YouSaid · the spoken record

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

lines on the record: 54
first: 2023-11-13
most recent: 2023-11-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“To a process where there are sort of democratic elections in two years' time as well. And I think there is still a sense, despite the fact that people preach about the demise of the United Nations, nobody's calling for the death of the United Nations. There may be alliances. We may be in an era of clubism where everybody wants to go into different directions. And it's true there is a lack of inconsistency about international relations, but if you're looking for consistency, then you don't come into working in international relations because the transactions and trade-off are crucial. But my job is to look for opportunities and I spend a great deal of my time looking for even the smallest window. And if I can push it ajar a little bit further, then we'll take it as well.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I can't do happy and bouncy, but in every tragedy there's always an opportunity. So I don't come out of this feeling rather bleak and hopeless. For example, as we speak, there's this innovative. I think it's going to be a challenge for them, but there's this interesting ad hoc innovative approach that Kenya is pursuing to help deal with Haiti. But it needs to work with an alliance of countries to make sure that the political agenda is not lost in the process of trying to sort of bring force into Haiti. The Maduro government, as you know, Rory in Venezuela has been less and less inclined to pursue a democratic path and electoral process. But only a couple of weeks ago, we saw this agreement in Barbados between the opposition in Venezuela and the Maduro government. And I think we have to keep an eye on that process to make sure that we do get”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“66%, but they wonder about the type of leaders at the helm, so much so that one young kid says to me, comfort, what's the difference between a rigged election and a soldier in power when the difference is very marginal for that young child who sees no prospects and no hope going forward?”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the state and the paramilitary forces who were the coup roofers were also able to continue with their gold mining. Prime Minister Hamdok was left with the most difficult job, which is to wave together a very complicated, fragmented society, which was to fix the problem of the economy, try to bring livelihoods back together, back to do with displacement and refugees. Meanwhile, the army and the paramilitary forces were able to continue to carry on as business as usual. So this is the challenge on the continent to convince people about the quality of democracy. And the one other thing I would say, Rory, is that there have been different surveys that have been held on the continent in the last year or so, whether it's the Open Society Foundation or UNDP. This is where UNDP is good, despite what you said about the UN earlier, or even Afro-Barimeter. And they're all consistent about people's desires for democracy.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Education of a different lifestyle. People begin to question who is it that is sitting in the state house. And they've watched 10 years of intervention in Mali, for example, 10 years of hyper-militarization in the Sahel. We are defenders of the security first approach because for you to get to governance and do all those kind of things, you need to get security back. But you've got to do the hard work of politics. You've got to give people the hope to live for the next day. And what we're seeing in Mali, what we're seeing in Guinea, what we're seeing in Sudan. And Sudan is the saddest of all of that because we saw a revolution taking place in 2019. And instead of doing the hard work of ensuring that Prime Minister Hamdok, who was given the most difficult task, Rory, of trying to turn things around in Sudan while the military were able to continue to have access to the largest”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I want to qualify what I mean because there's an assumption that what is happening on the continent equals the death of democracy. And in fact, it's not. It's a dissatisfaction with the quality of democracy that is taking place on the continent. It's question marks about this performative democracy that I go through the motions every four years only to get something that is quite questionable where there's still a shrinking of the political space, where governments themselves are only check boxing. These are elections that are signed off, considered legitimate by external actors. I put the West in that camp. And then what happens after you get a flurry of international assistance, security sector reform that does what, that solidifies a regime that is seen as questionable by its citizens as well? I mean, I've often said you can't eat democracy. If democracy doesn't lead to jobs, the promises of jobs of”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fuck those seven. I was just quickly doing the maths as well. Seven coups in the last three years. That tells you about the state of play on the continent. And I'll tie it back to Alistair's question. I think what we've seen in the last few years is that a number of crises, whether it's Ukraine and the fallout from that, now Israel, Palestine and the fallout of that, I think COVID-19, the climate financing, the question marks about institutions, the bankruptcy of I think the liberal democratic process, all of it shone a spotlight first with the fallout of the war on terror and then the Arab Spring and now again. And I think here the fallacy of democracy has been exposed. But I want to qualify.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the places like the Emirates, Morocco as well, and on the eve of the 7th of October attacks, the process, the normalization process between the most significant country in the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel, the train was out of the station. So I think the weaving, the netting of peace and this back together requires the involvement of Arab countries. And in fact, although it's highly unlikely, Alistair,”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, because partly because the US itself, its supervisory power, its ability to cajole, to influence, to a certain degree is there for Israel. And there's a sense in which Netanyahu and the Israelis will listen to Washington, but up to degree. But we are talking at the moment, Alistair, where while the two-state solutions was increasingly seen as bankrupt, and quite frankly, we have to resell that idea of a two-state nations as a process back to the Palestinians who may not trust that as a process going forward. But why that was sort of set aside and the aspirations of the Palestinians were set aside, another process called the Abraham Accords or Normalization was going on. So economic deals and they came alive really under Trump.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Asked me, Alistair, at the beginning, about how do you keep certain things on the radar of international actors? And I think this is one that we have to continually bring on the radar. And my colleague brought it to the spotlight two days ago when she highlighted that in the midst of Gaza, we were seeing settlers taking advantage of that and using it as a means in which to go after and then continue to pursue that settler strategy.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not now. If you're talking to me about where Israel is now and the last two years, it's increasingly far right when you listen to the key leaders, whether it's Bengavir or Smodrich. And even the young people, they call themselves the hilltop youths. They're the ones who are committing most of the violence today. There is no interest. There's no appetite. So how do you put a pause on that settler violence? And then how then do you begin to do just the basic fundamentals of dealing with the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank? Again, we haven't even, there's a whole different prescription needed today for dealing with Gaza, but just in the midst of everything else, what we've seen in the last two weeks is as the bombing is taking place in Gaza, you've got this set of violence taking place. And that's off the headlines. And it's been suffocated because of what's happening in Gaza.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are two things. Well, number one is the whole leadership on the Palestinian side as well in relation to the Palestinian authorities. I think the question marks as we try to reconceptualize what a Palestinian state looks like. There's that pillar to be dealt with. But there is also the sense in which Israel today is moving more and more to the right and put Gaza to the side for one minute. You've got the whole settler of violence unfolding in the West Bank where every single day the rights of the West Bank, which we often saw as the base for the Palestinian, is being pummeled, is being attacked, and it's been encroached upon. So even that becomes a challenge. And how do you address that question of the West Bank before then you get back to the wider issue of Gaza and then the whole issue of the rights of the Palestinians as well?”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What happened on the 7th of October was not done in the name of those aspirations, but nonetheless, this is the reality that we're facing.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the pummeling of innocent people. And so a way forward, Alistair, requires us to recognize the pain and the harm and destruction on both sides. So I just want to say that at the very beginning. Now, the difficult question is how do we begin to chart a political way forward? You know, you can to a certain degree and who knows whether Israel will be able to do this. It's unpredictable. It's uncertain. But you can maybe to a certain degree decapitate, degrade, downgrade Hamas. And there are real question marks about that. What you can't do is that you can't get rid of an ideology because it continues. And we can't ignore the context in which this happened, which is Palestinian aspirations and rights and political rights. However, I've got to make it clear that this is not a justification for Hamas did and what Hamas did is not, you know,”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's a good question, Alistair. And if there was a magic wand, we wouldn't be where we are today. So I think we should just acknowledge that. I think that if we can't answer the question of what to do about Hamas, then it becomes very difficult to understand how you deal with Israel's own sense of security. And I don't think we should underestimate the trauma, the pain and the horror that Israelis see today that their security and that deterrence that they held on to for so long has been shattered. So I think before you can ask them to stop the bombing, you've got to be clear on how you restore that. And that requires us to do with Hamas. Yet at the same time, and for me, it's about how do you stop the bombing? Because the statistics just on the children alone and the pummeling of Gaza.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of Britain standing in the world. And I mean, I'll be candid that that's been lost. And I think there is a concern about how the UK is viewed internationally. There is a sense in which the UK is sort of lost at sea that what we trusted it for, what we understood it for, about protecting some of these key principles and doctrines are, I wouldn't say completely gone, but have been there's a sense in which we're struggling to claim our rightful seat at the table, which is why people are questioning why the UK still sits at the table of the UN.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, when I was coming onto this podcast, it's like, I'm going to have to do everything in my power to avoid talking about this. You know, when you were asking me, Rory, to sort of chart my own history in the course of sort of international politics and the glorious area or not and everything about the UN, there's another story about the UK as the champion of the United Nations and these core principles. And I would say that those core principles is what bound both sides of the political divide, whether you are conservative or whether you're a Labour, there was a sense in which the UK was seen as a reliable, trusted go-to actor. And I remember my first sort of coming to crisis group and even before then, the importance of knocking on the door of embassies, of getting the perspective of the UK officials because they were very succinct, analytical. The Foreign Office for me still the go-to place partly because some of my colleagues have come from there and I've gone back to then everything. So there was a clear sense.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but everything. It was a letter that you were reading 75 years of failure. But I go back to that classic first degree essay that we are all asked to sort of answer when we're doing international relations. If the United Nations did not exist today, would recreate it. Yes, as a child of children that have suffered the colonial legacy and as a child coming from countries who fled, who had to flee or were told not to go back because of the civil war, as a child who saw and listened to stories of people who fled other countries and who has friends who are refugees, I would recreate the United Nations for that reason, to safeguard those rights, even if it appears to be a fallacy. Today, even if it appears that it's been smashed up today on the high halt of geopolitics, I would recreate the UN. A better one where this self-entitlement that you can continue to sit at the helm of the Security Council is then equalized in a different way.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You saw last, I think it was last week in the midst of all the tragedy of Gaza. I think you saw somebody from the office of the High Commission for Human Rights. Right, it was quite a letter, you know, that one feels as though that person resigned for other resignation was coming, but it all sort of crash landed and all his frustrations and sadness and concerns were all laid to bear as a result of Gaza. So that was probably his tipping point.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, it's always nice to start off with a good story, but with every large organization that you do run up against bureaucracy, when you are in the deepest far flung northern bit of Sudan, you know, or South Sudan or the places where you're also familiar with an Afghanistan and you're caught up with filling in all these forms and checking boxes and everything, it becomes ridiculous because your simple job is to focus on how you're going to get the wells fixed, how you're going to get the trucks to the next village, how you're going to do the water well, how you're going to get that child that is caught in the crossfire of a rebel.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, I think with Asia as well. And there is that tension. I think China would guard jealously. And in fact, where there is consensus, so I talked about how dysfunctional the P5 is, but where there is consensus is that they jealously guard their right to stay in that position. So when Biden opens the door to reform, it is a reform that keeps us at the table and intact as the P5. This is not about one of us off and the other one, you know, and a new person in. There is a question today as to how you right size for Security Council, how you bring in another two or three, but there's no question about those five going off.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Liberal global order. If you're going to judge them on their democracy, then you're opening the door to each size those other five permanent countries as well. But I mean. Number one, that even in the regions of these countries, there's no consensus on who's going to represent them as well. So, for example, in Africa, there's a real contest. The continent has its own superpowers. The continent has its own hegemon. So Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt also and Ethiopia all vying for status as the representatives.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your entry point, all our entry points tend to be the Security Council. And so if I was to focus on that, then yes, it's inevitable and there's certain things that are inevitable with an intergovernmental system, which is what it is. There's also something inevitable and dysfunctional about a body that in the end is controlled by five countries who, by the way, the only claim to be on the Security Council rested with the triumph in which they brought not to be underssold with the Second World War. The world is radically different from the end of the Second World War. There are other powers that are fine.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. And it's not dead. And in fact, and I made that very clear when I gave my sort of acceptance speech at the United Nations, if your entry point is the Security Council, then yes, you'll be forgiven for questioning its relevance going forward. But the UN is more than the Security Council. I think there are important agencies that are doing vital work as we speak today. They're at the front line, for example, in trying to get trucks into Gaza. Then you've got important agencies that are doing work on climate change, doing work on environmental issues. You've got other bodies that are doing sort of important vital developmental work like UNDP as well. So I think you've got to look at the entirety of the UN. And when I worked in the UN in Liberia, Rory, I began to appreciate the rest of the UN family that does the sort of work behind the scenes that doesn't often get heard about and where the job is largely thankless. Our entry point.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were misused, there were double standards, there was hypocrisy. We talk about those things today, but they're already there, Rory, in 2010. They're already there exposed. A spotlight was shone on them in the midst of Libya, in the midst of Ivory Coast, and in the midst of the democratic republic. We already saw that the system was brittle, was fragile, and was being called into question then.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, working, and they called it rehatting. So, for example, despite, and I think concerns about the heavy-handedness, for example, of Nigerian military or other regional bodies and countries, Ivory Coast, despite the controversies of their intervention in Sierra Leone or Liberia, the UN saw them as useful tools because it was Africa in the lead. And this was also the era of African solutions for African problems. I leave aside what I think about that. All is to say is that there was a period of a sense in which the UN was on the right path. It started to go in the wrong direction in the midst of 9-11, and it further took a knockback because all the triumphalism of that period was started to sort of die within the context of the Arab Spring. And then we get to Libya when doctrines, peacekeeping, responsibility to protect, all those things that we championed were seeing for what they were.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there was a moment in which the region and the international body would work in concert to help rebuild and bring peace.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's what we struggle with every single day. I think what we've watched is that in the theatres of war, civil wars, interstate conflict, war and terror, in the midst of all that, and I would even say that the first salvo of the crisis that faced the UN was in Srebrenica, where you, Alistair, Rory would know, Rwanda was the other beginning of the death knell. So even in that glorious era that everybody talks about, there were already problems with peacekeeping and question marks about that the UN's own ability to peacekeep. But then suddenly in the 2000s, we saw a resurgence of the United Nations going into places where I first started in Sierra Leone, in Liberia, and one of my former bosses who also was president at Crisis Group, Jean-Marie Geheno, came up with this innovation of partnerships where the regional bodies would re-hat in the form, for example, of the West Africa body working partnership with the US.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“93. I was in between finishing my master's and then getting ready or trying to figure out whether I was going to do a PhD or go to law school.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I say it proudly that I was probably self-declared longest intern. I believe I was the longest intern. I mean, if there was a Guinness Book of Records on internship, I probably would get it. I think I don't know, but at least in my world.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should say it's always been the ebb and flows. It can exacerbate certain conflicts and there's certain conflicts that become proxy to great power politics. I mean, it was great power politics that brought us into two world wars. So I don't want to make it sound as though it's new. I think what is new is we're no longer...”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As the committee is the most atrocious crime, my job is to find or to shape the politics of peace. And that requires me to engage with you. So I spend my time understanding, bringing your perspective into my analysis. In the end, I'm going to come up with policy options. And those are policy options that you may not like, but they're nonetheless how we understand a way out of the crisis.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both those things, and I think that is crisis group sort of unique power. We're not a name and shame organization, Alistair. We spend our time, as you suggest, providing sort of rigorous field-based analysis so we don't parachute in those countries, our analysts are either working in those countries. long historical presence in those countries. They also work in the regions as well. Our job is not to, as I said, name and shame, but to find a pathway to peace. It's about getting stuck in the politics, the grey area. So we don't see a black and white. We're trying to seek a compromise. We're trying to seek solutions that requires us to engage, to understand the dilemmas of the actors involved. My very first job is to build trust with even the most problematic actors, even actors who've got blood in their hands.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Haiti's another one. I think you were talking about an era sort of post the Cold War. It's funny how certain crises come back onto the agenda. So Haiti is sort of back on our agendas about three or four times in the span of 30 years. You've got Yemen also in the Middle East region, Sudan. I've heard you and I have to give credit to your podcast for continuously bringing places like Sudan and the Sahel, which should be a strategic importance anyway to the West onto the agenda. The DRC, one of the longest running intractable conflicts on the continent. And then, you know, I mention other unknown ones like the Central Africa Republic as well. And then, you know, we've got, well, it's not a small one. I think it's quite a big one. The South China Seas and Taiwan. I wouldn't put that as an off-the-radar conflict. I'd call it quite significant.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With China, and it's also largely because we are talking at a time of great power politics. I think one of the factors that has undermined the ability to deal with crises like Myanmar is because of the US-China tension.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you've got a situation where the coup leaders are entrenched, suppressing resistance, trying to push ahead with elections. But you've got leaders who are using the most brutal tactics to sideline, to curtail, to oppress people. And you're seeing heavy human trafficking in the region, first heavy refugee flows. And you remember Rory Alistair, we had the Rohingya crisis as well, and you had flows of refugees going into the border regions of Bangladesh. And today you've got a country where it has been able systematically to ignore the international community to its resistant to the pressure of sanctions, resistant to ideas of intervention, and it's been able to maintain its power, partly because the international community has decided that it has seized no options. It's not prepared to go into sort of loggerheads.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, when I became interim vice president in 2021, I was told, welcome to your new job, Myanmar, the coup. Myanmar was at the top of the headline in February 2021. It dominated the first three years of my transition and it slipped down the radar. That's the other one.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way it went, it went wrong. Notions of state building, notions that you can't impose peace, that you can't use the military or strong arm of the military to fix the problem, the notion that you can go in and bomb a country, even despite the atrocities of that country, the notion that the United States and its notion of democracy could easily be transported, I think, died a death in Iraq and Afghanistan, which you know well, Rory, if everything I was saying is wrong, then we wouldn't be where we are today, which is 20 years wiped out on the return to Taliban also the notion of democracy and human rights, the fallacy of that, particularly in Africa as well, and now suddenly we see that all those ideas suddenly look very free come 2010 in the midst of the Arab Spring as well.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That, but soon after the Irish peace agreement, then things started to fall apart. And it was very first tested in Syria when suddenly you saw that the principles of peacemaking, peacekeeping were no longer holding truth. Leaders said that in the name of responsibility to protect all those key doctrines, and suddenly there are fritted away, and I think the very first damage was in response to 9-11. And fast forward, people are invoking 9-11 again in terms of Israel-Palestine. So I think that was the first death of that.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was going to come to that because I'm walking backwards. And I think the only other one in my time that I think Holds credibly. And I think when you look at it within the guise of Crisis Group, and we never worked on Northern Ireland, which was interesting, Alistair, that for me was sort of a classic example of contemporary post-Cold War.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a good question, Rory, and I've just come back from our board meeting in Oslo, and this was a central theme that today we are, what we are witnessing is a crisis in peacemaking. And also at the same time that we see a new generation of conflicts emerging. And basically, I think what we found is that particularly after the Arab Spring, I mean, let's backtrack a little bit. I mean, I think one thing is clear to me, the era of negotiators' settlements, finding peace deals, that there are only two that we can cite in recent times, Colombia in 2016, the ending of the FARC, and then 2014, Mindanao in the Philippines. Those are the only two that we can mention.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“a vindication of what we had forecasted that there would be a run on the country, that there would be a challenge to the elections, and that there would be some kind of attempt to delegitimize that as well. So that's why we are where we are.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What did we see? We saw language that we would see in other conflict zones, so looking at sort of civilians who were protesting on the street, Trump was using language of battlefields, of enemies of the states, and while these were citizens protesting in the name of justice and equality. And we have an indicator, Alistair, for example, when we're looking for countries that are going to go through election crisis where we think that the elections will be usurped, will be challenged, where we think that various actors will seek to delegitimize the vote. We use this indicators to look at other countries. And our boss, my boss at the time, Rog Mali, asked curiously if you try to overlay this within the United States, what would the scorecard look like and everything turned red? And in fact, the January 6th incident, Alistair, whatever it is, familiar with, was sad.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and in fact, in our nearly 30 years of history, Alistair, a decision was taken in the aftermath of the George Floyd incident for crisis group to formally work on the United States as a conflict actor. Now, let me step back a bit. A decision was taken soon after Trump's coming in power that we needed to look at the United States in terms of do no harm in terms of its use of force and within the context of the war and terror and never-ending conflicts. And so the trustees sort of instructed us, so to speak, to start looking at the US overseas and its foreign policy. We took a tilt in 2020 to look at the United States domestic politics and reverberations.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say close to all of them, particularly on my mother's side. So I call my aunt in Nigeria Mummy Campos. And we tend to call people by their location. So my cousins will call her Mama Keja because the Keja is one of the government areas boroughs, if you like, in Lagos. But because I grew up on campus, I grew up on the Lagos campus. I called her and her husband, Mummy and Daddy, campus. And then my mom's elder brother, we would hang out and play with them and their children in Ibados. But they came from Canada. So I would call them mommy and daddy Canada because that's how I identified with them. And then I arrived in London. I was told they were coming back to London. And I saw my parents as mummy and daddy London. And I was told, these are your parents. I was like, oh, who are these people? So I felt blessed. I felt that I had several parents.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I came back at the time of infants, the last year of infants. Do we still call it infants? Pre primary school, I guess. My older brother came back in time to go to primary school. And I was brought up on my mum's side by her sister and her siblings. And we lived in my uncle, my mum's elder sister's husband, was in University of Lagos. So I grew up on the campus, Lagos campus, and my aunt was working for the African American Institute. She was also a museum curator. And in fact, she influenced, I mean, it's hard to tell my story and the decisions I took without talking about my aunt in Nigeria because she influenced it.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could only answer that on hindsight because I was a child. I mean, I was a baby when I went to Nigeria. I mean, my parents did what all good Nigerian parents did at that time, which is to take their children back, get them steeped in their heritage, the Nigerianness. And in fact, I was convinced that my mother was the one in Nigeria, which was her elder sister. And I used to call her mummy all the time. I had no idea that this wasn't my, you know, and then she's a lot.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And on that note, expect the signed copy at my door of your copy. Tomorrow, but that's tomorrow. It's on my maternal, my mother's mother's name, comfort. And, you know, as all children from those canonial past, you know, they do land with an English name at one point. My English name is comfort, and I have a host of other names that are non-English. What are your names? Comfort equase, which is the Binny side, Edo state of my father, and Abu Salah, which is the Yoruba side of my mother, my full name is Ayaru Ero, which is my father's name. And the same goes on with my brothers as well. I mean, the other tradition is that your grandparents and the most significant people in your family also name you as well.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the law. So in the midst of doing my first degree, he registered me, and I still wasn't interested. They still didn't get it. And then he said, well, you do your master's. And I did it in international relations. And he still wasn't figuring it out. And I was still registered to do law. I deferred it several times. But my father seemed to have a way with the law society that maintained that.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was campaigning for Thatcher. My father had some key books because my father was an educationist. He always bought our school books and he would take our list of books to read and he'll just literally go out and buy all the ones. But there was one thing he consistently bought, which is books of politically and historically significant women. So I grew up with one book in the living room apart from Goldomir and Gandhi. I grew up with Thatcher's book. That doesn't say anything about my father's political lenience, but it said a lot about how he viewed women. And he was very clear to me about your independence as a woman, your independence as a woman was bound by your education, that you get educated, nothing can be taken away from you because you chart your own course. And so I didn't do medicine. My dad didn't understand it. And he said, well, what else are you going to do? The only other profession he could possibly conceive of.”
2023-11-13 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 45. Dr Comfort Ero: Resolving deadly conflicts & reforming the UN · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source