For Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the best way to build a peaceful future is through a proper deconstruction of, and reconciliation with, our past.
Though initially touching on the unfortunate and abhorrent realities stemming from the Syrian Civil War and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, al-Hussein sought to impart on the audience that anyone concerned with the issue of human rights should begin to look at our present problems with a new light: with an eye for the past rather than a narrow focus on the present. An unfortunate degree of short-sightedness is common when examining these issues, whether it be by individual actors or international organizations.
Al-Hussein’s selection as speaker for the seventy-fifth annual Borah Symposium, as noted by University of Idaho Provost Torrey Lawrence, comes after a number of prominent symposium speakers including Nobel Prize winner Becky Williams and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Al-Hussein has a lengthy career on the international stage championing human rights. He was the sixth high commissioner for Human Rights for the United Nations as well as one of the key individuals in establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) and served on the court as its first president in 2002. Al-Hussein also served as Jordan’s ambassador to the United States. It is this wealth of experience and knowledge that informs his continued pursuits of securing protections for the most vulnerable.
“The UN in particular has failed to grasp the critical importance of confronting contested histories, there again the UN is only a reflection of the world…and can only make a difference around the margins,” al-Hussein said. “Sadly, it is not making that difference now.”
According to al- Hussein, the world is seeing various divisive and destructive political narratives being forwarded by populists and chauvinistic nationalists.
To properly address the growing attractiveness of these narratives, Hussein said that, at the global level, there will need to be “a much deeper exploration of the human psyche.”
Hussein posited that this idea could be, and needed to be, extrapolated outward to change the international communities’ traditional response to the project of restoring stability to a country in the wake of broad political upheaval and violent conflict.
In the past, the mindset has been that peacebuilding projects could be achieved by addressing a nation’s infrastructural needs: rebuilding roads, trains bridges, and other infrastructure. Hussein calls this “throwing cement at the problem.”
Hussein claims that the fatal flaw of this method of restoration lies in the fact that the mental scarring that preceded and followed the turmoil fails to be properly resolved.
“We are not in need of more peacekeepers, we are in need of therapists,” Hussein said, referencing a remark heard in the wake of the Bosnian War.
While presiding over the UN Security Council, Hussein argued that addressing collective memories can be a way of securing future peace. Through his interaction with ambassadors and world leaders, Hussein was able to see first-hand the sensitivity that national narratives held, even when concerning events that occurred more than a century ago.
In an examination of World War I, al-Hussein recalled ambassadors bristling during an examination of the oft forgotten individuals that contributed to the onset of World War I, with many wishing to leave the crimes of the past unaddressed. While some would argue that history, by its nature, is a matter of “endless debate,” al-Hussein lamented that the proliferation of this idea has been unfortunate.
“No one disputes the broader sequences of events…what historians will often contest are the motivations of the individual actors caught up in the unfolding sequence of events, or the precise sequence itself,” al-Hussein said, being careful to note that these disputes do not translate to a justification to “discredit history altogether.”
During his time on the Security Council, Husein noted that Russia refused to acknowledge the role that the Sergei Sassenach, the then-current Russian Foreign Minister, played in inciting World War I. Additionally, the only time he ever saw “the two Koreas and China agree on something, (was) the absurdity of Japan’s sanitizing at the time of its imperial history.” This desire to reject accountability is by no means limited to these two examples, however, nor to whole countries.
“All of us if we go back far enough in our family histories, we will come across accomplishments big or small to admire, and most probably demons to recognize, however painful those are,” Al-Hussein said. “Even if we tried to lead good lives, our family trees will very likely contain among the branches, some shameful behavior. Humility should therefore flow easily from us.”
“We must see our histories in high resolution, its warts most especially,” al-Hussein said. “Know what harms our communities may have in the past caused others and, with much humility, as a community muster the strength to atone for them.”
For al-Hussein, these issues around contested narratives and rising populism stem at least in part from inadequacies in education systems, which too often are strictly concerned with assessing technical competencies and can leave moral competencies wholly unaddressed.
“High intelligence and technical knowledge are insufficient insulators against bad outcomes,” al-Hussein said.
In fact, history has shown that the opposite can be true; some of the most educated in society can be among the biggest offenders of human rights violations and moral wrongdoing.
“Eight out of the (15) attending the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 to detail the final solution held doctorates, there were far from being uneducated,” al-Hussein said, referencing the infamous conference in which Nazi leaders conferred to devise an extermination plan for the Jewish people.
Though working to further the causes of peace and human rights can seem like daunting tasks that are hardly influenced by the actions of any one individual, Hussein believes the reality is that the actions of one can have cascading effects on a broader community, a broader region and the world writ large.
While al-Hussein said that the U.S. can address this in part by implementing curriculum dedicated to understanding international human rights, the most important change to be made lies in the “settl(ing) its historical narrative,” an issue characterized as being of “national urgency.”
According to al-Hussein, the current state of America is one of reckoning. For al-Hussein, the present reckoning stems from issues of our past as well as our present: we are reckoning with an increasingly militarized law enforcement, we are reckoning with recent restrictions and rollbacks to protections for reproductive health, and we are reckoning with historical inequalities of income, housing, healthcare and employment. It is the combination of all of these components, al-Hussein said, that has led him to harbor significant concern over America’s future.
In a Q&A session following al-Hussein’s talk, multiple individuals questioned how such far-reaching institutional problems could be properly addressed. These problems at the national level can certainly appear daunting to any one individual. When one broadens their view globally, bringing an end to human rights abuses can naturally make one resolve that extinguishing such problems is a hopeless endeavor. For al-Hussein, however, the future is not so grim, nor are these problems so insurmountable.
“There’s nothing more powerful than when a truth comes from a single courageous voice, defending the rights of all, and threatening violence or harm to no one,” al-Hussein said. “Is that not something we all admire? A voice that is often willing to overcome that instinct (of self-preservation) …for the sake of defending principle which has relevance to all of humanity.”
Royce McCandless can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter @roycem_news