Ideas - The UN at 80: Successes, Hopes, Failures, and Challenges

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

In 1945, as the Second World War ended, the United Nations brought together 50 nations of the world. Their historic charter aimed to uphold international peace, security, and human rights. Today, the UN faces a lot of criticism, but Canada’s UN Ambassador, Bob Rae, still believes in it.

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. In the spring of 1945, representatives from 50 different nations gathered in San Francisco,

exhausted by one world war. And nearing the end of a devastating second, they drafted a document, one aimed at building the peace and security that had so far eluded the 20th century. The assembled delegates here to call for their final vote from the chief of the British delegation, Lord Halifax. And it is now my duty, my honor and my privilege in the chair, to call for a vote on the approval of the Charter of the United Nations. The UK, US, China, France, and USSR led the way as permanent members of the Security Council.

And in October of 1945, at the end of World War II, the United Nations came into being. San Francisco has made a beginning, a courageous stand that promises to build a mighty structure for peace, a charter born of the agony and destruction of total war. It must mark a turning point in human history. A new way reaches to the future. The world must follow it through unity and cooperation to lasting peace. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed.

The UN has survived for eight decades now, growing to include 193 member states. It is a huge, complex set of entities, from the General Assembly to the International Court of Justice to agencies such as the World Health Organization. The UN's Charter, amended several times, continues to represent an international standard for peace and security, human rights, development, and international law. And there has been no World War III.

But the years have seen many major conflicts and humanitarian crises. And on many different fronts, from accusations of bureaucratic ineffectiveness to outright corruption, the United Nations has come in for all kinds of criticism over the years. Bob Ray still believes in the institution. He is ambassador and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York. He gave a public talk called The UN at 80, Successes, Hopes, Failures and Challenges. Bob Ray's talk took place at the end of January, weeks after the second inauguration

of Donald Trump as US President, as the Israel-Gaza ceasefire began and the Russia-Ukraine conflict raged on. Talk of peace, security, and sovereignty was all around. That's where Bob Ray began. About 400 years ago, the French philosopher Pascal said in one of his famous aphorisms that justice without force is powerless, but power without justice is tyranny. And the tension in these concepts is the tension that exists in our lives today. The UN was born at the end of the Second World War, at a time in history when we had been through the bloodiest struggle that was known to people at that point. And the charter was negotiated in San

Francisco, final draft in San Francisco, in the spring of 1945 before the war was completely over, and in particular before the dropping of the bombs, nuclear bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mention that because as the world was preparing for the end of the war. There were, of course, over a long period of time, intense discussions between the members of the Alliance that ultimately was successful and triumphant about what form would this new organization take, because it had to avoid the errors that had been committed in the previous generation. This was not the first try. The first try came after 1919 and with the Treaty of Versailles. And the first try produced the League of Nations. And the architect of the League of Nations, who was a former president of Princeton University, was Woodrow Wilson.

And Wilson was, as Henry Kissinger described him in his famous book on diplomacy, was almost the archetypal figure of idealism. The yin and yang of diplomacy that Kissinger describes is between realists and idealists. And I think it's fair to say that Kissinger in the end didn't have a lot of time for Woodrow Wilson and didn't believe that ideals were enough. And the irony of Versailles is that the architect of Versailles

of the treaty that gave birth to the League of Nations led the country which ultimately was not able to join. And so the League was born with some hope, but nevertheless a sense that, well, wait a minute, the United States is not in, they're out. And so that sense of tension in the creation of global organizations has been with us for the entire 20th century and now for this part of the 21st. And it's a tension that has never gone away and I say to you it will never go away. And so when we look at

the successes, the challenges, the hopes, the fears, the frustrations that go along with the two words, united nations. And I'm always reminded of the joke that Mahatma Gandhi told when he was asked what did he think of Western civilization and he says, it sounds like a good idea. And the same thing could be said of United Nations. It would be a good idea. But we're not united. But the problems that surround us are problems that require our unity and require our collective will to deal with. It's important to stress that when the UN was born,

it came as a result of a process of debate and discussion, as I said. And really, the first articulation of the debate was the Atlantic Charter, which was presented to the world after Churchill and Roosevelt signed the document in 1941. And ultimately, other member states signed on to the Charter after the United States finally joined the war effort after Pearl Harbor was attacked in December of 1941. And the Charter sets out certain key objectives, the rule of law, freer trade,

self-determination of nations, and a sense that the human rights that had been expressed so in such great force by Franklin Roosevelt in his famous Four of Freedom speech would in fact be articulated and contained in the Charter of the United Nations. But the actual document that was signed in San Francisco was different because the Charter is not only an expression of the aspirations that people have for human rights, for the rule of law, for statements about equality and justice, which are in the charter. But the charter also says all nations are equal and their sovereignty must be protected.

And aggression is a crime against all of us. But it also says that while all nations are equal, some nations are more equal than others. And you may remember that without any irony, that just two years before the charter was signed in which it deliberately created a structure in which five nations had a veto over the issues of peace and security in the world. George Orwell had written his famous book, Animal Farm, in which first on the wall was the statement, all animals are equal, but then one evening,

the words were changed, animals woke up and they said, wait a minute, the sign has changed, it says, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. And that's what happened at the UN. So just as it was being born, just as it was being created, the deal that we were left with was a deal in which the big powers, the great powers, self-designated, would have a veto over the effective peace and security mission of the United Nations.

Why was that? Well, quite simple. Because the big powers said, if you don't do this, this fish is not gonna fly. And if you want it to fly, we insist on a veto. And Roosevelt and Harry Truman actually accomplished what Wilson had not been able to accomplish,

and that is an organization which the United States agreed right away they would join, which the Soviet Union agreed it would join, in which the British Empire agreed, yes, we'll join, because they knew that on the critical issues of peace and security, they would continue to have a veto But the problem that they didn't fully recognize because the full impact of the Cold War had not yet been totally felt but they didn't realize was that they would be using the veto against each other and they would also be using the veto against everybody else and The culmination and the complete,

I think, description of how bad the veto was, was the realization that on the night of February 22nd, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the government that was sitting in the chair of the Security Council to decide on what should be done was the Russian delegate, who insisted that he do nothing about it and that it was the Russians that would actually veto

any effective action by the Security Council against the aggression which took place. So when we look at this experience, it's possible for us to say that in some important ways the UN has failed, but what exactly has it failed? Because when people say to me the UN has failed, I say, yeah, but it was not set up to do what it is you want it to do.

Because if the UN had been set up with all of the aspirations in it, and with all of the collective will to actually enforce those aspirations, the big powers would not have joined it. So it was like a kind of bargain that we had to make to say, okay, you want a United Nations? You want a United Nations organization?

You want to have universal human rights? You want to have declarations of equality? Okay. But you can't have that and have a UN without a veto. It won't happen. So we've been wrestling with this conundrum. We can take some comfort from the fact that it's the same conundrum that Pascal

set out. Just to remind you, justice without force is powerless. Yes, that's true. If justice does not have the means to be enforced, it's powerless. If we didn't know that traffic laws would in some sense be enforced, we would be much less likely to obey them. The strength of domestic law depends on the link between sovereignty, power, and justice. And that link is the knowledge that it will be enforced. But with international law, it's more difficult. It's more challenging, and it's more frustrating. And that's the real world that the United Nations is living in. It's not a perfect world. It's not a world only of speeches, although sometimes at the UN you kind of wonder if that's actually what it is. But it's not a world only of speeches, although sometimes at the UN you kind of wonder if that's actually what it is. But it's not only a world of speeches, because when

you do the marking of the UN, you have to say, well, we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have the Genocide Convention. We have uneven enforcement, yes, sometimes enforcement that doesn't even exist. And when the enforcement is attempted, it's challenged. But we do have a steady growth in the structure and architecture of human rights. We have seen a remarkable expansion of the concepts of human rights since 1945. Think of two or three that have marked our lifetimes as Canadians and as human beings. We now know that two of the great injustices that have been committed in our time, the treatment of people of diverse sexual identities and the treatment of Indigenous peoples is something that we ourselves have come to recognize are unjust, that we have

to embrace all of who we are and all of who we have been, come to terms with our own history and our own past, and recognize what it is we owe each other. We've done this as a country. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in this hall and in this place. We've seen how our notion and understanding of human rights has broadened, has become culturally more accepting, has become more generous. We like to congratulate ourselves as Canadians, but we're not unique in this regard. Many, many other countries around the world are going through this same process. And is it a fight?

Yes. Is it a struggle? Yes. But are we further ahead today than we were in 1945? Without question. Think of a couple of other major breakthroughs. In 1945, the world was dominated by imperial countries who lived in a world which they dominated and which colonies were oppressed.

And the process of decolonization that has taken place since 1945 has been one of the most radical and remarkable events in human history. And it continues to take place. The first thing you recognize coming in as a new person into the hall of the United Nations is there are 193 countries.

When we started, we were just over 50. And the countries are 193 countries. When we started we were just over 50 and the countries are all from all over. I mean the whole of the globe is now in the UN. The globe, the entire representation of humanity is present in the United Nations. It's just a remarkable thing just to sit and listen and learn from what it is that is said as people describe who they are and the journey that they have been on. And that process of decolonization has taken place, and thanks, I may say so, to geniuses and political leaders like Nelson Mandela, has taken place with, yes, with conflict, yes with loss of life, yes with struggle,

but sometimes with remarkable acts of generosity and remarkable acts of reconciliation that go well beyond what we thought was possible in 1945. So we live with this contradiction at the heart of the UN. It's full of these aspirations, it's full of these achievements, at the same times as it's full of its inabilities to fully come to grips with the life of the world. And its inability fundamentally to do what it says it should do and to enforce what we know should be enforced.

And this has led to the sense that people have that the UN has not succeeded, that the UN is not the organization people thought it was or think it still should be. But this is not a new sentiment. Let's think of a couple of examples. But this is not a new sentiment. Let's think of a couple of examples. 1957, 56, is often thought of as the time when Canada came of age on the stage of the United Nations.

Lester Pearson, who'd been elected earlier as the president of the General Assembly, now was in his seat as the minister of foreign affairs in Canada, dealing with the invasion of the Suez Canal by an alliance of Israel, France and the United Kingdom. It was a surprise attack. And Pearson led the way in saying, how do we get out of this? How do we get to a point where we can create peace where there was war? And how can we create the conditions that would allow this to happen? Well, the reason that it happened was because two great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, said to two other powers, whose power was dwindling, the French and the British, no, you can't do this. This isn't going

to work. You have to withdraw. And Mr. Pearson was able to see that moment where he could take advantage of the situation and move it forward. But let's also remember that that same period of time was the time when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary and wiped out a revolution that was based on the charter, that was based on the principles of universal human rights, that was based on a desire to free the Hungarian people from the oppression of the Soviet Empire which had been brought over them.

UN couldn't lift a finger. UN couldn't lift a finger. UN couldn't do anything. Mr. Pearson couldn't do anything except for say, we'll take in Hungarians who are coming. We'll take them here in Canada. Why? Power politics. The Russians said, no, that's our sphere of influence. We have nuclear weapons.

You can't move in. So this tension between where there is power being exercised and where it's being exercised in brutal ways and how do we defend ourselves against the sheer brutality of power politics. How we do that effectively can sometimes be moments of frustration. It would take the Hungarian people another 24 years before they could see the freedom that they had fought for and died in 1956 and 57. And so it's so important for us to understand how difficult these challenges are. And now where do we find ourselves?

We're in the world in which this tension is still with us. In which looking back we can see how much we have achieved. The UN when it started, there was no World Health Organization, there was no UNICEF, there was no UNHCR, High Commission for Refugees, there was no UN High Commission on Human Rights. The UN budget now is, it's about 10 billion if you look at what it is to run the organization plus peacekeeping, but it's another 65 billion.

It's a total of $75 billion, which is now being used for development and for the sustainable development goals and all of the elements that make up the life of the world, the life of the United Nations. That work goes on. But it only goes on if we're prepared to pay for it, and if we're prepared to commit ourselves to it, and if we're prepared to pay for it and if we're prepared to commit ourselves

to it and if we're prepared to understand how delicate is the consensus that we thought we had reached with respect to the utility and the value of international institutions and of international law. And now, of course, I have to choose my words carefully because I still represent the government of Canada. And I am also one who's aware that sometimes my comments extend well beyond my laneway. But the election of President Trump, I think,

has woken us all up to the fact that the concepts of power politics, spheres of influence, dividing up the world, and economic force, and just the use of force in general, have not disappeared from the face of the earth. In fact, they face us very directly as Canadians. And we are at this very moment as a country having to come to terms with just how serious this view of life is and how much it flies in the face of everything we have struggled to build. We built a relationship with the United States that was supposed to be based on the rule of law and not the rule of force and not simply the whim of one country or another, but was supposed to be

based on rules which we both accepted because we recognized in our moments of rationality that it was in our mutual interest to do so. And that's the same basis upon which we have built all of the fragile structures that bring together the rule of law and bring together our ability to say we are responding to a difficult world with all of the reason that we can bring to bear to the situation.

We have been able to say climate change is a fact. We've been able to say that coming to terms with climate change requires us to do truly heroic things in changing how we produce energy and how our industrial structures work around the world so we do not pollute ourselves to oblivion. That's what we've agreed to do. And then there are people who say, oh, it's not a real thing, doesn't really exist. We don't want to give our unilateral right to do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want. And we have to understand how serious these challenges are.

People who say there's no such thing as a pandemic, people who say we don't know how to deal with a pandemic, people who say vaccinations are bad, people who say the World Health Organization withdraw from it, leave it, abandon it. No. Canada has made it very clear. We believe in treaties. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in reason.

And we believe in the application of reason to resolve the challenges facing the human condition. That's what we believe. We don't believe in economic force. We don't believe in my way or the highway. We don't believe in spheres of influence. If we believed in spheres of influence, we would have said to Putin five years ago, go ahead, you want Ukraine, you can have it. And we've said, no, Ukraine is as entitled to be a sovereign country as Canada is entitled to be a sovereign country. And we say to both Mr. Putin and, yes, Donald Trump, we don't take your spheres of influence.

We believe in a world where the rule of law means something and where the institutions we have built are worth saving and, yes, worth fighting for. It's a challenging time. I don't come before you tonight to say that the UN is a perfect organization or that the UN is the only way in which we can defend ourselves. No, it's not the only multilateral institution. NATO is a multilateral institution, our treaties with the United States are multilateral institutions, we believe in all of these different agencies with which we can we can create certainty and better security in the world. But I do fundamentally believe that the dream that people have had, a

dream now which is well literally centuries old but certainly in our own time is at least over 100 years old. The dream that we can actually make the world a better place. How? By working together, by committing to work together, by committing to reaching out and learning how to live with every other nation and every other group of people in the world. And secondly, by building the institutions, the laws, the ways in which we can work more effectively together than if we just continue to say, might makes right, let the mightiest

take it all. That view of life is one we have rejected. And I hope we never see the day when a majority of Canadians say, yes, this is the way we should go. We have to continue to support the United Nations in the work that it does. And yes, we have the right to ask that the UN do better, that it improve. And those things are not contradictory. It can all come together if we persist in our political will to make it better. Thank you very much. It's good

to be with you tonight. Appreciate it. Bob Ray, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, giving the Paul Buteau Memorial Lecture in Winnipeg in January 2025. You're listening to Ideas, we're heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America, on SiriusXM, on World Radio Paris, and in Australia on ABC Radio National. Stream us around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. And you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed.

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. With less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice. And we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes.

Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. For the second part of the event, Bob Ray was joined by Lloyd Axworthy. He was the country's Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 1990s Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and these days he is chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council.

They spoke in January 2025, at the start of the second Donald Trump presidency, with its terror threats and rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state. Having recently written a memoir about his life in politics, Lloyd Axworthy began by telling the audience at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg about his own early and formative introduction to the idea of the United Nations. In 1957, I was a student at Sister High School, and I was invited to join a Rotary-sponsored

Model United Nations assembly in 1957. Glad to say that they're still hosting him today. And I represent the first country I was asked to represent was Israel. The next year I had a second round and I was asked to represent Yemen. Now those of you who follow the patterns of politics know that there's a pretty wide gap between those two countries. What was interesting, my mentors, wonderful couple of lawyers named Sam Breen and Ellen Breen, tutored me on both sides of that. And so I learned a couple of things at the ripe old age of 17 or 18. Number one is that how important it is to have discussion and talk. And that's still something that the UN,

for all its numerous reams of transcripts that it produces, it still is a place in which conversation, discussion, engagement can take place even within a reasonable system. I've attended Security Council meetings, I've attended General Assembly. It's not always peaceful, but there is a certain sense of decorum. And I think as an ambassador, I've seen you do the same thing, that you may not like that person, you may hate their

policies of their government, but you realize that to get somewhere, you're going to have to negotiate. And I've always thought that was an accommodation as a young Canadian that kind of makes us a little bit special in the sense that this is something we've done in our own country. We've learned how to make deals, accommodate, and make things work. The other point I wanted to mention is just how important it was that an organization like the Rotary of Canada would undertake to sponsor

a cross-country model UN assembly so young men and women just beginning to learn the ways of the world would have a place to feel that there was some inspiration, there was some place to go. My son teaches high school in rural Manitoba. His civics program is, he's told by his principal, he can't talk about Donald Trump. He just can't do it. So I think one of the things that may be in this room, I'm sure there's lots of educators, that the way in which we retain our commitment, our ability, our capacity to engage in this challenge that you raised, is to ensure that we are properly

doing our work at home, and that the blessing I was giving as a young student in North End, Winnipeg, to go to a rotary model and all of a sudden, play at being an ambassador for three days, stuck with me, and I strangely, 30 or 40 years later, when I actually ended up going there, it was the achievement of a goal, of a dream. So Bob, I guess what maybe I want to ask a question,

I'm sure other people here would reflect, that with the challenges you've talked about, this new emergence of imperialism, a manifest destiny that might mix right. What do you see as being the ways in which Canada can contribute to that retention of multilateralism and not just the retention of institutions but the revival, renewal, re-energizing? Where do you see as the kind of things that we as Canadians should rally around in terms

of our government, whomever it may be, goes back to work in the various parts of the United Nations. Well, I think one of the things that I would say is that when Mr. Trudeau came to the UN for the first time as Prime Minister, he gave a speech which I don't think anybody expected him to make, where he spent a great part of his speech talking about Canada's indigenous identity and our history and the reason why it was important for us to embrace all of the aspects of that history, bad and good. And the reason that he did it was because he was trying to demonstrate to the members of the history, bad and good. And the reason that he did it was because he was trying to demonstrate to the members of the UN,

most of whom are former colonies, most of whom have long histories of fighting oppression and fighting for their rights and fighting for their identity in the face of an imperial presence, to say, we're like you, we're part of your experience, and we understand what it is that brings you to this place. And I frankly think that what has happened and what is still happening with respect to our situation is that it puts us clearly on the side of

those countries who say, we don't like being pushed around like this. And that's a big difference for Canada. That's a big leap of connection that we can have with other countries that are facing the same challenge. And that's very important because one of the things that's risky about being in the UN as a country like we are is that you become immediately identified as part of a small elite of very wealthy, privileged countries that do not understand the real day-to-day challenges that are being faced by most of the countries

and most of the people of the world. And I think that is an important step for us. The second one for us is to make a choice as a country, which I think we have to make, and that is that we will not go quietly into the night on this one, that we will fight and we will join in the world's fight against oppression wherever it comes from or however it appears. And that, mean first of all is aspirational yes easy to say but it's also not easy to do but it's essential that we do it. One of the things that disturbs me about some of our discussions as a country is that we become exclusively fixated on this question of the relationship with the

United States as if that were the only issue facing us. Because it's not. What's happening more broadly is equally important. What's happening with respect to climate change? What's happening with respect to our ability to fight the next pandemic? What's happening with respect to the 150 million people who are living displaced by conflict today? How are we able to relate to what's going on

in other parts of the world? We can't lose sight of that. And there's a risk that we'll become so fixated on only one situation, that is to say our current challenge, that we fail to put it in the broader context of what's happening around the world. Because this is part of the world's fight. It's not just Canada's fight.

Can I kind of riff off those comments? Oh, riff, riff man, riff, riff. I still have some gas in the tank. You do have gas in the tank. But let me comment, and this is not sort of promotion, but when I was writing the book I was doing, I was intrigued by where do indigenous people play a role in our international affairs?

You know, that in the sort of recruitment of the class of foreign service officers, it's one or one and a half percent, far less than the population. And not only that, but the indigenous people are not given leadership roles in things that you've just talked about. Climate change, water, what's happening in the North and the Arctic, where there's special knowledge

and special sense of response and activity. We just have a new water agency established here in Winnipeg. But it's not given an international role. We are certainly not fully tapping into the opportunity that indigenous Canadians have to make this country a smarter, better, more effective international player. And the reason is, in my view, is we still not recognized our fundamental error

of never recognizing them as a founding people in this country. Well, I mean, I always try to look at the, is the glass, is there anything in the glass at all? fundamental error of never recognizing them as a founding people in this country. I mean, I always try to look at the, is the glass, is there anything in the glass at all? And then how do we fill it up? Fact is we are now, I think, certainly we're gonna see,

we're gonna have in Winnipeg in the next six weeks or so, we're gonna have a meeting here in Winnipeg about indigenous diplomacy. Where does that fit? How do we make it fit better? How do we expand it? We now have 300 employees who've self-identified in GAC as First Nations and indigenous more broadly, Métis and Inuit. So that's happening. That's starting to happen more and more. We have a regular meeting among our team about what more we can do. We have the Indigenous Forum, which meets in New York every year, which is for 10 days.

We have a fulsome discussion around what's happening to Indigenous people around the world. And Canada is a leader in those discussions. We are absolutely front and center in talking about that and trying to make a point of linking up what our own experiences have been with how we go forward. I was in fact just chatting with Premier Canoe about this this afternoon, saying it's important that we embrace this part of our identity

and that we expand it on the global stage. And I think there's a great willingness to do that. It's interesting for me to notice that there's also resistance to that idea, some of it coming from developing countries who are reluctant to get into, allow that kind of discussion in their own countries, some of it from the most oppressive autocracies

like Iran and China and Russia, which do not want those discussions to be taking place at the heart of the United Nations. So we are pushing that forward in, I think, a very positive way. You can, yes, have we fallen short? Yeah, we fall short. But it's not as if we're not coming to grips with it, as we, I think we really are. Because I want to take the second part of your second last comment, about we want to stand up to the bullies and the imperialists and all the rest of it. And I want to read

to you a comment from Lester Pearson, 75, well, close to 80 year it goes, says Canada cannot occupy its rightful place in international society so long as its security is dependent on American benevolence. If we're to escape from permanent inferiority, our security must be found in an organization to which we ourselves contribute. So my question is, how are we going to contribute to that, to that new challenge in terms of strengthening, buttressing, reinforcing, and in some ways changing the ways we deal with the issues of security, climate, discrimination?

Well, I think part of it is frankly something that you've done. I mentioned it in my first comment, and that is I think that the more we understand that human security is not just about the security of countries, it's about the securities of peoples. And one of the things that Canada has stood for at the UN

has been a reminder to everyone that the opening words of the preamble to the charter are we the peoples. It's not we the states or we the nations, it's we the peoples. And this is another really significant tension that weaves its way through the life of the United Nations. There are many, many member states of the UN who do not want the peoples to be represented. They want only governments to be there.

And it's sort of like it's a kind of club of oppressors, and we sit around and say, okay, we won't talk about your problems if you don't talk about our problems. And we've really gone beyond that. But when we look at human security, we understand how, and this is what's basic UN 101, is the nexus between peace and security, human development, and human rights. And they all go together. The three of them go together. And one of the challenges, the real challenge of security we face in the world today are

those countries that are not able to provide support for their own people, that are not able to deal with basic conditions of security, and where human rights are regularly oppressed. One of them is in our continent, Haiti. Haiti is a classic example of a country where the state has not been able, on its own, to provide security for its people. And what R2P was about, I think, was a very extremely important concept. The question is, how do you make it happen?

But you've got to keep trying to make it happen. And that is understanding that it's the government's have a fundamental responsibility to provide security for their people. That that security is not only about police, it's also about jobs, and it's about work, and it's about rights, and it's about laws. And the countries around have an obligation

to support that, and then the UN itself has a responsibility to do that. The challenge we've had over and over again at the UN is the reluctance on countries to, some countries, to allow the Security Council to do its job. We still can't, have not yet been able to get a proper peacekeeping mission into Haiti because the Russians and the Chinese won't let it happen. And I think that's terrible. We're now having to go around this as a country and say, well, how can we do this within the rule of law and with the will and support of the Haitian people? And

so far we've done some things, but still not all the things that need to be done. And that, I think, is where we can play an increasingly important role. And I think the more we, and this is partly perhaps a question of style, we should not be afraid to describe the challenges and we should not be afraid to encourage a debate and a discussion about the challenges as opposed to adopting language at the UN which is just so mealy-mouthed, it's even worse than the House of Commons. And that's saying something. I mean, I really just it's even worse than the House of Commons. And that's saying something. I mean, I really just said something there.

Because the language of international diplomacy is a language where you deliberately obfuscate so that people, nobody will be offended. Can I do a footnote on what you said? Because we talked about that period in the 90s when we had a pretty good run at things. Partly is that we had set up our own multilateral organization.

With the Norwegians, we put together a human security network in the United Nations that was then able to become the promoter of the international court and child protocols and things. So it's not just a matter of us being involved in a multilateral institutions. I think we have to look at our capacity once again to convene a multilateral new kind of institutional network

to take on some of the problems that you identified. So with that, I turn it over to this very wonderful audience. We have a chance for some questions. I'll look at our organizers. Do we have a moment here to ask some questions from the audience? Okay, thank you very much. Like I said, I have the microphone, so everybody should listen to me. Thank you.

My name is Paul Kambaja. I am from Congo, Aradi Sea. And right now, my country is bleeding because we are under a hole. And for the last 30 years, UN has been in Congo, and yet 10 million people have been killed and they're still dying. Over seven million displaced, so many raped women and girls.

My heart is just bleeding inside me. And we have a generation of UN kids. These are the kids unwanted by UN soldiers after raping some of our women and mothers. My question is, why is it that Congolese people need to die for you to use your phone? We are dying because of our minerals. And we believe the UN only count the number

of people dying and not helping the Congolese people. So that was my first question. My second is, how does Canada decide which country to help? Because we have seen an equal treatment, the amount of support and declaration Canada has made to Ukraine when Russia invaded Ukraine, which is the right things to do, and we the Congolese people have been waiting for the same treatment we have I personally wrote to some of our politicians and have never received any response so do we need to look like Ukrainians for Canada to listen to us and help us in this world so that we can feel like we are also human beings like you guys how much bleed or bleach do we need to use in our skin

so that we can look more white to be considered as human being? Thank you. I think those are really profound questions. Let me start with the second one. Is there an unevenness in the response of the West to different crises? And the answer to that is yes.

Is that problematic for our present and future when it comes to the conflict in the Congo, for example? The answer is yes, it is. The question then becomes, well why does that happen? And the answer is because public opinion in our country and public opinion in other countries is affected and impacted in a variety of ways by different kinds of conflicts around the world.

And the point of the UN itself is that it's supposed to be a place where these things are evened out and where there's a recognition that no one, in the words of the UN famous mantra, no one should be left behind. But right now when we look at the conflicts in Africa, we're leaving Africa behind and it's wrong. There's no question about that. And so we have to respond to that more effectively

together with other countries. We have an obligation to respond to that more effectively. Some of the most eloquent speeches in the UN have been given by the ambassador of the DRC saying, okay, you're responding to this crisis and that crisis, what are you gonna do about our crisis? And that was two years ago. And now we've seen that Africa's had a series

of civil wars within Africa in which millions have died and in which tens of millions have been displaced. And the world has not responded to the same extent to that as we have to other crises which are around us. So yeah, there is a double standard there. I don't say that lightly or just brushing it off. I think it's very important for us to recognize it. There's so much more to be done and that there's so much more that is to be learned. that is to be learned. But in a sense, that's also, I think, the reason why we need to keep going.

It's not because we don't keep going because we've solved everything or because we've found a better way to figure out where money should go or where our resources should go or how we're supposed to find a way to resolve these conflicts. We keep going because we have not yet succeeded.

But we also know that one of the most important things we have to do in life is learn how to embrace our failures, not by pretending their successes, but by saying, what do we learn from this? And what I learn every day at the UN, what I think everyone who thinks about it can learn, is that we're the products of our past. We bring with us every day our own preconceptions and our own prejudices. But the reason why doing it in the UN and with the United Nations,

with our fellow citizens around the world, is because it helps us to learn how to do it differently and how to do it better. And in embracing our failure, we also are embracing our commitment to change and our commitment to learning from the mistakes that we've made in the past. This does not give any great comfort to those who've died in the struggle and those who are dying tonight in the struggle in different parts of the world. But it is, I think, a reminder to all of us as to why the struggle is not only worthwhile, but is actually an essential part

of what it means to be human in the world today. So thank you for your question. Can I do the benediction, because on that point, I'm gonna take it down to its kind of basic, maybe even crest, discussion. The reason why the choices are so difficult is that for the last decades we have been substantially reducing, budget by budget, our investments in diplomacy, our investments in development assistance, our investments in promoting a variety of NGO civil activity.

Why? Because the people in Haiti or in the Sudan, they don't have a constituency, they don't vote. And the calculation, I'm speaking, someone who was in the system for a long time, and when it comes down to Treasury Board or finance, but I was also, usually on the end, I always thought myself as being the turkey

at the Thanksgiving dinner every time the budget discussion came up, because you're gonna be carved. We have an election coming up. As a group of Canadians are clearly engaged and interested, to what degree are we gonna start talking about questions that go beyond just to axe the tax or some other? Those are important, but the reality is that part of our weakness has been a leeching of our diplomatic defense, security, and human rights capacity, and that

makes it very hard to make choices, so you end up sort of just going for the easiest out. So, this is my statement. Great to have easiest out. So this is what's amazing. Great to have everybody out here. Thank you. Thank you. You've been listening to former politician Lloyd Axworthy in conversation with Bob Ray, ambassador and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York.

Lloyd Axworthy is chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council and the author of My Life in Politics. They spoke at the Paul Buteau Memorial Lecture event in Winnipeg on January 29, 2025. Dr. Paul Buteau was an integral part of the University of Manitoba community for over 45 years. As a professor of international relations, he was the leading Canadian scholar on nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Dr. Buteau was committed to academic excellence, education, and public debate on defense and security issues. He established the Centre for Defense and Security Studies in 1992 and served as its first director. Through his efforts and initiative, the Centre established the University of Manitoba

as a leading voice on international strategic and Canadian defense issues. Episode producer, Lisa Godfrey. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval and Gabby Hagarilis. Senior producer, Nikola Lukcic. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.