“What is China doing which is really that heinous?” asks Jagdish Bhagwati, a world-renowned economist known for his advocacy of free trade, as a rhetorical question during this interview with the GO that covered topics of international aid and development. “I’m in favor of lecturing to the Chinese, saying you should do better in terms of imposing some conditionality, but at the same time, not to spend too much time worrying about it,” he says.

Dr. Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, sees the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank as suffering under anti-reform, anti-growth policies. “Unfortunately, both in the Bank and the UNDP, the ideas about development are really, I think, unwittingly calculated to harm the developing countries. So I think this really needs to be taken in hand. And I hope that some of these messages get through."

“The World Bank and UNDP, which are the two main agencies—and then there are the OECD and UNCTAD, which are the think tanks of the rich and the poor countries respectively—they all need leaders who will surmount their secretariats in a way, because secretariats tend to be behind the curve,” he says. “They will attract first-rate students. There are so many economists coming out now. At Columbia, it’s the most popular discipline, the largest one, about 300 students. And so, because everybody wants to do some economics. So I think there’s a huge supply of them.”

The interview was conducted by Vanessa Wyeth, former Research Fellow at the International Peace Institute.

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Interview Transcript (edited by the GO)

Vanessa Wyeth (VW): We are here today with Jagdish Bhagwati who is a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Bhagwati, thank you very much for joining the Global Observatory today.

Jagdish Bhagwati (JB): Thank you for inviting me.

VW: Professor Bhagwati, is the current international aid and development framework fit for the 21st century? What kind of structural changes do you think are needed to adapt the collective systems of delivering aid and supporting development to today’s changed geopolitical realities?

JB: I think what’s changed is not just the rise of the emerging powers, which everybody mentions. It’s true that India and China, for instance, are giving aid, but it’s not anywhere to the order that the Western countries have been giving traditionally. The one difference, of course, is that China doesn’t go by any rules. India tends to go by it, but it’s not a big deal. So I think in many cases people who are worried about aid flows or concerned about increasing them, they always point to, and the civil society groups always point to, how China is spoiling the market for conditionality. And I think there is something to it.

The GO is tracking African elections and updating this map with recent results and changes including Senegal, Mali, and Guinea-Bissau. The map covers a period of two years when 40 countries have organized elections. Twenty-four of these elections are to choose presidents, while thirty-seven of them will renew national parliaments.

As more and more elections take place across Africa, electoral processes pave the way for democracy and development. However, weak and flawed elections also carry with them a strong potential for instability and violence. Continuous monitoring of electoral processes thus serves as a tool to identify and alert on potential conflict.

Click here to view interactive map >>

In this interview, Ian Martin, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), discusses his recent experience of heading the United Nations’ efforts to help Libya during its transition from decades of dictatorship, a topic he briefed the UN Security Council on just after this interview finished.

Speaking about the upcoming elections, Mr. Martin acknowledges that “the challenges are really immense, because these are the first elections in Libya for some 47 years.” Absent any recent exposure to democratic processes, “there is almost no living memory of participation in real elections,” he said.

“State security forces are very weak,” explains Mr. Martin as he discusses the many security challenges that continue to riddle Libya as a result of the near-complete breakdown of state security institutions. Absent a functioning state security apparatus, the revolutionary brigades are “necessary for public security,” he says. However, as a functioning military and police are built up again, Mr. Martin believes that “there is a need to integrate or demobilize the revolutionary fighters.”

UNSMIL is a fairly small, so-called “light footprint” mission, which is focused on supporting the democratic transition, public security, and human rights, transitional justice, and rule of law. Mr. Martin explains the difficult balance that needs to be struck in Libya, which he said was “a very unusual combination of considerable financial and human resources, and yet very little institutional experience.”

“I believe that a classical mission that was not a light footprint mission would not be well received in a country that is not accustomed to strong engagement with the international community. But there is a real desire, across the board, to now have access to the kind of international experience from which Libya has been isolated.”

The interview was conducted by Francesco Mancini, IPI Senior Director of Research.

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Interview Transcript

Francesco Mancini (FM): We’re here today at the Global Observatory with Special Representative of the UN Secretary General and head of the UN support mission in Libya. Ian Martin, thank you very much for being with us today.

Let’s start with your job in Libya. Next month, there are scheduled elections in the country. What role will the UN mission play in these elections, and, in your opinion, what are the key challenges for these elections to turn out in a good way?

The current security, political and economic environment in Afghanistan presents significant challenges to ending the conflict. Facts on the ground have largely worked against political dialogue in the first four months of 2012. In recent weeks, however, there have been small steps forward in four areas: 1) dialogue with the Taliban; 2) easing tensions with Afghanistan’s neighbors; 3) Afghan leadership exercising its sovereign authority; and 4) international commitment backed up by credible action. Accelerated progress in these areas is essential to create an atmosphere that facilitates a peace and reconciliation process.

Key Conclusions

Dialogue among Afghans, including the Taliban, on a peace and reconciliation process has not yet started. As of late April, it seems that new ideas are being offered to provide safe passage for Taliban representatives from Pakistan to join the talks to be held in Qatar. Pakistan is engaged in the current process of facilitating the talks, so regional buy-in to a certain extent is occurring. Afghanistan has asserted its sovereignty in its relationship with the United States by establishing Afghan terms and lead on detainees and night raids. The United States is demonstrating its commitment to Afghanistan beyond 2014 by signing the US-Afghanistan strategic partnership in Kabul on May 1. This political progress is both real and very tenuous, given the violence and insecurity across Afghanistan.

Analysis

Events in the first quarter of 2012 have done little to create an atmosphere that would support positive steps toward resolving the conflict in Afghanistan. 2012 has thus far been marked by a series of incidents involving serious misconduct by US forces with tragic consequences and the killing of civilians in a pre-dawn raid by an unauthorized US soldier acting alone. These incidents, as well as the April 15 attack in Kabul that shut down the center of the city (speculated to be the work of the Haqqani network), and the attack at a compound used by western contractors on May 2 immediately after the visit by President Obama, have over shadowed the ongoing international, regional and bilateral political tracks.

“I am very concerned that the rule of law is being reduced to some of its more familiar trappings such as rule-of-law institutions–police, courts, prisons–and that the rule of law is really used interchangeably with law enforcement, which of course is a cheapening of the rule of law,” says Louise Arbour a former international prosecutor who for the last three years has been the president and chief executive officer of the International Crisis Group.

In this interview, Ms. Arbour discusses broadening the conversation about the rule of law to make sure “it is understood for what it really stands for.” She also talks about peace and justice, and the importance of establishing rule of law as an essential first step in transforming countries that are struggling to reinvent themselves as more representative societies, such as in the Middle East and North Africa. She discusses new challenges to the rule of law coming from transnational threats such as transnational organized crime and illicit trafficking.

The interview was conducted by Warren Hoge, IPI Senior Adviser for External Relations.

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Interview Transcript

Warren Hoge (WH): I am very happy to welcome as our guest in the Global Observatory today Louise Arbour, who for the last three years has been the president and chief executive officer of the International Crisis Group (ICG). This of course is just the latest in the number of high-profile positions she has occupied on the international stage, and they include being chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, a justice on the Supreme Court of Canada, and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Louise, that history gives you serious credentials to talk about the subject that will be the focus of the opening high-level debate of the General Assembly this fall, and that is the rule of law. I know you have very specific ideas about how you think that debate ought to go, what it ought to focus on, and also what it ought to avoid.

Louise Arbour (LA): Yes, I am very concerned that the rule of law is being reduced to some of its more familiar trappings such as rule-of-law institutions–police, courts, prisons–and that the rule of law is really used interchangeably with law enforcement, which of course is a cheapening of the rule of law. I am afraid that the UN might be on the road to make the same mistake in the sense it did with elections, which is reducing elections to their mechanics, rather than seeing them for what they are, which are substantive political events. So I hope that we could broaden the conversation about the rule of law to make sure it is understood for what it really stands for.

On April 12, 2012, Guinea Bissau experienced another coup d’état, its second in two years. This came as part of a wave of coups and unconstitutional changes of government that rocked West Africa: Mauritania in August 2008, Guinea in December 2008, Guinea-Bissau in March 2009, and Niger in March 2010. The coup in Mali in March 2012 took the international community by surprise because Mali has been a model of democracy in the region with a continuous democracy for two decades.

In all of these coups and unconstitutional changes of government, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) swiftly condemned them and imposed sanctions (except in the case of Mauritania, which had pulled out of ECOWAS in December 2000). Despite sanctions by ECOWAS, undemocratic changes of government in West Africa seem to be the norm rather than the exception. These events question the ability of ECOWAS to deal effectively with these complexities. Disaffections with the leadership style of ECOWAS has seen the move by a sub-regional organization, the West African Economic and Monetary Union, to create a security commission to deal with the security challenges facing the francophone countries. An analysis of this emerging issue is important because of its many negative implications for peace and stability in the region.

Key Conclusions

On the surface, ECOWAS seems to be responding swiftly to these changes in the region. Nevertheless, unconstitutional changes of government in West Africa are a symptom of deeply imbedded problems, such as lack of economic opportunities, youth unrest, organized crimes, piracy, endemic corruption that could paralyze state apparatuses, and more spending on military armaments than public spending for basic services.

For ECOWAS to be seen as responsive, it needs to move from the rhetoric of “swift” sanctions to the actual encouragement and nudging of its ruling elites to respect the rule of law, protect human rights, provide avenues for economic growth in their respective countries, actively nip corruption in the bud, and observe democratic principles, such as the imposition of term limits on serving presidents. No doubt, this is a re-awakening call for ECOWAS to pause, reflect, reinvent itself, and come up with relevant solutions as a regional organization to solve the myriad security issues confronting the region. Otherwise, it could lose relevance in the region and further alienate its francophone members.

In this interview, Raghida Dergham, senior columnist and diplomatic correspondent for the London-based Al-Hayat, discusses her experiences and observations over her long career reporting from the United Nations, arriving at the UN at a time when there were very few women covering the organization.

Ms. Dergham says the UN during the Cold War was a place where reporters ran around trying to catch spies meeting with each other, and where people came and went more freely, describing the Secretariat building as “the people’s building.”

“There was much openness,” she said, adding that the UN now is much more closed today because of the increased security.

Ms. Dergham discusses the UN’s involvement in Syria, saying Ban Ki-moon really took the lead. “I find him a very interesting Secretary-General,” she says. “Once he believes in something, he just goes all the way. I think he’s very principled… I think he decided that his best legacy would be one of ending impunity, and I think he really believes that what has happened in the Arab region for the last year, year-and-a-half is tremendously important because it is about what the people said they want.”

Ms. Dergham says she has seen many changes in the organization over the past three decades, describing the Cold War era where it was a competition for every single vote in the General Assembly by great powers; now, she says, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab uprisings, the Security Council has assumed more importance, describing it as “the club to belong to” for member states today.

Ms. Dergham also says that in the past, “The north-south confrontation was much more predominant than it is now,” because of the rise of emerging powers. Today, she says, countries conclude where they stand on an issue-by-issue basis more so than in years past, when the north-south divide was more automatic.

Ms. Dergham discusses the various Secretaries-General she has worked with over her career, noting that Ban Ki-moon has appointed a lot of women to senior positions, and that maybe the next Secretary-General will be a woman.

The interview was conducted by Warren Hoge, IPI Senior Adviser for External Relations, who worked alongside Ms. Dergham as the UN correspondent for The New York Times between 2004-08.

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In addition to pop songs and glitzy costumes, the Eurovision song contest is notorious for how neighboring countries usually vote for each other rather than the best performer. But when this year’s contest takes place in Baku on May 26, don’t expect Azerbaijan to give any votes to its neighbor Armenia. Indeed, there will be no points for Armenia; they have pulled out of the event, citing animosity from Azeri authorities including President Ilham Aliyev, who said in February, “Our main enemies are Armenians of the world, and the hypocritical and corrupt politicians under their control.”

What could have been a feel-good confidence-building measure has turned into another example of how the unresolved status of Nagorno-Karabakh continues to poison relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan more than twenty years after the two countries went to war over this mountainous region.

Key Conclusions

Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan remain tense over the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh. Despite twenty years of diplomacy under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group (co-chaired by France, the Russian Federation and the United States), there has been little progress towards a solution. Even the personal engagement of the presidents of France, Russia, and the United States has done little to edge the parties towards peace. New actors, like Israel and Iran, are becoming involved, while Turkey’s relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan have been damaged.

A new approach is needed to reinvigorate the negotiation process. In the meantime, a mechanism is urgently needed to reduce tensions and conduct investigations of incidents along the line of contact between the parties. The deployment of a preventive force should also be considered. More people-to-people contacts are essential in order to create better relations among neighbors who, for a generation, have lived in a perpetual state of no war yet no peace.