International Organizations

The following is a guest post by Caroline Andridge, research associate for global health, economics, and development at the Council on Foreign Relations. Controversial President Robert Mugabe isn’t the only unpredictable force citizens of Zimbabwe face. Over 1.5 million additional people in Zimbabwe (above the 4.8 million undernourished citizens in 2013) will go hungry this year because extreme weather and poor farming methods halved maize production. This is just one sad example of climate change’s growing impact on human health. “Climate-smart” practices, like crop rotation and efficient food storage, can help address such shortages but current efforts are disjointed and inadequately financed. Yet their potential contributions will only increase as climate change’s impact becomes more severe. Climate-smart agriculture is barely on the periphery of the UN climate summit to be held in Paris later this year. It should instead be a central theme. Emissions from agriculture are substantial. Nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from land use; over 85 percent of those emissions stem from agricultural production. Yet, only twenty-eight of the 127 national adaptation plans—which will drive the summit conversation—mention climate-smart agriculture by name. These peripheral mentions suggest the potential contributions from climate-smart agriculture will be lost in the Paris discussion. Instead, we are likely to see a familiar litany of proposals that do little to help those suffering from climate change today and require difficult tradeoffs between improving the standard of living for today’s population and ensuring there is a planet for future generations. Climate-smart agriculture sustainably increases productivity and resilience, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and advances food security and development goals. Many farmers in developing countries have begun experimenting with these practices, but lack resources to scale up projects. The Paris summit is the first UN climate meeting to prioritize bottom-up efforts through national adaptation plans; prioritizing climate-smart agriculture in Paris will draw needed attention to these similarly local initiatives. Although climate-smart practices are implemented locally, international coordination to rally resources and coordinate expertise will bolster success. The UN’s top climate official claims current national plans do not cut emissions enough to achieve international mitigation goals. Paying increased attention to the agricultural sector may go a long way to address this shortcoming and save lives. Climate-smart agriculture has two unique strengths. First, it promotes production systems that mitigate harmful emissions and adapt to the changing environment—both today and for the future. Current plans to address climate change focus on reducing emissions over future decades, but this does little to assist the many people experiencing real effects of climate change now. Unexpected dry conditions shortened Ethiopia’s rainy season and lowered crop production, putting 4.5 million people in need of food aid. More efficient food storage and water-saving techniques may have eased this burden. Climate-smart practices increase land-use efficiency today and also make smarter use of resources to decrease future agricultural emissions. For example, reducing unnecessary fertilizer use (a large emitter) conserves it for more crops and minimizes greenhouse gases. This is particularly important for low-income country economies. Nearly forty percent of the labor force in low- and middle-income countries is employed in agriculture, compared to only 3.5 percent in high-income countries. The group Agriculture for Impact estimates that sub-Saharan Africa will suffer $68 billion in economic loss from land degradation per year. That diminished productivity has health consequences too. The severe burden of malnutrition in developing countries is exacerbated by variable precipitation, rising temperatures, soil salinization, and desertification, all worsened by climate change. This burden will only increase if low diet diversity and poor crop yields are not addressed. Investment in climate-smart agriculture allows local farmers to fill these shortages now. Climate-smart agriculture can help developing countries maintain agricultural productivity and increase production of foods that boost nutrition. Examples include the hugely successful SRI-Rice system, a yield-increasing methodology for rice farming that dramatically reduces necessary inputs like seeds and water, cuts costs to farmers, and increases rice yields by half. Small-scale farmers in over fifty countries have successfully adopted this system. Projects in Namibia, Micronesia, and Zambia that train farming communities in food preservation, micro-gardening, and agroforestry have also shown success in boosting nutrition through climate-smart practices. Second, climate-smart agriculture does not require universal participation for positive results. These practices outwit the challenge of collective action by providing local benefits. Tangible increases in crop production and household income incentivize nations to implement climate-smart practices, regardless of commitments made by other nations. These actions, in turn, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land use. There is already some international momentum for climate-smart initiatives. Recent support for these activities—notably from the United States and many low-income countries—suggests an increased focus would be embraced in Paris. In addition, climate-smart agriculture is one of the World Bank’s five steps to mitigate climate change and is promoted by multiple global and regional alliances. These initiatives, however, lack funds. The UN Green Climate Fund has received barely half of the promised contributions from participating countries; the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture does not finance projects. In 2014, only 0.01 percent of U.S. official development assistance was directed toward the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Global Climate Change Initiative (GCCI); even less was directed toward GCCI programs that may include climate-smart practices. Climate-smart agriculture projects have also been disjointed, leading to inefficient allocation of resources. USAID and similar development organizations support several ongoing projects in developing countries, while some national governments also attempt to initiate climate-smart projects unilaterally. Flexibility is beneficial, but increased resources and unified expertise will allow specialists to share best practices and improve implementation. Improving cohesion in climate-smart agriculture should be a priority in Paris. Countries should begin by raising the issue’s profile and seeking partnerships with the private sector to invest in climate-smart agriculture. As the effects of climate change increasingly create challenges for food security, we can’t afford to ignore this potential game-changer. Simply put, climate-smart agriculture is a rare win for both development and the environment.

Arun Mohan Sukumar heads the Cyber Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, and is a participant in the Cross-Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability. You can follow him on Twitter @arunmsukumar. At the ICANN 54 meeting in Dublin last week, the IANA transition process reached a crucial breakthrough: the group tasked with recommending measures to elicit accountability from ICANN broadly agreed on the legal vehicle to enforce them. There was a sharp difference of views between the ICANN Board of Directors and the Cross-Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG) in the days leading up to the meeting. Although the CCWG proposed turning ICANN into a membership organization that would allow the ICANN community to remove any or all of the board and modify the corporation’s budget, the Board argued such a “radical” restructuring could potentially destabilise its governance. The Dublin meeting reached a modus vivendi, with both sides agreeing to a proposal that will largely mirror ICANN’s existing structure, while offering additional checks on the Board’s decision-making powers. The CCWG was created late last year, and its recommendations are one part of the package the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will consider as part of the IANA transition process. Although the consensus reached in Dublin is good news to make ICANN accountable, there is still one major hurdle to address:  managing governments’ relationship with ICANN after the IANA transition. In March 2015, a sub-group of the CCWG was created to perform stress tests—testing ICANN’s governance mechanisms against crisis scenarios—and provide recommendations. For instance, the CCWG accepted a recommendation that empowers ICANN’s communities to remove Board members and block ICANN’s annual budget if ICANN were to be engulfed by a major corruption scandal like the one that affected FIFA. Among the thirty-six stress tests conceived by the sub-group was a scenario where some governments could potentially take control of ICANN. The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), currently comprising more than 140 countries, has a special relationship vis-à-vis the ICANN Board. Although the GAC’s counsel is not binding, the ICANN Board is required to take such advice into account and “find a mutually acceptable solution” on public policy matters. However, the GAC offers such advice only if there is consensus among governments within the committee. In cases where a small minority of governments objects to the GAC’s advice, those objections are communicated to the Board. Stress Test 18 envisages a future instance where GAC rules are changed to allow for majority voting. In such a situation, a dominant number of governments could bulldoze their way through the GAC, and demand that the ICANN Board follow its advice. To prevent this, the CCWG suggested ICANN bylaws be changed to make the Board answerable only to GAC advice that is supported by consensus. Given that Stress Test 18 constrains the GAC, it has got governments up in arms and threatens to stall the IANA transition altogether. Several countries, notably Brazil, Spain, Denmark and Argentina, see the proposed modification as unacceptable. The GAC’s Dublin communiqué indicates the committee is split down the middle: while some prefer GAC advice that reflects consensus, others see Stress Test 18 as intrusive and tampering with the way GAC makes decisions. To complicate matters further, the NTIA has suggested that the U.S. government considers the Stress Test “both appropriate and necessary”. The Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation weighed in on the accountability debate ahead of Dublin, stressing in a letter to the ICANN board that “community empowerment over government control” would be the “bedrock of Congressional support” for the IANA transition. To be sure, the chances of government capture as conceived by the stress test are slender. It is unlikely that the United States, European Union or Brazil is simply going to roll over and allow for changes to the GAC’s operating procedures. Majority voting in the GAC would render it akin to a United Nations committee, a scenario that most countries are keen to avoid. The GAC’s institutional culture is different from that of a conventional inter-governmental body: GAC veterans, unlike their counterparts in New York or Geneva, are well-versed in the multistakeholder policy development process at ICANN. The pulls and pushes of international politics still apply, but as a collective, the GAC has come to accept its limited role in ICANN’s governance. The issue is controversial because some governments see the U.S. support for Stress Test 18 as a strategy to limit their influence while maintaining its own privileged position. Indeed, the U.S. government could well re-take contractual oversight of IANA functions after the transition is complete. This eventuality is more likely than majority voting at the GAG given that ICANN will continue to be legally rooted in the United States. On the other hand, Stress Test 18 has support from ICANN’s business and civil society stakeholders, because it insulates the corporation from political processes the WSIS+10 review. Stress Test 18 now threatens to invite the traditional conflict between multistakeholder and intergovernmental processes to ICANN’s turf. While the proposal to modify GAC’s operating principle is well-intentioned, the CCWG should evaluate whether it is trying to fix a system that isn’t broken. It is important that ICANN’s relationship with governments is carefully balanced with other constituencies after the IANA transition, but the GAC already operates under its own system of political checks. As it heads into the final stages of the proposal, the CCWG would do well to assess the real risk of governments capturing ICANN’s policymaking before pushing ahead with Stress Test 18.

Pity the United Nations (UN), which turns seventy this month. Rather than enjoying a carefree retirement, the UN faces unrelenting demands on its time and resources, being expected to address threats both old (e.g., violent conflict, nuclear proliferation, and infectious disease) and new (e.g., climate change, terrorism, and cyberwar). Like many Baby Boomers, the UN has held up pretty well, at least superficially. Thanks to its binding charter and universal membership, it remains the world’s most important multilateral forum. However, dig a little deeper and the UN’s real problems are not frailties of geriatric life but the psychological complaints of middle age. The world body faces a four-fold midlife crisis—of identity, of relevance, of authority, and of performance. In an article just published by Foreign Affairs, I take a look at where the UN stands seventy years after its founding. In a world increasingly crowded with capable international actors, I argue, the UN should focus on doing what it does best and doing it well. Read the full article here.

This post originally appeared on the Council on Foreign Relations Net Politics Blog and is written by Mailyn Fidler. Mailyn is a Marshall Scholar studying international relations at the University of Oxford. You can follow her on Twitter @mailynfidler. This September, African civil society, business, and government leaders gathered at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa to debate Internet issues at the African Internet Governance Forum. I attended the Forum to interview participants for research I am conducting on the African Union Convention on Cybersecurity and Data Protection. In the months before the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held this year in Brazil, most world regions host their own version of the forum to incubate positions to take at the global IGF. The IGF system was a compromise outcome of the UN-backed World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005, which sought to address inequalities in Internet infrastructure and governance between countries. Although important Internet-related issues are addressed at the forums, they have no binding decision-making power. The ten-year review of the outcomes of WSIS will happen this December, and the agenda of the African IGF largely mirrored issues that will also be addressed then, including Internet governance, Internet access, cybersecurity, and human rights online. The report from the African IGF is available here. The 2015 African IGF was marked by excitement about increased participation by high-level African government officials. In the past, only Nigerian and host country officials had attended. This year’s event in Addis saw high-level officials from South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria participate. Speakers noted this phenomenon repeatedly, excited by a sense that governments were taking the gathering, which held its first meeting in 2012, seriously and not writing it off as a civil society echo chamber. Despite their participation, the government representatives were not entirely supportive of the IGF’s guiding concept. IGFs are committed to multistakeholder ideals, giving equal voice to government, civil society, and business. The representatives expressed concern about this approach, stating the need to prioritize government views. Specifically, one representative raised concerns about a draft document prepared for the ten-year review of WSISoutcomes that endorsed multistakeholder principles. At the panel titled “Enhancing Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation,” a representative from the African Union repeated these concerns, drawing the biggest applause of the forum, trumping the clapping for a young Nigerian woman who challenged an Ethiopian bureaucrat over the questionable detention of bloggers and journalists. These reservations about multistakeholderism reflect the positions African states have taken on Internet governance in other forums. In perhaps the most prominent example, all but three African state attendees at the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) voted in favor of a proposal for updated International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) that would support a more government-centric Internet governance approach. Another hotly debated issue at the forum was the interplay between zero-rating and net neutrality. The prime zero-rating example is Facebook’s Internet.org, where the social media company works with providers to offer Facebook and select other websites at no cost to users. Attendees debated whether zero-rating was an appropriate approach to expanding Internet access in Africa. Human rights representatives championed the development as a boon for the least well off, while attendees from the African tech sector resisted it, concerned about having to compete with free Western services. Ebele Okobi, head of public policy for Facebook Africa, sought to highlight Facebook’s recent efforts to include more and locally developed websites on its free platform. Attendees also debated whether zero-rating violated the principle of net neutrality, and if, when, and how African states should legislate to preserve net neutrality. The first event I attended at the forum opened by urging attendees to remember, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Concerns about making sure Africans are “at the table” resonated throughout the event. I spent coffee breaks with younger attendees, listening to their concerns that the structure and style of the event would resign the African IGF and African perspectives on these issues to obscurity. I watched civil society walk the fine line between welcoming increased government participation, which could give the forum increased seriousness, and resisting increased government influence, which could shut out crucial African voices. I watched the forum grapple with the disparity between the increased willingness and ability of African states to “be at the table” on Internet matters and the limitations the external world still places on African participation. At the same time, attendees also recognized that many African countries still must make huge strides in government, civil society, and technological capacity before having a consistent, firm, and informed seat at the table, despite incredible progress. A strong African voice on Internet matters at international events may come with decreased inclusiveness. The greater number of African government officials who attended the African IGF, gathered in the Chinese-built hall of the African Union, may well determine such a tradeoff is worth it.

The BBC reports that troops from the African Union’s (AU) African Standby Force (ASF) have started military exercises in South Africa on October 20. This exercise is meant to establish whether the ASF will be fully operational by the intended December 2015 deadline. The AU’s aspiration is that the ASF will free the continent of the need for non-African outside forces for conflict resolution. On October 12, it was announced that the ASF’s logistics base will be in Yaounde, Cameroon. Established by the AU, the ASF will be multinational, and the goal is that it will be 25,000 strong. The current plan is that the force will consist of five brigades, one from each of the major regional groupings: the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, the Southern African Development Community, the Economic Community of Central African States, the East African Standby Force, and the North Africa Regional Capability. The current training exercises involve 5,000 military and police. The exercise will continue until November 5. As is so often the case with multilateral initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa, the issue is money. In May, the AU said that it will need one billion dollars to make the force operational. The AU will be approaching international donors. Africans have long seen a standby force as an essential ingredient in “African solutions to African problems.” So, too, have international friends of Africa. The training exercise now underway in South Africa is a major step forward. The estimated cost of one billion dollars is probably realistic. At first glance, the number induces sticker shock. But, an effective standby force could significantly reduce the international community’s burden of providing – and funding – various peacekeeping missions. Unlike many international organizations, the AU does not recognize the sovereignty of its member states as unlimited. It has criteria for intervention, and has been increasingly willing to do so as it has developed. Grounds for uninvited AU intervention include war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Coauthored with Naomi Egel, research associate in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. The Internet has facilitated countless improvements in lives around the globe, from reducing costs of business transactions to connecting distant expatriate communities. But it has also brought challenges, from new privacy concerns to cyberattacks. The latest addition to the Global Governance Monitor, produced jointly with our colleagues in CFR’s Digital and Cyber Policy program, assesses efforts to govern cyberspace. Unlike most other issue areas explored by the Global Governance Monitor, the regime for Internet governance is—at best—fledgling. There is no cornerstone treaty, as for nuclear weapons (the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons) or crime (the UN Convention against Transnational Crime) undergirding the regime. Further treaty-making is additionally complicated by the speed with which the Internet is evolving: by the time negotiations are finished, a treaty might be irrelevant. Still, despite serious challenges to robust Internet governance, there have been some positive steps toward improving international cooperation in cyberspace. Major Governance Challenges Disagreements among major powers: The United States, European Union, Russia, and China disagree on how the Internet should be managed. The United States and Europe support a continuation of the decentralized, multistakeholder process that involves governments as well as civil society, businesses, technical experts, and other private citizens. This is the model on which ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which manages the allocation of IP addresses and the domain name system (DNS), among other functions, is based. In contrast, Russia, China, and other authoritarian countries see the multistakeholder model as favoring U.S. economic and security interests and want Internet policy issues to be decided through purely intergovernmental forums, like the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Many developing countries, which often lack independent civil-society actors or businesses capable of participating in multistakeholder governance, also prefer venues like the United Nations (UN) where governments are the primary actors. Tensions between privacy and security: Particularly after the Snowden revelations, privacy on the Internet has become a core concern for people around the world. In light of these concerns the European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently struck down the Safe Harbor agreement on the grounds that it failed to provide adequate protections to data on EU citizens in the United States. This agreement had sought to set standards to protect privacy: under it, American companies that operate in Europe are required to self-certify that they disclose to customers when personal data is being collected, how it is being used, and who has access to it. The ECJ’s decision made clear that existing privacy protections no longer provide the assurance they previously did. Ongoing Cooperation Efforts Incorporating Internet governance into existing institutions: As the Internet increasingly changes nearly every aspect of our lives, a growing number of international institutions are taking the Internet into account in their respective domains. In 2013, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) updated its 1980s Guidelines Governing the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data. The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution in 2012 affirming that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online.” Meanwhile, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has taken up the issue of cybercrime by initiating a draft study to examine countries’ ability to tackle it. Developing norms for cybersecurity: As cybersecurity risks and attacks become increasingly public, governments are struggling to prevent, mitigate, and respond to them. These challenges are compounded by difficulties of attributing malicious cyber activity to a specific actor and discerning the intentions of malevolent actors. The United States and others have attempted to promote norms of responsible behavior in cyberspace, but countries have different ideas of what “responsible behavior” involves: for example, the United States and many NATO countries consider that the laws of armed conflict apply in cyberspace, while Russia and China have actively promoted the concept of “cyber sovereignty.” Countries are also unable even to agree on a definition for “cybersecurity.” Moreover, private sector companies, rather than governments, provide most cybersecurity assistance, making it difficult for the ITU or other established intergovernmental venues to coordinate global efforts. Potential Policy Options Improve data collection on cybersecurity All states need better data to assess cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities and whether existing efforts are working. Currently, however, such data is collected primarily by companies selling cybersecurity products and thus inherently biased. To create a more neutral process, the OECD is attempting to streamline cybersecurity data collection and reporting requirements among its member states. Over time, this process will also enable states to compare practices across jurisdictions and to set common international standards. The United States should both contribute to this effort and seek to involve non-OECD countries as well. Give the ITU the authority to discuss but not decide Internet issues The ITU has historically been one of the more effective UN bodies, and today, many developing countries ask the ITU’s advice for Internet issues from cybersecurity to broadband development. Still, the ITU’s involvement in Internet issues is politically charged, as many efforts to expand its influence have sought to centralize authority over the Internet and directly challenge the role and operations of ICANN and other decentralized, multistakeholder venues. The promising middle ground here is to encourage the ITU to act as a facilitator, but not a deliberative body or service provider, to help countries solve Internet-related challenges. The ITU can link experts on Internet policy issues from government, the private sector, and civil society to help expand Internet access in a secure and reliable manner. Create a digital due process system One of the biggest obstacles to improving online privacy is the lack of a digital due process system to standardize how operators of Internet platforms respond to requests from users to correct online information. Governments and the private sector should fill this gap by agreeing on a streamlined approach to the processing of such requests for the removal of content. Any such system should also include a consistent approach for handling law enforcement requests for data from platform operators like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The United States is in a special position to lead and shape the creation of a digital due process system, since so many of these companies are U.S.-based. These comprise only a sampling of the issues explored in the Global Governance Monitor: The Internet. For more, visit the monitor itself.

Mailyn Fidler is a Marshall Scholar studying international relations at the University of Oxford. You can follow her on Twitter @mailynfidler. This September, African civil society, business, and government leaders gathered at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa to debate Internet issues at the African Internet Governance Forum. I attended the Forum to interview participants for research I am conducting on the African Union Convention on Cybersecurity and Data Protection. In the months before the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held this year in Brazil, most world regions host their own version of the forum to incubate positions to take at the global IGF. The IGF system was a compromise outcome of the UN-backed World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005, which sought to address inequalities in Internet infrastructure and governance between countries. Although important Internet-related issues are addressed at the forums, they have no binding decision-making power. The ten-year review of the outcomes of WSIS will happen this December, and the agenda of the African IGF largely mirrored issues that will also be addressed then, including Internet governance, Internet access, cybersecurity, and human rights online. The report from the African IGF is available here. The 2015 African IGF was marked by excitement about increased participation by high-level African government officials. In the past, only Nigerian and host country officials had attended. This year’s event in Addis saw high-level officials from South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria participate. Speakers noted this phenomenon repeatedly, excited by a sense that governments were taking the gathering, which held its first meeting in 2012, seriously and not writing it off as a civil society echo chamber. Despite their participation, the government representatives were not entirely supportive of the IGF’s guiding concept. IGFs are committed to multistakeholder ideals, giving equal voice to government, civil society, and business. The representatives expressed concern about this approach, stating the need to prioritize government views. Specifically, one representative raised concerns about a draft document prepared for the ten-year review of WSIS outcomes that endorsed multistakeholder principles. At the panel titled “Enhancing Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation,” a representative from the African Union repeated these concerns, drawing the biggest applause of the forum, trumping the clapping for a young Nigerian woman who challenged an Ethiopian bureaucrat over the questionable detention of bloggers and journalists. These reservations about multistakeholderism reflect the positions African states have taken on Internet governance in other forums. In perhaps the most prominent example, all but three African state attendees at the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) voted in favor of a proposal for updated International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) that would support a more government-centric Internet governance approach. Another hotly debated issue at the forum was the interplay between zero-rating and net neutrality. The prime zero-rating example is Facebook’s Internet.org, where the social media company works with providers to offer Facebook and select other websites at no cost to users. Attendees debated whether zero-rating was an appropriate approach to expanding Internet access in Africa. Human rights representatives championed the development as a boon for the least well off, while attendees from the African tech sector resisted it, concerned about having to compete with free Western services. Ebele Okobi, head of public policy for Facebook Africa, sought to highlight Facebook’s recent efforts to include more and locally developed websites on its free platform. Attendees also debated whether zero-rating violated the principle of net neutrality, and if, when, and how African states should legislate to preserve net neutrality. The first event I attended at the forum opened by urging attendees to remember, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Concerns about making sure Africans are “at the table” resonated throughout the event. I spent coffee breaks with younger attendees, listening to their concerns that the structure and style of the event would resign the African IGF and African perspectives on these issues to obscurity. I watched civil society walk the fine line between welcoming increased government participation, which could give the forum increased seriousness, and resisting increased government influence, which could shut out crucial African voices. I watched the forum grapple with the disparity between the increased willingness and ability of African states to “be at the table” on Internet matters and the limitations the external world still places on African participation. At the same time, attendees also recognized that many African countries still must make huge strides in government, civil society, and technological capacity before having a consistent, firm, and informed seat at the table, despite incredible progress. A strong African voice on Internet matters at international events may come with decreased inclusiveness. The greater number of African government officials who attended the African IGF, gathered in the Chinese-built hall of the African Union, may well determine such a tradeoff is worth it.

The African National Congress (ANC) wants South Africa to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Obed Bapela, a deputy minister in the presidency, said that the ICC “has lost its way.” According to the media, the Minister for International Relations (foreign minister) Maite Nkoana-Mashabane indicated that the process would be orderly and not hasty. South Africa will place the issue of its withdrawal on the agenda for November’s Assembly of States Parties meeting attended by all ICC members and it would table it at the January African Union (AU) summit, she said. The ANC will bring the issue to parliament for debate. The ANC government of President Jacob Zuma is no doubt smarting from the domestic and international criticism that followed its failure to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he was in Johannesburg for an AU heads of state summit. Bashir is under ICC indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The South African High Court has ruled that the government acted unconstitutionally when it failed to arrest Bashir, and the ICC has asked for an explanation. Other factors are likely at play in the ANC decision. There is resentment that the United States, among others, supports the ICC but does not accept its jurisdiction. Bapela referred to a handful of powerful countries which refused to be ICC members, yet they still had the power to refer matters to the court.” He went on, “They would rather put their own interests first than the world’s interest.” There is also within the ANC an “Africanist” trend which seeks to align South Africa more with other African states. Many of these states object to the ICC as essentially employing a “double standard” by which Africans are prosecuted but others are not. While not unchallenged within the party, the “Africanists” appear to be growing in strength. Some of their spokesmen are highly critical  of the United States as being ”unilateralist” with little respect for African sensitivities. South Africa under Nelson Mandela was one of the founding supporters of the ICC. The Court continues to have strong support in South Africa among the opposition parties in parliament and among civil society. South Africa’s court system is strong and independent. Despite the ANC’s large majority in parliament, it is by no means certain that South Africa’s departure from the ICC will occur.

Samantha Dickinson is an Internet governance consultant and writer. You can follow her on Twitter at @sgdickinson and via her blog, Lingua Synaptica. The eagerly anticipated draft outcome document for the UN General Assembly’s December High Level Meeting on the review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) appeared fashionably late last week. At the two major summits in 2003 and 2005, which together were known as “WSIS”, UN Member States agreed to a number of activities aimed at bringing the benefits of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to everyone in the world, and in particular to those in the developing world. This latest document, called the “zero draft”, will form the basis of negotiations in New York next week when Member States continue to debate the next steps in achieving the WSIS goals. The draft arrived a little too fashionably late as states, with the input of other stakeholders (the private sector, civil society, the technical community and academia), race to find common ground before December’s meeting. There are significant divergences of opinion on WSIS issues—security, Internet governance, human rights, and policies that improve Internet access are just a few—and they have largely existed in the same form since the original WSIS discussions of a decade ago. Moreover, Member States have only in the last few weeks diverted their attention to the WSIS process given that much of their time was consumed with the much larger Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process. Many Member States didn’t feel able to form full positions on WSIS until they knew what the SDGs would finally be. The convergence of all these factors means that the development of an outcome document for the December High Level Meeting has been, and will continue to be, challenging. The two co-facilitators of the preparatory process have tried their hardest in the zero draft to set forth language that States may perhaps be able to accept. However, there is very little likelihood of reaching any agreement on significant changes to the current WSIS priorities or agreement on any new ones. This, of course, won’t stop participants in the preparatory process from making their case. Developing countries will push for a larger role for multilateral institutions to manage the Internet and many in the West will push back. Russia will advocate for a recognition of the concept of “national Internet segments” and civil society groups will parry, arguing that it risks fragmenting the Internet and undermining access to ICTs. As December gets closer, negotiators are likely to focus on the following sticking points: Enhanced cooperation in Internet governance. In 2005, Member States agreed that “enhanced cooperation” was necessary “to enable governments … to carry out their roles and responsibilities in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet.” It’s a vaguely worded compromise, the meaning of which is still debated today. Does enhanced cooperation mean a government-only platform to address Internet policy issues? Would the platform be open to non-government representatives to participate in or to observe? Or does it mean better cooperation between all stakeholders engaged in Internet governance processes? Whether to hold another summit or high level event aimed at developing specific and concrete outcomes. Many participants wanted more specific and significant outcomes and updates to the direction of WSIS for the December meeting, but it’s clear that’s not going to be possible. Hence, there is debate about holding another summit, possibly in 2020, which would be a far more costly exercise than this current process for everyone involved. But for many, the costs would be justifiable if the next summit can achieve the significant changes that are not likely to be agreed in December. Cybersecurity and human rights. These are separate issues in the zero draft, but are closely related to each other, particularly in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures, where a number of States are invoking human rights to argue against other governments accessing information about their citizens’ communications. Funding mechanisms for achieving the WSIS goals. As always, it comes down to debates about who should pay for it all. In the end, the final outcome document is more likely to note the existence of diverse views instead of reconciling them. As the process moves forward, the views and actions that don’t have strong support will begin to disappear from the draft, leaving only what states can agree on. That middle ground is likely to be based on the existing WSIS framework agreed between 2003 and 2005, with some additional amendments based on other related texts agreed since that time. Unless there’s a major change to the way Member States are approaching this review of WSIS, don’t expect agreement on concrete solutions to any of the topics above any time soon.

The following is a guest post by Daniel Chardell and Theresa Lou, research associates in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. With little fanfare, last week marked the conclusion of a foreign policy experiment six years in the making. After two consecutive three-year terms, U.S. membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has expired. The end of U.S. tenure on the Council offers an opportunity to assess what the United States has accomplished, what challenges remain, and how Washington should consolidate its gains moving forward. In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the United States would seek membership in the HRC—reversing the policy of former President George W. Bush, whose advisors had considered the Council little improvement over its predecessor, the now defunct Commission on Human rights (CHR). Critics pilloried the decision. President Bush’s ambassador to the UN, John R. Bolton, likened joining the Human Rights Council to “getting on board the Titanic after it’s hit the iceberg.” President Obama’s policy of working with the Council, rather than critiquing it from the outside, has been the subject of much debate ever since, with skeptics maintaining that the HRC is irretrievably flawed. So where do things stand now? Far better than naysayers would have you believe. The Council continues to suffer weaknesses—namely, substandard membership and disproportionate focus on Israel—but active U.S. participation has also yielded successes that were unimaginable just six years ago. Hard-Won Victories U.S. participation went a long way toward strengthening the Council’s legitimacy and effectiveness. Four achievements are worth highlighting. Syria: In the early years of the Arab Spring, the Human Rights Council offered the first and most effective UN venue to spotlight the atrocities of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On U.S. initiative, the HRC held its first emergency session on the Syria crisis on April 29, 2011, resulting in a report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documenting crimes against humanity. Over the next year, the United States rallied global support for three more special sessions on Syria, leading to the creation of an independent commission of inquiry. The Council’s investigations were vital to broader U.S. efforts to condemn and isolate the Syrian regime, particularly in light of deadlock in the UN Security Council, where veto-wielding Russia and China have continued to block decisive action. Country-specific resolutions: In its recent sessions, the HRC has adopted resolutions on the dire state of human rights in countries around the world, from North Korea and Iran to Sri Lanka and Belarus. Country-specific resolutions are now taken for granted, but they were no sure bet six years ago. With the exception of resolutions on Israel and a handful of African countries, the HRC (like the CHR before it) was loath to spotlight specific governments’ human rights records. The United States changed that, spearheading country-specific resolutions, encouraging others to cooperate, and naming and shaming those that remained defiant. LGBT rights: The United States also persuaded the HRC to take unprecedented action on the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. After rallying cross-regional support for a joint statement in March 2011 against discrimination and violence committed on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, the United States partnered with South Africa—one of the few African countries where LGBT rights are enshrined in law—to introduce a landmark resolution on human rights, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The resolution was narrowly adopted, thanks to the support of traditional Western allies—such as the United Kingdom and France—as well as non-Western partners—including Brazil, Cuba, Mauritius, and Thailand. The 2011 resolution laid the groundwork for a follow-on resolution in October 2014. Despite staunch behind-the-scenes opposition from Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the resolution—sponsored by Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, and the United States—won support from an even broader coalition of countries. Breaking down voting blocs: None of these achievements would have been possible had the United States not invested considerable diplomatic capital in breaking down voting blocs in the UN—such as the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)— that have long obstructed decisive action. By actively courting nontraditional partners in Geneva as well as in capitals, U.S. diplomats forged new relationships that were decisive to passing resolutions with cross-regional support. Remaining Challenges These achievements notwithstanding, U.S. membership hasn’t remedied all of the Human Rights Council’s chronic ills. Membership: Browsing the HRC’s roster of members, it’s easy to question the body’s credibility. Year after year, countries with egregious human rights records like Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia continue to secure seats. Supporters of the Human Rights Council had hoped that its composition would be an improvement on the CHR, since HRC membership requires election by a majority of states in the UN General Assembly. Unfortunately, these reforms have failed to keep human rights offenders off the HRC, where they continue to water down language and obstruct resolutions. Israel: Disproportionate focus on Israel—one of the biggest U.S. criticisms of the former CHR—is a major problem. Even as other human rights abusers evade scrutiny, Israel remains the subject of a stand-alone HRC agenda item. Ending, or at least alleviating, the Council’s disproportionate focus on Israel was one of the Obama administration’s chief motivations for reengaging the HRC in 2009. Six years later, the HRC’s record on Israel is mixed. Deft U.S. diplomacy has facilitated some progress in normalizing the HRC’s treatment of Israel, including by securing Israel’s admission into the Western European and Other States Group (WEOG) in 2013. In return, Israel agreed to participate in its Universal Periodic Review, thereby ending its boycott of the Council. This was a victory for the United States and Israel, but also for the Human Rights Council itself. Nonetheless, the United States hasn’t succeeded in significantly reducing the HRC’s bias toward Israel. This isn’t to suggest that the Council should let Israel’s human rights record go unchallenged. Rather, Israel’s abuses should be judged alongside those of other countries, not in a class of its own. What Next? As a nonmember, the United States must consolidate the gains it’s made over the past six years while preventing the resurgence of the Council’s worst tendencies. Luckily, nonmember status won’t inhibit Washington’s ability to exert influence in the HRC. The United States should use its large diplomatic presence in Geneva in two ways. First, the United States should leverage its convening power to continue building cross-regional coalitions with likeminded governments as well as nontraditional partners. Last year’s progress on LGBT rights was made possible through close U.S. collaboration with South American sponsors, whose leadership bestowed greater legitimacy upon the resolution. The resolution even earned support from traditional U.S. “adversaries,” such as Cuba and Venezuela. U.S. diplomats should aim to replicate these successes across other issue areas. Second, the United States shouldn’t lose sight of its goal of strengthening the Council’s membership. There are plenty of UN member states that abide by their human rights obligations but don’t have the resources to fully participate in the HRC. The U.S. Mission in Geneva should marshal resources to assist these countries in elections for HRC membership and, once elected, help build their diplomatic capacities in Geneva. Finally, as the race for the White House heats up, it’s worth considering what tack the next administration—whether Democratic or Republican—would take on the Human Rights Council. While candidates from both parties will be tempted to focus exclusively on the Council’s weaknesses, they would do well to remember the lessons of the previous six years: on the whole, the HRC performs best when the United States participates, not when it sits on the sidelines.

The biggest achievement of the past week’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York was the adoption of a new fifteen-year plan for global development. Replacing the soon-to-expire Millennium Development Goals, seventeen new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will guide UN and domestic development policies through 2030 with an ambitious, and some say overly idealistic agenda. Based on UN member and civil society input over a three-year process, the final set of SDGs aims to eliminate hunger, reduce inequality, promote shared economic growth, and “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” President Obama, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and Pope Francis all endorsed the new “global goals” during the three-day UN Sustainable Development Summit held in the run-up to UNGA. Here are two major takeaways from the summit: The Global Goal of Good Governance One of the more controversial global goals is SDG 16, which promotes inclusive, accountable institutions and includes twelve specific targets on anti-corruption, representative decision-making, access to information, and the rule of law. With a UN-led global survey of over eight million people ranking governance as a top priority (the second most popular answer in low-income countries), leaders incorporated it into the SDGs despite “adamant resistance.” While many, including U.S. policymakers, support the citizen-led goal, others point to the ambiguity over what “good governance” means, owing to differing perceptions between developed countries and poorer ones. Further, defining and measuring corruption remains difficult, with no standardized cross-country metrics. While polling data propelled governance onto the SDG agenda, citizen participation may also determine whether goal 16’s accountability objectives are achieved. Financing the Global Goals The SDGs now set, the development community must find ways to pay for them as costs are estimated to run $3 trillion a year or more. With private capital as a growing funding source—foreign direct investment (FDI) outpaced government-led assistance by about five times last year—the UN and domestic donor agencies embraced multinationals during the summit. A “UN Private Sector Forum” convened business leaders including Unilever’s Paul Polman, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and MasterCard’s Tim Murphy with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Oxfam International’s Winne Byanyima to discuss SDG priorities. Many pitched a win-win “business for good” model that stimulates domestic economic growth and cuts poverty while expanding the customer base. Yet others highlighted the limits of private investment—UNGA President Mogens Lykketoft pointed to the failure of big corporations and wealthy individuals to pay taxes. Next week rich countries may advance this conversation with new international rules to govern multinationals.

Amelia M. Wolf is a research associate in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. While chairing Monday’s Leaders’ Summit on Peacekeeping, President Obama called on UN member states to increase their troop contributions, improve protection of civilians, and reform and modernize peace operations. The intent and outcome of the meeting is a positive step toward strengthening the ability of UN peacekeeping to work more effectively in complex environments. However, there are many issues left unaddressed, and what matters most is what comes next. First, the U.S. contributions announced by President Obama are not enough. Obama vowed to “double” the number of U.S. military officers in UN peacekeeping operations. Given that the United States currently contributes six military experts and thirty-four troops—less than .04 percent of military personnel—major contributors shouldn’t be fooled by Obama’s promise. In fact, the top ten troop contributing countries account for 54 percent of troops, but make up just 46 percent of the world’s population. Source: World Bank; “Contributors to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations,” UN Peacekeeping, August 31, 2015. If the Obama administration genuinely believes that “too few nations bear a disproportionate burden of providing troops,” then it should be more willing to commit more U.S. military experts and troops to the cause. This would require breaking down barriers within the armed services that make it difficult for military officers to serve in peacekeeping operations, even though the desire exists among them. As Paul Williams, professor of international affairs at George Washington University, wrote in a recent Council on Foreign Relations report, greater troop contributions from the United States would have three primary benefits: demonstrate the country’s commitment to the idea that peace operations are a global responsibility and intrinsic to conflict management and mitigation; strengthen Washington’s ability to exercise leadership by leading by example; and increase the effectiveness of missions. Additionally, it would increase U.S. military and intelligence awareness of other operating environments and enhance bilateral relationships with peacekeeping units from other countries. An additional goal for the Obama administration should be to ensure gender diversity in future contributions. Half of the upcoming “doubling” of U.S. military contributions—though a meager total of forty—should be reserved for women, and the United States should also strongly advocate that countries’ contributions be more gender diverse. Some countries already took initiative. India and Bangladesh have deployed all-female police units, and Rwanda promised to do the same at Monday’s summit. However, progress has been slow. Over the past five years, women’s involvement in military missions has increased by less than 1 percent, and the number of female police officers has increased by just 1.8 percent. Second, given that the UN peacekeeping budget is still inadequate, the United States can and should use its leverage as the top funder to pressure other states to increase their financial contributions. The United States provides 28 percent of the peacekeeping budget. This might seem high. However, countries are supposed to make contributions to the United Nations based on their percent of global GDP and, among the top ten funders of peacekeeping operations specifically, the United States is not an outlier—nine punch more than their own weight. The top ten funder account for 71 percent of funding, but just 53 percent of the world GDP. Third, as facilitator of the UN peacekeeping summit, the Obama administration should encourage UN member states to engage in a discussion on how UN Security Council mandates should evolve with operating environments that have significantly changed since the first mission in 1948. In a June report, the High-Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations found that, “a number of peace operations today are deployed in an environment where there is little or no peace to keep.” In addition to traditional peacekeeping tasks, mandates for peace operations now include counterinsurgency, state-building, atrocity prevention, and even counterterrorism. “The problem,” Williams says, “is that all these different types of activities, of course, require really different types of training, different types of capabilities.” The pledges of an additional thirty thousand troops and police is a monumental step forward, but their ability to successfully fulfill mandates will be hindered if they are not adequately trained for the range of operations that are now categorized as peace operations. This problem is evident in the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). One senior UN official anonymously stated, “We have very naively gone into northern Mali, into a very non-permissive environment, without understanding the implications,” and warning that the result would be “lots of U.N. peacekeepers killed…an ignominious withdrawal and total mission failure.” So far, discussions on mandates have primarily taken place in the Security Council Working Group on Peacekeeping Operations, which has been chaired by Chad since May 2015. Before Chad’s chairmanship ends on December 31, the United States should consult with Chad, Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, and other working group participants to ensure that the incoming chair has the diplomatic capacity and is willing to prioritize this issue. The Obama administration’s initiatives are on the right track to strengthening the capacity and abilities of UN peacekeeping operations.  Its commitments made at Monday’s summit and in a Presidential Memorandum on Support to UN Peace Operations—including additional air and naval logistical support, training, protection against IEDs, and enhanced technologies—will provide peacekeeping missions with more timely and essential supplies. Notably, proposals in the president’s memorandum closely reflect recommendations proposed by Williams’s report, Enhancing U.S. Support for Peace Operations in Africa.  The Obama administration has also supported peacekeeping in other capacities, such as the 2009 New Horizon initiative to develop operational standards for UN peacekeepers, the Senior Advisory group that led to reforms in 2012, and the White House’s African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership (APRRP) proposal. Garnering member state contributions is just the first step of many toward ensuring that peacekeepers have the “the training and the forces and the capabilities and the global support they need to succeed in their mission,” as Obama said. It is the responsibility of the United States to ensure that subsequent steps are taken to clearly differentiate between increasingly diverse peacekeeping mandates and ensure that peacekeepers are equipped and trained to succeed in those missions. One year from now, at the 2016 UN General Assembly, the Obama administration should be prepared to evaluate not only how peacekeeping contributions have grown, but whether they have better enabled peacekeepers to complete their missions.