Panel Discussion

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Well, welcome to UN, or UN-Specific, depending on how you want to read that.  Aging Institutions, Modern Solutions - something that we've been talking about throughout this conference has been how institutions are changing.  I'm Mercedes Stephenson, I'm your Moderator.  I am the Bureau Chief at Global News in Ottawa, covering Parliament Hill, and I host our Sunday morning political programme called The West Block.  I'm going to give a quick introduction of our panellists and then get the conversation started.  I'm sure you know most of them.

Ms Rose Gottemoeller; she is the Deputy Secretary General of NATO.  Previous to that, she was the Under Secretary for Arms Control in International Security at the State Department.  She has held various high level positions at think tanks, studied at major international strategic studies programmes, and been involved quite seriously in a number of arms control treaties that are critical to our international security.

Ambassador Véronique Roger-Lacan is the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of France to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.  She has a fascinating and very relevant background, particularly when we’re talking about these institutions functioning in places like Africa.  She was the Special Representative on fighting maritime piracy, as well as the Head of Mission in Mali and the Sahel.  She's worked very closely as well with NATO and the United Nations, so she has a very good sense of these institutions.

We also have a fellow Canadian on the panel; Ambassador Marc-André Blanchard.  He's the Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations.  He was part of the NAFTA negotiating committee that was put together by the government for what is now USMCA, or US MuCA, as we say it.  And he was, previous to that, the CEO of McCarthy Tétrault, Canada's largest law firm, and he was named one of Canada's 50 most powerful business leaders.

Last, but certainly not least, we have Dr Mustafa Barghouti.  He is a Palestinian physician and politician.  He formed his own political movement; he is the Secretary General and co-founder of Mubadara, pardon me, Mubadara, which he broke off and formed because he was disillusioned by a lot of what he was seeing in Palestinian politics, in terms of fundamentalism and corruption.  He has suffered greatly for his beliefs and literally put himself in the line of fire; he was injured while providing medical aid on the frontlines to protestors.

Without further ado, let's get started with the conversation.  The big questions here really, why are institutions in trouble, if they are?  And what needs to be done about it?  And that’s sort of the general direction that we’re going to take with the panel.  So, Rose, I'd like to start with you, by asking, you are in a very powerful position at one of the largest and most influential international institutions in the world.  Do you believe that large institutions like NATO are in trouble at this point?

Rose Gottemoeller [NATO Deputy Secretary General]: The answer is a yes and no answer, but let me just start by commenting on the video, which I hadn’t seen before; I'll tell you one very good thing about it, if you looked over that sea of faces when the UN was formed, I didn’t see a single woman in that room, but the introduction for the UN General Assembly a couple of weeks ago, or two months ago, was "Ladies and Gentlemen", and how many female leaders were on those screens?  So, I do want to applaud that fact.  I think it's a very, very important one and just to say the UN General Assembly has its particular attractions, but I think we'll hear further about the work of the UN and I'll look forward to that.

But as far as NATO is concerned, you know, NATO is an organisation that is a defence alliance.  We have a core and critical task, which is collective defence.  And for that reason, there is a certain vitality to the organisation.  I do want to point out that Jean Monnet, one of the fathers of the EU, had a very important comment that he made, which I really think is important for us to contemplate as we start this panel, and that is "For the lessons of history to stay learned, they must be embedded in institutions", and so I think that that is a core truth and that’s why I say, you know, yes there may be difficulties out there, but that is a core truth we have to keep our eye on.

And as far as NATO is concerned, NATO stays vital because of the its critical collective defence mission and the fact that we have to adapt over time, to be effective at implementing that mission.  To talk about how we adapt, I'll just raise two examples for you from our recent big exercise, Trident Juncture, up in Northern Norway.  In that case, we adapted in two ways I would say, that are very important; one is we are incorporating into the Alliance new members, since NATO was formed.  Now we are up to 29 members and it's been a very important expansion since the close of the Cold War, and brought I would argue security and stability to across Europe, to Central and Eastern Europe as well.  But that means incorporating new members in big new collective defence efforts, and I think Trident Juncture showed very well how we are doing that.  We had, for example, German tanks moving on Polish and Dutch transporters, across Norway, and all of this was organised by Bulgarian statisticians.  So, it's just an example of how new members are being brought into the critical work of collective defence in the Alliance.  The other big area is new technology and we… I went up to the DV Day up in Trondheim and saw with my own eyes how we’re using additive manufacturing in the field, to manufacture spare parts for equipment and vehicles.  So, those are just two examples of how NATO is adapting.  But you have to adapt if you are going to remain a vital institution.  And I'll see how my fellow panellists comment on that matter.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Marc-André, I'd like to go to you next because you don’t have a lifelong experience as a diplomat, which gives you a bit of a different perspective when you're somewhere like the United Nations.  Coming in and watching how the UN functions, with your business background, what are your thoughts on … is the UN, in particular, in trouble?

Marc-André Blanchard [Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN]: So, when you arrive at the UN and you come from the private sector and you find out that it takes 12 months to buy something and 14 months to hire someone, then you see oh my god, this is so inefficient.  That’s the bad side.  But then, after two years and a half, you look at the… actually I am more convinced than ever of the relevance of the UN and I am actually a believer that the UN is doing its job, to a large extent.  And I know I may be in the minority in some quarters, but I actually believe, when you look at it, you know, we put on the lap of the UN the worst problems of humanity and so no wonder why it's so difficult.  And the UN, after all, it's the member states interacting together.  And so it's only as good as the member states are acting together.  And then you look at the problems we’re facing now.  Like what are the problems we're facing now?  The biggest issues we're facing now; climate change and the migration crisis, and the … [inaudible] in Africa, the… you know cyber-security.  So, all of these issues cannot be resolved unilaterally or bilaterally or in, you know, in subsets or anything.  You need a place where you all come together.  And it's tough coming together in such a diversity of interests and regions and countries and all of that, and that’s what makes it so tough.  And of course, the current, you know, like there's a big shift at the moment in some of the positions taken by some of the leaders at the UN, and that creates some uncertainties and some difficult moments.  But I actually, after two years and a half there, I actually believe it's quite efficient in some ways.

Look, in 2016, two great frameworks came out of the UN kind of sphere: the Agenda 2030, which is a fantastic blueprint for the planet.  And the second one is the issue of the Paris Agreement.  And so we tend to still talk, when we talk about the UN we talk about Syria or we talk about some other issues, Yemen or the difficult crises.  Of course, and of course there are some issues that are being dealt by the Security Council, and the Security Council in many ways and some aspects is paralysed.  But there are some success of the Security Council as well.  Just look this year; the sanctions on North Korea, you know, we look at some successes with Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia, Sierra Leone.  Columbia is a phenomenal success of the UN, you know, and so we… it's easy to judge by looking at some of the crises, and then when you look at what it can do, I find that what amazes me, coming from the private sector, is that actually that convening works and convening has a big impact.  And it's the most inclusive… one of the problems we have in this world is the lack of inclusiveness.  It's the inequalities.  And actually, at the UN, better than any other forum, it's the only inclusive forum where everybody is at the table.  Of course there is different status, like because of the Security Council and stuff, but generally speaking that’s why we need to work all together to make this place a better place, and more efficient, and very relevant and fit for purpose for the challenges that are facing.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Véronique, I'd like to go to you next, because you're in Europe, somewhere where you're seeing so many of the tensions that are playing on these international institutions, the discussion for example between Germany and France about a real European army, which people are questioning whether or not that would be competition for NATO.  Brexit; leaving the European Union.  All of these questions about how Europe both comes together and whether the traditional institutions you’ve had can survive.  Can you tell us a little bit about the perspective from your position on where the pressures are on these organisations, and if you agree that they're likely to survive and important?

Véronique Roger-Lacan [Permanent Representative of France, OSCE]: Yeah, thank you.  I'd like to make a distinction, the OSCE, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cooperates with the EU, but doesn’t replace the EU at all.  And you mentioned a European army, the discussions between President Macron and Chancellor Merkel, maybe one clarification on that, because there has been lots of controversy on this idea of a European army.  Let's be clear: Europeans taking their own responsibilities, becoming strategically autonomous, is not an act of aggression against NATO or against the United States of America.  It is Europeans wanting to become a true contributor to collective defence in NATO, but also in the whole world; a true contributor to peace and stability in the world.  And there, there should be no controversy.  On the contrary, leaders who hear those types of words should say, "Well, they are taking the responsibility.  Great, I'm going to work with them".  So, that’s a word on this issue of European army and European strategic autonomy.

On the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, it's a Cold War baby.  It was an organisation designed to instil dialogue between the so-called East and the so- called West.  And we are still there and we are still discussing.  And I would like to quote Vladimir Putin in 2014, who said, in Valdai, "Either we change the rules or there will be no rules anymore".  But now, in the Permanent Council every Thursday, we sit with our dear Russian delegation and many other delegations, and we see that the way they challenge us is not by changing rules.  They, on the contrary, use the rules that we, in the so-called West, claim to apply, and they want also to apply them to us, in a way.  So, when we say for example, there is no freedom of press in Russia, then they will say, there is no freedom of press in the US, there is no freedom of press in France.  Sputnik and Russia Today have not been allowed in the Elysee.  So, France is challenging the freedom of the media.  So, this is why it's a very lively use of principles and commitments of international public law, and this is the reason why we would say, I would say that they are not aging institutions.  On the contrary, we have been able to build international public law for all those years, and it's a solid body of legislation that we are all using, proud to use, and that we will continue to use.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Mustafa, you have a very different perspective on this, because you've lived and worked somewhere that has struggled to be recognised by some of these international institutions to receive aid.  Do you agree with what you're hearing from your fellow panellists?

Mustafa Barghouti [Secretary General & Co-Founder, Mubadara]: I will start with something I found in the most recent Global Threat Index that, regardless of the failures of the UN in doing things, actually that index is showing that people considered the UN as the most positive supranational organisation, with 72% approval.  That means yes, it has a very important role.  But I think if we want to look at why it's failing, especially when it comes to very serious crises, like the one we have in Palestine and Israel, I think one has to notice several factors probably; I managed to identify six of them, I will mention as much as I can quickly.

First, I think one major problem is a global phenomena which we have been witnessing during the last years, which is a constant and repeated violation of international law and international resolutions, and international humanitarian law.  And I think it's very risky, because when we look at the world today, you feel that there is some sort of agreement, maybe some… between not only big countries, but also small countries, to marginalise human rights and democratic values, and to… for the sake of pure national interest.  In a way, I look at the world and feel as if we are regressing, as if there is regression back to the values of the 19^th Century.  That is a dangerous development.

The second point is that I believe then one of the things that we can do, as an institution, and many international structures as well, is the double standard.  For instance, frequently I come across description of the occupation of Ukraine, but no mentioning of the occupation of Palestine.  I mean, there is imbalance here and this double standard makes people suspicious, of course.

A third point is that, while we live in an unprecedented level of communication and economic globalisation, we see, as was mentioned in this forum many times, an increasing amount of isolationism and political populism.  What worries us is that these phenomena are appearing a lot in the United States and in many countries in Europe, and of course you have witnessed yourself examples of violation of trade agreements, of agreements on disarmament, on control of global warming.  That is risky because that means that the UN is incapable of continuing to implement what it has even agreed about.

My fourth point is that that UN seems to be lacking executive structures or instruments to implement its own resolutions.  As a Palestinian, I can mention what I know, which is that there has been 705 General Assembly Resolutions about Palestinian issue, and no less than 86 United Nations Security Council Resolutions that were never implemented.  A huge amount of resolutions that were never implemented, although some of them affect very dangerous and very sensitive issues, like Jerusalem or the issue of illegal settlements.

My final point is that I believe we live in a situation of inconsistency and there is a phenomena also, which I think UN should deal with, because it hasn’t developed the instruments to deal with that, and that is the fact that there is a shift of power.  We witnessed a shift of power from state institutions to corporate world, to non-state actors like civil society and other structures.  We also see failure of developing necessary instruments  to deal with cyber issues, for instance.

I think all these are challenges that have to be met.  UN is needed.  UN is necessary.  There is no substitute to UN, but it has to deal with these issues.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: There have been tremendous challenges, and you mentioned a few of them.  Technology, so people no longer have to rely on their governments to talk to people in other countries for them.  You can connect like that.  You can also put out disinformation, you can put out a tweet and it's around the world in seconds.  Facing issues where the nature of conflict has changed, and I remember talking about this years ago at the Halifax Forum, but it's still an issue, that we’re not talking about state-on-state conflict.  And there have been many successes of these international institutions, but how do you convince people in Syria?  People in Yemen?  People watching these kinds of atrocities unfold, where the UN is not acting, where NATO is not acting.  There is still a relevancy for these institutions, because part of what we're seeing with populism is if that buy-in, by the people, into these institutions, start to slip, so does their relevancy.  Rose?

Rose Gottemoeller [NATO Deputy Secretary General]: Well, I will stress that, for NATO once again, the challenges of these new kinds of cyber and hybrid threats are challenges that we are taking incredibly seriously, because so much of what we are facing now, as a defence alliance, is related not to outright kinetic threats against our member states, but they are related to that… as we think about a grey area, between peace and war, when there are constant challenges coming at us, day in day out, you know, hundreds of attacks a day on NATO information networks.  And I know institutions represented throughout this audience are seeing absolutely the same thing, militaries everywhere must learn to defend themselves against this.  So, I think a core issue is how much of traditional international law applies here. 

I agree very much that we have not gotten far enough down the road of really figuring out how to create the normative superstructure around the cyber arena, in order to be able to think about regulation, to think about measures that can help to bolster deterrence and defence in this realm - this is where it's particularly relevant for NATO.  At NATO, we have associated both cyber and hybrid threats with our Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which is our… it's the famous collective defence clause.  I think about it sometimes as the Three Musketeers clause, all for one and one for all.  But we, in recent years, have basically said that an attack in cyberspace or an attack by hybrid methods can call forth a response from NATO, not necessarily a cyber response for a cyberattack, but across the spectrum of tools that NATO has available for it.  This is, in our view, providing for a measure of deterrence, but then you have to back that up with all kinds of different measures, such as creating resilience for NATO member states and helping our partners to develop resilience as well.  Being able to detect, in real time, cyberattacks, to figure out where they originated from and then be able to make decisions about response.  And so, it's an interesting… in many ways, it's interesting territory because you are trying to apply traditional principles and rules of deterrence, but then thinking about the particular challenges that these types of mechanisms and threats bring.  And so I think, for all of our institutions, these are very, very important challenges that we really have to grapple with very seriously indeed.  The United Nations, with its group of government experts that came up against a blockage a couple of years ago, I understand there has been some new progress toward getting back to the table again.  In the UN context, I think that that is very good, but no institution can stand still, in terms of thinking through the policy demands that cyber and hybrid threats are placing upon us all.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Véronique, can I ask you, how does the change in American tone and American leadership reflect in these international institutions?  And whether they find relevance, if people are questioning whether the United States will still be the backbone contributor financially, troop-wise and in terms of speaking out?  I know it's one presidency, but it's certainly something that I've heard a lot of people discussing around the forum.

Véronique Roger-Lacan [Permanent Representative of France, OSCE]: Well, I was extremely reassured yesterday to hear Senator Wicker, President of the Helsinki Commission and Chairman of the American Delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, mentioning the OSCE.  The OSCE is not a product easy to sell, in terms of communication.  It's a very complex organisation, first because it's not a likeminded organisation; it reunites Russia, the US and in between European Union countries, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Mongolia, and it has a complex mandate.  It's, at the same time, security; non-military security with fight against terrorism, fight against drug trafficking, fight against radicalisation; military security with three arms control, conventional arms control treaties; economic and environmental work; and human rights and democratic institutions building work.  So, it encompasses the whole spectrum of life of people and it also works towards people.  You were talking about populism, about the fact that those organisations are very far away from the preoccupations of individuals.  But in fact, OSCE works in a very discreet manner, but I would say somehow efficient.  It has, or it had 15 field missions, established far away in Central Asia, in the Caucasus, in the Balkans, and which have brought to the people, to individuals, the knowledge of the rights that they have, of their fundamental freedoms, of their human rights.  And those missions, including staff members from the 57 participating states, are reaching out to individuals and to people and helping them to defend their rights.  Let's talk about, for example, again freedom of the media; we have an institution called the Representative for the Freedom of the Media, which helps… who helps bloggers, individual journalists, in countries where there is no freedom of press, to establish their own small journals or blogs and talk about the necessity for freedoms to be developed in their own countries.  And those guys, of course, at some stage, in countries like Azerbaijan or Turkey, they are jailed.  First, in the Permanent Council, we Ambassadors would discuss that every Thursday, we would challenge each other.  The Turkish Ambassador will say, "Yes, this one is jailed, but there is due process of law in our country" and we, for example in the European Union, we would say "But we need to ensure true due process of law.  We don’t believe that lawyers have been seconded to those cases", and we would also try and make sure that, for example, those journalists are freed from jail, if they are.

So, I'm just giving some examples to tell you that OSCE is still useful, although it is very much challenged.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Very innovative solutions and forward-looking.  Mustafa, I'd like to ask you about the corruption angle, because this is one of the big criticisms that people make of the United Nations and other large international organisations, that when money is flowing to some of these countries, it never reaches the people who it was intended to reach.  It enriches the governments.  And there's questions about how do you move forward, and can these big institutions move forward if that’s not addressed?  And it's obviously very difficult to do or it would have been done by now.

Mustafa Barghouti [Secretary General & Co-Founder, Mubadara]: No, of course, that issue has to be addressed because if you have corruption in certain projects or certain activities, it creates a double effect.  From one side, it makes the donor very angry, and from the other side, it makes the people of the country that is helped very angry too.  And even they create very wrong and very negative images about even the donor itself or the UN institution in this case.  So, this has to be dealt with.  But to be honest with you, I find that in most of the cases, the control instruments are available, if they are used properly, and the control instruments can allow you to be 100%... especially at this time of development of cyber instruments and so on, it allows you to be 100% sure that things are going very well, or at least 90% sure.  But there is another aspect of it and that other aspect is that sometimes you feel we live in a situation of severe inconsistency, to a level that I might say it looks like schizophrenic dichotomy, between the overwhelming talk about human rights, about democracy, about the rule of law, and then there is so much normalisation with authoritarianism, with governments that are practising dictatorship, with governments that are oppressing their own people, and a lot of it is going to these governments.  And that is the main source of corruption in my opinion.  And that’s why I think this has to be looked at.  There has to be, in my opinion - and this by the way relates not only to the United Nations, I think it relates to all of us, it relates to every institution that is present here - there has to be, I hope… this is the future of humanity, I hope there will be zero tolerance to these authoritarian structures and these oppressive measures that are really affecting humanity in a very bad way.  And I mean, look at this normalisation or even tolerance to unjustified wars that are taking place.  Look at the situation of the people in Yemen, for instance.  And I believe these things have to be addressed.  What makes me feel very sad really today is that, after seven years of the so-called Arab Spring, the situation in our region is much worse than any time before.  So, I believe this issue of what you have just raised, the issue of corruption and other things, have to be very much addressed within the context of really being loyal to democratic values and human rights.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: I'm going to open up to the floor in just a minute, so if you want to start thinking of your questions now and preparing them, I'll go to you right after Marc-André, but you're saying the UN works well and I want to challenge you on that, because people look at the Security Council and they say, every time they want to do something substantive, Russia can block it.  And certainly we saw this with Syria.  And we’ve seen on other major international issues.  You see countries that are notorious for violating human rights, talking about human rights, running the Human Rights Council.  How do you deal with that?  Because, at the end of the day, the way the institution has been built, that ability to gridlock and the ability of people to say one thing there or run one committee and do something very different at home, is ingrained.

Marc-André Blanchard [Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN]: Well, I'll answer your question and I want to make a comment on what Mustafa said about, but let's first your question; the… as I mentioned, the Security Council, you have good stories, you have less good stories, and we… it's a system that we are rethinking now a little bit how we revitalise some of the parts of the UN, like the role of the General Assembly.  We, Canada, led an initiative when there was a deadlock for Syria in December 2017 - or 16, 16 - on the humanitarian corridor for Eastern Aleppo.  There was a deadlock, impassable, there had been repeated veto by Russia in the Security Council.  We led an initiative in the General Assembly to actually make a huge statement of the world and say this is unacceptable.  You know what, Russia was very sensitive to that; they démarched against it in every capital of the world where they had representation and followed the adoption by the General Assembly, of the highest number of votes on the context of the Syrian conflicts, they actually… that led to the accountability mechanism that was set up a few weeks later.  And then it led, a few days later, to the adoption of a Security Council Resolution that was actually allowing humanitarian assistance.  It was too late for many, but it happened.  So, there are ways to work with the institutions, where you can put pressure and actually, because of the new communication stuff that you’ve talked about, states, even Russia is more sensitive than we think to that sort of things.  And we need to use it better.  But we need to work differently within the UN.  All of… you know, the Western Bloc needs to be way more open to other partnerships in the world and with the non-usual traditional likeminded.  This is my fight every day in the UN.  We have to work with African partners, we have to work… and if… because the world is changing, there's the rise of China as a power, that creates a lot of instability.  You have a new direction, new leadership in the US that creates also all sorts of challenges within the UN context, you can understand.  And we just need to work differently, because there's a lot… often I say I'm a lot likeminded with many of the countries in Africa, way more than some of the countries that were my traditional likeminded.  So, we need to work differently.  On the question of talking of to work differently and how the UN… and I think every governments and international institution and state institutions are facing this issue.  We have limited resources in the public sector and we have greater challenges, we are facing systemic challenges like climate change, just take this climate change or take the … [inaudible] in Africa, and then Mustafa talked about the shift of power from the state’s institution to the corporate world and to the non-state actors, so we must adapt to that.  Like this is… and like the UN is a good example of this, of how we must progress.  We have an agenda, the Agenda 2030, which is really… if you haven’t read it, if you haven’t, read it.  It is so good.  Really, it is good and we need to communicate better about it.  Like, yesterday we spent the day and nobody talked about that as actually a useful thing to ensure more security and more peace.  So, that’s a failure of the UN.  It's a planned 17 goals.  It takes $7trillion a year of investment until 2030 to make this happen, that’s the… those are the UN numbers.  Let's take them for granted.  The ODA, the public assistance, is £135billion.  We need $7,000billions, to achieve our goals, of new investment a day.  So, how are we going to do that?  It's not going to be through the traditional means, we need to work differently and we need to… that’s why the UN now, we need to talk way more, and we do.  Last week, we spent the week talking about financing of infrastructure for climate change.  We need… member states want result on the ground delivered now, and it's urgent that we do so; climate change is going faster than we are.  So we, in the institutions, we need to work way faster.  The Minister of Turkey yesterday said we're not fast enough, I totally agree with that.  We need to be… and we need… and if we want to work with the private sector, governments, member states and international institution, we will need to be way more nimble.  And that’s what the reform of the UN… at the moment, Secretary General Guterres has a reform that is on peace operation, management, and development system, and all of them are trying to… the same aim; breaking down the silos, trying to make sure that we deliver better on the ground and trying to make sure that actually we work in an integrated matter, we focus a lot on prevention.  We, of course, are in the operation of a peace operation, but we also do in a continuum, the peacebuilding that is necessary.  And to do all of that, you will need new partnerships that have not been done before on the same scale.  And so this is why these… it's so urgent that we work with these institution, but we, the member states that we represent, the non-profit… I find the non-profit sector is the most conservative… some of the most conservative actor, and they are actually just maintaining the status quo.  They need to evolve.  We need to… things that were in… we're in unchartered territory and what was unthinkable before needs to be thinkable, and we need to move on with that.  And that means defence department working with international department, with finance department.  That has never been done and we need to do that.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: I'm going to stop you there, just because… it's fascinating and I hope you'll talk more about it, but I do want to give our audience a chance to get in as well.  If you have a question, put your… Yes?  First person I saw, right back there.  Sir?  In the glasses, behind the camera. 

Question: Thank you very much.  My name is Michael Cole.  I'm Canadian, but I've been working in Taiwan for 13 years.  My question is for Mr Blanchard.  I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on growing Chinese influence at United Nations.  I was surprised to hear mostly about Russian interference at UN Security Council, when in reality what I would argue is the largest, greatest threat to the effectiveness of United Nations is Chinese influence at UN General Assembly, largely through co-opting blocks of voters at the UNGA, but also as we saw on the news recently, bribing a former Head of the UN General Assembly, with United Nations not even wanting to hold an investigation into what happened.  And I'm talking about China Energy Fund Committee and Patrick Ho in New York City.

Related to this as well, you talk about inclusivity at the United Nations. I wonder what your views are on the fact that arguably the most successful advanced democracy in Asia, with a population the size of Australia, that is Taiwan, is still unable to participate, not only at the UN, but also at specialised agencies.  And if you have a Taiwanese passport, you cannot even enter a building that belongs to United Nations.  Thank you.

Marc-André Blanchard [Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN]: Thank you.  I will comment mostly on the role of China at the UN, it is… first of all, let's just look at the role of China in peacekeeping operation, that’s actually probably the best example of the rise of the role of China at the UN and the influence it has.  It is now the first or second contributor of troops and money in the peace operation.  In the top four in any event, so just… I don’t have precisely the number, but it's way ahead of most countries.  That’s one example.  The other example I thought that was telling was last week, China is presiding the Security Council two weeks ago, for the month of No… sorry, yeah, we’re still in November, the month of November they were presiding… the… I may have… anyway, no it's October they were presiding the Security Council and they convene, that was an interesting point, they convene on multilateralism.  So, to think that China is now perceive itself as the global convener, or as a very credible global convener on multilateralism, is telling in itself.  So, this is what we see at the UN and this is… we need to work with at the UN.  And on China, your question was not necessarily on that, but to me yesterday I've heard, and it's back to my comments that I just made, I'll finish on this, is we’re talking about One Belt One Road, and the One Belt One Road is there and we in the West say, well but One Belt One Road, and some are opposing it, some wants to work with it, blah, blah, blah.  Fine.  But we in the West, we need to provide an option.  That’s where we fail.  And an option will not come from government, that’s where we need to work with the private sector, to get the same sum of money.  China invested in Africa more than $200billion so far, that’s the numbers that they gave in September, like 120/130 in the last six/seven years, and they promised another 60billion for the next four/five years.  That’s what was announced in September.  Let's take those numbers for real; like we arrive with… like the US is proposing something like 60billion for Africa, they’ve offered 130million in the Pacific, in September, like we’re not talking the same numbers.  We’re not talking about the same magnitude.  And I actually believe the money will not come from government.  We need to work more closely with our private sector, to make sure… in China, the Chinese government controls capital, in the West it's the private sector.  So, we need to make sure that we work with them, to make sure that they understand the risk better and that they see the opportunities better and that actually they go and help us, making a more secure world.  Just think about climate change; we need them.  The governments did the Paris Agreement and all of that, and all of the accords and the norms needed, now the private sector needs to come in and make the investment, to make sure that we meet those targets, to avoid the conflicts that we’ve talked about.  And if you're a state in the middle of Africa and you have the IMF and the World Bank telling you, no no no, you cannot borrow for this, we won't let it happen, and you have China open to give you the money, what do you do?  It's obvious, if you don’t have any option, an alternative.  And it's our responsibility to develop that option and that alternative, and we’ve not been good at it, and we need to become good at it.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Sorry to cut you off.  I want to get to the next questions because we don’t have a lot of time left.

Marc-André Blanchard [Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN]: That’s fine.  Made my point.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Yes, Madame? Right here in the front row.

Question: Thank you very much.  Comfort Ero, International Crisis Group.  I mean we are… this is an important time to have this conversation because three important multilateral organisations are actually undergoing reform, the UN being at the helm of that, the European Union also going through its own reform, a lot of it largely because of its own internal crisis on its borders, and also the African Union is going through its own reforms and you know, this weekend, right now in Addis Ababa there's an important summit that speaks to the heart of self-sufficiency of the UN and the UN… the African Union being able to fund itself and its own sort of peacekeeping initiatives as well.  And you're right, Ambassador, I think one of the realities on the ground is that these institutions don’t move fast enough and are not necessarily able to react to certain realities on the ground, so the need to become more nimble and agile is absolutely right.  And, for the last 20 years, there has been an incremental growth of partnership on the continent, whether it's at the regional level, with the African Union, or with sub-regional organisations, and I would actually say that we've seen a flourishing of partnerships on the continent, that the AU has moved on about.  I think the key question for me is whether these organisations, as the question … [inaudible] come with the right solutions, and I think right now, I think there is a real question mark about the solutions that we’re seeing on the ground.  In 2013 / 2015, when there were questions about what kind of UN or what kind of intervention should be provided for Mali, at the time, there was a real question mark as to whether it should be a peacekeeping mission or whether it should be a special political mission.  I think the reality is quite clear today, that we ought to have thought about it of a special mission as opposed to a peacekeeping mission.

The other question, and also because this is a mission taking place in the midst of counterterrorism, is it appropriate to have had a peacekeeping mission in Mali?

The other reality is that I think member states themselves are getting frustrated in terms of the slowness of the UN to respond to some of these threats on the ground.  So hence, instead of having a peacekeeping force, for example in the Lake Chad Basin, the five countries came together to create a multinational joint task force, because the UN cannot do transborder peacekeeping.  Also, out of a frustration because of what has happened in Mali and what has happened in the Sahel, instead of turning to the UN, we create a G5 Sahel force, again because there are question marks to the legitimacy of the so-called solution to dealing with these questions.

So, I think we need to review the solutions that we are providing to these crises on the continent.

The other one is Amison; you license an effective war machinery to fight in Somali because you have no faith in peacekeeping as an instrument going forward.

And I think my last final point is, we talk about the aging institution, is it the institution itself that is aging, or shall we be more specific that it's the P5 member states themselves?  Is that a legitimate chamber going forward?  Should we limit ourselves just to the P5?  What about Japan?  What about Germany?  What about Canada?  These are strong member states who are paying their dues to the UN, so should the chamber remain limited to the P5 or should we reform the Security Council chamber?

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Véronique, because you've spent so much time in Mali?

Véronique Roger-Lacan [Permanent Representative of France, OSCE]: Yeah, I will not answer on Mali, if I may, because it's not my job anymore.  But I would like to answer on the missions, on the field missions, and on what the OSCE is doing in Ukraine.  Of course, you can take the downside of the work that we do.  It's an observer mission, 800 people who have been in the field since 2014 and who are observing the ceasefire and observing the withdrawal of heavy weapons.  People can say the ceasefire is not there and with… and heavy weapons have not been withdrawn.  But still, this mission negotiates every day a ceasefire, and every day manages to lesser the number of casualties, the number of displaced people, and the fact that this mission is in the field, is there, prevents the conflict from being a true open, super hot conflict.  It is not something really calm, but if this mission was not there the conflict would be really terrible.  It's a mission which the OSCE has been able to develop and to launch.  The UN would not have been able to develop this, to launch this mission because, in the Security Council, Russia would have opposed it and Russia would still oppose what the Ukrainians want, which would be a UN peacekeeping mission in Ukraine.  But we have this field mission and those instruments that we have, we should not throw them away.  We have to look at these areas and to look at what they are doing.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: I think we have time for another question.  Take one from the very back there.

Question: Thank you.  I'm from Yemen, a country of victim of the United Nations Peace Agreement.  But I have a few questions: first, what happens… also, you were talking about China and Russia when they undermine peace process by the UN, which happens all the time with the P5.  What happens also in the US and UK, on Yemen as well, war holder was not actually the Russian or the Chinese, it was the United Kingdom and the US responsible for the war in Yemen.  So, how do we do that?  How do we… probably sometimes they even have underestimated itself, by itself.  Last year or two years ago, Ban Ki-moon, the Former Secretary General, put Saudi on the list of child killer, something like that, and then removed it 24 hours later.  He said I was bullied for money.  How does this undermines, the UN by itself, undermining the UN?  And the credibility of it around the world?  Basically, the story … [inaudible] so I put them out of the list.  As blunt as that.  Which terrifies me, as someone working for world multicultural, multi-institutions. And finally, … [inaudible].I'm still looking for an example, reason where the UN solved the …[inaudible].  On most of the major agreements, whether fact or … [inaudible] I would not …[inaudible] and I'm wondering if the type of conflicts we are facing today around the world, and the times the UN can no more actually solve them, and maybe we should didn’t ask it to solve it.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Thank you, Sir.  Sorry, just so we have time for responses.

Mustafa Barghouti [Secretary General & Co-Founder, Mubadara]: You want to take more questions?

Véronique Roger-Lacan [Permanent Representative of France, OSCE]: Yeah, because what was the question, I didn’t get it.  Sorry.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: I think the question was…

Mustafa Barghouti [Secretary General & Co-Founder, Mubadara]: I would like to comment a little bit.  I think what was just mentioned refers exactly to what we've spoken about in relationship to this situation of dichotomy that has to be dealt with.  But I was very glad that the Ambassador spoke to the 17 goals of sustainable development goals, which I think should be paid attention to.  Because, at the end of the day, when we speak about security, and everybody in this room is concerned mainly with security issues, we have to recognise we live in one world.  It's one world.  It's so connected, more than any time before.  And I will give you one example of how one has to deal with; I mean we all know that we have witnessed communication revolution, we have witnessed information revolution worldwide, social media is a very powerful instrument and I always tell people, look at the youth.  The youth represent basically, if you include also children, 40% of the population of the world.  The difference today from the past is that anybody in Mali or Senegal or Yemen or anywhere in the world, knows what they are missing, because they know through the social media how other countries live.  And that’s why I think we live in this one world.  I mean it's redundant to say that it takes only $12million to solve the problem of water pollution worldwide; you can provide healthy water to everybody with just $12million… billion.  I mean if we look at the world as one, if we accept the fact we have a global system and if we look at the fact that there is a very serious problem with wealth distribution, if we take all of that into consideration, I think we will be dealing with the roots of security problems worldwide.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Rose?

Rose Gottemoeller [NATO Deputy Secretary General]: I think the question is a tough one, you know. Point to an example where the UN, per se, has solved a conflict.  And you raised the example of the FARC, but I was just thinking about how actually in that case, yes indeed, it was a long process of negotiation and it was a negotiation where a number of players were involved, from the United States of America, Colombia of course very much taking the lead in the negotiations, the Vatican helping to facilitate, Cuba helping to facilitate.  All of these actors coming together, but at the end of the day, it was the UN, in many ways, provided some of the glue to hold the deal together, and I'm thinking particularly about the pledging conference that I attended in September of 2014, to deal with the problem of unexploded ordnance.  And that was held on the margins of the UN General Assembly, very much under the aegis of the UN.  So, I don’t think we can think about the UN often times as having an exclusive role in resolution of a conflict, but often it is an inherent and important part of the solution to the conflict.

Mercedes Stephenson [Moderator]: Well, that takes us to our time, believe it or not.  It goes by very quickly.  But I want to thank all of our panellists for their thoughts and a very difficult challenge ahead of us, certainly also a very important one, when you talk about the values that people here are trying to protect.  And thank you to our audience for your questions and for listening.