization (ILO) conference put this dominant means of production on the agenda for the first time this year, addressing working conditions for those within these chains. Government and business leaders from the ILO’s 187 member countries spent the past two weeks debating whether to set official standards to push companies like Walmart, Gap, and Nestlé to address labor violations along their transnational production chains. Though any new rules would be non-binding, historically ILO standards have prompted legislation. Bank Secrecy Act Takes On Corruption Goldman Sachs may have run afoul of the Bank Secrecy Act in its dealings with Malaysian state development fund 1MDB. The 1970 legislation requires U.S. banks to report suspicious deposits or transfers. In 2013 Goldman transferred $3 billion from a 1MDB bond deal to a small Swiss bank. Days later, half the funds disappeared offshore, with some resurfacing in Malaysian President Najib Razak’s personal accounts. J.P. Morgan and HSBC have also been penalized under the act for neglecting to report the Madoff Ponzi scheme and providing financial services to Mexican drug cartels, respectively. Designed originally to target money laundering, the Goldman Sachs probe shows the act can help take on global corruption. Kimberley Process Lifts Diamond Ban on CAR     The Kimberley Process—a joint initiative by producer and consumer countries, jewelry companies, and civil society to keep “conflict diamonds” out of global markets—lifted a three-year embargo on the Central African Republic (CAR). In the wake of a 2013 coup, the government lost control of mining regions to rebel groups, making it unable to confirm the origins of its gems. The nation’s newly-elected government promises to trace its stones again, at least those from certain stable regions. Advocates for continuing the ban doubt the government’s capacity to weed out blood diamonds in the face of roving militias and active smuggling.

The following is a guest post by Megan Roberts, associate director of the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, or so the saying goes. While New York and Washington, DC, have been drenched with rain over the past month, the sun is beginning to shine again in both cities. Light is also beginning to shine inside the United Nations, at least when it comes to high-level appointments.  For the first time, the next UN secretary-general (SG), director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), and nonpermanent members of the Security Council will all be selected through more transparent procedures. Though still a far cry from free and fair elections, these reforms are a historic departure from the traditional secrecy and horse-trading that reigns at the United Nations. And the resulting choices will matter. Elected members help shape the Security Council’s work. The director general of the WHO must lead the organization in responding to fast-moving health crises that do not stop at national borders. And the next UN secretary-general will confront a daunting agenda, including the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, growing demands for UN peacekeepers, and resurgent geopolitical competition among the great powers. The Races UN Secretary-General The current UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, will leave office at the end of 2016. Traditionally, the SG selection has been a closed door affair negotiated by the Security Council’s permanent members (P5) and rubber-stamped by the UN General Assembly. Thanks to pressure from civil society groups and activist UN member states, Ban’s successor is being chosen in a markedly more open process. In April, a packed General Assembly hosted the first-ever public interviews with the (then) nine candidates, each of whom faced two hours of questioning from member states after submitting a CV and written statement. Rather than the stale affair many had anticipated, the interviews turned out to be surprisingly heavy on substance and did not shy away from difficult topics including sovereignty, civil rights, UN reform, and abuses perpetrated by UN peacekeepers. The second round of debates, which begin Tuesday, will allow two new entrants in the race to impress member states. The candidate to watch will be Susana Malcorra, Argentinian minister of foreign affairs who formerly served as Ban Ki-Moon’s chief of staff. WHO Director General In late April, the WHO initiated its own process to succeed Margaret Chan, whose term as director general ends in June 2017. Chan’s successor will have his or her hands full in restoring the credibility that WHO lost following its belated response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak. The agency has struggled to raise funds to combat the Zika virus, and it faces complex reform challenges. Unlike Chan and her predecessors, who were selected by the WHO’s thirty-four-member executive board, with frequent allegations of corruption, the next director general will be elected through a secret ballot of all WHO member states. Candidates will be required to present a written statement, as well as field questions from WHO member states in a forum this autumn. Candidates must also adhere to a code of conduct (PDF) during the campaign period. Already, hopefuls from Ethiopia, France, and Pakistan have thrown their hats in the ring, with more expected before the list closes in September. Nonpermanent Security Council members The beam of light is even illuminating the Security Council, where last week for the first time countries competing for five nonpermanent seats submitted to questions from member states and civil society. The open hearings, held in advance of the June 28 elections in the General Assembly, covered a wide range of topics, including Security Council reform, climate change, and peacekeeping. They were also a major departure from the traditional campaign. This typically starts with private negotiations within regional groupings that determine which states will run, and frequently results in clean slate tickets. And when competitive races actually take place, campaigning often occurs behind closed doors, with countries seeking commitments from other member states, sometimes years in advance. Under this business as usual scenario, quids pro quo are common; candidates may offer support to countries in other UN elections, development assistance, or commitments to highlight (or steer clear of) certain issues while holding a Security Council seat. This year, three of the five elections are genuinely competitive:  Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden are competing for two seats in the Western Europe and Other group and Kazakhstan and Thailand are competing for one Asia-Pacific seat. (Ethiopia and Bolivia are running uncontested for the Africa and Latin America seats respectively.) What these Reforms Mean for the Campaign and Tenure of Candidates Critics have dismissed these changes as mere window dressing. After all, the elections remain exclusive affairs in practice: the P5 will still exercise undue influence on the choice of the next SG, behind-the-scenes negotiations within regional groups will still influence the election of nonpermanent UNSC seats, and major donors will likely still have an outsized role in determining the next director general of the WHO. Nevertheless, the new transparency processes are having a real impact, rewarding candidates with particular skill sets. Consider the SG race. Going into the first round of hearings, the smart money was on Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, who possessed a unique combination of traits: As head of the UN Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), she has a deep understanding of the United Nations. She also hails from Eastern Europe, the only region that has not yet held the post, and is a woman at a time that support is building to choose the first female secretary-general. However, many found her interview performance disappointing, especially when compared to candidates who came across as more personable, particularly Antonio Guterres of Portugal and Helen Clark of New Zealand. Indeed, had he competed this year rather than in 2006, it’s unlikely that Ban Ki-Moon, described as among the dullest and least eloquent of past secretaries-general, would have outshone his competitors. The more open process may also have positive implications for the subsequent tenure of the successful candidate. More formal campaigns require candidates to make clear statements about their priorities and to articulate positions on more difficult issues. Even if a select group of member states continues to wield an undue influence in the ultimate selection, civil society groups and the public at large can help hold the victors accountable for their campaign pledges. The Reforms Come with Added Risk These tentative efforts at transparency also carry dangers, however. Like partial democratic openings at the national level, they risk giving the surface appearance of change while allowing business as usual to continue in the shadows.  Corruption is a particular concern. With more member states involved in elections, candidates will seek to curry favor, sometimes through quiet promises of cushy appointments or whispered pledges of support. In an effort to discourage such behavior, the WHO’s own code of conduct calls on member states and candidates to avoid “improperly influencing” the elections. However, as Laurie Garrett notes, in this election cycle candidates for WHO director general will need to garner support from 194 member states during a five-month campaign period—a situation ripe for bribes or other forms of corruption. Secret ballots in all three races also complicate identifying corruption after the fact. Finally, all three elections are not subject to any campaign finance rules, implying that states and candidates with significant election coffers will have an advantage in nudging out less financially wealthy competitors. Anticipating competition from Romania, Estonia is already setting aside funds for its campaign for a nonpermanent Security Council seat in 2020. Despite these risks, recent efforts to increase transparency in the selection of leaders of multilateral institutions are to be welcomed. They should be treated like the dawn—the promise of greater light to come.

Electoral Violence Starts Early in Kenya In Kenya, police cracked down on opposition protests, killing three and injuring more. With elections still more than a year away, the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) party is demanding that current electoral officials resign for corruption and bias toward President Uhuru Kenyatta’s ruling Jubilee coalition. In the wake of the bloodshed CORD halted the demonstrations and agreed to negotiations, responding to other governments’ calls for dialogue. But given Kenya’s history of electoral violence and impunity, many expect clashes to continue. Vietnam, Labor Rights, and the TPP On his historic Vietnam visit, President Obama met with civil society leaders and advocated for human rights, even as he lifted a four decades-long arms embargo—a move opposed by many nongovernmental organizations. He also addressed labor rights, central to Vietnam’s admission to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Along with Malaysia and Brunei, Vietnam must reform its labor laws—allowing workers to unionize within five years, setting a minimum wage, and prohibiting child and forced labor—to enter. Though the Communist Party continues to jail and harass labor rights activists, if the agreement is ratified, the economic benefits for Vietnam—the World Bank estimates it will add 10 percent to gross domestic product (GDP)—could force change. Still No Election in Haiti Seven months and four missed deadlines later, Haiti is no closer to wrapping up presidential elections. Despite public calls from the United States, the United Nations, and frontrunner Jovenel Moïse to move forward with a runoff, an electoral commission has yet to decide if the first round was fraudulent, as the opposition alleges, and what to do. Now weeks beyond an agreed-upon handover, Interim President Jocelerme Privert remains without a mandate to address Haiti’s deepening challenges: a stagnant economy, food scarcity, and a growing Zika epidemic.

Coauthored with Theresa Lou, research associate in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. The first-ever World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) concluded this week in Istanbul with mixed results. Although a few significant initiatives emerged, including on financing and education, the summit made little headway on other urgent priorities. These include mobilizing a new crop of humanitarian donors, ensuring compliance with the 1951 Refugee Convention, and getting states to uphold international humanitarian law, including the safety of relief workers. Progress on these fronts will await the opening of the seventy-first session of the UN General Assembly in September, when world leaders convene for real intergovernmental negotiations. The Istanbul summit was merely the first step in mobilizing global attention and political will on the need to rescue a world in flight. The most pleasant surprise was a Grand Bargain between donor countries and aid organizations to get more assistance directly in the hands of local humanitarian organizations. Today, the vast majority of emergency aid is channeled through international agencies and service providers, with the six largest UN agencies managing nearly 50 percent of that aid. By contrast, national and local humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) receive only a pittance—perhaps 0.2 percent. Under the new arrangement international actors pledged to increase the share going directly to local on-the-ground NGOs to 25 percent by 2020, reducing bureaucratic inefficiencies and saving an anticipated billion dollars over the next five years. They also agreed to provide more aid to beneficiaries in the form of cash rather than vouchers, which aid experts say provide more bang for the buck. By endorsing this agreement, donors and aid organizations are committing to work together to increase financial transparency and efficiency. In another bright spot, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched the “Education Cannot Wait” fund to better coordinate support for education for children affected by the protracted crises. The UNICEF initiative responds to a bleak reality: Children now comprise more than half of the global refugee population, and their displacement risks contributing to “lost generations” of uneducated school-age children from Syria to Yemen, Mali to Somalia. Donors in Istanbul made an initial down payment of $90 million, but the real money is yet to come. Finally, the WHS also launched the Global Preparedness Partnership, as well as the World Bank-sponsored Global Financing Response Platform. These aim (respectively) to prepare fragile states against future shocks and promote their economic resilience. These initiatives reflect a lesson of experience: Tomorrow’s flows of refugees and internally displaced persons are most likely to emerge from today’s stock of poorly governed, conflict-prone developing countries. Protecting these vulnerable nations from sudden-onset crises, whether natural or man-made, is central to preventing displacement. Both initiatives seek to employ longer-term development assistance in a fashion that reduces the likelihood of future humanitarian crises. They build on another financing initiative launched jointly last October by the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Islamic Development Bank Group to meet the financial needs of Middle East and North African countries coping with the costs of housing millions of refugees. But that is, unfortunately, where the good news ends. Despite acknowledging that “humanitarian action cannot be a substitute for political action,” participants did little more than reaffirm the importance of political will in preventing and resolving conflicts and the need to uphold international humanitarian law. Weeks before the summit commenced, the prominent NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) announced that it would not be participating, precisely because it did not believe member states would be held accountable for their repeated violations of humanitarian principles. Two main factors limited progress in Istanbul: First, this was essentially a UN-run show, rather than an actual intergovernmental summit. Indeed, world leaders were conspicuously absent, with only fifty-five heads of state or government in attendance. Among the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, only Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany chose to attend. The summit brought together thousands of participants from the private sector, civil society, and NGOs, but no-shows by President Barack Obama and other prominent leaders suggested that they did not take it seriously and were skeptical that it could deliver substantive change. Second, the United Nations unwisely chose to hold this event without prior agreements among member states on critical agenda items. In the run-up to the event, the United Nations did conduct extensive consultations with governments, aid agencies, NGO service providers, and host governments. In February, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released a report to guide discussion and action. Unfortunately, the summit agenda was too sprawling, and the United Nations failed to generate traction among member states for concrete policy decisions. Luckily, the year is yet young. September will provide two more opportunities for breakthrough. First, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) will host a plenary meeting on refugees and migrants. Beyond building worldwide support for the various WHS commitments, this intergovernmental session provides an opportunity for UN member states to recommit themselves to the legally binding asylum principles under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which are under increasing threat, to judge from the EU-Turkey refugee deal and Kenya’s threat to close the Dadaab refugee camp (the world’s largest). In parallel, the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council should pass new resolutions reaffirming international humanitarian law, which has been routinely violated in Syria and in other recent conflicts. Second, President Obama intends to use his last UNGA appearance to host a more selective meeting of current and potential donors to the humanitarian enterprise, which continues to be dominated by a handful of countries, led by the United States. Modeled on the successful “pay to play” approach the president used at last September’s special session on UN peacekeeping, the U.S.-led meeting offers the best opportunity to generate new financial commitments from major emerging countries such as China and India, as well as Persian Gulf nations, to bridge an estimated $15 billion annual shortfall in humanitarian spending.  

Tyler Falish is an intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program, and a student in Fordham University’s Graduate Program in International Political Economy & Development. On April 29, ten of the fifteen UN Security Council members voted to renew the mandate for the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), one day before its expiration. Prior to the vote, Angola, a non-permanent member, requested an informal, confidential Security Council meeting held outside the Security Council room, to allow Joaquim Chissano, Special Envoy of the African Union (AU) for the Western Sahara, to brief the council. NGOs were barred from attending and no translation services were provided. Morocco, which is the only African country without AU membership and considers the AU biased toward the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), opposed the meeting with Chissano on the grounds that the UN is the sole intergovernmental organization legitimately involved in the issue. Angola—along with Russia and New Zealand—ultimately abstained from the vote, while Venezuela and Uruguay voted in opposition. Despite continued U.S. support for Morocco’s plan for autonomy for Western Sahara, Rabat has expressed displeasure with the U.S. role in the resolution. Apparently, the first draft, for which the U.S. was responsible, contained considerably stronger language than the resolution that was ultimately passed. As passed, Resolution 2285 pushed lightly on Rabat to allow MINURSO to be restored to full-strength, and calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to report back within ninety days on the matter. However, Morocco has called the decision to remove support for the peacekeeping mission “irreversible.” Previous to the April 29 vote, the Polisario Front—the Sahrawi national liberation movement—made it clear that restoring MINURSO (which, even with the resolution, is far from a certainty) is necessary but not sufficient to maintain peace in the region. Short of a Security Council-approved timeline for a referendum—including the option for self-determination—the resurgence of war remains a possibility. Following Polisario Front military maneuvers in the “liberated territories” on April 23, Sahrawi Defense Minister Abdelah Lehbib asserted their forces have “the necessary human and material resources to counter any escalation” from Morocco. As a necessary compromise, the UN pushed lightly on Rabat to allow for the full restoration of MINURSO. Morocco has thus far shown no intention of doing so, and maintains that it will not consider a referendum that includes independence as an option. The Polisario Front has warned of war in the absence of at least a viable plan for a referendum including an option for an independent Western Sahara, an effort that has made little progress since 1991. Both Morocco and SADR are pursuing ‘corner solutions’ in Western Sahara: the former from a position of strength; the latter from the point of desperation. The refugee camps in Tindouf, having recently entered their fifth decade, could in theory exist in perpetuity, and remain a telling scar on the face of the UN and the AU, not to mention a North African tinderbox. At present, however, nothing is likely to happen until the secretary-general’s report comes due, at which point the Security Council will revisit the issue.

The international rules-based order established after World War II seems to be under relentless pressure, threatening its foundations existentially. If so, what if anything can be done to reinvigorate it? This question raises several others a priori. First, what are the most distinctive attributes of the post-1945 world order; how did that order come into being; and what explains its longevity? Second, what forces are now placing this order under strain? Third, what aspects of today’s order are most vulnerable—and which are most resilient? Fourth, what principles, frameworks, and objectives should guide U.S. policy toward world order going forward? In my new article in The Washington Quarterly, I aim to answer those fundamental questions. Contemporary analyses of world order tend to fall into two camps: “the sky is falling!” and “what, me worry?” Despite their differences, however, both the pessimistic and optimistic outlooks share the same premise: there exists a Western liberal international order whose distinctive values, norms, laws, and institutions were designed to inform and govern state conduct. This order originated in Europe but achieved full expression only with the U.S. rise to global leadership (or hegemony), as the post-1945 United States combined power and purpose to forge a multilateral world order, using a mixture of persuasion, incentives, and coercion to do so. Where these outlooks part ways is on how ongoing shifts in the distribution of material power affect the substantive content of world order, including its regnant norms, rules, standards, and institutions. My take? The sky is not yet falling. But the turbulence of the past sixteen years, over two very different U.S. administrations, suggests little room for complacency. The international rules of order laid down over the past seventy years are fraying, even as rules of the road are needed to address challenges the “wise men” of the 1940s could scarcely have imagined. Beginning with its likeminded allies, the United States must use its still-unmatched position to forge workable consensus among established and rising powers. And it must temper its historic “exemptionalist” stance towards multilateral cooperation—or risk seeing others mimic its behavior, to the detriment of world order. Read the full article in the latest issue of The Washington Quarterly here.

    Kim Jong Un has been intensifying his efforts to develop a long-range nuclear strike capability since the beginning of 2016. The more vulnerable he feels atop a weakening North Korea, the more he seeks a silver bullet to ensure the regime’s long-term survival. This dynamic has been in play for decades, especially as North Korea pursued nuclear weapons to compensate for the loss of its powerful patrons in Moscow and Beijing and fell further behind a far more prosperous South Korea. But Pyongyang’s insecurity has intensified even more under Kim, who, since coming to power in 2012, declared his father’s bequest of a nuclear program as a crowning achievement, changed the constitution to declare North Korea a nuclear state, and declared nuclear and economic development as his twin priorities. Read the full article on CNN.    

Coauthored with Theresa Lou, research associate in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. A record-setting sixty-million individuals are currently displaced due to violent conflict. While the world’s attention has been gripped by the million who have reached Europe’s shores over the past year, the global crisis of displacement is vastly greater in scope. In anticipation of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Turkey in May 2016, the International Institutions and Global Governance program held a workshop to diagnose shortcomings of the current humanitarian regime and propose recommendations for its reform. Here are five important takeaways. 1. Limited responsibility sharing is unsustainable. The 1951 Refugee Convention outlines states’ obligations to protect asylum seekers, but it fails to establish mechanisms for member states to equitably distribute the responsibilities and monetary costs of hosting refugees. Accordingly, the burdens for providing emergency relief and hosting refugees fall disproportionately on neighboring countries. To make matters worse, these hosting countries are often fragile states with weak capacities to provide essential services. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, developing countries today host more than 86 percent of the world’s refugees. Allowing geographic proximity to determine refugee burdens generates tensions between states forced to accept refugees and those that can turn the other cheek, jeopardizes the safety of asylum seekers, and undermines the legitimacy of the humanitarian regime. 2. The humanitarian regime needs to adapt to the times. Established in the wake of World War II, the international humanitarian regime is no longer fit for purpose. It has failed to adapt to a world of fragile states and nonstate actors, in which humanitarian crises are more complex and protracted. Being a refugee is no longer a temporary situation: today the average duration of displacement is a shocking seventeen years. Instead of offering short term assistance, international actors must increasingly seek durable solutions. They must also adjust to the communications revolution. As the Syrian experience shows, today’s refugees often have access to satellite based navigation technologies and social media communication, which they can use to guide themselves toward hospitable destinations and services. But these same technologies also encourage secondary movements, whereby asylum seekers transit potential asylum countries for more desirable onward destinations. This trend exacerbates backlogs in processing asylum claims and complicates the task of distinguishing refugees from economic migrants. Indeed, today’s complex emergencies blur the distinction between those who qualify as refugees under the 1951 convention and those who do not deserve asylum. For example, what should be the status and legal protections afforded so-called “survival migrants”—those who cross international borders to escape deprivation, even death, thanks to collapsing governance or climate change-induced famine? Likewise, the existing humanitarian regime fails to offer adequate protections for the roughly 40 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who continue to reside within their country’s borders, in often desperate circumstances. Although IDPs are often among the most vulnerable individuals, aid organizations struggle to access and protect them, in a world still organized around state sovereignty. 3. The world must bridge the gap between humanitarian and development aid. In the immediate wake of crisis, affected populations require emergency assistance. As displacement persists, however, refugees and IDPs increasingly need development assistance so that they can rebuild livelihoods and homes and gain access to essentials services from water and sanitation to health and education. Bridging the gap between humanitarian and development action requires agencies to break out of their bureaucratic boxes and get more comfortable both with doing things differently and doing different things. In one promising step, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Islamic Development Bank Group jointly launched a new financing initiative in October 2015 to meet both the humanitarian and development needs of the Middle East and North Africa countries coping with the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis. 4. Opportunities for education and employment must be part of the long-term solution. Finding durable solutions to the global humanitarian crisis requires us to think more creatively about the linkages between states, markets, and refugees. By providing refugees with employment opportunities, host countries are empowering them to become self-reliant economic actors. Such an approach not only benefits the local economy, but also may minimize the level of secondary movement, because refugees now have the means to support themselves and their family in place. It also provides them with skills they can take back to their homes when conflict subsides. This approach has proven successful in studies conducted by the University of Oxford in Uganda, where refugees were found to make “a positive contribution to the host state economy.” Today, children make up more than half of the global refugee population. All too often, they have limited access to education in host countries, due to shortages of schools, lack of transportation, and other obstacles. This is a ticking time bomb, inasmuch as children not enrolled in school are more likely to end up working in hazardous conditions or to be recruited into militant organizations. At the 2016 conference on Supporting Syria and the Region in London, participants committed to provide education to all Syrian refugee children by the end of the 2016–17 school year. Though such an endeavor will cost at least $1.4 billion annually, it seems a reasonable price to prevent the emergence of a “lost generation.” 5. The world must seize upon upcoming opportunities to harness global momentum for change. Given the growing number of fragile states, as well as the strains of climate change, mass human movements are likely to be the wave of the future. The world needs to act accordingly. Fortunately, the remainder of 2016 offers at least three opportunities for humanitarian actors and member states to focus on pressing reforms. In May, the United Nations will host the world Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. In September, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host a plenary meeting on humanitarian issues at the seventy-first session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Finally, President Barack Obama will host a high-level summit on the sidelines of UNGA to “secure new commitments” for humanitarian action. The United States has established the following laudable goals: Increase global response to UN humanitarian funding appeals by 30 percent Increase the number of regular humanitarian donors by at least ten Double (at a minimum) the number of slots for refugee resettlement globally Increase by at least ten the number of countries admitting refugees Enroll one million refugees children in school and provide one million refugees with lawful employment Though much work remains to be done, this “Year of Summits” offers member states and humanitarian actors an opportunity to harness political momentum for necessary reforms to protect the growing number of forced migrants and refugees.  To learn more, read the full report: “The Global Humanitarian Regime: Priorities and Prospects for Reform.”

The World Health Assembly (WHA), the executive body of the World Health Organization (WHO), will convene on May 23-28 in Geneva. While member states have received invitations to participate in this year’s WHA, the only assurance Taiwan has received from the WHO Secretariat is that “internal operations were ongoing.” Why is the invitation letter from WHO of any significance to Taiwan?  Well, over the past twenty years, the Republic of China (Taiwan) has been seeking to rejoin the WHO and WHA.  But it was not until 2009—following Mr. Ma Ying-jeou’s electoral victory and the rapid warming of cross-strait relations—that goodwill from the mainland China or People’s Republic of China (PRC) enabled ROC to participate in the WHA as an observer under the title “Chinese Taipei.”  Because it was the first time since its withdrawal from the United Nations (UN) in 1971 that ROC formally participated in a UN organization, this move was viewed as a milestone in cross-strait relations, as well as Taiwan’s quest for international space. Maybe it is still too early for Taiwan to be seriously concerned about its WHA participation this year—in the past, an official invitation to WHA could arrive as late as May.  Still, amidst the uncertainties surrounding the cross-strait relations after Mame. Tsai Ing-wen’s successful bid for the presidency in January, few would remain optimistic that Taiwan’s continuous participation in WHA is a matter of course. In a recent meeting with a delegation of the Council on Foreign Relations, Minister Andrew Hsia of the Mainland Affairs Council (the agency charged with PRC relations) pointed out a slew of developments since mid-March that had made his job even more daunting.  On March 17, China resumed diplomatic ties with Gambia, a former Taiwan ally, ending an unofficial “diplomatic truce” that had suspended PRC’s efforts to poach Taiwan’s twenty-three diplomatic allies. This was followed by its rejection of Taiwan’s bid to become a founding member of the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.  On April 11, news broke that eight Taiwanese involved in a telecom fraud in Kenya (which does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan) were deported to PRC, rather than their homeland. One week later, ROC representatives were expelled from a high-level international steel symposium held in Brussels under alleged pressure from Beijing. These developments, including the delayed invitation from the WHO, are viewed widely in Taipei as signs of Beijing’s hardening stance on Taiwan.  In the eyes of many watchers of cross-strait relations, they are warnings aimed at putting pressure on President-elect Tsai to stick to the so-called “1992 Consensus,” which insists that both Taiwan and mainland China are inalienable parts of a single “China.” Whether or not that insinuation tactic will work remains to be seen, but one thing is clear— it will undermine President Ma’s greatest legacy in cross-strait relations. When receiving the Council on Foreign Relations delegation on April 12, President Ma spent much of the time talking about his accomplishments in promoting cross-strait peace and stability over the past eight years. Tightening the diplomatic screws on Taiwan while Ma is still in office has not only shown how fragile cross-strait relations are, but has also done a disservice to Ma’s efforts to defend his record in handling cross-strait relations. It may further alienate the Taiwan public when support for an independent Taiwanese identity is at an all-time high.  According to a 2015 poll, 90 percent of respondents would identify themselves as “Taiwanese” rather than “Chinese” if they were to choose between the two. As PRC ramps up pressure on ROC, a growing sense of victimhood in Taiwan may further narrow Tsai’s space for political maneuver, encouraging her to jettison Ma’s policy on cross-strait relations and actively quest for Taiwan international space, even though she may still prefer to sustain the existing constitutional order. Already, Tsai has indicated that her administration would reassess the agreements Ma’s administration had reached with the mainland. To many leaders of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), PRC did not really give up much when Taiwan was granted observer status in WHA. As early as 2005, China signed a memo with the WHO Secretariat purportedly stipulating that all exchanges between Taiwan and the WHO have to be approved by Beijing. As chairwoman of the opposition DPP, Tsai then lambasted Ma’s decision to participate in WHA under “Chinese Taipei,” saying that while Taiwan was able to maintain its sovereign status when negotiating the joining of APEC, Asian Development Bank, and the World Trade Organization, Ma had paid too high a price in Taiwan’s sovereignty for a dubious gain in WHA participation. The observer status in WHA, she contended, was no different from an NGO affiliated with PRC. To be sure, if diplomatic activism were to be rekindled by either side, China’s economic clout and international prestige would make Taiwan’s efforts to keep any of its remaining twenty-two diplomatic allies (not to mention winning over even one from China) an uphill battle. The so-called diplomatic truce hinges more upon goodwill from PRC; in game theoretical terms, the truce is unstable and unsustainable because it is not a Nash equilibrium in which no player has anything to gain by deviating from the existing strategy. Still, by playing “tit for tat,” ROC can cause more diplomatic trouble to PRC. It could take advantage of the growing international sympathy to beef up its soft power, which happens to be China’s Achilles heel despite the latter’s near one decade’s worth of tremendous investment in this area.  It may also lobby for more active participation in international organizations where universality is critical to their effectiveness. Indeed, the need to include every country (region) to forge a seamless global framework against transborder spread of acute disease outbreaks means that states will have to cede sovereignty to a certain extent in specific cases in order to ensure the adequate provision of health security as a global public good. Taiwan’s odds are pretty good at a time when Washington is disappointed with the lack of reciprocity from China in bilateral relations. Last month, President Obama signed a bill supporting Taiwan’s observer status in the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). In that sense, it would be diplomatically more productive for PRC to map out a strategy on how to use the WHA model as a template in preparing for ROC’s future access to other global bodies rather than use its gatekeeper status in Taiwan’s WHA participation to marginalize Taiwan in global diplomacy. The effectiveness and replicability of the model, though, depend on whether leaders on both sides can agree upon a new political formula as flexible as the 1992 Consensus to anchor the future cross-strait dynamics.

Coauthored with Erin Sielaff, intern in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. The United Nations is attempting to restart yet another set of peace talks in Syria and Yemen, two deeply conflicted states. After years of struggling to foster a negotiated peace, hopes are high that these latest rounds will be successful. The more likely scenario is that they end like their numerous predecessors—in failure. The track record of UN-mediated peace negotiations is not good. Many talks collapse without producing a substantive agreement. And even when adversaries reach a deal, more than 50 percent of these settlements break down within five years, plunging states back into violence and societies into suffering. To be sure, making and sustaining peace is difficult, and negotiations can fail for diverse reasons. But the negative effects of aborted peace processes are felt most acutely by those who have typically been ignored in the negotiations themselves: women. Consider the impact of the Syrian and Yemeni conflicts. Though the vast majority of casualties have been men, women have borne the brunt of the conflict in many instances: they face alarming rates of sexual violence, are targeted for kidnappings and arbitrary detentions, and are disproportionately affected by shelling, chemical weapons, and air bombardments. At the same time, the social fabric in Syria has been torn asunder, upending gender roles. Women are suddenly participating in new sectors of society. They have acted as peacebuilders, pushing for peace through local ceasefires, and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged regions. Women have also taken on new family responsibilities: in more than 145,000 Syrian families, they are now the sole breadwinners. To house and feed their children, they have developed new income-generating skills, such as embroidery or agricultural production, and engaged in markets from which they were previously excluded. And in some instances, Syrian women have even taken up arms on behalf of the Assad government or rebel groups. Similarly, in Yemen women have been especially vulnerable, facing rampant sexual- and gender-based violence, having minimal access to healthcare, and suffering food insecurity. As in Syria, some Yemeni women have pushed for peace, while still others have joined local militias to defend tribal territory. Despite their active roles in both war-fighting and peace-building, women are regularly excluded from formal, high-level peace negotiations. Not a single woman was represented in either delegation during the January 2014 peace talks in Syria, for example. This is not simply a problem of gender equity. It is a problem of effectiveness. With rates of conflict recidivism so alarmingly high, it’s obvious that the current approach to UN-led peace negotiations is inadequate. Yet, international actors continue to rely on a faulty formula. Here’s a radical idea: why not make peace talks actually representative of the societies that negotiations are trying to stitch back together? With few exceptions, women today are almost always excluded from formal peace negotiations. But in those rare instances where they do have a seat at the table, a host of qualitative and quantitative evidence suggests that they make tangible contributions to the creation and maintenance of sustainable peace. Consider these data points: First, including women in formal peace negotiations significantly increases the probability of reaching a deal. Second, it increases the chance that the agreement will be properly implemented. Overall, including women makes it 35 percent more likely that the peace deal will last fifteen years. What explains this “gender peace dividend”? To begin with, women bring unique perspectives to peace discussions, including a focus on gender issues and other social concerns. In addition, women frequently play important societal roles in fostering consensus, an essential ingredient to ensure the successful completion and implementation of peace accords. We know from recent history that women can have a productive impact on the peace process. In 1997 in Northern Ireland, women insisted on being included in peace talks. They mobilized a Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) and used their two seats at the negotiating table to advocate for a more inclusive agreement and to reconcile divides between various parties. They also contributed substantively to the final agreement, which included a recognition of the rights of victims, the rights of women, and several social provisions. A similar dynamic unfolded in the Philippines. Women played an active role in protracted negotiations, pushing for representative and inclusive talks that began in the early 2000s and culminated in a 2014 agreement. Outside the formal negotiations, female civil society groups worked to prevent spoilers from undermining the talks. None of this is news to the UN, which already has a framework to facilitate the inclusion of women in peacebuilding. UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which celebrated its fifteenth birthday in October 2015, formally recognized the link between gender and security, and called on member states to enable the participation of women in post-conflict peace negotiations, governance, and peacekeeping initiatives. The resolution also outlined reforms within the UN system to foster the inclusion of women in the peace and security realm. Unfortunately, implementation of 1325 has been slow going, hindered by inadequate financing and political will. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon should use this month’s high-profile peace negotiations in Syria and Yemen to revitalize Resolution 1325, by insisting that women are active participants in both rounds of peace talks. Beyond that symbolic step, the UN should adopt a standardized process for automatically including women in peace negotiations that it (or a regional organization) is brokering. Women should be included in every phase—from prenegotiations through implementation. Simultaneously, the UN needs to get its own house in order, by including more women in senior UN positions. There is clearly room for improvement. In 2015, 92 percent of Ban’s senior staff appointments were male. Though some activists have called for at least 25–30 percent of peace negotiators to be women, the quality of participation is just as important as the quantity of women included. Too often, when women are included, they are assigned to limited portfolios, such as committees on “gender issues,” while the substance of the peace talks is left to the men. This is a real possibility in the ongoing Syrian talks, given the creation of the Syrian Women’s Advisory Council. On one level, the council is a positive step—a group of twelve female civil society representatives will advise UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura throughout the peace talks. The problem is that the council is divorced from the actual talks, suggesting it will be devoid of real influence over the negotiations. Women must be included as formal delegates, and (as in Northern Ireland), they must enjoy the same status as their male counterparts. Finally, the UN must ensure that all negotiated settlements are gender-sensitive, by incorporating provisions related to women’s rights and inclusion. The 2014 agreement between the government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is one example: sustained female participation throughout the negotiations helped to create a peace deal with specific provisions to include women in post-conflict governance, address the needs of female ex-combatants, and launch gender-conscious economic and social initiatives. When peace deals fail to include such concerns, they are not only unrepresentative of their societies, they also fail to address root causes of conflict, which can contribute to recidivism. The UN and its member states must do more to implement the mandates of Resolution 1325. The challenges are immense, but so are the opportunities—the UN should capitalize on the momentum from these renewed talks to overhaul its entire approach to peace negotiations, in a way that has been proven to work for all.