UN75 Global Consultation with Government & Civil Society in San Francisco:
a Collective Narrative
By Tatiana Vekovishcheva
On April 4, 2020, the United Nations Association of the USA, San Francisco Chapter (UNA-SF) hosted the UN75 Global Consultation with Government & Civil Society in San Francisco to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations (UN) and help the UN set priorities for the next 25 years. This endeavor is part of a series of consultations with several stakeholder groups of San Francisco—the birthplace of the United Nations.
Delegates of this consultation shared perspectives informed by their experiences as leaders and members of established civil society organizations as well as foreign diplomats, former UN employees, and US government officials serving with the Government of the City and County of San Francisco or federal government agencies. Mary Elizabeth Steiner, President of the UNA-SF, served as Head of Engagement for this consultation.
This group of 27 delegates included 11 delegates affiliated with civil society organizations that served as official consultants with the US Delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in 1945 (American Association of University Women, American Bar Association, American Jewish Committee, Council on Foreign Relations, League of Women Voters, Lions Clubs International, National Council of Jewish Women, Rotary International, and United Nations Association of the United States of America), 9 delegates representing International Consulates in San Francisco, and 2 delegates representing the City & County of San Francisco (Department of the Environment and Department on the Status of Women) among others.
Some delegates were sent by their organizations while others applied as individuals and were selected for their experience. All delegates were encouraged to share their personal perspectives not bound by their organizations’ official positions to allow for sincere and generative conversations.
In the context of the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, this consultation was conducted online. A participatory process called World Café was used to combine the benefits of small group conversations and cross-pollination of diverse perspectives of the group-at-large. Fyodor Ovchinnikov, Chair of the UN Global Consultations Committee, served as Head of Process.
Delegates’ reflections were stewarded and harvested according to the Collective Narrative Methodology and processed into a collective narrative by Tatiana Vekovishcheva. As Head of Reporting, she will use the information from this narrative to submit a report to the National Office of the United Nations Association of the United States of America in Washington DC. This report will be combined with reports from other consultations and shared with the United Nations and US Congress Members.
COLLECTIVE NARRATIVE
We raised a lot of consistent concerns and interrelated crisis issues such as climate challenges, migration, health and well-being inequalities, women's rights, education, food insecurity, trust, and others. All those issues are interconnected: climate change impacts migration and health, human rights impact inequalities and trust, and so on. We cannot solve one issue without solving the other, and solving one issue will help solve the other. However, although everything can be connected to another issue and everyone is affected, different people are affected in different ways and issues may have differential impacts on different communities and groups.
Recognizing the Paradox of Interconnectedness and Disparities Highlighted by COVID-19
Public health as a major theme right now seems to be in focus and view. COVID-19 is a crisis situation that is highlighting the issues that we have in the world right now, but those issues were here before. As we recognized the opportunity to learn from this incredible catastrophe, we looked to the future and envisioned that we do not have these issues anymore, that all basic needs are being addressed, and that there is equality among different groups of people along different lines.
We spoke about distribution of wealth and resources in light of the current pandemic as an example of weaknesses in our global systems and the need to address disparity in income, wealth, and health care shortfalls. Economic disparity is bad for the economy and it is bad for women and other vulnerable groups. The equity that we need and want is not there. It is not just gender inequity: it is discrimination, the inability of vulnerable groups—the unhoused, the migrants, the children, the disabled, and others—to have their voice heard.
We noticed that COVID-19 is pushing the view that we are one world, but there are still silos, and the question is how to get out of our individual silos. The silos exist on the local, state, national, and international levels. There is polarization and hostility, and vulnerable groups such as women are feeling the brunt of it. There has been a growing trend of hostility against women which includes domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of gender-based violence.
The issue of migration, specifically economic migration and economic refugees which is also influenced by climate change, came up along with the issues of equal pay and education of women and other vulnerable populations. There is an increasing vulnerability as a result of displacement and ongoing unhoused situations, and we see an increase in trafficked persons, especially women and children.
Taking Responsibility and Consolidating around the United Nations
Who can help solve all the issues that we are facing? Our communities need to take responsibility for vulnerable populations—we all are as much vulnerable as our weakest links—so the solution is to collaborate and come together. We agree that one of the biggest issues that we are facing today and one that we can continue to face if we don't address it, is the diasporic players and the discontinuity between different sectors.
Considering measures that can be taken to move us forward, we agree and recognize that everyone is responsible for taking action, including the private sector and civil society, media and tech, but it is especially important to highlight such players as government authorities and international non-governmental organizations. We are also finding that local nonprofits are essential. For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is working with nonprofits and seeking input from nonprofits and other civil society groups on how emergencies should be managed and regulated.
A specific actionable step that we can offer is encouraging the private sector to be more involved. We know that when companies make a pledge for a specific cause, they set the way for others as an example. A lot of private initiatives could be used for lessons learned and to help promote local actions at the grassroots level. In this context, the United Nations Association of the USA, San Francisco Chapter is looking toward the future and a better role knowing that it can collaborate with large tech companies and with other non-profits around the Bay Area that are looking at connecting us in more effective and enforceable ways.
We have also talked about how governments can provide financial help to small companies for products that help with developmental issues, meaning that the government is buying into solutions that may not come from them, but are coming from private sectors that aren't necessarily for profit but are for the advancement of human society. We had a lot of discussions about partnerships. It appears that public-private partnerships are working quite well and so we need to continue with that in order to address economic disparities.
We have the ongoing issue of figuring out how to connect with empathy, understanding, transparency, skill, mindfulness, and awareness of how we relate to each other, not just as individuals, but as local communities, as nations, as members states of the United Nations. There is also a growing number of non-governmental organizations that work around the world — thousands of them — and they are in need of connecting in a more transparent way.
We need to keep in mind that the UN plays and needs to continue to play an instrumental role in bringing all these groups together in order to facilitate the conversation, but more importantly, to facilitate change. We are looking at the United Nations System, especially the World Health Organization, as a way to provide protocols, standards, and medical equipment to come up with better ways for us to deal with future crises. The UN also holds the role to administer protection to people that are on the frontlines: in this case we have medical responders, but also for anyone who is most affected by whatever is taking place.
Recognizing the Critical Role of Grassroots Initiatives in Addressing Global Issues
At the same time, we need to recognize that the United Nations does have limitations in how much it can actually enforce. Therefore localities need to step up in order to implement the actual change within their societies. Local implementing partners need to uphold and implement global UN initiatives to make them sustainable. Our recommendation is to attack issues from a grassroots level, to work locally and to push back on autocracy.
Existential threats to humanity such as habitat loss, invasive species, overpopulation, pollution, overharvesting of resources, and nuclear weapons are in part being addressed by the United Nations, but we all should certainly promote successes in addressing them. We can only solve the current crisis if we recognize the different issues and empower people at the grassroots level.
The changes need to be made from the grassroots because every community struggles with different issues. There is no one issue that we can impose on everyone to solve first because it will not be the same for everyone, so it is important to have each community empowered to start tackling the issues that it is facing right now. With everyone solving their local issues, we can slowly solve our global issues. At the same time, one of the principles that should guide these actions is not to sacrifice the long term conditions or goals for short term needs and also to understand the effects that these actions would have on other people.
Different groups of people should have ways to participate in the United Nations, in shaping their future. The UN role in this is to amplify the message and to facilitate this work that is being done everywhere. Through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals the United Nations recognizes that there are different issues, that not everyone is struggling with the same issue but everything needs to be addressed. The SDGs as a framework is a very good way to promote that message and these goals translate into resiliency. Resiliency is a term that appeared a lot in our discussions.
Creating Cohesion through Trust-Based Multilateralism and Resilient Democratic Institutions
One pattern that emerges from our conversations is that we are becoming more aware. There is a general awareness of who we are: we are members of civil society organizations—some of our organizations are the original 42 that collaborated and consulted with our American delegation in 1945 about what the UN Charter should be while some of our organizations were founded more recently—we are members of the Diplomatic Corps of San Francisco, and we are members of the government of the City and County of San Francisco as well as federal government agencies.
We are very aware that many of us feel fractured and that we feel that we have a difficulty in responding together in our dysfunctional world. The lack of trust is especially an interesting issue because, like climate change, it is spreading and increasing while most other issues have always been part of our world. This lack of trust is mostly caused by the disappearance of communities and the disappearance of trust between neighbors. We need to integrate our systems globally a little bit better as we see a lack of leadership in addressing the issues we are facing and we do not see a lot of cohesion. Some of us also noted a lack of leadership at the national level here in the US and that the nation itself is dysfunctional at this time.
This situation requires multilateralism. Governments need to take responsibility and participate with the United Nations. There is also the need to emphasize resilience of local and even national institutions. The United Nations and other stakeholders should promote democratic elections and make sure that those institutions remain strong.
Maintaining the rule of law is a big and a difficult action to take. Considering national treaties, international treaties, and local enforcement, there is the issue of making international treaties a part of local law enforcement and there is ongoing interest in how to do that. There was an example given where an international treaty was brought to a local court.
Inculcating New Habits and Connecting with Others Virtually during the Pandemic
At a personal level, COVID-19 has brought the problems of the world home to us. We are speaking from our homes and we are looking at how, personally, our comfort zone is being impinged. Here we are, shut in at home and we are doing that so that someone else might live. Perhaps none of us is feeling completely comfortable, but at least we feel that we are in some way contributing to a greater good.
Given the tendency to be oriented inward rather than outward which is especially notable in this crisis, it is important to inculcate new habits of sustainability and empathy. At the same time, the sense of a greater good is also an increased level of awareness that we are feeling in this situation. We know we have a clearer picture of what our goals are and we are finding that we have actionable items as we connect with each other from our homes through the Internet, use social media, etc.
Using Reliable Information as a Basis for Grassroots Action and Policy Making
We want to call out the need to focus on education and access to education. We need to talk about it, inform people about what is going on, provide resources such as free webinars and debates. We all know these resources that are in our own sectors but we need to push this information to the general public so that they have access to it. These resources should not be reserved only for those who are in the playing field itself. We need to promote the global view.and better education for all.
Research that comes out of institutions focused on specific issues such as the World Health Organization or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs to be transferred into laws and actionable steps way before we are actually in a situation where we need to use it. The governments hold the power to make laws so they need to leverage the research that we have available in different countries and find a way to bring together the arm and the brain.
Considering inequality in terms of information or literacy, it is important to tackle this information and bring in science and evidence into the picture. We need accountability and collaboration. We need to have good information, evidence-based research, and then we need to share this information. It is critical to empower people by giving them legitimate and appropriate information. There is the saying that if you educate women, you educate a village. We need ways to apply that to the general public in order to spread information that is accurate and that people can make actionable decisions on.
Directly Linking the United Nations Organization to Local Communities and Government
We also recognize that all of us here understand how important the United Nations is, but there is a disconnect with the rest of the world or the rest of the population, even within a country. The United Nations Organization is a global actor: it is everywhere, but it is also somehow nowhere. United Nations Associations provide an anchoring in local communities which is very precious but the United Nations Association of the United States of America is only active in some major metropolitan areas of the United States while in the center, in most of the other communities of the United States, there is a very large gap in understanding of what the United Nations does, how it helps the globe, and that it is meant for all of us. This is a big gap that disconnects the UN from local communities, so we recommend directly linking the United Nations to local communities and governments.
The idea here is to go beyond just the political face of the United Nations, where we see countries arguing against each other. We need to share real contributions to the lives of ordinary people made by those who work on the ground in the UN System. There are a lot of people in the United States in non-governmental organizations who have attended UN conferences. We can use that local talent and connect them to each other within the country. The bottom line is to reach out to local communities and help them understand what the United Nations does, how we can work together as communities from the grassroots on up and then to actually work together on implementation and use available tools for sustainable change.
What every single one of us can do today is to start this grassroot movement by talking about what we are doing by serving as delegates, by participating in a call with our United Nations Association. We can talk about this to people around us, empower them to identify issues that they care about and take action so that we can all improve the situation and therefore empower others. So we can go to communities and local organizations to have a groundswell of support, educate decision makers on issues and work with them, and simultaneously support changes in the United Nations, in its bureaucracy and even in the Security Council.