At the UN, what do we tell the world?
Opinion |
Azly Rahman
Published: |
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COMMENT | "Silence our war drums". That was what the president of the 73rd. United Nations General Assembly appealed to the delegates, pointing out to the increasing urgency to stop militarizing each other and antagonizing societies as we attempt to sustain the planet. Then there is the question whether the UN itself is, or has been, effective in silencing drums, ensuring human rights violations are reduced, protecting the environment, and making the world sustainable.
The UN is essentially a social club, and an elitist and expensive one to maintain, whose operations depend on member contributions. It is a place - since 73 years ago during the time of Woodrow Wilson's proclamation to end all wars - to air grievances, call for help from member states in cases of state-to-state aggression, and in general, to talk and perhaps walk the talk on issues of grave concern to the well-being of humanity and the environment.
I spend the day, whilst preparing my lectures on global issues, listening to speeches I felt highlight the perennial issues plaguing us. I sat and watched speeches by Donald Trump, Hasan Rouhani, Mahmoud Abas, president of the 73rd General Assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa, European Council president Donald Tusk, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Since I started studying about the UN in the 80s, closely studying its function in the late 90s, visiting its New York headquarters many times, and today factoring in the UN sustainable development goals in my lectures on international affairs, focusing on the interplay between sustainability, human rights, peace, security, and justice, I have always wondered year after year, delegates have spoken about reforming the system, especially in the nature of its Security Council. Has it not been working well at all, to be calling for reform yearly?
There are comforting and troubling messages in the seven videos I watched and took notes on, reminiscent of my ethnographic "scratch-notes-taking sessions" of my dissertation-data gathering days at Columbia, analyzing hundreds of pages of speeches on the nation-state and cybernetic change, ploughing into data-sets daily, triangulating words with numbers, and visual images with statistics, and seeing the elegance of themes emerging as I tried to find explanation of a new Malaysian world emerging using the framework of grounded theory.
Fun stuff, ethnographic research on the anthropology of peace, economic development, and the emerging cybernetic state.
So, what did I find out today, concerning the world we are living in as represented and characterized by the heads of states of the leaders of today? And how must Malaysia proceed in her existence, after the regime change of the same-old-ideology perhaps, if she must honour the promises of globalism and the framework of the 17 UN sustainable development goals?
What must Malaysia do to silence the war drums in the country?
What shall we trumpet?
Every world leader, including the one from Israel and Venezuela and of course the United States, wants to tell the world how good their government has been to the people and the planet.
President Trump spoke of "principled realism", of making America great again by renewing the effort to create both enemies and new friends. Hence, Iran as a potential country the US could go to war with to help Israel, and the beginning of acceptance North Korea as a potential new friend under the aura of the "little rocket man's repentance", as Trump, the president of the most powerful military power on earth called Kim Jong-Un. In his speech the US president was seen alluding to bombing Iran to Persian oblivion in the name of establishing world peace, much to the cringing looks of the UN delegates.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the Iranian threat and why the Islamic Republic is the real aggressor and a dangerous regime, and a threat to peace in the Middle East, with its secret facilities and 300 tons of nuclear-related materials in Maher Alley, Teheran, exposed by the Israeli intelligence. The Israeli leader also made his own country look good by reporting on how Israel, despite the hostility of world opinion, is a great example of a democratic country with her fine treatment of Arabs and Muslims too, humane treatment of LGBTs, and how the country has contributed so much to the world's technological innovation, and that the Palestinian issue has never been an issue, but a misconstruction of a truth.
So after all these, what would our Malaysian leader be telling the world on the issues of sustainability, human rights and peace, justice, security?
How do we treat the LGBTs? How do we treat Malaysians equally, not leaving any Malaysian behind, based on race? What do we tell the world of how we preserve the environment when Malaysia has been the worst destroyer of the forests, even in the most pious and Islamic of states such as Kelantan, let alone in the hill-shaving-happy state such as Sabah?
What about the way we bully the indigenous people? Our attitude towards the mullahs who love championing underage marriages? What are our efforts in slowing down the spread of the radical Wahabbi-Salafi brand of Islam that could be a continuing fertile ground for an IS-type of utopianism? How do we respect the rights of those who profess other faiths and help them flourish?
What about the way we structure our educational apartheid system, in the whole scheme of the Malay-Muslims wanting to prolong the system of preferential treatment within the ideological march of Malay superiority (false as it may seem), which runs counter to the spirit of what it means to be a Malaysian?
What would His Excellency Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, rhetoricize in his UN speech to let the world believe that we are a country that is worthy of being congratulated for practising good democracy, whether framed from a Western or Eastern perspective?
Do we preach what we have failed to do?
AZLY RAHMAN is an educator, academic, international columnist, and author of seven books. He grew up in Johor Bahru, and holds a Columbia University doctorate in international education development and Master’s degrees in five areas: education, international affairs, peace studies communication, and creative writing.
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