This week on International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey interviews Bertrand Ramcharan, former top UN diplomat and author of the recent book, The UN Security Council and Its Protective Function (Melrose Legal Publishers, 2024). Ramcharan describes the many instances in which the UN Secretaries-General worked discreetly to secure peace agreements in conflicts such as the Iran-Iraq war, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Russia-Georgia territorial dispute. He argues that these mediations followed three specific strategies: discreet diplomacy, patience, and waiting for the ripeness of conflicts, through which Secretaries-General have deployed their good offices. Ramcharan also proposes using previously successful approaches to address the current conflicts in Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan, which involve working with Great Powers instead of lecturing them and appointing envoys whose prestige may enhance the credibility of the UN and facilitate conflict resolution.

John Torpey 

Over the past couple of years, as it has stood seemingly helpless in the face of two major conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, observers have wondered whether the United Nations can still contribute to the maintenance of world peace. This is particularly problematic in regard to conflicts in which members of the so called P5 the permanent five in the Security Council, may choose to use their veto powers to oppose UN action. Can the United Nations still play a meaningful role in allaying and resolving major world conflicts? Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. We’re fortunate to have with us today Bertrand Ramcharan, who has had a long and distinguished career in and outside of the United Nations. He’s been chief speechwriter for the UN Secretary General, director in the UN political department, and deputy and then acting High Commissioner for human rights. He’s also been a professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Professor of International Law at the University of Ottawa, and Chancellor of the University of Guyana, his home country. He’s a senior fellow here at the Ralph Bunche Institute, and has recently authored a book on the UN titled The UN Security Council and Its Protective Function. Thanks so much for joining us today, Bertrand  Ramcharan.

Bertrand Ramcharan 

Thank you for having me.

John Torpey 

Great to have you with us. So let’s talk a little bit about your book. First, your book addresses what you characterize as the protection concept, protection roles and protection jurisprudence of the United Nations. So for those who may not be so familiar and haven’t had a chance to get the book yet, can you explain what you mean?

Bertrand Ramcharan 

Well, yes, I want to give some background, if I may, for a while. If you look at the Pact for the Future that was just issued at the UN, they say that there are three categories of issues that are interconnected: sustainable development, peace and security, and human rights. I’ve long been of the view that there should be an opening fourth category, and that’s the category of survival and protection. I wrote a book called United Nations Protection of Humanity and Its Habitat. And in that book, I tried to trace what I consider to be the protection roles of the United Nations. And when I looked around in the book, I asked myself, keeping in mind the threats that humanity is facing, existential, climatic, weapons of mass destruction and others, rising oceans, if one were to look to protecting actors in the United Nations. The only one that I could identify is the Security Council. And so in the book on United Nations Protection of Humanity and Its Habitat, I argue that the Security Council will have to become an a sort of executive agency leading efforts for protection. Let me just stay with this theme for a moment. I explored this very issue in a book came out about two or three years ago called Modernizing the Role of the International Court of Justice. And there also I was looking to possible protection roles of the war court now back to the Security Council. I argue, and it is a central submission of the book, that the Security Council has a protection concept. It discharges protection rules, and that it has a protection jurisprudence. I know that none of this is ideal, but it is there, there, there. And what I wanted to do in this book was that I basically wanted to document the practice of the Security Council in these three areas. Sydney Bailey wrote a book on the Security Council and the protection of human rights, and he traced a lot of the work that the Security Council did in relation to Southern Africa, and I think it was in 2000 or two or so, I did a book on the Security Council and the protection of human rights, and I brought it up to date a little bit. Now I want to take you back to 1947. In 1947, the Security Council, it’s amazing to think about it today, the Security Council considered the situation in Franco Spain and wrongly condemned the Francoist regime for its gross violations of human rights in Spain at the time. So in other words, I’m saying two things to you. I’m saying that the United Nations, and in particular the Security Council, has to be ready to discharge to the best of its possibilities, a protective role. And I’m saying, I’m saying that there are elements in the practice of the council that can help it to discharge its protection role in the future. Let me give a concrete example of that. I spent three and a half years with the peacemakers and peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia, at one stage, the Security Council declared six safe areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now, what did it mean that the United Nations Security Council designated these protected areas? We had great difficulties giving effect to these resolutions of the Security Council declaring the safe areas. But nevertheless, the fact that the council has this precedent of declaring safe or protected areas, I think that that is of importance. So basically, that’s what I wanted to do in the book.

John Torpey 

I see. So, I mean, at the same time, you know, may have this protective function, but there’s a kind of sense, I think, abroad, that the UN seems hamstrung when it comes to dealing with some of the major conflicts in the world today. And of course, I’m talking primarily about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the seemingly spreading conflict in the Middle East. And you know, I wonder what you would say about its ability to address these kinds of conflicts, because it seems to me that’s the main way that most people in the world have thought about the United Nations, is as kind of peacekeeper, but it seems unable to exercise that function. Now, or would you disagree with that?

Bertrand Ramcharan 

I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I would kind of nuance it a little bit. So, I spent 34 years in the UN. I’m not trying to impress with that. I’m just mentioning the experience. And after that, I did some big missions for the UN, including a mission to Georgia, a week before Russia and Georgia fought. That was in 2008, I believe. And I did missions to visit prisoner of war camps in Iran and Iraq, and I worked as a part of the secretary team that supported the UN mediator in Iran and Iraq. Why am I mentioning this? I would like to say to you that three concepts influence the role that the United Nations might be able to play in relation to conflicts that touch on great powers or which involve the direct interest of the major powers. These three concepts, I think, are discrete diplomacy, patience and the ripeness of conflict. Now, before I come back to these three concepts, let me mention three examples of conflicts that directly touch on the Great Powers where I think that the United Nations and its Secretary General played a role. Take a look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the Ralph Bunche Institute, there was a program called UN Intellectual History Project, and I wrote one of the books for that project on preventive diplomacy at the United Nations. I have a chapter in this book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in preparing that chapter, I went to the UN archives and I looked at the papers of U Thant. And there you see a dramatic case. U Thant is receiving telegrams and telephone calls from all over the world, “please do something.” And then U Thant, at one stage, appeals to the parties for I’m not sure whether it was 24, I think it was 48 hours respite, so as to allow negotiations to continue. U Thant obtained this 48 hours respite, and it was during these 48 hours that Robert Kennedy and the Soviet Ambassador were able to negotiate the deal that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis. And after the crisis had passed, U Thant followed up with a visit to Cuba. Now I don’t over claim here, but I think that the record shows very clearly that the discrete good offices role of U Thant had helped the international community buy some space for diplomacy. So that’s one I want to mention. Then, of course, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, there were many condemnatory resolutions in the General Assembly and Diego Cordovez, over a period, I found my memory is correct, some eight years he led peace by peace negotiation. Diego Cordovez was concluding little agreements, one after the other, which, when the time was right, he brought together into the Afghanistan peace deal. And then the third one I want to mention is Iran-Iraq. The Iran-Iraq war went on for years. We know, of course, Afghanistan involved the Soviet Union and it advanced. It involved the United States, which was arming the Mujahideens. We know that in relation to the Iran-Iraq conflict, the United States had a direct role in providing intelligence and other assistance to Iraq. And said, and now Jan Elliason, the Swedish ambassador, he was mediator for the UN and we and the secretariat. We had a team of Secretariat people backing him up with papers and work notes. Well, of course, Jan Elliason alone, he did not stop the conflict. I want to tell you that in 1988, I visited prisoner of war camps in Iran and Iraq, and we were at a dinner, and I was seated next to the host, and I innocently asked the host, how are the talks between the Iraqi foreign minister and the UN Secretary General going and he replied to me: they are going nowhere, and they will go nowhere until your secretary general makes a personal appeal to President Saddam Hussein. Well, later in the meeting, I asked him if I could report this conversation. And he said yes, I reported it. The Secretary General made his appeal, Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, went back to Iraq, and a ceasefire deal was concluded within a week I think. Now, I’m not saying that this exchange with the Iraqi host was all that dramatic. I’m saying two things, the UN had been nursing peace efforts for years, and at this moment, the conflict was right for some movement, for a ceasefire, and the UN could play a role. So here are three cases where involving the direct interest of the major powers, where the UN played a role. Now I’ll come back to my three concepts. Discrete diplomacy. I want to speak carefully. We have seen recently, senior UN leaders being very critical of the leaders of parties in conflict. One of the questions we have to ask is, how can the Secretary General, for example, balance an expression of concern with language that can help him to play some good offices role progressively? I actually think that the UN must and Hammarskjöld was a great master at this. The UN has to learn that it cannot lecture Great Powers. It has to find ways of to the best of its ability working with Great Powers. Think about what Diego Cordovez did in Afghanistan. Could a UN envoy have been assembling building blocks for peace in relation to the two conflicts you mentioned. We could we shouldn’t rule it out. So, patience. And then there’s the issue of ripeness. So my answer to you is that I will place emphasis on the first concept, discrete diplomacy, and patience over a period of time until the conflict is ripe for some form of solution. That’s my answer to you.

John Torpey 

Well, thank you for that detailed response, but I guess I do want to press a little further about the question of Security Council and reform. Or, I mean, you say in your current book you want to avoid that and leave that to other people, but I wonder what you would say about it. You know, it does seem as though the role of the P5, of the permanent five members of the Security Council, and their veto power make for a difficult situation, particularly in a conflict in which one of them is, in fact, directly involved. So I wonder what you would say about, you know, whether there’s a prospect for reform of the Security Council, and what significance it would have in the UN’s role.

Bertrand Ramcharan 

You know, I want to say this to you, only today I looked again at the Pact for the Future, and I wrote a piece on what I call actionable items in the pack for the future. And let me put it charitably, the negotiators clearly had great difficulties in wrestling with this issue of Security Council reform, the politics are very deep on this. And you can have a point of view that you will go for Security Council reform and block, you know, it’s a block, or you do it piecemeal. I don’t know if piecemeal is possible, but what I can tell you is that en bloc will not work anytime soon. And largely because, I don’t want to name countries, I’m used to the UN way of speaking, discreetly, there are major powers, in the major power in Asia will not accept some countries as permanent members. There are European countries that will not allow their counterparts to come on the Security Council. The same issue applies in Latin America, and the same issue applies in Africa, although there seems to be some movement in principle that Africa could have two permanent seats and they decide who they are, my gut feeling is that the moment is not yet ripe for Security Council reform, and so we can knock our heads against the brick wall, or we can try to make the system function to the best of our abilities. That’s the first point. The second point I want to make is that although, you know, this may not be popular, but I spent three and a half years in the Yugoslav peace negotiation, and our lead I was the director of the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia. I was a secretariat official. We had as our mediators, Secretary of State, former Secretary of State, Cy Vance, and former British Foreign Secretary, Lord David Owen and successors, who were both foreign ministers, one of them, Prime Minister, we could not solve the Bosnian conflict unless the United States, until rather, the United States determined at Dayton that they were ready for a solution. That’s a great power. So my point here is I can’t conceive of a situation in which the Security Council, either with its current 15 members, or it’s a lot of it with an enlarged composition, could really function in the face of direct opposition from the major powers. You can, of course, argue that there are four nuclear powers, Russia, China, Britain and France and, did I mention the United? So they all have, they all have a nuclear weapons. So I’m repeating the point. I do not think that the Security Council in any composition, nor the General Assembly can override these considerations of power, so we have to work with the major powers. That’s my experience.

John Torpey 

I mean, this issue came up in the workshop in which you and I recently met, and I have to say, I was a little puzzled about this notion of ripeness. I mean, obviously, at some level, it may be the case that certain parties to a conflict are simply not prepared to resolve whatever differences have caused that conflict. But I guess, you know, as we had this discussion last week, I thought, isn’t that what some kind of leadership is all about, isn’t it the case that some people with certain special skills and insights about what’s going on, you know, need to sort of bring those to bear. I mean, I’m not saying you can work miracles, but I’m saying that there must be some possibility for moving things. Forward without just saying, well, we’re going to wait until things are ripe. I mean, maybe I’m just overly romantic about the possibilities of these solutions, but I’m curious what you would say about that.

Bertrand Ramcharan 

I would like to put on the table two concepts, the concept of leadership and the concept of ripeness. William Zartman has written extensively about the concept of ripeness. One can say that parties with the will to fight and the means to fight will continue to fight until and unless a power greater than they are may decide to intervene and kind of oblige them to stop. So, power is the decisive element in the resolution of conflicts. The concept of ripeness relates to these elements of power and attitudes of the parties. If one or more of the parties thinks that it no longer has the means to carry on the fight, then it will be amenable to talks. So I’m repeating myself, for as long as the parties have the will and the means to fight, the concept is not right for resolution, and leadership will not change that. What leadership can do is what Diego Cordovez did in Afghanistan, and what I would like to think we did in the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia. We had three successive peace plans that, in my view, were superior to the plan eventually adopted at the Dayton Peace Conference in 1995, but I’m not being critical here, the United States had its reasons. It thought that an injustice had been done to the Bosniaks, and they wanted to arm them to fight. But the United States, in my view, blocked all three peace plans when the United States thought that yes, the moment has come that this can be settled. What happened? Why am I mentioning there the pieces that we had assembled, the pieces advanced and Owen, and Stoltenberg, and Bill had assembled, those were the pieces that Dayton took and put together into the Dayton peace accord. I know this because I myself sent the materials to the State Department at the time. So you raise the issue of leadership, the leadership has a role to play, but I want to say that leadership cannot overcome the determination and the preparedness of the parties to fight. What leadership can do is assemble the building blocks even as the parties are fighting, so I would distinguish between these two concepts of leadership and rightness.

John Torpey 

Okay, thank you. So you know, then I’m led to ask, What? What about the two conflicts that you know I mentioned in the in the introduction to the to the discussion here today? Where are we at with, you know, the Middle East seems obvious at some level, what the answer to that is, but perhaps with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I mean, are the either of these, you know, ripe for resolution?

Bertrand Ramcharan 

I would have to give the answer, in both conflicts, we see parties with the will to fight and the means to fight, so I doubt very much that either conflict is ripe for resolution. That does not mean that we should not be endeavoring to assemble pieces, either for a ceasefire or for some kind of modus vivendi. I have two thoughts in my mind here. I have felt myself that even if the UN Secretary General did not designate a personal envoy or representative, even if the UN Secretary General himself has not directly become involved in peace efforts in relation to Ukraine and the Middle East. I have felt for a while that he should have a representative for each of these conflicts. He has one for the Middle East. But in my view, we need someone in a different category. I’m not going out on them here. I’m looking at the category of the person, and that would do two things. It would show the international community that even in the midst of a difficult situation, a representative of the UN is talking to the parties. That’s the first thing. And second, based on my experience with the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia, I have found myself reflecting that there is need for three international peace conferences: an international peace conference on Ukraine, an international peace conference on the Middle East, and an international peace conference on Sudan, because that’s a major conflict too. And there again. Let me go back to the Yugoslav experience. The one spectacular success we had in the Yugoslav Peace Conference was we moved to get the UN preventive deployment in Macedonia. I put that aside, but what we did do was over three and a half years of involvement with the parties was engaging so that there were lines of communication and assembling pieces. So to cut a long story short, I do not think that either of these conflicts that you mentioned is ripe for resolution, but I do think that there should be a United Nations representative talking discreetly to the parties, and thirdly, I would float the idea of three international peace conferences.

John Torpey 

Okay, so, let me ask one final question, as we were sort of running out of time. And I guess that question is, you know, how do you see the, shall we say, prestige or legitimacy of the UN in the world today? And insofar as you see, you know shortcomings in that regard. You know, what would you recommend? What would you urge the UN to do to bolster its legitimacy and prestige.

Bertrand Ramcharan 

I would like to give a historical answer. I think one of the greatest Secretary gentlemen, everybody knows this was hammered and hammered played a diplomatic hand with finesse and with dignity. I would like to emphasize those two words with finesse and with dignity. Now we are in a very difficult situation here. This morning, I read a piece on we can talk about it openly in the public domain, Israel’s decision that the Secretary General is persona non grata. As a guy who spent 34 years at the UN, I would like to use a term of feeling. This hurts me somewhat. I don’t take it lightly. It hurts me. But now we have to look for a way of getting beyond this. At your conference, you remember, I asked a former president of the GA, could the president of the GA perform a good officer’s role, or might the president of the GA designate a special representative in this situation? In the light of the most recent developments, I would like to think that I don’t want to be misunderstood. I respect the Secretary General, but whether or not a representative from him would do the trick at this stage deserves to be weighed. But the President of the General Assembly. Imagine if the president of the General Assembly were to designate a former or current head of state of trust in each of these situations as a kind of voice, a representative of the United Nations. I think that such representatives will be received with respect, and that such a move could possibly help to refurbish a little bit the image of the United Nations. We are not dealing with an easy situation here. And so that’s the one thought I have.

John Torpey 

Well, thank you very much for wagering those thoughts. I appreciate that. And I’m afraid, however, that we’re out of time for today. That’s it for today’s episode. I want to thank Bertrand Ramcharan for sharing his insights about the UN and its activities in recent years. Look for International Horizons on the New Books Network, and remember to subscribe and rate International Horizons on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I want to thank Claire Centofanti for her technical assistance, as well as to acknowledge Duncan McKay for sharing his song International Horizons as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey saying thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode of International Horizons.