Multilateralism: Then & Now | Kofi Time with Lord Mark Malloch-Brown | Episode 1

Introduction

AHMAD FAWZI__20 years ago, Kofi Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, together with the United Nations, regarded as one of the modern world’s icons of diplomacy. What is his legacy today in 2022? What can we learn from him and how can we prepare for tomorrow based on his vision for a better world? Hello, I’m Ahmad Fawzi. I had the pleasure and privilege of working with Kofi Annan for over 25 years, accompanying him on many missions around the world as one of his spokespersons and later as his communication adviser.

 Kofi Time is brought to you by the Kofi Annan Foundation and the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, produced by Gianluca Allaria. This is Kofi Time. Today, we will discuss the state of the multilateral system. Everyone seems to understand that the colossal challenges we are facing today all require concerted action at the international level. And yet, the multilateral framework put in place just after the Second World War seems unable to deliver common and coherent responses.

And growing tensions among great powers threaten to paralyze it. What would Kofi Annan, who did so much to strengthen the United Nations and bring it into the 21st century, do today? To answer this question and more, I am very pleased to welcome Lord Mark Malloch-Brown to this podcast today. Lord Malloch-Brown is the president of Open Society Foundations.

He has had an illustrious career as a U.N. civil servant, diplomat, politician, communication consultant and journalist. He has worked to advance human rights, justice, and development for more than four decades with the United Nations, and the World Bank, as a British government Minister for Africa, as well as with a range of civil society groups and businesses. At the United Nations, he headed the United Nations Development Program from 1999 to 2005 and later served as chief of staff and Deputy Secretary General for Kofi Annan.

Lord Malloch-Brown. Hello and welcome. 

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__Thanks, Ahmad. A pleasure to be with you. 

AHMAD FAWZI__So good of you to join us, Mark, if I may say so. May I call you Mark? 

LORD MALLOCH-BROWN__I think, you know, you may. 

Kofi Annan Legacy 

AHMAD FAWZI__My first question to all our guests is this: How and where did you meet Kofi Annan? The second part of this question is, as the ultimate U.N. insider, was he really the right man to reform the organization?

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__Well, I met Kofi as a young UNHCR official and a rather out-of-control one who was, in my case, running refugee operations on the Thai-Cambodian border. And that, very luckily and tragically, at the same time, I found myself at the centre of this exploding refugee crisis. And Kofi was head of personnel back in Geneva. And I remember on an early trip back inviting me to walk around the rim of Lake Léman beneath the office, extraordinarily already finding myself falling into the sort of, in his case, mentor in my case mentee role, but just the sort of wise voice calming me down as I was struggling with this sort of massive refugee crisis.

And what was clear in those conversations about reform at the beginning was that he turned that inside of knowledge. He knew the rule book. He knew how to make it work for him, and yet had hugely ambitious plans for the reform of the system, some of which fell even at that first fence of his initial 100-day reform plan.

But where precisely because he knew where the bodies were buried and understood the U.N. ways of getting around problems. Later, when I worked by his side and led the second reform effort, while he was very focused by that point on the external diplomatic world and the challenges of war and peace, I was still taking my lessons from him. He would gently, quietly caution me to just go a little slower. 

AHMAD FAWZI__Using his inside knowledge to turn the system around softly, softly, as it were. He took his time, didn’t he? Maybe that was an African trait. I’ve noticed on many of his initiatives that he planned very carefully, step by step, and he made sure that he mobilized whatever opinion he needed before he took the plunge.

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__ when we, together with so many of our friends, grieved Kofi’s parting, a phrase I and others used was one of his many favourite African aphorisms about you can’t change the wind, but you can bend the sail and this was the sort of ultimate masterclass, if you like, because it applied not just to the reform of the U.N., but to the wider agenda of diplomatic achievement while he was in the job, which was, the winds blow in a particular direction and they are bigger often than individuals can change, but smart leadership can find its way to navigate those winds can indeed adjust the sail.

And that was the genius of his time was to understand the lay of the land. The set of the sea, if you like, and to navigate it to find ways through him. 

AHMAD FAWZI__Well, it is said that the issue of U.N. reform was already discussed as early as 1946 by the General Assembly at its second session.

And although it sometimes seems like the system has become so unwieldy as to prevent effective reform, so much change happened during Kofi Annan’s mandates. New institutions were put in place, conventions were signed, large peacekeeping operations deployed, and agreement was reached on the ambitious Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs, which you played a significant role in formulating and passing through. 

UN Reform 

AHMAD FAWZI__What do you think were Kofi Annan’s greatest achievements in modernizing the U.N. system?  

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__Well, I do think the MDGs and the whole development agenda and the focus on the challenge of Africa was a huge part of the external achievement. These MDGs were classic Kofi and that, at one level was a simple piece of paper with some rather inelegant goals on it.

At another level, it completely dramatically mobilized and directed the development community and also the spending priorities of developing country governments in a way that sort of energized development in its post-Cold War. Suddenly we were able to break through with this sort of, if you like, eight commandments for development, the MDGs. And it galvanized the system, but it was only one of many such efforts that Kofi led, whether it was around international criminal justice, whether in the form of the Human Rights Commission into a Council, whether it was around the response to HIV/AIDS.

In each case, there was the gentle, careful crafting of a strategy based on listening to all stakeholders and really listening, finding where the wind was blowing and how to bend the sail to find a way through. And then, getting out there with a level of ambition that the U.N. had not known before or since. And these were big undertakings with big, big, big outcomes.

Part of the tragedy is how many of them seem diminished today by the return of an almost Cold War-like polarization in the world and the real sort of denting and diminishing of multilateralism that has happened in the years since. 

AHMAD FAWZI__Really listening, I’ve heard that before from so many other interlocutors that Kofi Annan really listened. He took the time to listen to those around him, to member states and to people. His ability to connect not only with the leaders of this world but with ordinary people was amazing, truly amazing.

Millennium Development Goals

AHMAD FAWZI__Many consider the adoption of the MDGs as a significant milestone in the history of the UN. Let’s listen to what Kofi Annan himself said. 

KOFI ANNAN__“Through the Millennium Development Goals. We energized the development process and came up with goals which were simple enough for the average man or woman in Lagos or Delhi or Santiago to understand.”

AHMAD FAWZI__Can you tell us a little more about the process of getting all the member states to adopt those goals? Was it simple? Was it easy? Was it complicated? And what were Kofi Annan’s major efforts in that regard with you?

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__Kofi understood that in the space of development, one of the really single greatest advantages of the U.N. was its convening power. It was the place which could set standards that the world as a whole was able to adopt. And we had that universality and a sense of global participation, which he recognized we could turn into a powerful convening, standard-setting platform.

And Kofi was able to shoot me so well in making sure that we steadily built up that sort of universality and global legitimacy to these goals. And by the end, as the quote you just delivered from Kofi showed, we had this extraordinary moment where you had sort of child-friendly and citizen-friendly versions of the MDGs in local languages from Brazil to Vietnam.

It began with the still small, quiet voice of Kofi and grew into a huge global movement. 

AHMAD FAWZI__After Kofi Annan passed away in 2018, you spoke of the power of his personality, his warmth and dignity, but also of his ability to speak to all the peoples of the United Nations, whether rich or poor, young or old, male or female.

Civil Society 

AHMAD FAWZI__Could you tell us how he opened up the United Nations, which is first and foremost an organization of governments, to the people of the world and to other sectors, the business world, civil society, and even Hollywood? And why did that matter? 

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__What people forget is that actually, this area was one of his rare failures in that he had a commission on civil society participation in the U.N., led by former President Cardoso of Brazil, which laid out a wonderful, ambitious plan for including civil society in the deliberations of the organization.

And it was a rare example of the member states of different political colourings all coming together to block this challenge to the interstate character of the organization. But typical of Kofi, having not been able to sort of go in through the front door on this issue, found plenty of side windows and back doors to come in.

And so whether it was using Hollywood celebrities to champion issues from Darfur to the Millennium Development Goals and the battle against HIV/AIDS, whether it was a brilliant engagement of campaigners from civil society around different issues and incorporating them into coalitions to campaign for issues, you started to see the early beginnings of a U.N. where you didn’t have to wait for the whole membership to move on an issue, but where you could start to see coalitions of the willing some progressive member states supported by civil society actors, supported by enlightened businesses moving.

Landmines

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__And whether it was on debt relief, whether it was on the response to HIV/AIDS, it all built on kind of campaigning model that I’ve always felt began with the campaign against landmines, where you saw coalitions of veterans, church leaders, anti-war activists, the smarter end of business come together against these criminal, indiscriminate weapons, landmines. And it created a model which really continued with great energy during Kofi’s years.

So even if he couldn’t formally give civil society a seat at the official table in any meaningful way, civil society became part of the conversation part of the outcomes and part of the success. And again, since his day, it’s not stopped. I mean, you wouldn’t have had a COP26 in Glasgow without the energy of civil society, but it just sort of somehow bumps up against the official process in a less creative, constructive way than it did in Kofi’s time. 

AHMAD FAWZI__And what you mentioned about bringing civil society and NGOs into the landmines conversation resulted in a convention banning landmines, which was a milestone in itself.

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__That’s right. Each of these agendas, there were real outcomes. This wasn’t the sort of blah blah U.N. of popular imagination. This was the U.N. delivering real outcomes and results.

UN Security Council 

AHMAD FAWZI__Let’s move on to another institution, if you will, of the United Nations that desperately needs reform. In 2005, Kofi Annan put forward recommendations for enlarging the membership of the Security Council to make it more representative of today’s world.

It was never put to a vote. However, the rules for the composition of the council hadn’t changed. This weighed heavily on his mind, as he himself said later. 

KOFI ANNAN__“There has to be a reform in the machinery we have for governing our world. One of my biggest disappointments was the failure to help reform the Security Council before I left. The Security Council has to be reformed; the structure today reflects the geopolitical realities of 1945.”

AHMAD FAWZI__So, do you think Kofi Annan failed there? And in your view, will this change ever really happen? 

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__Well, look, I don’t think he failed in the sense that when as secretary general, he made a proposal for the reform of the Security Council. And I remember, he and I, were going backwards and forwards on the wisdom of him doing this, and indeed many others as well were part of that discussion.

We knew we were trespassing into what was ultimately a member state issue, we trespassed because he just saw that member states were just finding no way through this. So classically he thought perhaps he could offer a road map, find a way through. But ultimately, it was above his pay grade, if you like. This was always going to be a matter for member states.

But I think, in a sense, the council’s challenges have steadily grown in its 75 years of life because its membership was frozen at the point of formation in terms of permanent P5 hold on the institution. And that basis, which was the Victory Alliance in the Second World War, has looked less and less relevant as time has gone on. For years, and particularly when Kofi and I were there, the principal issue looked to be European overrepresentation and developing world underrepresentation.

With the conflict in Ukraine, we have a whole new crisis of relevance of again, one of those holdovers from 1945, then the Soviet Union, and now Russia proving such an abuser, if you like, of its Security Council role, that it’s sort of completely trashed the charter, the values, the principles that P5 status was meant to give a special responsibility for protecting.

But this is a really unique moment where a P5 member has really this extent breached the charter in quite such a brazen way. 

International Conflicts 

AHMAD FAWZI__You wrote recently in an article, and I quote, all of us are at risk when the U.N. is sidelined. All of us suffer when international law is broken. Do you sometimes worry that under pressure from the strong men taking centre stage today, the U.N. is returning to its intergovernmental core and the zero-sum game approach of the Cold War days?

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__I do. I think that we are seeing echoes of the Cold War on a scale which would be unimaginable a few years ago. And ultimately the U.N. is a mirror held up to the world and it’s never going to be that much better than the world around it. And for all our praise of Kofi, like great leaders so often are, he was also a lucky leader.

And he led at a point in time where there was a cautious consensus and occasionally enthusiastic consensus out there for multilateralism and coming together to solve problems. But that seems like a lifetime ago today when you have a totally gridlocked, divided Security Council. As I said, one member state, seems willing to sort of treat the whole U.N. system with reckless casualness to its principles and rules and charter, and where that in turn will have knock-on effects in the quality of human rights and democratic society.

Everywhere we talk about a world divided into a sort of authoritarian versus a democratic column. But life in both columns will be less good than it was before. And in that sense, the marginalization of the U.N. is symptomatic of it’s not the fault of the current leaders of the U.N. It’s a consequence of the wind blowing in such a strong direction that they can’t find a way to bend the sails.

And that is dramatic and consequential, perhaps for a generation or more to come. This is a systems-changing war. It’s because, with the exception perhaps, of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, we have not seen in the post-Second World War period an intervention with so little attempt to justify it in terms of international law. We’ve had wars condemned by the Security Council.

We’ve had wars not approved by the Council as well as conflicts that are. But in each case, their perpetrators have sought to make the case for the conflict in terms of international law, that there is a threat to their own security as a nation, but that the world’s peace is put at risk. None of these issues were seriously raised in the context of Ukraine, and that’s what makes this so exceptional.

And it’s not just, if you like, in the causes that it’s so exceptional, but it is the likely consequences, which is it’s very hard to see a way out of this which isn’t going to lead to creeping conflict and insecurity and confrontation between the two halves of Europe. And I think Kofi would recognize in that way the difference between this and other conflicts, which is not about human lives lost or a different value put on those lives. It’s about why the conflict happened and what it may lead to. 

Multilateralism 

AHMAD FAWZI__Mark, you also said that Kofi Annan’s work after he left the U.N. from the platform of his small foundation, the Kofi Annan Foundation, points to a final lesson of his legacy. And I quote that some of the most innovative future multilateralism may happen on the margins outside the official structures of the U.N., unquote.

Do you believe that we have to reinvent multilateralism outside of official institutions?

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__Well, yes and no is the answer. I always hope for a model where the energy would be generated outside the U.N. system, but where the U.N. would remain the ultimate arbiter and platform where you took an initiative which had partial support and gave it universal support.

And I worry I mean, I think that the weakness of the U.N. will displace a lot of political and creative energy into these sorts of stand-up coalitions. But whether they can institutionalize themselves and turn into global agreements that are globally implemented and globally monitored is going to be a huge challenge, I think. 

AHMAD FAWZI__Mark Lord Malloch-Brown, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

You started out by saying you met Kofi as… you were an out-of-control young official. I can’t imagine you to be ever out of control, Mark. So, thank you for sharing your wisdom your thoughts and these stories with us and helping us understand better how Kofi Annan managed to promote effective multilateral action and what his legacy means for those of us who try to do the same today.

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN__Thank you, Ahmad. It was a wonderful conversation. 

AHMAD FAWZI__You’ve been listening to Kofi Time and wherever you are now, I invite you to share the values that Kofi Annan represented that you think are relevant today using the hashtag Kofi Time. I’m Ahmad Fawzi. Please join me again in the next episode of Kofi Time. Thank you. And do take care.