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Bad tactics, good strategy: Britain’s inconsistent commitment to Security Council reform

Though the UN Security Council can appear defunct, it remains a crucial feature in the architecture of international governance. It is in British, and global, interests to reform it. But if Britain wants to transform its rhetoric on this issue into reality then it must take steps to expedite the process.

US Presidential confidante Daisy Suckley recalls that Franklin Roosevelt was in bed when it hit him. Next morning, as soon as he had finished breakfast, he climbed into his chair to be wheeled to Winston Churchill’s room. He knocked on the door. Hearing no answer, he went in and called for his guest. Churchill had just appeared, nude, in the bathroom door, when the President exploded: “The United Nations!”. “Good!”, the Prime Minister replied.

The UN was born in a Washington bedroom as the name for a wartime alliance. Yet in the face of newer, non-conventional threats such as cybercrime, terrorism, climate change, and now COVID-19, its executive body can appear deadlocked, even defunct.

Of course, the UN Security Council is not the only organisation confronting these challenges. NGOs and regulators worldwide are also working to tackle them, as are private corporations. But allowing our response to the 21st century’s most pressing problems to be outsourced to external actors is perilous.

NGOs are able to energise the public and policymakers on particular issues, but are often unable to take the kind of open, holistic approach that governing bodies are built for. Unelected advisors and businesses suffer from a similar paucity of democratic accountability.

For all their flaws, bodies like the Security Council remain a crucial feature in the architecture of international governance. It is in global interests that they are reformed rather than rejected.

It is also in British interests. By expanding the Council to redress its regional imbalances – there are 54 African UN member states but none are permanent members – the UK can help relocate important debates to a chamber where it enjoys disproportionate influence. Britain is a veto-wielding permanent member with a strong diplomatic reputation, and ‘penholder’ on 11 of the 41 issues regularly considered by the Council, meaning it leads negotiations and resolution writing on them. Leading Council expansion could also help signal that Whitehall is serious when it claims that the UK will be “more active in shaping the international order of the future”, as the Integrated Review reads.

The Government appears to recognise these arguments. Britain has been committed to securing permanent seats for a G4 of Japan, Brazil, India, and Germany as well as permanent African representation since 2008. It is also in favour of a moderate expansion in the number of non-permanent members, taking total membership to around 25.

This looks like bad tactics. Indeed it entails the dilution of Britain’s power in an important international body. Yet it is good long-term strategy, challenging efforts by the UK’s systemic rivals to claim that they are the sole supporters of developing nations.

Still, good strategy suffers without implementation. As the German Permanent Representative to the UN argued in a 2020 debate, citing one of Grimm’s fairy tales, if the UK wants to “kiss sleeping beauty” it must find the courage to “cut through the rose bushes” and act.

Cutting through the rose bushes might cause some scratches. Two-thirds of the General Assembly would have to approve any reform proposal, and Britain’s is opposed by G7 allies Italy and Canada.

Yet change has been achieved before – in 1963, when the number of non-permanent members was increased from six to 10 – and there are some steps the UK can take to expedite the process.

First, the UK should seek appointment by the President of the General Assembly as Chair of the next round of Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council reform.

Second, and preferably from that position, the UK should push for consultations on the basis of a single text. This text could be developed from the ‘commonality’ and ‘convergence’ documents produced over past years as well as an updated version of 2015’s Framework, which provided attributed positions on particular reform ‘clusters’. It could then be amended and rolled over into successive sessions, with the aim of drawing it steadily closer to a formal resolution.

This will likely be divisive. There is no consensus on moving to text-based negotiations, and building the text itself will require member states to pick sides as they give public opinions. Yet members have moved pressing issues to text without prior consensus before – on COVID-19 for example – and this could preclude another restatement of views, moving parties immediately into negotiations and, hopefully, compromise.

Britain can make its commitment to Security Council reform more than rhetoric. But it has to act.

Dylan Rogers is a Fellow at UN Watch. He writes in a personal capacity.

Framing the climate crisis as a security threat

The issue of climate change has long been discussed by states around the world. As the issue becomes more prominent, the threat of climate change must be understood and the necessary response agreed by all.

International organisations, domestic governments, media outlets, and non-governmental organisations have all played a part in securitising the invisible war against climate change. Securitisation as a process allows a state or, in this case, a network of interconnected states to transform an issue into a security threat. This in turn allows for extreme measures to be taken, mitigating said threat.

The securitisation has taken many forms, ranging from international law to domestic policies. The Paris Agreement (2015) is a clear example of how climate change has been securitised on an international level; a mutual understanding has been provided and a clear dialogue created to discuss the issues. The collective understanding is that a response to the threat is essential to securitisation. The Paris Agreement provided this, with 195 states, including the UK, signing the treaty. The Paris Agreement has not fully securitised climate change by any means, however it is a huge step in that direction. Climate change has been an issue for a long time, recognised by numerous states. The securitisation of climate change starts with recognition of the issue, then a reaction: the Paris Agreement. In short, the treaty outlined a clear goal for states: to reduce their contribution to climate change, therefore stopping the global temperature rising by more than two degrees, with a further emphasis on 1.5 degrees where possible.

Securitisation has unfolded as states have agreed that climate change is a threat to their security, with the potential to compromise their domestic policies on economics, migration, society, welfare, and so on. Although each state that signed the treaty acknowledges this threat, the level of threat perceived by each state varies.

For example, the Alliance of Small Island States experiences higher threats due to rising sea levels. It is essential to recognise that the commitment demonstrated by states reflects the level of threat they perceive.

This influences the way states deal with the issue. The Paris Agreement allows for perceptual differences creating legal obligations to the agreed target of temperature change, while allowing space for individual domestic policy.

Securitisation is clear as this process relies on the collective understanding which, in practice, is almost impossible to achieve. However, the Paris Agreement is a successful tool in the securitisation of climate change as it creates a mutual agreement and collective understanding by the states.

It can be argued the UK has securitised climate change domestically. The Government has passed legislation committing the country to reducing carbon emissions relative to that of 1990 by 100% by 2050, commonly referred to as ‘net zero’.

Although the policy attempts to contribute towards the global target outlined in the Paris Agreement, the UK was not legally obliged to reduce emissions by 100% and could have taken alternative measures. As climate change has been securitised domestically, however, the UK government was able to draft policy to reduce the level of threat.
The policy implemented in the UK, such as banning the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2030, will affect many people everyday. The effects could damage the economy with job losses due to the limited number of electrical car manufactures in the UK and the increased costs that businesses will incur. Nevertheless it can be observed that the securitisation of climate change has taken place, thus leading to this policy. This subsequently might have negative economic consequences, but this is viewed as acceptable as the threat of climate change is mitigated by policy and mutually agreed by citizens, as they elected the Government and granted them the legitimacy to implement policy.

Securitisation is a useful process to tackle a large-scale issue such as climate change as mutual agreement and collective understanding is the best weapon a state can deploy when fighting an invisible security threat. As such, climate change has become securitised internationally using legally binding obligations, while simultaneously being securitised domestically through government legislation. Therefore a legitimacy to intervene is created, which leads to legislation and government policy designed to reduce the threat. Overall framing climate change through a security lens is positive, because it directly affects nations and their citizens – similarly to an ordinary security threat. As the issue is securitised further it would be reasonable to assume a greater understanding and agreement on retaliation will arise, furthermore reducing the level of threat and eradicating climate change altogether.

Bailey Gould studies International Relations and Politics at the University of Sheffield.

Why the ‘staycation’ trend isn’t necessarily the environmental win we think it is

Reduced tourism numbers may have meant a drop in CO2 emissions, but local travel carries environmental risks too, particularly for the biodiversity of national parks.

It was inevitable that international travel would be limited when Britain first went into lockdown in March of last year. In the summer of 2020, ‘staycations’ were up 500%; families had traded their all-inclusive week in Corfu for a less exotic trip to Cornwall. Even as the possibility of travel abroad reemerges, the risks and uncertainty involved will still deter many.

In light of this, Britons may utilise the beauty of their 15 national parks to escape to, with lockdown lifted. From the Lake District to the Brecon Beacons, national parks have been a feature of the UK landscape since 1951. The regions aim to preserve nature and heritage against property developers, whilst providing the public with a glimpse of the picturesque scenery that their country has to offer.

Tourists are not wrong to take advantage of the parks. Their existence is crucial to exhibit the beauty of the environment. Yet, the worry remains that, if 2020 saw record numbers of visitors flock to these places, 2021 may see a correlation between swelling tourist numbers and lamentable damage to the habitats that these areas strive to protect.

Using the USA as an example, sightseers have congregated around the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls since air travel was invented. Areas of national beauty are appreciated, but at the same time spoilt by litter, air pollution, and noise. Rangers at Yellowstone label tourists as the real “wild animals” due to their swamping of local car parks, road rage, and debris that they spew all over the local ecosystems. More than 300m people visited American national parks in 2015 and this number has only grown since.

Britain’s parks accommodate significantly fewer visitors every year, totalling 13.71m in 2019 over all 15 locations. Although this figure is far less than numbers recorded in the USA, it is tallied pre-COVID. This summer, the appeal of the parks will only lure more sightseers in if many international destinations are placed on the Government’s so-called “red list”. Tourism to British parks has a very realistic potential to follow the same upwards trajectory as the USA. This could leave British national parks vulnerable to the environmental issues seen in places such as Yellowstone.

Preserving national parks is of global interest too. Foreign and domestic forests aid in carbon sequestration. Trees drain carbon dioxide from the air by acting as natural sinks. Tourists harming these designated basins with pollution only creates a further imbalance of carbon in the air. Consequently, Britain should not be the only country that takes into account the effects of staycations this year.

The Government must make the protection of national parks’ biodiversity a priority. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s 30 by 30 pledge commits to protecting 30% of the UK’s landmass by 2030 in efforts to enhance biodiversity. Westminster has also promised £40m for creating green jobs in these areas in the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution.

However, these policies may face difficulty this summer. Any limitations on sightseer numbers could result in the hospitality sectors of the rural towns surrounding the parks to perish, and the pandemic has already cost the Government a great deal of money. The industry has suffered significantly from lockdowns and any spike in tourism could greatly benefit the local communities.

Perhaps as the threat to national parks is an international issue, there should be cross-border solutions to ensure their protection globally. For instance, 14.7% of Earth’s landmass is protected by a national park status, however less than a fifth of countries have actually committed to their duties of preserving biodiversity in these places. There must be an international response to prevent countries neglecting their nature reserves as they create balance for the rest of the world.

The Foundation for Environmental Education’s creation of the Blue Flag Beach Award provides countries with an incentive to keep their beaches clean. The achievement grants coastlines prestige for preserving the environmental integrity of their waters. Perhaps, a similar scheme could run to preserve the biodiversity of national parks. Countries could be given an internationally recognised ‘Green Trophy’ certificate for maintaining their parks.

National parks are there to be enjoyed, not squandered. However, the world must start treating them with respect to ensure their continuation and contribution to hindering climate change.

Emily Wilson studies Politics and International Relations at the University of Manchester.

The Brexit campaign’s rhetoric against migration needs rewriting

There are 26m refugees around the world. In 2019, 133,094 of them were being hosted by the UK. Some British newspapers assert that they had ‘flooded in’ and deprived Britons of jobs and services. The Government should take the lead on creating a more empathetic discourse around migration.

The normalisation of nationalism

COVID paused the UK’s resettlement scheme and the Government is now rolling out a new points-based immigration system to demonstrate just how much control of the borders it has ‘taken back’.

Xenophobia in Europe is nothing new, dating back to fears of medieval Middle Eastern Muslims invading Christian Europe. But Brexit normalised and facilitated anti-immigrant discourse, culminating in the UK’s toughest immigration policies in living memory.

Recent migration to the UK

Following the addition of new countries to the EU in 2004, British policy-makers forwent the transition periods that most member states used and instead immediately granted freedom of movement to those from the newly joined states. Headlines spoke of “hordes” of Eastern Europeans arriving, arguing that they wanted to exploit the benefits system, and exacerbating fears of job insecurity. By 2019 around 3.7m EU citizens had settled in the UK, but this happened over several years and was a consequence of the EU enlargement that the UK had supported.

The 2015 migrant crisis prompted further debate on those coming to the UK. Millions of refugees fleeing poverty and persecution in the Middle East and Africa sought safety elsewhere during this period. Although the majority became either internally displaced or lived in neighbouring host countries, the Vote Leave Brexit campaign used concerns about immigrants to its advantage.

Dominic Cummings’ 2016 tweet that remaining in the EU risked a repeat of attacks against women by migrant men carried out in Cologne in 2015, and Nigel Farage’s famous ‘breaking point’ poster of long queues of migrants actively stoked these fears. In this way, the Leave campaign successfully politicised the issue of migration and asylum. The focus was placed on the EU’s attempts to forcibly resettle migrants amongst its member states, supposedly diminishing British sovereignty.

Post-Brexit migration policy

Boris Johnson stated that migrants crossing the Channel in dinghies were “very bad and stupid and dangerous and criminal”, omitting the fact that his party’s policies are a driving factor of such bahaviour. Post-Brexit, the Government stepped up its existing hostile policies and proposed the new UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS). Official figures suggest it will settle 5,000 refugees, but it threatens the safety of thousands more. Its removal of legal routes and safe schemes, like the Dublin Agreement, causes asylum seekers to risk their lives at sea.

Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel create a false narrative of criminal migration. They normalise anti-immigrant rhetoric and portray asylum seekers and refugees as threats to British safety and sovereignty, rather than vulnerable people fleeing war and persecution. In 2016, the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination declared that “divisive” language used by UK politicians during the Brexit campaign prompted a rise in hate crime. A poll in 2017 also found that anti-immigrant sentiment garnered support for the Leave vote.

This narrative is also reflected in the Government’s excessive detention of asylum seekers. The UK is the only country in western Europe without a detention time limit. This means that British authorities can indefinitely detain asylum-seekers (698 people as of June 2020), often keeping them in poor conditions.

The Napier Barracks are one such example. After numerous reports of suicide attempts, unsanitary conditions, and the spread of COVID-19, the Home Office temporarily removed those held there, only to return them after the Easter weekend. Criminalising migrants and depriving them of their dignity in this way contributes to their ‘othering’. It implies that they are burdens on the state, solidifying the narratives of suspicion and division that developed in waves around 2004 and 2015.

Rewriting the narrative

The UK’s new asylum laws were prompted by a Brexit vote that aimed to ‘take back control’ from Brussels but, ironically, replicate the EU’s famous red tape by creating yet more paperwork.

More troublingly, efforts to ‘take back control’ have jeopardised the dignity and safety of people fleeing conflict. The Government must implement a more humane policy. Practically, it should expand the UKRS and end indefinite detention, but rhetorically it should also encourage more empathy. In doing so, politicians can attempt to articulate a positive vision for refugees in the UK.

Lara Brett is studying for an MA in Contemporary European Studies at the University of Bath.

By ratifying the Istanbul Convention, the UK can send a signal to the rest of the world on violence against women

Almost nine years after signing the Istanbul Convention (IC), the United Kingdom has yet to ratify it. Turkey’s recent withdrawal from the IC makes now the perfect time for the UK to send an important message. The legal protection of women and girls is essential, and could catalyse a shift in our society’s towards a better understanding of how they should be able to enjoy public spaces.

Identified as the most common form of gender-based violence within the UK, public sexual harassment (PSH) lacks any specific legislation to tackle it. PSH can be anything from unwelcome and unwanted attention, sexual advances and intimidating behaviour that occurs in public spaces, happening both in-person and online. Not all experiences of PSH are the same and, as an intersectional issue, different identity categories influence an individual’s experience.

Despite several countries – including France, Peru and Chile – implementing legislation to tackle PSH, the UK still refuses either to ratify the IC or to enforce a dedicated legal framework to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG). Given the recent tragic death of Sarah Everard, coupled with the findings by UN Women UK that 97% of women aged between 18-24 have experienced sexual harassment and 80% of women of all ages have experienced PSH, the need for ratification and additional legislation is blatant.

Beyond just the UK, a 2014 survey by the European Union (EU) Fundamental Rights Agency revealed that sexual harassment was the most prevalent form of violence against women across the EU. As a result, countries such as France and Portugal have implemented legislative measures. In 2018, France introduced a law allowing on-the-spot fines of up to €750. Within the first eight months, 447 fines had been handed out for street harassment. Backed by 90% of the French public, these laws provide the building blocks to form better protection for women and girls across France.

British law must go further still. As 97% of young women have experiences of sexual harassment, it is unlikely that the perpetrators of these incidents would have been caught committing the offence by police if a similar law had been in place. Instead, legislation similar to that in Chile (where Fair Planet report that 85% of women had experienced harassment prior to legislation) could prove more beneficial at protecting women, girls, and marginalised genders as laws carry financial penalties as well as possible jail time for those found guilty. Yet still, the UK is in a unique position regarding VAWG.

In 2016, former Prime Minister and then Home Secretary Theresa May said in her department’s Ending Violence Against Women Strategy that “no woman should live in fear of violence, and every girl should grow up knowing she is safe, so that she can have the best start in life”. The Government argued that their strengthened legislative framework was underpinned by work to change the attitudes to prevent offences and improve police response. Yet five years later, particularly following the harrowing death of Sarah Everard, thousands of women across the UK are sharing their countless stories of PSH online. The lack of legislation, alongside the normalisation of harassment in UK culture and communities, has deterred women from reporting these offences.

All of these statistics present the fundamental need for legislation against PSH. This is crucial to prevent an environment and culture that disregards historically vulnerable and oppressed groups of people, diminishes their sense of self-worth, and denies equal access to public space.

The UK government must do more. It must protect and prepare its citizens by ratifying the Istanbul Convention and introduce a new bill. Turkey’s departure should not be viewed as an excuse for the UK to ignore their failings. Instead the UK should use this as a platform to steer and encourage other global powers into signing, ratifying and ensuring that their country enshrines the safety and legal protection that women and girls so desperately need.

Kendal Sefton is Researcher, Public Affairs and Partnerships Officer at Our Streets Now.

How Trinidad became an incubator for Islamist terrorism

Once a colony at the fringes of the British Empire, Trinidad was an epicentre of human importation. Initially slaves from Africa, then nearly one hundred thousand indentured laborers from India, were brought to the island, mainly to produce and harvest sugarcane. But after generations of cohabitation, Trinidad has developed a unique multicultural social fabric, and with it, unique problems resulting from a history of colonial subjugation.

In the wake of emancipation, British authorities imported Indian indentured workers to fill the labour vacuum left by freed black slaves who typically refused to continue working for their former masters. Ethnic studies researcher Nasser Mustapha has noted that, unlike the Afro-Trinidadians, the newly arrived Indians “were able to maintain their religious identity due to their isolation on the estates”. Further, “because of the need to preserve their faith in an alien and somewhat hostile environment, Indo-Trinidadian Muslims became very defensive and introverted, with an emotional attachment to their ancestral traditions”. Nonetheless, “common external pressures led to greater mutual respect and acceptance between Indian Muslims and Hindus in the Caribbean”.

Although initially intended to prevent African and Indian Trinidadians unifying to revolt against British rule, colonial policies to encourage ethnic separation unintentionally pressured Indo-Trinidadians to forgo prior inter-ethnic religious rivalries out of a mutual interest to preserve shared cultural traditions. Similarly, slavery eroded Afro-Trinidadian slaves’ prior cultural identity, reenforcing absolute subservience to the British colonial system.

At the time of Trinidad’s independence, the Nation of Islam’s anti-imperialist political ideology appealed to descendants of slaves seeking to distance themselves from the legacy of colonial subjugation. Just as race became inseparable from religion amongst Indian Muslims, and in response to centuries of colonial oppression, Afro-Trinidadian Muslim converts embraced a particular brand of Sunni fundamentalist Islam which fused black-power rhetoric with anti-western-imperialist sentiments. Consequently, pervasive ethno-social divisions became only further entrenched as Afro-Trinidadian Muslim converts resented Indo-Trinidadian Muslims for incorporating ‘blasphemous’ cultural elements into worship, Indo-Trinidadian Hindus for practicing the ‘wrong’ religion, and demonised Afro-Trinidadian Christians for not rejecting the religion of their former colonial oppressor.

Ethno-religious tensions reached their peak in 1990 when a Trinidadian Islamic radical group, Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM), carried out an attempted coup which held various political officials hostage, including the Prime Minister, for six days and left at least 24 people dead. While the vast majority of Trinidadians, regardless of ethnicity or religion, disavowed the coup attempt, the Counter Extremism Project notes “Yasin Abu Bakr, the notorious leader of JAM […] targeted urban Afro-Trinidadian youth in his sermons through a mix of Islamic doctrine and Black Power rhetoric”.

The pervasive legacy of colonial oppression meant disempowered Afro-Trinidadians saw potential for Islam to rectify perceived social injustices. However, Afro-Trinidadian Muslim converts found themselves only more socially isolated as their particular interpretation of Islam demonised the established Muslim community on the grounds of race, or even members of their own race for their religion.

Although the majority of modern Trinidadians see their society as a patchwork of multicultural customs and racial unity, many of the social divisions which originally drove the 1990 coup attempt remain unaddressed. For example, political parties are often divided along racial lines, and Trinidadians still tend to marry within their own racial group.

More perniciously, the rise of the Islamic State has seen radicalised Trinidadians to channel their resentment elsewhere. Generations of compounded resentment preconditioned a subset of the Afro-Trinidadian Muslim community to be especially receptive to rhetoric promising social reordering, and therefore vulnerable to radicalisation. Predatory ISIS recruiters have been able to lure a disproportionately large number of Afro-Trinidadian Muslims by manipulating feelings of alienation towards their local community through the promise of global social reordering. In fact Trinidad is at the top of the list of Western and English speaking countries for rates of Islamic State recruitment.

Social isolation breeds resentment and the legacy of British colonial rule established a toxic precedent of disunity, making Trinidad fertile ground for extremist recruitment. As the only nation in the Western Hemisphere to ever experience an attempted Islamic coup, and as one of the largest ISIS recruitment centres, Trinidad exemplifies how the legacy of colonialism does not disappear with independence. It also shows how short sighted policies can have long-term consequences. Although British colonists could not have predicted that their actions would lead to the rise of Islamic extremism on the island, policies enacted in bad faith rarely end well. History cannot be undone, but similar blunders can be avoided in future by recognising that policy actions may have unintended consequences, especially those involving race and religion.

Christopher Lindrud is International Coordinator at the Trade Center of the Americas.