YouSaid · the spoken record

Olonisakin

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19

first

2023-05-03

most recent

2023-05-03

sittings or episodes

1

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un-security-council

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1. “On the contrary, let us have the courage to question and rethink the system together in order to make it better. Strengthened by that conviction, Switzerland welcomes the initiative of the Secretary-General, who next month will propose a New Agenda for Peace. Today’s debate is a real opportunity to gather ideas and proposals from Member States and to take advantage of the synergies that unite us. Trust is earned through actions, not intentions. It is in that spirit that I believe in the strength of multilateralism. I now resume my functions as President of the Council. I shall now give the floor to those members of the Council who wish to make statements.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

2. “We will also need to consider how the Council can strengthen the foundations of a broader peacebuilding architecture, which must be inclusive of all whom the population has designated as democratically legitimate. It must also respect cultural differences and care for the historical heritage that defines us. Imposed peace is not sustainable. Finally, trust is built on concrete facts. Science and new technologies offer us opportunities to better anticipate and understand the risks of today and the opportunities of tomorrow. We must respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century with twenty-first century solutions. Injustices and violations of the Charter of the United Nations do not justify the entrenchment of each behind their own positions.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

3. “It is time to refine our tools to restore trust and build lasting peace. That is the objective of today’s debate, organized by Switzerland — to rebuild the bridges that connect us. Where there is trust, anything is possible. International law is based on the Latin phrase pacta sunt servanda — agreements must be kept. That principle embodies the mutual trust of parties who pledge their word and keep it. I am convinced that if we can restore that trust, we will be able to restore long-term peace. To achieve that, we need to focus on the areas where multilateralism has real added value. First, we must ensure adherence to a common and respected normative framework, basedonhumanrightsandpublicinternational law. Predictability, not arbitrariness, is the basis for trust. Through trust, we can aim for a lasting peace.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

4. “Globalization was presented there as a factor for peace, as if the end of the Cold War and the economic interdependence would usher in a new era of peace. Yet today there is still war. How did we get here? How can we avoid being the ones who failed to react to the current crises? Seventy-seven years ago, nations united, cemented by trust and the will to rebuild, said: never again. And yet, today there is war. Perhaps we were guilty of arrogance? We have to admit that we have not sufficiently taken account the frustrations and changes taking place everywhere on our planet. Yes, the multilateral system is under stress, but no, it is not bankrupt. The real failure would be to do nothing. It is time for the Security Council to assume its responsibilities and to reflect on its potential for action in the face of the growing number of crises.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

5. “At the outset, I would like to thank the three briefers for their valuable insights. Recently, I went back to my old school to talk about foreign policy. The students asked me only questions about the war and its consequences. That made a deep impression on me. I realized how different our questions were when I was a student at that school 45 years ago, in the late 1970s. My classmates and I were convinced then that there would never be another war in Europe. Our teachers and our parents had lived through the Second World War, and they swore to us that the international community had learned its lesson. In 1992, Francis Fukuyama announced the end of history in his bestseller The End of History and the Last Man.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

6. “Beyond regulation, part of the norm-setting task of institutions will include the facilitation of investments and intervention to make technology, including artificial intelligence, safer and peace-leaning. Returning to where I began, futureproofing trust for sustaining peace requires the reduction of uncertainty by anticipating the future of peace, better connecting science and future people and holding a space, as was said earlier, that builds an inclusive imagining of the future. The United Nations would do well to lead thinking and policymaking about this vitally important element of futureproofing trust. ThePresident(spokeinFrench):Ithank Ms. Olonisakin for her briefing. I shall now make a statement in my capacity as Federal Councillor and Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

7. “Without a systematic and inclusive connection between science and people, particularly the future people I described earlier and without a collective imagining about the future of peace, there will be less certainty about the agency of global and regional institutions to shift the tide towards sustaining peace in future. In order to be relevant in a future of peace, institutions must today facilitate an approach that accommodates multiple futures and enables a seamless connection between science and future people across their diversities so that they can unleash their own agency in the pursuit of peace. Including future people in norm-development, for example, is an important element in imagining the future of peace and war, thus connecting the world as it ought to be with how it really is, empirically.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

8. “Already, the report of the High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, A Breakthrough for People and Planet: Effective and Inclusive Global Governance for Today and the Future, which was developed at the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, which also served as the secretariat of the Advisory Board, includes 10 specific principles of effective multilateralism, all of which together provide a framework for rebuilding trust with global majorities. I am not about to rehash them here, but it is worth noting that the report underscores the importance of an anticipated reaction, while calling also for increased transparency on peace and security, including increased investment in peace.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

9. “The power hierarchies between institutions and society and within institutions, whether global or regional, pose grave risks because they reinforce inequalities and maintain a dangerous inequity between the real owners of peace and the distanced beholders of peace. Despite well-articulated norms and templated technical solutions, institutions invariably deny agency to the vast majority of future people.”

   2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

10. “That range of reasons is why the network of institutions I mentioned earlier — GESDA, GCSP and SIPA — argue for complementing predictions made accessible through scientific means with the use of informed imagination to anticipate a variety of future scenarios, with a view to understanding how better to prepare for change, and of course for black-swan events too. The third and last set of factors has to do with trust between people and institutions, and we have heard a lot about that already. But that raises the question as to what that all means for institutions that will be relevant to governing the future of peace and war. That is the importance of the institution at which we are speaking today. Trust between people and institutions is needed to undergird peacebuilding.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

11. “For example, religious leaders, cultural leaders and dynamic events determine so much more than scientists and social laboratories. That is partly why the African Leadership Centre’s data laboratory, among others, has collected and analysed hundreds of millions of pieces of social media data, combined with ethnographies of communities that are usually excluded, in order to observe the complex and dynamic ways that peace, development and conflict are interpreted, reimagined and reinterpreted by different people across age, gender and social status.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

12. “But in recognizing that our chronological thinking limits our capabilities to comprehend the complexities of the intertwined time frames of events, it is important to see future peace and war not as isolated events but as part of a broader experiential continuum. The multidimensional nature of reality will likely generate multiple futures of peace and war. That will certainly require bringing into focus the empirical reality of people and places that are often peripheral to global policy decision-making on peace and war. I think we also heard the previous briefers speak about this. For example, in cultures that form part of the majority world, the current, past and future leadership of opinions on security, war and peace is not readily under the influence of elites that we can predict.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

13. “Studying future people longitudinally is important in order to understand how they organize, build community and problem-solve today, and crucially, how the present technological world and society will influence their longitudinal maturity. That will enable us to understand, or at least examine, the unfolding future consciously, progressively and piece by piece through the lens of those who inevitably will govern the world in 2050. That concept holds much significance, we argue, for futureproofing trust for sustaining peace. To be clear, the future is not a singularity or a specific point, nor is it linear.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

14. “Anticipatory methodologies for understanding peace and war in the future must also seek to bring science and people together, connecting scientific breakthroughs with future people, by which I mean those who will govern the world in 2050. That will be vital if we are to circumvent the tyranny of now and the temptation to simply fix power and agency in expectation of a sequential future that concurrently succeeds the present. The reality will be different. The 10-year research agenda that I co-lead at the African Leadership Centre of King’s College London and in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, asks one central question. How will perceptions of peace and the State change among those who will govern the world in 2050? The reason is simple — although not that simple.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

15. “We therefore urgently need to develop a sense of things to come and to imagine the future of peace and war in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer pace of change. For if we are overwhelmed, our agency will be easily lost, and that is the crux of the matter. Three organizations, among others, are leading the way in developing methodologies for anticipating the future of war and peace — the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, here in New York City. That work is timely and requires the active engagement of policymakers. The second set of factors to consider involves bringing science and future people together.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

16. “We know, for example, that advances in science and technology are critical drivers of war and peace for the future and that the determinants of where power lies, who has agency and how that agency is exercised are underpinned by that. But we do not know enough about how the evolution of science and technology in the future will change power and agency. We also now know, for example, that progress in artificial intelligence is leading to advances in the capacity, or capability, of systems, and that there is less advancement in humans’ ability to control them. In that context, the sheer speed of breakthroughs in science and technology is matched only by the scale of our inability to anticipate the implications for politics, society, war and peace.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

17. “The question that therefore confronts us is how we proactively engage with those tensions without retreating to business as usual — that is, the technical, transactional exercise of engagement that ultimately does not build trust or facilitate any peace, now or in the future. I believe that three interrelated factors warrant deeper reflection on our part. The first has to do with norms, science and anticipation. To be sure, norms enable us to design tools for directing the world the way we think it ought to be. But the starting point has to be to understand the world as it really is and to collectively imagine a new future for sustaining peace. Of course, there are knowns and unknowns in that regard.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

18. “There is therefore a case for aligning our engagement with three important realities of our time if we are to rebuild trust and futureproof the trust that is critical to sustaining peace. The first of those realities is uncertainty. The current period of uncertainty in the world carries inherent risks. The second, which is related to uncertainty, is distance — the distance between nations, the power distance between institutions and the majority of the people in the world and the distance between leaders and those whom they lead. The third is the seeming disconnect between science and the agency of institutions and people, particularly people of the future.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source

19. “Ms. Olonisakin: The message thus far has been clear. Futureproofing trust for sustaining peace requires inclusive approaches, norms that are fit for purpose and trusted knowledge on how to think about future peace. Therefore, to be sure, first of all, norms matter. So do normative frameworks that drive collective accountability and predictability and that enhance trust because they are widely owned. At the end of the day, they should define the terms on which societies can live well together and in dignity. Secondly, knowledge that is trusted, available to all and transparently governed is an essential ingredient in futureproofing trust. At the core of all of that, however, is an important tension that must be addressed. It is the tension between understanding our world as it should be and how it really is empirically.”

    2023-05-03 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9315 (2023) · source