foreignpolicy--2020-02-04--U.N. Chief Faces Internal Criticism Over Human Rights

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is facing criticism from his former advisors for what they see as his lax record defending human rights at a time when powerful U.N. member states are growing increasingly brazen in abusing them and the United States has become not only indifferent to the issue but is considered a rights abuser itself .
From China to Saudi Arabia and the United States , according to former U.N. rights defenders , the former Portuguese prime minister has repeatedly chosen quiet diplomacy over candor and public denunciation in responding to flagrant rights violations during his first three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues as the mass detention of religious minorities in China and the assassination of political and military rivals by regimes .
“ I ’ m sure the secretary-general has convinced himself that he is acting prudently ” by holding his tongue , Zeid Raad al-Hussein , a former U.N. political officer in Bosnia and Jordanian ambassador who served as U.N. high commissioner for human rights until August 2018 , told Foreign Policy .
“ I think future historians won ’ t interpret it as prudence but will interpret it as weakness.
” Andrew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights , voiced concern that the U.N. secretariat under Guterres is retreating on human rights as part of a broader surrender on the core values enshrined in the U.N. Charter , and that it is steadily chipping away at the body ’ s moral authority .
In a farewell email to Volker Turk , the U.N. assistant secretary-general for strategic coordination , Gilmour faulted the U.N. secretariat for displaying excessive deference to the interests of powerful member states over the principles enshrined in the U.N. Charter and bringing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the refusal to hold itself accountable after U.N. peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti , resulting in the deaths of nearly 10,000 people , or to accept responsibility for resettling some 600 ethnic minorities , including Roma , near an industrial mine in Kosovo where they were exposed to lead poisoning .
Even after the U.N. “ was made aware of the health risks , ” it failed to relocate the community for more than a decade , according to a scathing report by the U.N. Human Rights Advisory Panel in Kosovo .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that standing up for [ U.N. ] Charter values and speaking out for principles over expediency , and on major violations of human rights and international law , is somehow a bit quaint , even a sign of zealotry and political imbecility.
” “ [ T ] he impression now conveyed by some is that standing up for [ U.N. ] Charter values and speaking out for principles over expediency , and on major violations of human rights and international law , is somehow a bit quaint , even a sign of zealotry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the email , which was reviewed by Foreign Policy .
Guterres , a former U.N. refugee chief , had the misfortune of taking on the top U.N. job at a time when the organization ’ s most influential member states were turning away from human rights .
His arrival in New York just over three years ago came weeks before U.S. President Donald Trump ’ s presidential inauguration .
The new president , who spoke approvingly of torture during his campaign , and his first top diplomat , Rex Tillerson , were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ international diplomacy , and other powerful states—including China , Russia , Saudi Arabia , and Turkey—were growing increasingly unwilling to accept criticism of their rights records .
Guterres has made a determined effort to keep his head down , fearing an open confrontation with the United States , China , or another major power might lead them to retaliate against the organization by starving it of funding or impeding its efforts to do its work .
In doing so , he has often fallen back on the cautious advice of his legal department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out controversial positions , like accepting responsibility for settling refugees in contaminated camps in Kosovo or invoking his considerable authority under the U.N. Charter to pursue investigations into the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi .
But Guterres ’ s reticence has inspired sharp criticism for what many in the human rights community see as his muted public response to breaches of international law by powerful U.N. members , including Egypt , Saudi Arabia , Turkey , and the United States , and to the mass detention of more than 1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China .
In a searing op-ed last year in the Washington Post , Kenneth Roth , the executive director of Human Rights Watch , argued Guterres ’ s term is “ becoming defined by his silence on human rights.
” Zeid , the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights , believes there is an underlying assumption by many at the U.N. , including Guterres , that openly confronting world leaders responsible for atrocities closes off diplomatic opportunities to moderate their behavior—and ultimately costs more lives .
“ It doesn ’ t hold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I broke precedent by attacking leaders by name , and what I found is that it didn ’ t bring the house down.
” Public opinion and public pressure , he added , are “ an enormous source of influence if you decide to use it .
But you have to get to the point where you can ’ t be afraid to use it.
” The debate over the virtues of naming and shaming influential rights violators underscores the underlying challenge faced by each U.N. chief to uphold the principles of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of human rights as one of its primary purposes , while managing relations among capricious world leaders who seek to use the organization to advance their own personal or national interests .
Guterres , like his predecessors , is called upon to play multiple roles—diplomat , politician , referee , civil servant—in an institution that receives its marching orders from 193 fractious members .
Guterres has never fully embraced the role of U.N. secretary-general as a secular pope—a phrase associated with previous U.N. leaders such as Dag Hammarskjold and Kofi Annan .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on some human rights crises , acknowledging publicly that Myanmar engaged in ethnic cleansing against the country ’ s minority Rohingya and prodding the U.N. Security Council to take steps to resolve the crisis .
He ordered a ban on Sri Lankan peacekeepers in some U.N. missions after the government appointed a suspected war criminal as head of the country ’ s military—though the secretary-general left open a loophole that allows Sri Lankans to participate in peacekeeping operations if their role is considered vital .
Guterres defended his record on human rights during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.N. headquarters , telling reporters he must balance human rights advocacy with the need to engage with governments to end conflicts and pursue peace .
“ We are not an NGO , ” he added .
“ We are an organization whose objective is to address simultaneously the problems of peace and security , human rights , and development and to make sure that we have , in this regard , the most effective capacity to serve and to benefit the people we care for.
” That , he said , requires a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his high commissioner for human rights , former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet .
“ My role is essentially to define the principles and to define what needs to be done , ” he said .
“ Her role is more to look into the concrete situations.
” Guterres has also defended his response to China ’ s detention of the Uighurs .
“ I don ’ t think anyone has been more persistent and more clear in talking to the Chinese authorities in relation to this issue than myself , ” he told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is absolutely not true that I ’ ve only done discreet diplomacy.
” But even critics such as Gilmour don ’ t place all the blame on Guterres .
The roots of the U.N. ’ s moral failings , Gilmour suggests , predate his arrival , reaching a high point in the U.N. decision to shirk responsibility for its peacekeepers introducing cholera into Haiti in 2010 .
The U.N. legal counsel at the time , Patricia O ’ Brien of Ireland , was at the forefront of efforts to insulate the U.N. from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cholera epidemic , which was traced back to a Nepalese peacekeeping contingent .
Her successor , Miguel de Serpa Soares of Portugal , maintained the U.N. ’ s hard-line legal position , triggering a scathing rebuke from the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights , Philip Alston : “ The U.N. ’ s explicit and unqualified denial of anything other than a moral responsibility is a disgrace , ” he said in October 2016 .
The U.N. ’ s legal office , he added , put forward a “ patently artificial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the [ U.N. ] must not take legal responsibility for what it has done.
” In response to Alston ’ s findings , document in a report earlier that year , the U.N. deputy secretary-general at the time , Jan Eliasson , pressed Guterres ’ s predecessor , Ban Ki-moon , to accept some share of the blame for the cholera epidemic .
But he faced intense resistance from the lawyers , who vigorously opposed any acknowledgement of responsibility , according to several U.N. sources .
The “ shame ” of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cholera epidemic was compounded by efforts to “ impugn the integrity ” of U.N. officials who had pushed “ for some form of U.N. apology and at least moral responsibility , ” for what happened in Haiti .
In December 2016 , Ban did ultimately issue a formal apology to the Haitians for playing a role in the cholera outbreak and acknowledged the U.N. bore a “ moral responsibility ” to help Haitians recover from the calamity—though he never accepted legal responsibility , sparing U.N. member states the obligation to pay compensation .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , dismissing Alston ’ s findings as “ a piece of advocacy.
” He also disputed the portrayal of an internal bureaucratic fight over the admission of responsibility for the Haiti cholera epidemic .
“ There was no disagreement , ” he said .
“ I was absolutely instrumental in validating that new approach.
” Gilmour wrote in his farewell email that nothing in the U.N. ’ s recent history “ comes close to the ethical morass of our response on Haiti cholera.
” But he said the “ shame ” was compounded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” of U.N. officials who had pushed “ for some form of UN apology and at least ‘ moral responsibility ’ ” for what happened in Haiti .
“ Our Organization makes great play of demanding accountability on the part of others , ” Gilmour added .
“ Thus the sight of the extraordinary internal campaign ( that was waged to thwart DSG Eliasson ’ s efforts ) of presenting legal arguments against even the most limited accountability for that avoidable tragedy , while derisively rejecting arguments in support of the UN Charter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the single greatest example of hypocrisy in our 75-year history.
” “ Guterres Needs to Own This ” During his first months in office , Guterres faced a similar moral dilemma in Kosovo , where the U.N. stood accused of settling hundreds of ethnic minorities in an environmental hellhole .
He sided with the lawyers .
In 1999 , the U.N. moved some 600 ethnic Roma , also known as gypsies , into camps near a former lead-smelting factory , where residents cited a history of health concerns .
Families living in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ died from illnesses related to lead poisoning , prompting a scathing investigation by the U.N. mission ’ s human rights office , which accused the organization of gross negligence .
In December 2016 , shortly before Guterres was sworn in as secretary-general , Eliasson and other top officials produced a “ draft apology statement ” to be read out by the U.N. ’ s top official in Kosovo , according to a report in the New York Times .
Foreign Policy obtained a copy of the draft .
The U.N. legal office initially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Roma , but changed its view after Guterres took charge , according to the New York Times .
The U.N. legal office initially agreed to an apology but changed its view after Guterres took charge , according to the Times .
One former U.N. official confirmed the account .
In May 2017 , Guterres ’ s spokesman expressed “ profound regret ” for the plight of the Roma and established a voluntary trust fund to aid victims , but he offered no apology and no compensation .
Serpa Soares said he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ table .
“ The [ Times ] story is totally false .
My position and the position of the Office of Legal Affairs which is the position of the UN has remained the same and has never changed at any time : there was no issue of legal responsibility of the Organization , ” Serpa Soares wrote in an email to Foreign Policy .
“ As to the draft apology that you have mentioned I have never seen such a draft and I was not aware of its existence .
This discussion was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other alternative solutions beyond the one being incorrectly described.
” “ Guterres needs to own this , ” said Louis Charbonneau , the U.N. director at Human Rights Watch .
Whatever advice he received from his lawyers , he had plenty of other advisors telling him that morally , it was right to issue an apology , Charbonneau added .
“ He chose to go the other way , ” he said .
Guterres also sided with his lawyers when he reversed course on his predecessor ’ s most important human rights initiative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was launched by Ban Ki-moon in 2013 in response to a damning review of the U.N. ’ s failure to promote the protection of hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians trapped on the battlefield in the final months of Sri Lanka ’ s brutal civil war .
The scathing 2012 review , conducted by a former senior U.N. official , Charles Petrie , charged the U.N. leadership team in Colombo , Sri Lanka , as well senior officials in New York , with downplaying the Sri Lankan government ’ s complicity in killing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The U.N. team in Sri Lanka “ did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility—and agency and department heads at UNHQ were not instructing them otherwise , ” Petrie wrote .
The new rights initiative—which was spearheaded by Eliasson—was designed to change that .
The former Swedish foreign minister—who carries a worn copy of the U.N. Charter in his coat pocket—assembled a small team of civil servants in the secretary-general ’ s executive office to promote the plan .
They organized quarterly , high level meetings to discuss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to spiral into chaos and violence , the U.N. top brass would convene emergency meetings to plot a response .
“ It was a comprehensive prevention vision to ensure that the UN would not have to say , once more , ‘ never again ’ as we did after Sri Lanka ( and regrettably since then in Myanmar ) , ” Gilmour wrote in his email .
“ And it was an effort to return to UN Charter values ; moral courage in speaking up ; as well as a recognition that everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responsibility to promote human rights.
” But support for the initiative faded under Guterres ’ s watch .
On his first day on the job , Guterres invited his top advisors to lunch in the delegates dining room at the U.N. headquarters building , where the discussion quickly turned to human rights .
Serpa Soares questioned the worth of Ban ’ s initiative , which was designed to encourage the U.N. ’ s humanitarian , development , and political officials in the field to speak out more forcefully in the face of atrocities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to two sources .
The initiative was unpopular with many key member states , including China and Russia , which were seeking to kill funding for a small team in the secretary-general ’ s office that spearheaded it .
Serpa Soares—who had previously criticized the initiative for straining U.N. relations with member states—argued that it duplicated the human rights role of other U.N. agencies and it should be eliminated , according to three sources .
More than a year later , Guterres shuttered the office , after Moscow and Beijing succeeded in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offer from a group of Scandinavian governments to cover the costs .
Still , the U.N. decision to shutter the rights office in the secretary-general ’ s office marked a blow to the efforts of Eliasson and his team to provide encouragement and political cover for U.N. workers in the field to call out human rights abuses .
It also highlighted the sway of the U.N. legal office in shaping the organization ’ s approach to some of the most sensitive political and moral issues , from the defense of human rights to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actions of more than 100,000 U.N. personnel deployed around the world .
“ There was skepticism from the new team and the old team , ” recalled Jeffrey Feltman , a former U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs , who defended the rights initiative at the Jan. 3 , 2017 , lunch .
“ The legal advisor did not see the value.
” Gilmour said that “ a persistent effort to denigrate ” the human rights initiative came from “ the same quarter as the resistance to accept any accountability for Haiti.
” Gilmour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bear responsibility for curtailing the U.N. commitment to human rights in his exit email .
But several U.N.-based sources said that Serpa Soares had long opposed the initiative , saying it would anger member states .
Serpa Soares challenged that account and said that his recollection of the luncheon differed .
He said that he had not openly opposed the initiative—though he had raised concerns about what he considered its flaws .
“ The exchange was totally different ” from that described in the above account , he told Foreign Policy .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ human rights up front ] more clearly … because even I would have difficulty explaining the content.
” When Feltman pointed out “ that it would be close to [ an ] early warning system on human rights violations , ” Serpa Soares said he responded : “ That ’ s good .
That makes sense and it ’ s clear for people .
That ’ s the only exchange.
” Still , several U.N. officials believed that the growing resistance to the rights initiative in Guterres ’ s office marked an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the forces of nationalism and populism sweeping across the globe , with a new generation of autocratic leaders less willing to brook U.N. criticism of its treatment of its citizens , according to former and current U.N. officials .
“ I really did underestimate the hostility to this initiative , ” Feltman said .
“ I thought once people on the 38th floor understood why this was something positive they would no longer object , and I was wrong.
” ( The secretary-general and his executive staff are located on the 38th @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) “ In subsequent meetings , any written product referring to human rights up front tended to be stripped out by the 38th floor , ” he added .
“ It became the U.N. initiative that shall not be named.
” Guterres ’ s advisors countered allegations that the U.N. was retreating from the defense of human rights .
Guterres , they said , has been deeply committed to pursuing a pragmatic course to human rights since his days as high commissioner for human rights , looking for discreet ways to nudge rights-abusing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to mend their ways without entirely alienating them .
They note that he routinely urges China ’ s leadership to observe human rights .
The principles underlying Ban ’ s human rights initiative are still being upheld .
“ There is this myth propagated which says that Human Rights Up Front is dead , ” said Turk , the official in the secretary-general ’ s office to whom Gilmour sent his exit email .
On the contrary , he said , the principles embedded in the initiative have been “ mainstreamed ” into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The secretary-general , he said , has placed human rights at the center of all that he does .
The difference , he said , is that Guterres has established a cabinet-style system of regular principals and deputy principals meetings , which includes a representative from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights , that incorporate human rights into every decision .
“ We go through a rigorous process that this secretary-general has created , ” Turk said .
And “ we have to use all the tools available , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is facing criticism from his former advisors for what they see as his lax record defending human rights at a time when powerful U.N. member states are growing increasingly brazen in abusing them and the United States has become not only indifferent to the issue but is considered a rights abuser itself.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is facing criticism from his former advisors for what they see as his lax record defending human rights at a time when powerful U.N. member states are growing increasingly brazen in abusing them and the United States has become not only indifferent to the issue but is considered a rights abuser itself.
From China to Saudi Arabia and the United States, according to former U.N. rights defenders, the former Portuguese prime minister has repeatedly chosen quiet diplomacy over candor and public denunciation in responding to flagrant rights violations during his first three years in office. These include such issues as the mass detention of religious minorities in China and the assassination of political and military rivals by regimes.
“I’m sure the secretary-general has convinced himself that he is acting prudently” by holding his tongue, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, a former U.N. political officer in Bosnia and Jordanian ambassador who served as U.N. high commissioner for human rights until August 2018, told Foreign Policy. “I think future historians won’t interpret it as prudence but will interpret it as weakness.”
Andrew Gilmour, who stepped down recently as U.N. assistant secretary-general for refugees, voiced concern that the U.N. secretariat under Guterres is retreating on human rights as part of a broader surrender on the core values enshrined in the U.N. Charter, and that it is steadily chipping away at the body’s moral authority.
In a farewell email to Volker Türk, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for strategic coordination, Gilmour faulted the U.N. secretariat for displaying excessive deference to the interests of powerful member states over the principles enshrined in the U.N. Charter and bringing “shame” to the organization through the refusal to hold itself accountable after U.N. peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti, resulting in the deaths of nearly 10,000 people, or to accept responsibility for resettling some 600 ethnic minorities, including Roma, near an industrial mine in Kosovo where they were exposed to lead poisoning. Even after the U.N. “was made aware of the health risks,” it failed to relocate the community for more than a decade, according to a scathing report by the U.N. Human Rights Advisory Panel in Kosovo.
“[T]he impression … is that standing up for [U.N.] Charter values and speaking out for principles over expediency, and on major violations of human rights and international law, is somehow a bit quaint, even a sign of zealotry and political imbecility.”
“[T]he impression now conveyed by some is that standing up for [U.N.] Charter values and speaking out for principles over expediency, and on major violations of human rights and international law, is somehow a bit quaint, even a sign of zealotry and political imbecility,” Gilmour wrote in the email, which was reviewed by Foreign Policy.
Guterres, a former U.N. refugee chief, had the misfortune of taking on the top U.N. job at a time when the organization’s most influential member states were turning away from human rights. His arrival in New York just over three years ago came weeks before U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. The new president, who spoke approvingly of torture during his campaign, and his first top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, were downgrading the importance of human rights in international diplomacy, and other powerful states—including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—were growing increasingly unwilling to accept criticism of their rights records.
Guterres has made a determined effort to keep his head down, fearing an open confrontation with the United States, China, or another major power might lead them to retaliate against the organization by starving it of funding or impeding its efforts to do its work. In doing so, he has often fallen back on the cautious advice of his legal department, which has counseled him against staking out controversial positions, like accepting responsibility for settling refugees in contaminated camps in Kosovo or invoking his considerable authority under the U.N. Charter to pursue investigations into the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
But Guterres’s reticence has inspired sharp criticism for what many in the human rights community see as his muted public response to breaches of international law by powerful U.N. members, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States, and to the mass detention of more than 1 million members of the Uighur minority in China. In a searing op-ed last year in the Washington Post, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued Guterres’s term is “becoming defined by his silence on human rights.”
Zeid, the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, believes there is an underlying assumption by many at the U.N., including Guterres, that openly confronting world leaders responsible for atrocities closes off diplomatic opportunities to moderate their behavior—and ultimately costs more lives. “It doesn’t hold water,” Zeid said. “I broke precedent by attacking leaders by name, and what I found is that it didn’t bring the house down.” Public opinion and public pressure, he added, are “an enormous source of influence if you decide to use it. But you have to get to the point where you can’t be afraid to use it.”
The debate over the virtues of naming and shaming influential rights violators underscores the underlying challenge faced by each U.N. chief to uphold the principles of the U.N. Charter, which cites the promotion of human rights as one of its primary purposes, while managing relations among capricious world leaders who seek to use the organization to advance their own personal or national interests. Guterres, like his predecessors, is called upon to play multiple roles—diplomat, politician, referee, civil servant—in an institution that receives its marching orders from 193 fractious members.
Guterres has never fully embraced the role of U.N. secretary-general as a secular pope—a phrase associated with previous U.N. leaders such as Dag Hammarskjold and Kofi Annan. But he has been willing to speak out on some human rights crises, acknowledging publicly that Myanmar engaged in ethnic cleansing against the country’s minority Rohingya and prodding the U.N. Security Council to take steps to resolve the crisis. He ordered a ban on Sri Lankan peacekeepers in some U.N. missions after the government appointed a suspected war criminal as head of the country’s military—though the secretary-general left open a loophole that allows Sri Lankans to participate in peacekeeping operations if their role is considered vital.
Guterres defended his record on human rights during a press conference on Feb. 4 at U.N. headquarters, telling reporters he must balance human rights advocacy with the need to engage with governments to end conflicts and pursue peace.
“We are not an NGO,” he added. “We are an organization whose objective is to address simultaneously the problems of peace and security, human rights, and development and to make sure that we have, in this regard, the most effective capacity to serve and to benefit the people we care for.”
That, he said, requires a certain division of labor between himself and his high commissioner for human rights, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
“My role is essentially to define the principles and to define what needs to be done,” he said. “Her role is more to look into the concrete situations.”
Guterres has also defended his response to China’s detention of the Uighurs. “I don’t think anyone has been more persistent and more clear in talking to the Chinese authorities in relation to this issue than myself,” he told reporters in September 2019. “It is absolutely not true that I’ve only done discreet diplomacy.”
Body collectors with the Haitian Ministry of Public Health carry a cholera victim to a mass grave north of Port-au-Prince on Nov. 24, 2010.
The Roots of Moral Decline
But even critics such as Gilmour don’t place all the blame on Guterres. The roots of the U.N.’s moral failings, Gilmour suggests, predate his arrival, reaching a high point in the U.N. decision to shirk responsibility for its peacekeepers introducing cholera into Haiti in 2010.
The U.N. legal counsel at the time, Patricia O’Brien of Ireland, was at the forefront of efforts to insulate the U.N. from any legal liability for Haiti’s cholera epidemic, which was traced back to a Nepalese peacekeeping contingent.
Her successor, Miguel de Serpa Soares of Portugal, maintained the U.N.’s hard-line legal position, triggering a scathing rebuke from the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston: “The U.N.’s explicit and unqualified denial of anything other than a moral responsibility is a disgrace,” he said in October 2016.
The U.N.’s legal office, he added, put forward a “patently artificial and wholly unfounded legal pretense for insisting that the [U.N.] must not take legal responsibility for what it has done.” In response to Alston’s findings, document in a report earlier that year, the U.N. deputy secretary-general at the time, Jan Eliasson, pressed Guterres’s predecessor, Ban Ki-moon, to accept some share of the blame for the cholera epidemic. But he faced intense resistance from the lawyers, who vigorously opposed any acknowledgement of responsibility, according to several U.N. sources.
The “shame” of the U.N.’s role in the Haiti cholera epidemic was compounded by efforts to “impugn the integrity” of U.N. officials who had pushed “for some form of U.N. apology and at least moral responsibility,” for what happened in Haiti.
In December 2016, Ban did ultimately issue a formal apology to the Haitians for playing a role in the cholera outbreak and acknowledged the U.N. bore a “moral responsibility” to help Haitians recover from the calamity—though he never accepted legal responsibility, sparing U.N. member states the obligation to pay compensation.
Serpa Soares hit back at his critics, dismissing Alston’s findings as “a piece of advocacy.” He also disputed the portrayal of an internal bureaucratic fight over the admission of responsibility for the Haiti cholera epidemic. “There was no disagreement,” he said. “I was absolutely instrumental in validating that new approach.”
Gilmour wrote in his farewell email that nothing in the U.N.’s recent history “comes close to the ethical morass of our response on Haiti cholera.” But he said the “shame” was compounded by efforts to “impugn the integrity” of U.N. officials who had pushed “for some form of UN apology and at least ‘moral responsibility’” for what happened in Haiti.
“Our Organization makes great play of demanding accountability on the part of others,” Gilmour added. “Thus the sight of the extraordinary internal campaign (that was waged to thwart DSG Eliasson’s efforts) of presenting legal arguments against even the most limited accountability for that avoidable tragedy, while derisively rejecting arguments in support of the UN Charter and Haitians’ rights, may rank as the single greatest example of hypocrisy in our 75-year history.”
“Guterres Needs to Own This”
During his first months in office, Guterres faced a similar moral dilemma in Kosovo, where the U.N. stood accused of settling hundreds of ethnic minorities in an environmental hellhole. He sided with the lawyers.
In 1999, the U.N. moved some 600 ethnic Roma, also known as gypsies, into camps near a former lead-smelting factory, where residents cited a history of health concerns. Families living in the camps said that dozens of children died from illnesses related to lead poisoning, prompting a scathing investigation by the U.N. mission’s human rights office, which accused the organization of gross negligence.
In December 2016, shortly before Guterres was sworn in as secretary-general, Eliasson and other top officials produced a “draft apology statement” to be read out by the U.N.’s top official in Kosovo, according to a report in the New York Times. Foreign Policy obtained a copy of the draft.
The U.N. legal office initially agreed to an apology about the treatment of the Roma, but changed its view after Guterres took charge, according to the New York Times.
The U.N. legal office initially agreed to an apology but changed its view after Guterres took charge, according to the Times. One former U.N. official confirmed the account.
In May 2017, Guterres’s spokesman expressed “profound regret” for the plight of the Roma and established a voluntary trust fund to aid victims, but he offered no apology and no compensation.
Serpa Soares said he was unaware an apology was on the table.
“The [Times] story is totally false. My position and the position of the Office of Legal Affairs which is the position of the UN has remained the same and has never changed at any time: there was no issue of legal responsibility of the Organization,” Serpa Soares wrote in an email to Foreign Policy. “As to the draft apology that you have mentioned I have never seen such a draft and I was not aware of its existence. This discussion was much broader involving other Senior Managers and other alternative solutions beyond the one being incorrectly described.”
“Guterres needs to own this,” said Louis Charbonneau, the U.N. director at Human Rights Watch. Whatever advice he received from his lawyers, he had plenty of other advisors telling him that morally, it was right to issue an apology, Charbonneau added. “He chose to go the other way,” he said.
A Sri Lankan pedestrian walks past a poster ridiculing U.N. chief Ban Ki Moon in Colombo on April 25, 2011, ahead of the release of a U.N. report on alleged war crimes.
Bring in the Lawyers
Guterres also sided with his lawyers when he reversed course on his predecessor’s most important human rights initiative.
The Human Rights Up Front initiative was launched by Ban Ki-moon in 2013 in response to a damning review of the U.N.’s failure to promote the protection of hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians trapped on the battlefield in the final months of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war.
The scathing 2012 review, conducted by a former senior U.N. official, Charles Petrie, charged the U.N. leadership team in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as well senior officials in New York, with downplaying the Sri Lankan government’s complicity in killing more than 40,000 civilians by indiscriminate shelling. The U.N. team in Sri Lanka “did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility—and agency and department heads at UNHQ were not instructing them otherwise,” Petrie wrote.
The new rights initiative—which was spearheaded by Eliasson—was designed to change that. The former Swedish foreign minister—who carries a worn copy of the U.N. Charter in his coat pocket—assembled a small team of civil servants in the secretary-general’s executive office to promote the plan. They organized quarterly, high level meetings to discuss crisis situations. If a country began to spiral into chaos and violence, the U.N. top brass would convene emergency meetings to plot a response.
“It was a comprehensive prevention vision to ensure that the UN would not have to say, once more, ‘never again’ as we did after Sri Lanka (and regrettably since then in Myanmar),” Gilmour wrote in his email. “And it was an effort to return to UN Charter values; moral courage in speaking up; as well as a recognition that everyone who works for the UN has some responsibility to promote human rights.”
But support for the initiative faded under Guterres’s watch.
On his first day on the job, Guterres invited his top advisors to lunch in the delegates dining room at the U.N. headquarters building, where the discussion quickly turned to human rights.
Serpa Soares questioned the worth of Ban’s initiative, which was designed to encourage the U.N.’s humanitarian, development, and political officials in the field to speak out more forcefully in the face of atrocities in countries where they are stationed, according to two sources.
The initiative was unpopular with many key member states, including China and Russia, which were seeking to kill funding for a small team in the secretary-general’s office that spearheaded it. Serpa Soares—who had previously criticized the initiative for straining U.N. relations with member states—argued that it duplicated the human rights role of other U.N. agencies and it should be eliminated, according to three sources. More than a year later, Guterres shuttered the office, after Moscow and Beijing succeeded in blocking its funding. Guterres rejected an offer from a group of Scandinavian governments to cover the costs.
Still, the U.N. decision to shutter the rights office in the secretary-general’s office marked a blow to the efforts of Eliasson and his team to provide encouragement and political cover for U.N. workers in the field to call out human rights abuses.
It also highlighted the sway of the U.N. legal office in shaping the organization’s approach to some of the most sensitive political and moral issues, from the defense of human rights to the determination of U.N. responsibility for the actions of more than 100,000 U.N. personnel deployed around the world.
“There was skepticism from the new team and the old team,” recalled Jeffrey Feltman, a former U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, who defended the rights initiative at the Jan. 3, 2017, lunch. “The legal advisor did not see the value.”
Gilmour said that “a persistent effort to denigrate” the human rights initiative came from “the same quarter as the resistance to accept any accountability for Haiti.”
Gilmour did not name any individuals he believes bear responsibility for curtailing the U.N. commitment to human rights in his exit email. But several U.N.-based sources said that Serpa Soares had long opposed the initiative, saying it would anger member states.
Serpa Soares challenged that account and said that his recollection of the luncheon differed.
He said that he had not openly opposed the initiative—though he had raised concerns about what he considered its flaws. “The exchange was totally different” from that described in the above account, he told Foreign Policy. “I said that we need to define [human rights up front] more clearly … because even I would have difficulty explaining the content.”
When Feltman pointed out “that it would be close to [an] early warning system on human rights violations,” Serpa Soares said he responded: “That’s good. That makes sense and it’s clear for people. That’s the only exchange.”
Still, several U.N. officials believed that the growing resistance to the rights initiative in Guterres’s office marked an early act of surrender to big-power politics and the forces of nationalism and populism sweeping across the globe, with a new generation of autocratic leaders less willing to brook U.N. criticism of its treatment of its citizens, according to former and current U.N. officials.
“I really did underestimate the hostility to this initiative,” Feltman said. “I thought once people on the 38th floor understood why this was something positive they would no longer object, and I was wrong.” (The secretary-general and his executive staff are located on the 38th floor of the U.N. headquarters building.)
“In subsequent meetings, any written product referring to human rights up front tended to be stripped out by the 38th floor,” he added. “It became the U.N. initiative that shall not be named.”
Guterres’s advisors countered allegations that the U.N. was retreating from the defense of human rights. Guterres, they said, has been deeply committed to pursuing a pragmatic course to human rights since his days as high commissioner for human rights, looking for discreet ways to nudge rights-abusing countries such as China and Saudi Arabia to mend their ways without entirely alienating them. They note that he routinely urges China’s leadership to observe human rights. The principles underlying Ban’s human rights initiative are still being upheld.
“There is this myth propagated which says that Human Rights Up Front is dead,” said Türk, the official in the secretary-general’s office to whom Gilmour sent his exit email.
On the contrary, he said, the principles embedded in the initiative have been “mainstreamed” into the secretariat’s daily work. The secretary-general, he said, has placed human rights at the center of all that he does.
The difference, he said, is that Guterres has established a cabinet-style system of regular principals and deputy principals meetings, which includes a representative from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, that incorporate human rights into every decision.
“We go through a rigorous process that this secretary-general has created,” Türk said. And “we have to use all the tools available, and they are not purely public advocacy.”


foreignpolicy--2020-02-04--Why Pakistan Is Resuming Flights to and From China

Why Pakistan Is Resuming Flights to and From China Welcome to Foreign Policy ’ s weekly South Asia Brief .
The highlights this week : Pakistan resumes flights to and from China amid the coronavirus outbreak , Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is campaigning for his party in Delhi ’ s state elections , and Indian stocks fall on a disappointing budget .
If you would like to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Tuesday , please sign up here .
China and Pakistan have long described their close diplomatic and economic relationship in poetic terms .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yousuf Raza Gilani described the relationship as “ higher than mountains , deeper than the ocean , stronger than steel , and sweeter than honey.
” And Beijing has called Islamabad its “ irreplaceable , all-weather friend.
” But Pakistan ’ s decision on Monday to resume flights to and from China—just three days after suspending them in response to the 2019-nCoV outbreak that originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan—has drawn criticism .
“ We don ’ t have any facility to properly test suspected cases , ” a medical expert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Post , questioning the wisdom of the move to reopen flights .
Meanwhile , Pakistani authorities are confident their airport screening system is adequate .
The price of friendship .
Pakistan ’ s decision highlights the different ways that countries are dealing with the coronavirus .
The divergence may be linked to Beijing ’ s ability to put pressure on some countries and not others , as the New York Times reports .
China called a U.S. entry ban “ not in keeping with the facts ” or “ in keeping with friendship.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be difficult for Pakistan to continue to ban flights to and from its biggest arms supplier and investor .
Pakistan is also facing criticism over its decision not to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan .
Once again , a Pakistani spokesman used a strange choice of words .
“ We stand by China in full solidarity , ” said Zafar Mirza , a health official in Prime Minister Imran Khan ’ s government .
“ If we act irresponsibly and start evacuating people from there , this epidemic will spread all over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calculations .
At the World Economic Forum ’ s annual meeting in Davos , Switzerland , last month , FP editor in chief Jonathan Tepperman interviewed the Pakistani prime minister .
Their exchange shed light on how Khan is constrained by China ’ s largesse : JT : You ’ ve been very vocal about criticizing India ’ s treatment of its Muslims and the oppression of Muslims around the world , with one notable exception : China .
Why have you been so quiet about the persecution of China ’ s Muslims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Well , two reasons .
One main reason is that the scale of what is going on in China—and frankly , I don ’ t know much about it , I just occasionally read about it—is nothing compared to what is happening in Kashmir .
JT : With all due respect , we ’ re talking about some 1 million to 2 million people being detained in Xinjiang .
That ’ s not nothing .
IK : But what is happening in Kashmir is 8 million people under siege for five months .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 100,000 people have been killed in Kashmir .
And all the top [ Kashmiri ] leadership is in jail .
So it ’ s the scale of what is happening .
As far as the Uighurs , look—China has helped us .
China came to help our government when we were at the rock bottom .
So we are really grateful to the Chinese government , and we decided that whatever issues we will have with China , we will deal with them privately .
We will not go public .
You can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here .
No cases yet .
While things could change in the coming days , Pakistan has yet to confirm a single case of the coronavirus .
The only South Asian countries to have reported cases so far are India , with three , and Nepal and Sri Lanka , with one each .
( See cases identified by Johns Hopkins University here . )
Delhi ’ s elections battle .
Since its surprise victory in 2015 , the Aam Aadmi—meaning “ common man ” —Party ( AAP ) has held power in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was ruled for 15 years by the Indian National Congress .
In Delhi ’ s assembly elections this week , Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping to flip the state once more to bring his Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) to power .
A win in Delhi would also provide a much-needed shot in the arm after months of protests , first over Modi ’ s decision to revoke Kashmir ’ s special status and then over his government ’ s controversial new Citizenship Amendment Act .
Though Modi will likely play @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to secure a win , local issues may keep the AAP in power .
An investigation into Nepali deaths abroad .
Millions of Nepalis work abroad , and their remittances contribute over 30 percent of their country ’ s GDP .
But they face dangerous conditions : Around 1,000 Nepali workers die abroad every year—97 percent in the Persian Gulf region , according to the Himalayan Times .
Few of those cases have been investigated , but that may soon change after a Supreme Court ruling on a case filed by two Nepali @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has ordered the Nepali government to look into the suspicious deaths .
Rohingya refugees go back to school .
Among a few government proposals for handling the huge population of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh—including repatriation to Myanmar and relocation to an island in the Bay of Bengal—Dhaka recently announced one that has Rohingya feeling hopeful .
Last week , officials announced that Bangladesh would provide refugee children access to formal education after warning about the potential for a “ lost generation.
” Brentrance ?
Just an hour after Britain left the European Union @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Maldives rejoined the British Commonwealth .
The island nation left the global organization in 2016 after it was threatened with suspension over concerns about its human rights and democratic record .
Four years and a new president later , the country has been readmitted .
On Feb. 4 , 1948—exactly 72 years ago—the colony of Ceylon won its independence from Britain , but it retained a governor-general as head of state , representing the British monarch .
Years later , the country became a republic and was renamed Sri Lanka .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down for the answer .
India ’ s budget bust .
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the country ’ s annual budget on Saturday .
Investors were so disappointed that the main Mumbai stock market recorded its biggest single-day decline in three years during a special weekend trading session .
While Sitharaman announced plans for investments in roads and airports , along with tax cuts , many economists said the plans fell short of the major reforms needed to turn around India ’ s slowing economy .
Writing in Quartz , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ woefully short on vision ” with potentially “ disastrous ” impacts .
Smartphone disruption .
When it comes to manufacturing smartphones , India is second only to China .
But India still depends on its bigger neighbor for components : batteries , cameras , chips .
There are now fears that the coronavirus crisis could disrupt the supply of those parts to manufacturers in India , hitting production numbers this quarter .
As shown below , while India has seen rapid growth in smartphone use , there is still immense potential for continued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from regular so-called “ feature phones ” to devices with touch screens .
Forgotten internment .
Most readers will know about the U.S. internment of citizens of Japanese origin during World War II .
But fewer will have heard the story of Chinese Indian internment in 1962 , as told in The Deoliwallahs , a new book by Joy Ma and Dilip D ’ Souza .
Through interviews with survivors , the book sheds light on the plight of around 3,000 Chinese Indians who were interned for several years in Deoli , Rajasthan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ May 22 , 1972 , Ceylon formally became the independent socialist Republic of Sri Lanka as it severed ties with the British Crown .
That ’ s it for this week .
We welcome your feedback at newsletters @ foreignpolicy.com .
You can find older editions of South Asia Brief here .
For more from FP , subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters .

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s weekly South Asia Brief. The highlights this week: Pakistan resumes flights to and from China amid the coronavirus outbreak, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is campaigning for his party in Delhi’s state elections , and Indian stocks fall on a disappointing budget.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s weekly South Asia Brief. The highlights this week: Pakistan resumes flights to and from China amid the coronavirus outbreak, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is campaigning for his party in Delhi’s state elections, and Indian stocks fall on a disappointing budget.
If you would like to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Tuesday, please sign up here.
Trade Together, Sneeze Together?
China and Pakistan have long described their close diplomatic and economic relationship in poetic terms. In 2010, former Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani described the relationship as “higher than mountains, deeper than the ocean, stronger than steel, and sweeter than honey.” And Beijing has called Islamabad its “irreplaceable, all-weather friend.”
But Pakistan’s decision on Monday to resume flights to and from China—just three days after suspending them in response to the 2019-nCoV outbreak that originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan—has drawn criticism. “We don’t have any facility to properly test suspected cases,” a medical expert in Islamabad told the South China Morning Post, questioning the wisdom of the move to reopen flights. Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities are confident their airport screening system is adequate.
The price of friendship. Pakistan’s decision highlights the different ways that countries are dealing with the coronavirus. The divergence may be linked to Beijing’s ability to put pressure on some countries and not others, as the New York Times reports. China called a U.S. entry ban “not in keeping with the facts” or “in keeping with friendship.” One can imagine why it would be difficult for Pakistan to continue to ban flights to and from its biggest arms supplier and investor.
Pakistan is also facing criticism over its decision not to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan. Once again, a Pakistani spokesman used a strange choice of words. “We stand by China in full solidarity,” said Zafar Mirza, a health official in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government. “If we act irresponsibly and start evacuating people from there, this epidemic will spread all over the world like wildfire.”
Khan’s calculations. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last month, FP editor in chief Jonathan Tepperman interviewed the Pakistani prime minister. Their exchange shed light on how Khan is constrained by China’s largesse:
JT: You’ve been very vocal about criticizing India’s treatment of its Muslims and the oppression of Muslims around the world, with one notable exception: China. Why have you been so quiet about the persecution of China’s Muslims in Xinjiang and elsewhere?
IK: Well, two reasons. One main reason is that the scale of what is going on in China—and frankly, I don’t know much about it, I just occasionally read about it—is nothing compared to what is happening in Kashmir.
JT: With all due respect, we’re talking about some 1 million to 2 million people being detained in Xinjiang. That’s not nothing.
IK: But what is happening in Kashmir is 8 million people under siege for five months. Over the last 30 years, about 100,000 people have been killed in Kashmir. And all the top [Kashmiri] leadership is in jail. So it’s the scale of what is happening. As far as the Uighurs, look—China has helped us. China came to help our government when we were at the rock bottom. So we are really grateful to the Chinese government, and we decided that whatever issues we will have with China, we will deal with them privately. We will not go public.
You can read a complete transcript of the interview here.
No cases yet. While things could change in the coming days, Pakistan has yet to confirm a single case of the coronavirus. The only South Asian countries to have reported cases so far are India, with three, and Nepal and Sri Lanka, with one each. (See cases identified by Johns Hopkins University here.)
What We’re Following
Delhi’s elections battle. Since its surprise victory in 2015, the Aam Aadmi—meaning “common man”—Party (AAP) has held power in the Indian state of Delhi, which was ruled for 15 years by the Indian National Congress. In Delhi’s assembly elections this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping to flip the state once more to bring his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power.
A win in Delhi would also provide a much-needed shot in the arm after months of protests, first over Modi’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status and then over his government’s controversial new Citizenship Amendment Act. Though Modi will likely play to the BJP’s nationalist base to secure a win, local issues may keep the AAP in power.
An investigation into Nepali deaths abroad. Millions of Nepalis work abroad, and their remittances contribute over 30 percent of their country’s GDP. But they face dangerous conditions: Around 1,000 Nepali workers die abroad every year—97 percent in the Persian Gulf region, according to the Himalayan Times. Few of those cases have been investigated, but that may soon change after a Supreme Court ruling on a case filed by two Nepali social justice organizations. The highest court has ordered the Nepali government to look into the suspicious deaths.
Rohingya refugees go back to school. Among a few government proposals for handling the huge population of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh—including repatriation to Myanmar and relocation to an island in the Bay of Bengal—Dhaka recently announced one that has Rohingya feeling hopeful. Last week, officials announced that Bangladesh would provide refugee children access to formal education after warning about the potential for a “lost generation.”
Brentrance? Just an hour after Britain left the European Union on the Jan. 31 Brexit deadline, the Maldives rejoined the British Commonwealth. The island nation left the global organization in 2016 after it was threatened with suspension over concerns about its human rights and democratic record. Four years and a new president later, the country has been readmitted.
Question of the Week
On Feb. 4, 1948—exactly 72 years ago—the colony of Ceylon won its independence from Britain, but it retained a governor-general as head of state, representing the British monarch. Years later, the country became a republic and was renamed Sri Lanka. When did that change take place?
A) 1955
B) 1972
C) 1984
D) 1999
Scroll down for the answer.
South Asia Inc.
India’s budget bust. Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the country’s annual budget on Saturday. Investors were so disappointed that the main Mumbai stock market recorded its biggest single-day decline in three years during a special weekend trading session. While Sitharaman announced plans for investments in roads and airports, along with tax cuts, many economists said the plans fell short of the major reforms needed to turn around India’s slowing economy. Writing in Quartz, the economist Jayati Ghosh called the presentation “woefully short on vision” with potentially “disastrous” impacts.
Smartphone disruption. When it comes to manufacturing smartphones, India is second only to China. But India still depends on its bigger neighbor for components: batteries, cameras, chips. There are now fears that the coronavirus crisis could disrupt the supply of those parts to manufacturers in India, hitting production numbers this quarter.
As shown below, while India has seen rapid growth in smartphone use, there is still immense potential for continued sales of new devices as people upgrade from regular so-called “feature phones” to devices with touch screens.
Odds and Ends The Deoliwallahs, Joy Ma and Dilip D'Souza, Pan Macmillan India, 248 pp., Feb. 12, 2020
Forgotten internment. Most readers will know about the U.S. internment of citizens of Japanese origin during World War II. But fewer will have heard the story of Chinese Indian internment in 1962, as told in The Deoliwallahs, a new book by Joy Ma and Dilip D’Souza. Through interviews with survivors, the book sheds light on the plight of around 3,000 Chinese Indians who were interned for several years in Deoli, Rajasthan, during the Sino-Indian War.
And the Answer Is…
B) 1972.
On May 22, 1972, Ceylon formally became the independent socialist Republic of Sri Lanka as it severed ties with the British Crown.
That’s it for this week.
We welcome your feedback at newsletters@foreignpolicy.com. You can find older editions of South Asia Brief here. For more from FP, subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters.


foreignpolicy--2020-02-04--The Big Missing Piece of the Kushner Plan: Water

The Big Missing Piece of the Kushner Plan : Water Among many other problematic aspects of the Trump administration ’ s peace plan for the Middle East , one glaring fault is its lack of any serious attention to the contentious question of how to divide up precious water resources between the Israelis and Palestinians .
One of the many reasons that the Palestinian leadership dismissed the proposal out of hand was that it included a demand for Palestinians to cede the water-rich West Bank and the entire Jordan Valley to Israel .
“ What struck me when I looked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was of a historical context .
There was no recognition of the past agreements that dealt with water , or recognition of the steps that had been put into place to allow for water sharing , or recognition of water rights , ” said Erika Weinthal , an expert on water politics and conflict at Duke University .
Access to water has for decades been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and many regional tensions more broadly .
The arid region has limited supplies of water that are increasingly in demand for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ largely shared across national boundaries , including the Jordan River and the critical underground aquifers in the West Bank and near the Gaza Strip .
That geology and geography helps explain why water conflicts have been behind a lot of the region ’ s sharpest clashes for centuries and even millennia , going back to when the biblical Isaac and the Philistines fought over access to water wells .
More recently , former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon blamed water for ultimately sparking the Six-Day War in 1967 .
Since 1967 , water @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Israeli-Palestinian conflict in part because Israel made control of access to water a cornerstone of its approach to the Palestinians .
Water access for Palestinians in the West Bank is limited enough , with catastrophic impacts on farmers , whose rain-watered fields yield smaller and less valuable harvests than the lush fields of their water-rich neighbors .
In the Gaza Strip , the situation is genuinely dire : More than 90 percent of the water is unfit for human consumption , and the sole aquifer is being invaded by seawater .
“ Water @ @ @ @ @ @ @ core issues in the conflict—not as high as Jerusalem or the question of refugees , but it ’ s always been one of the core issues , ” said Clive Lipchin , the director of the Center for Transboundary Water Management at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel .
Hence it is odd that there is no real discussion about how to share water resources between Israel and the Palestinians in the plan proposed last month by U.S. President Donald Trump ’ s son-in-law , Jared Kushner .
( Although , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the region ’ s history while working on the plan , it may not be that surprising . )
Water was the third of seven major pillars in the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan , and water was a central part of the 1995 Oslo Accords , the closest the two sides have come to finalizing a deal that would eventually see the creation of a Palestinian state .
In contrast , water was allotted a single paragraph in Kushner ’ s blueprint , just after plans for building a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Decades of bitter fights over who should get access to how much water , and years of Israel ’ s use of water as a tool to bolster the viability of its West Bank settlements while strangling Palestinian farmers , was dismissed thus in the White House plan : “ The parties will work together in good faith to manage the details with respect to water and wastewater treatment issues.
” The remnants of deals related to water rights and water allocation in the Oslo Accords remain in effect to this day .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ between the Israelis and Palestinians for two big reasons .
First , the Oslo commitments on paper regarding Palestinians ’ access to water were never ultimately consummated in the hoped-for final agreement .
That has left Israel in ultimate control of Palestinians ’ access to water , whether from the Jordan Valley or the plentiful Mountain Aquifer .
New Palestinian wells , for example , or irrigation systems or wastewater plants all require Israeli signoff , which almost never comes , leaving Palestinians ’ water infrastructure woefully underdeveloped compared to that of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Israelis use more than 80 percent of the water in the West Bank , leaving only a fraction for Palestinians .
Second , the water crunch has only grown more acute in the 25 years since the Oslo accords were signed .
The Palestinian population has grown and with it demand for water , while Israeli allocations of water rights agreed to in the 1990s have hardly changed , Lipchin noted .
That ’ s why the Trump administration ’ s proposal , which talks a lot about supercharging the Palestinian economy through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ manufacturing zones , is jarring to many experts .
It doesn ’ t take into account the fundamental requirements that Palestinians in Gaza need simply to find clean water to drink and bathe , or that West Bank farmers need to irrigate crops that could provide a livelihood .
If some version of the Trump proposal were implemented , including Israel ’ s now-greenlighted annexation of the entire Jordan River Valley , those water inequities would only grow .
Weinthal has written previously of the securitization of water , where Israel controls access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own security and weaken Palestinian communities .
“ This is a plan that continues to ignore any form of effective diplomacy , holding water and infrastructure hostage to the conflict , rather than prioritizing the basic human needs of the Palestinian population , ” she said .
“ At the end of the day , water is a basic human need and a basic human right that should not be held hostage to the conflict or that makes one party acquiesce.
” Could technology come to the rescue and end the ages-old fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , Israel has made huge strides in bolstering its own water security thanks to big investments in desalination plants , which turn Mediterranean seawater into another source of freshwater .
The Trump plan , too , speaks of new big investments by both parties in desalination plants that could provide ample supplies of water , with an eye , perhaps , to sidestepping the fight over precious groundwater resources and removing one of the roadblocks to a final agreement .
“ Desalination will never take away water as a source of conflict @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s a fact that Israel is much more water secure because of technologies including desalination , Israel will never relinquish its rights to the natural resources—those are always going to be the preferred source of water , and always going to be looked at and managed as a buffer in any crisis that may arise.
” The plan ’ s vision of a booming , peaceful , prosperous Palestine—even one under Israeli security tutelage and with little access to the outside world—is hard to square with a future state that will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neighbor for access to water to which it has a legitimate claim , Lipchin said .
Water , as much as control over borders and airspace that are also lacking in the Trump plan , is the stuff sovereignty is made of .
“ If you ’ re talking about a viable and independent state , obviously you need to have control over your natural resources , ” he said .
“ What kind of state is this going to be ?
”

Among many other problematic aspects of the Trump administration’s peace plan for the Middle East, one glaring fault is its lack of any serious attention to the contentious question of how to divide up precious water resources between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Among many other problematic aspects of the Trump administration’s peace plan for the Middle East, one glaring fault is its lack of any serious attention to the contentious question of how to divide up precious water resources between the Israelis and Palestinians.
One of the many reasons that the Palestinian leadership dismissed the proposal out of hand was that it included a demand for Palestinians to cede the water-rich West Bank and the entire Jordan Valley to Israel.
“What struck me when I looked at the plan is how devoid it was of a historical context. There was no recognition of the past agreements that dealt with water, or recognition of the steps that had been put into place to allow for water sharing, or recognition of water rights,” said Erika Weinthal, an expert on water politics and conflict at Duke University.
Access to water has for decades been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and many regional tensions more broadly. The arid region has limited supplies of water that are increasingly in demand for agriculture, and what water exists is largely shared across national boundaries, including the Jordan River and the critical underground aquifers in the West Bank and near the Gaza Strip.
That geology and geography helps explain why water conflicts have been behind a lot of the region’s sharpest clashes for centuries and even millennia, going back to when the biblical Isaac and the Philistines fought over access to water wells. More recently, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon blamed water for ultimately sparking the Six-Day War in 1967.
Since 1967, water has remained a big irritant in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in part because Israel made control of access to water a cornerstone of its approach to the Palestinians. Water access for Palestinians in the West Bank is limited enough, with catastrophic impacts on farmers, whose rain-watered fields yield smaller and less valuable harvests than the lush fields of their water-rich neighbors. In the Gaza Strip, the situation is genuinely dire: More than 90 percent of the water is unfit for human consumption, and the sole aquifer is being invaded by seawater.
“Water is always mentioned as one of the core issues in the conflict—not as high as Jerusalem or the question of refugees, but it’s always been one of the core issues,” said Clive Lipchin, the director of the Center for Transboundary Water Management at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel.
Hence it is odd that there is no real discussion about how to share water resources between Israel and the Palestinians in the plan proposed last month by U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (Although, since Kushner deliberately refused to discuss any of the region’s history while working on the plan, it may not be that surprising.) Water was the third of seven major pillars in the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, and water was a central part of the 1995 Oslo Accords, the closest the two sides have come to finalizing a deal that would eventually see the creation of a Palestinian state.
In contrast, water was allotted a single paragraph in Kushner’s blueprint, just after plans for building a tourist resort on the Dead Sea. Decades of bitter fights over who should get access to how much water, and years of Israel’s use of water as a tool to bolster the viability of its West Bank settlements while strangling Palestinian farmers, was dismissed thus in the White House plan: “The parties will work together in good faith to manage the details with respect to water and wastewater treatment issues.”
The remnants of deals related to water rights and water allocation in the Oslo Accords remain in effect to this day. But water is still a hot-button issue between the Israelis and Palestinians for two big reasons.
First, the Oslo commitments on paper regarding Palestinians’ access to water were never ultimately consummated in the hoped-for final agreement. That has left Israel in ultimate control of Palestinians’ access to water, whether from the Jordan Valley or the plentiful Mountain Aquifer. New Palestinian wells, for example, or irrigation systems or wastewater plants all require Israeli signoff, which almost never comes, leaving Palestinians’ water infrastructure woefully underdeveloped compared to that of their settler neighbors. By some estimates, Israelis use more than 80 percent of the water in the West Bank, leaving only a fraction for Palestinians.
Second, the water crunch has only grown more acute in the 25 years since the Oslo accords were signed. The Palestinian population has grown and with it demand for water, while Israeli allocations of water rights agreed to in the 1990s have hardly changed, Lipchin noted.
That’s why the Trump administration’s proposal, which talks a lot about supercharging the Palestinian economy through international investment and the creation of high-tech manufacturing zones, is jarring to many experts. It doesn’t take into account the fundamental requirements that Palestinians in Gaza need simply to find clean water to drink and bathe, or that West Bank farmers need to irrigate crops that could provide a livelihood.
If some version of the Trump proposal were implemented, including Israel’s now-greenlighted annexation of the entire Jordan River Valley, those water inequities would only grow. Weinthal has written previously of the securitization of water, where Israel controls access to the vital resource to bolster its own security and weaken Palestinian communities.
“This is a plan that continues to ignore any form of effective diplomacy, holding water and infrastructure hostage to the conflict, rather than prioritizing the basic human needs of the Palestinian population,” she said. “At the end of the day, water is a basic human need and a basic human right that should not be held hostage to the conflict or that makes one party acquiesce.”
Could technology come to the rescue and end the ages-old fight over wells and water? In recent years, Israel has made huge strides in bolstering its own water security thanks to big investments in desalination plants, which turn Mediterranean seawater into another source of freshwater. The Trump plan, too, speaks of new big investments by both parties in desalination plants that could provide ample supplies of water, with an eye, perhaps, to sidestepping the fight over precious groundwater resources and removing one of the roadblocks to a final agreement.
The Arava Institute’s Lipchin doesn’t buy it.
“Desalination will never take away water as a source of conflict,” he said. “While it’s a fact that Israel is much more water secure because of technologies including desalination, Israel will never relinquish its rights to the natural resources—those are always going to be the preferred source of water, and always going to be looked at and managed as a buffer in any crisis that may arise.”
The plan’s vision of a booming, peaceful, prosperous Palestine—even one under Israeli security tutelage and with little access to the outside world—is hard to square with a future state that will be still be wholly dependent on its neighbor for access to water to which it has a legitimate claim, Lipchin said. Water, as much as control over borders and airspace that are also lacking in the Trump plan, is the stuff sovereignty is made of.
“If you’re talking about a viable and independent state, obviously you need to have control over your natural resources,” he said. “What kind of state is this going to be?”


foreignpolicy--2020-02-04--Is Georgia Ready for a Trump of Its Own?

Is Georgia Ready for a Trump of Its Own ?
If you ’ ve seen Georgia in the news in the last few months , it was probably due to one of two reasons : Either you were subjected to yet another breathless tourism write-up imploring you to visit the Caucasus republic , or you saw the mass demonstrations that have gripped the country almost ceaselessly since June 2019 .
Tbilisi ’ s ruling Georgian Dream administration would prefer that the latter not be your introduction to the country .
Georgia ’ s opposition—still largely dominated by the United National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of eccentric former President Mikheil Saakashvili—might be happy with it because opposition leaders have pinned their electoral hopes on the rising discontent .
These coalescing narratives will be put to the test in Georgia ’ s upcoming parliamentary elections , which have to be held by October .
It will be a tough choice for the Georgian people , though .
They may not like their current leaders , but they ’ re not fans of the UNM or its allies , either .
In two recent nationwide polls conducted by the International @ @ @ @ @ @ @ National Democratic Institute ( NDI ) —both U.S.-based think tanks with offices in Georgia—respondents supporting either the incumbent or the opposition were outnumbered by those preferring some alternative ( whether that was another opposition party or none at all ) .
The IRI poll , released on Nov. 18 , 2019 , found that 32 percent of those polled did not know who they would vote for if elections were held the next day , compared with 23 percent who would vote for Georgian Dream and 15 percent for UNM .
When NDI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 , its more pointed questions produced a more damning indictment of Georgia ’ s political landscape : When asked “ Which political party is closest to you ?
” a full 34 percent responded “ no party ” or “ refuse to answer ” —nearly double the total 19 percent who chose Georgian Dream .
( UNM only notched 13 percent . )
With the existing options so reviled by such a large portion of the population , the field should be ripe for a third force to make a splash .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries exploited mass disenchantment with the political system to ride a populist wave to power , Georgia ’ s version of Volodymyr Zelensky or Donald Trump might follow a similar playbook to upend Georgian political life .
The person most likely to find themselves in the position of spoiler is not an upstart celebrity comedian or even a reality TV host but a recently outcast member of the elite : the banker Mamuka Khazaradze .
The co-founder and former head of TBC , Georgia ’ s largest bank , Khazaradze found himself at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 after he resigned from his position as TBC chairman in the midst of an investigation many thought to be politically motivated .
On July 24 , 2019 , prosecutors formally charged Khazaradze ( and his co-founder ) in relation to an investigation into a 2008 money laundering case involving him and his associates—just two weeks after he announced his intention to found a new political movement , Lelo , independent of Georgia ’ s leading political forces .
Lelo ’ s platform is not yet fully developed , but the party ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ main purpose is to “ defeat the bipolar system ” of Georgian Dream and UNM .
Although experts who talked to Foreign Policy agreed that Lelo and Khazaradze have the best outside chance of challenging Georgia ’ s two main political parties , it probably won ’ t be enough .
“ Everyone is crying out for something new , some sort of savior , ” said William Dunbar , a journalist and analyst based in Tbilisi .
“ Khazaradze thinks he ’ s this guy , but the best he ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the October election ] .
” For comparison , in the last parliamentary election in October 2016 , Georgian Dream won 48 percent of the vote , compared with 27 percent for UNM .
The initial optics have not helped the former banker , either .
“ Even in his first press conference , people saw his suit with his fancy cuff links , ” said Olesya Vartanyan , a South Caucasus analyst for the International Crisis Group .
“ They already thought , ‘ This guy is not one of us.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not the man himself but what he represents .
More accurately , it is what people want him to represent .
“ Georgia has this phenomenon with new politicians , ” Vartanyan said .
“ When there are rumors that someone new will enter [ politics ] , people start to project all their hopes onto them .
They build up a mythology , regardless of what this person actually is.
” This messiah complex has long characterized Georgian politics .
Former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili rode such a narrative to power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Saakashvili did much the same in 2003 ’ s Rose Revolution .
( Saakashvili served as president , but a constitutional change in 2010 transferred real power from the president to the prime minister . )
Unlike them , however , Khazaradze is at a far greater disadvantage .
This is partly because choosing a saviorlike leader has never worked out for Georgians in the past .
Ivanishvili was an extremely wealthy leader who was ultimately a disappointment because he failed to tangibly improve the living conditions or economic well-being of most citizens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Georgians ’ perceptions of wealthy candidates , harming Khazaradze ’ s chances .
“ Trust towards the wealthy has taken a big hit , ” said Iago Kachkachishvili , the head of the Institute of Social Studies and Analysis , a Tbilisi-based think tank .
Khazaradze ’ s initial poll numbers reinforce this analysis : In the same November IRI poll , only 29 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the man , compared with 45 percent who held a unfavorable view .
A lack of media resources is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and UNM command loyal television stations that broadcast positive coverage of their activities , a luxury Khazaradze and Lelo lack .
In a country where an estimated 69 percent of the population gets its news from TV , that is a major obstacle to overcome .
Khazaradze might hope to get some limited airtime from opposition media , according to Kachkachishvili , but that ’ s still more than can be said for any other potential newcomers .
This lack of media attention is one of the key barriers preventing new political blood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ founding a new news outlet for those purposes is simply impossible given the time frame .
“ There ’ s just no chance for anyone to set up a party and a new TV channel before October , ” Dunbar said .
Perhaps even more damning for a would-be third-party candidate is the sheer polarization that exists in the country .
It would be “ all but impossible ” for a newcomer to establish themselves as truly independent , Dunbar said , because the public would instinctively place them into one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who started gaining momentum … would be seen as either Bidzina ’ s creature or Misha ’ s [ Saakashvili ] .
” Georgia ’ s existing smaller parties aren ’ t likely to fare much better , either .
While parties such as Girchi and Labour have some name recognition , neither currently holds any seats in parliament , and their ability to grow is limited by the same restrictions in place for independent candidates .
“ There ’ s not much hope for them to pick up momentum , ” Kachkachishvili @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but there are some glimmers of hope .
Some analysts have observed a gradual shift away from Georgia ’ s savior complex as more comprehensive political platforms and more developed ideologies have gained greater traction among the electorate .
[ The ] lack of media attention is one of the key barriers preventing new political blood from disrupting the established order .
“ I think every year [ this trend ] is growing , ” Vartanyan said , adding that simply promising the world “ is no longer good enough ” for political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” from largely demagogic one-man rule , Dunbar added , at least for now .
Khazaradze himself has embraced this new approach , promoting potential cabinet members and advertising his team at least as much as himself .
Vartanyan and Kachkachishvili both agree that this represents an important break from past approaches .
“ The active presence of other respected public figures , like [ fellow TBC co-founder Badri ] Japaridze and [ former parliament speaker Davit ] Usupashvili , shows that this will not be a one-man show , ” Vartanyan said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mentioned their potential cabinet ministers , and Khazaradze is giving his a platform.
” Georgia ’ s younger generation has an especially important role to play in all of this .
While Saakashvili famously cleared out the Soviet-raised generation of officials , it is , perhaps ironically , the youth who grew up under his rule who are today disenfranchised and alienated from both UNM and Georgian Dream .
“ Growing up during this [ time of radical reform ] has given them higher expectations , ” Vartanyan said .
These are positive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gradual and insufficient to affect the election this year , and neither Khazaradze nor any other actor can realistically hope to harness these forces in time .
In the near-term , the outlook for Georgian democracy is underwhelming at best and downright bleak at worst .
“ If the opposition wins , the real risk is that Misha becomes the unaccountable guy in the shadows [ wielding true power ] , like Bidzina is right now , ” Dunbar said .
Saakashvili has often announced his intention to return from exile to Georgia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerful opposition politician .
The other option is bleaker still : a Georgian Dream victory in an election marred by widespread fraud and undemocratic conduct .
“ If that happens , then , by default , the U.S. and EU will scale down relations , ” Dunbar said .
“ When that happens , the only possible friend [ Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream ] will have left is the one to the north , ” referring to Russia .
In such a scenario , Georgia will have much bigger problems than the political @ @ @ @ @ @

If you’ve seen Georgia in the news in the last few months, it was probably due to one of two reasons: Either you were subjected to yet another breathless tourism write-up imploring you to visit the Caucasus republic, or you saw the mass demonstrations that have gripped the country almost ceaselessly since June 2019.
If you’ve seen Georgia in the news in the last few months, it was probably due to one of two reasons: Either you were subjected to yet another breathless tourism write-up imploring you to visit the Caucasus republic, or you saw the mass demonstrations that have gripped the country almost ceaselessly since June 2019.
Tbilisi’s ruling Georgian Dream administration would prefer that the latter not be your introduction to the country. Georgia’s opposition—still largely dominated by the United National Movement (UNM), the party of eccentric former President Mikheil Saakashvili—might be happy with it because opposition leaders have pinned their electoral hopes on the rising discontent. These coalescing narratives will be put to the test in Georgia’s upcoming parliamentary elections, which have to be held by October.
It will be a tough choice for the Georgian people, though. They may not like their current leaders, but they’re not fans of the UNM or its allies, either.
In two recent nationwide polls conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI)—both U.S.-based think tanks with offices in Georgia—respondents supporting either the incumbent or the opposition were outnumbered by those preferring some alternative (whether that was another opposition party or none at all). The IRI poll, released on Nov. 18, 2019, found that 32 percent of those polled did not know who they would vote for if elections were held the next day, compared with 23 percent who would vote for Georgian Dream and 15 percent for UNM. When NDI’s poll came out in December 2019, its more pointed questions produced a more damning indictment of Georgia’s political landscape: When asked “Which political party is closest to you?” a full 34 percent responded “no party” or “refuse to answer”—nearly double the total 19 percent who chose Georgian Dream. (UNM only notched 13 percent.)
With the existing options so reviled by such a large portion of the population, the field should be ripe for a third force to make a splash. Similar to the way outsiders in other countries exploited mass disenchantment with the political system to ride a populist wave to power, Georgia’s version of Volodymyr Zelensky or Donald Trump might follow a similar playbook to upend Georgian political life.
The person most likely to find themselves in the position of spoiler is not an upstart celebrity comedian or even a reality TV host but a recently outcast member of the elite: the banker Mamuka Khazaradze.
The co-founder and former head of TBC, Georgia’s largest bank, Khazaradze found himself at the center of a storm in February 2019 after he resigned from his position as TBC chairman in the midst of an investigation many thought to be politically motivated. On July 24, 2019, prosecutors formally charged Khazaradze (and his co-founder) in relation to an investigation into a 2008 money laundering case involving him and his associates—just two weeks after he announced his intention to found a new political movement, Lelo, independent of Georgia’s leading political forces. Lelo’s platform is not yet fully developed, but the party’s leaders have repeatedly stated that its main purpose is to “defeat the bipolar system” of Georgian Dream and UNM.
Although experts who talked to Foreign Policy agreed that Lelo and Khazaradze have the best outside chance of challenging Georgia’s two main political parties, it probably won’t be enough.
“Everyone is crying out for something new, some sort of savior,” said William Dunbar, a journalist and analyst based in Tbilisi. “Khazaradze thinks he’s this guy, but the best he’s likely to do is 15 percent [in the October election].” For comparison, in the last parliamentary election in October 2016, Georgian Dream won 48 percent of the vote, compared with 27 percent for UNM.
The initial optics have not helped the former banker, either. “Even in his first press conference, people saw his suit with his fancy cuff links,” said Olesya Vartanyan, a South Caucasus analyst for the International Crisis Group. “They already thought, ‘This guy is not one of us.’”
The primary appeal of Khazaradze is not the man himself but what he represents. More accurately, it is what people want him to represent.
“Georgia has this phenomenon with new politicians,” Vartanyan said. “When there are rumors that someone new will enter [politics], people start to project all their hopes onto them. They build up a mythology, regardless of what this person actually is.”
This messiah complex has long characterized Georgian politics. Former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili rode such a narrative to power back in 2012, and his predecessor Saakashvili did much the same in 2003’s Rose Revolution. (Saakashvili served as president, but a constitutional change in 2010 transferred real power from the president to the prime minister.) Unlike them, however, Khazaradze is at a far greater disadvantage.
This is partly because choosing a saviorlike leader has never worked out for Georgians in the past. Ivanishvili was an extremely wealthy leader who was ultimately a disappointment because he failed to tangibly improve the living conditions or economic well-being of most citizens. This relatively recent experience has colored Georgians’ perceptions of wealthy candidates, harming Khazaradze’s chances. “Trust towards the wealthy has taken a big hit,” said Iago Kachkachishvili, the head of the Institute of Social Studies and Analysis, a Tbilisi-based think tank.
Khazaradze’s initial poll numbers reinforce this analysis: In the same November IRI poll, only 29 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the man, compared with 45 percent who held a unfavorable view.
A lack of media resources is a further challenge. Both Georgian Dream and UNM command loyal television stations that broadcast positive coverage of their activities, a luxury Khazaradze and Lelo lack. In a country where an estimated 69 percent of the population gets its news from TV, that is a major obstacle to overcome.
Khazaradze might hope to get some limited airtime from opposition media, according to Kachkachishvili, but that’s still more than can be said for any other potential newcomers. This lack of media attention is one of the key barriers preventing new political blood from disrupting the established order, and founding a new news outlet for those purposes is simply impossible given the time frame. “There’s just no chance for anyone to set up a party and a new TV channel before October,” Dunbar said.
Perhaps even more damning for a would-be third-party candidate is the sheer polarization that exists in the country. It would be “all but impossible” for a newcomer to establish themselves as truly independent, Dunbar said, because the public would instinctively place them into one of the two predominant political camps. “Anyone who started gaining momentum … would be seen as either Bidzina’s creature or Misha’s [Saakashvili].”
Georgia’s existing smaller parties aren’t likely to fare much better, either. While parties such as Girchi and Labour have some name recognition, neither currently holds any seats in parliament, and their ability to grow is limited by the same restrictions in place for independent candidates. “There’s not much hope for them to pick up momentum,” Kachkachishvili said.
The outlook is grim, but there are some glimmers of hope. Some analysts have observed a gradual shift away from Georgia’s savior complex as more comprehensive political platforms and more developed ideologies have gained greater traction among the electorate.[The] lack of media attention is one of the key barriers preventing new political blood from disrupting the established order.
“I think every year [this trend] is growing,” Vartanyan said, adding that simply promising the world “is no longer good enough” for political success. “Georgia has moved on” from largely demagogic one-man rule, Dunbar added, at least for now.
Khazaradze himself has embraced this new approach, promoting potential cabinet members and advertising his team at least as much as himself. Vartanyan and Kachkachishvili both agree that this represents an important break from past approaches. “The active presence of other respected public figures, like [fellow TBC co-founder Badri] Japaridze and [former parliament speaker Davit] Usupashvili, shows that this will not be a one-man show,” Vartanyan said. “Previous leaders have hardly ever mentioned their potential cabinet ministers, and Khazaradze is giving his a platform.”
Georgia’s younger generation has an especially important role to play in all of this. While Saakashvili famously cleared out the Soviet-raised generation of officials, it is, perhaps ironically, the youth who grew up under his rule who are today disenfranchised and alienated from both UNM and Georgian Dream. “Growing up during this [time of radical reform] has given them higher expectations,” Vartanyan said.
These are positive developments, but they are likely too gradual and insufficient to affect the election this year, and neither Khazaradze nor any other actor can realistically hope to harness these forces in time. In the near-term, the outlook for Georgian democracy is underwhelming at best and downright bleak at worst.
“If the opposition wins, the real risk is that Misha becomes the unaccountable guy in the shadows [wielding true power], like Bidzina is right now,” Dunbar said. Saakashvili has often announced his intention to return from exile to Georgia and is still widely considered the most powerful opposition politician.
The other option is bleaker still: a Georgian Dream victory in an election marred by widespread fraud and undemocratic conduct. “If that happens, then, by default, the U.S. and EU will scale down relations,” Dunbar said. “When that happens, the only possible friend [Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream] will have left is the one to the north,” referring to Russia. In such a scenario, Georgia will have much bigger problems than the political prospects of obscure independent politicians.