DIPLOMACY CAN WORK...IF WE LET IT

I spent an informative day recently in Prague at the Forum 2000, a think group organised by one of my hero’s, Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia. He’s a seriously great man, poet, dissident, imprisoned by the Communists, and leader of the ‘velvet revolution’ that saw a free Czechoslovakia. President Havel, gently and with dignity, presided over the peaceful separation of the old Czechoslovakia into two independent nations, the Czech and Slovakian Republics. Not easy. For those who think individuals don’t matter, imagine if Milosevic had been President of Czechoslovakia and Havel, President of Yugoslavia! The great and good at the Forum, as is usual at such meetings nowadays, expressed disappointment in the corridors at the failure of the world community to grasp the opportunity to reform the United Nations. It’s shameful that leaders attack the United Nations for its many failures then refuse it the funds and the Secretary-General the power to do the job. The limp, disappointing reforms of the United Nations do suggest abolishing the embarrassing and discredited Human Rights Commission with a new Human Rights Council which is a good step. More dramatic is the idea of a Peace-Building Commission, which if funded and lead properly could implement the new doctrine of their responsibility to protect. But the non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state is an old principle. The ‘right’ to do what you like within your border should not be beyond international action. This has long been an alibi for all sorts of evil policies. The creative leader of one of the most effective Non Government Organisations, former Foreign Minister of Australia, Gareth Evans of the International Crisis Group had some good news to report:

• There has been a dramatic decline in the number of armed conflicts since the early 90s - by 80% in the case of conflicts with 1000 or more battle deaths in a year. Although some 60 violent conflicts are still being waged around the world, war between states has almost completely disappeared - now less than 5% of around the world, war between states has almost completely disappeared - now less than 5% of all conflicts - and the overall environment is one of really major reduction.
• Paralleling the number of conflicts, the number of battle deaths is also dramatically down, both in absolute numbers and in terms of the deadliness of each individual conflict. Whereas back in the 1950s and for years thereafter the average number of deaths per conflict per year was 30-40,000, by the early 2000s this number was down to around 600 - reflecting the shift from high to low intensity conflicts, and geographically from Asia to Africa. Of course violent battle deaths are only a small part of the whole story of the misery of war; as many as 90% of war-related deaths are due to disease and malnutrition rather than direct violence. But the trend decline in battle deaths is a significant and highly encouraging story.
• There has been a dramatic increase in the number of conflicts resolved by active peace-making, involving diplomatic negotiations, international mediation and the like: the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change which reported top the Secretary-General in the lead-up to this year’s United Nations Summit came up with the startling but well-researched statement that more civil wars have been ended by negotiation in the last 15 years than in the previous two centuries.

Dilpomacy can work.

None of this should make us complacent or smug, there’s much to do, we should all be haunted by the tragedy of Rwanda, the Balkans and elsewhere. But we have learnt what works and what certainly does not. Conflict prevention and conflict resolution is better than forceful peace-making. But no-one ever won the Nobel Prize for stopping something that never happened. Even in post-conflict peacekeeping we have learnt valuable lessons, that’s about resources, focus and the patience to win, slowly, calmly, over a long period of time. That’s where this one reform agreed to in the process of UN reform can work and do much good. This proposed Peace Building Commission could be the best new idea in years. Fundamental to this is democracy, and here again we have something good to report. Less than 10 years ago only one third of nations were democratic. By 2002, two thirds of nations were democratic. Now for the first time in human history, three quarters of people live in a form of democratic self-government. Good but not good enough.

It’s just a pity there are not enough Havels to go around.