Between Hillary Clinton’s loss in the US election and Helen Clark’s failed bid for UN secretary-general, 2016 was a hell of a year for women in high office. Clinton didn’t manage to smash her literal glass ceiling, while Clark claims she hit hers.
Long thought to be the clear frontrunner, New Zealand’s former prime minister and the then-administrator of the UN Development Program was firmly denied the UN’s top job. It was a choice that disappointed many, not least of which those advocating a woman for the job. In the organisation’s 72-year history, the position has been exclusively held by men.
Clark’s not surprised by the comparison — one prophetically made in the new film, My Year With Helen. “Women were going for top jobs and they didn’t get them,” she tells Crikey.
When asked for her views on how the UN needs to change in 2018, she sighs deeply.
“Well, it’s got a range of challenges.”
Though Clark has directly refuted allegations that women were discriminated against in the race for SG, she’s sceptical about the overall impartiality and objectivity of the institution as a whole.
“Firstly, the fact that the UN has a constitution which is very difficult to change,” she says. “At the core of that is the proposition of permanent membership to the Security Council which is stuck in the geo-politics of 1945.
“This is clearly a problem, because it’s not seen as representative. One of the issues is that when organisations aren’t seen as representative and responsive, over time their relevance withers and in extreme situations they disappear. Now, the UN’s not going to disappear, but it does need an injection of sheer political reality and updating to be seen as relevant to our time.”
Clark argues that the five permanent members of the Security Council (Russia, the US, the UK, France and China) have “acquired an enormous amount of power” that would best be limited. She also suggests the SG should be restricted to one term in office to deliver action quickly — “The way things are the moment, the UN is not seen as anything like a top or sometimes even relevant actor in the resolution of [conflicts]” — and calls for changes to the SG selection process.
“The list kind of goes on.” She laughs. “But we can add to it the bureaucracy, the lack or meritocracy, these are all issues … To watch from miles away, one is concerned. One doesn’t see much sign of the increased relevance that the UN needs to have. It’s one of those organisations that has to be better, and I think it is struggling.”
Clark really is miles away from it now. “In my mind, I’ve always been able to shut the door on something and move on to the next thing. That’s essentially what I did in October 2016,” she says.
She stayed at the UN just six months after losing out to Portugal’s Antonio Guterres, ending eight years in her role as administrator. Clark now enjoys a full roster of speaking engagements and policy development roles.
This distance certainly allows her to take a number of swings at the organisation but, though the long-serving former NZ PM is known as no-nonsense, she shows considerable restraint in discussing other aspects of her political career.
When Clark — an advocate for asylum seekers who played an active role in the Tampa affair — is asked about Australia’s recent controversial appointment to the Human Rights Council, she congratulates them on successful diplomacy and wishes them well. When asked about simmering tensions between New Zealand and Australia, she stresses the importance of the bilateral relationship, no matter who’s in office: “I worked very well with John Howard and (laughs) we’re very different people!”
Then the subject turns towards women in politics and she’s frank once again. “I think young women need to see [politics] as a career that they would pursue, and then they’ve got to get in and fight for a place,” she says, while also acknowledging structural issues like childcare and spousal support. “Sometimes the image of politics can be that it’s not a very attractive position, but actually we need people of integrity with good ethics to come forward and run for public office. That should include as many women as men.”
“I also think that lifting up more women can change the tone of how parliaments are run,” she goes on. “[New Zealand’s] definitely benefited from the presence of more women — we’re up to 38% now.” On the issue of tone, she says, “I think women are fundamentally better behaved in these settings” while laughing. “Before women came in, it was pretty much a boys’ club, and until you get to critical mass with women, that stays the same.”
The tone of New Zealand’s political discourse has of course had a huge shift with the election of 37-year-old Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern — the first woman to take the leadership since Clark left office in 2008. When asked for advice for Ardern from one woman PM to another, Clark sighs again. “I think Jacinda is navigating that pretty well. She turns a deaf ear to silly sexist stuff which is around — it’s always around, never goes away. Because if you respond to it, that gives it oxygen.”
She laughs. “Don’t bother responding. Just ride over it, drive through it.”
In my uni days I was a big supporter of the UN. Thought the post-Cold War UN had a real opportunity to make a difference in the world. This probably peaked when the UN seemed the best hope for avoiding the US’ march to the Iraq War, and the way the US defied the UN and suffered absolutely nothing for it has seen things be all downhill from there.
It’s not just the Security Council vetoes that have limited the UN’s role, though. Structural problems plague every level of the organisation. One vote per country sounds great in principle, but it has tended to let the rich buy the votes of many small and often unaffected countries on issues which matter to them. Japan buying the votes of landlocked small nations on whaling is a classic example known to Australians, but it’s easy to detect the influence of US and Chinese aid, OPEC oil money, etc in resolutions in the General Assembly and various committees.
It doesn’t feel like anyone really respects or believes in the UN anymore, or that there is any institutional will left in the UN to put the organisation back in the forefront of international affairs again. They still have a number of agencies doing valuable work in the field, which you wouldn’t want to lose, but the political organs at the top are moribund.
The next step may be to write off the UN as a valuable experiment but to migrate to a new body without the baggage, just as the League of Nations was abandoned in favour of the UN decades ago, although how one will (without a war) encourage the powerful nations to move to a structure which no longer gives them lurks and perks, well, that’s the question isn’t it?
You’ve pretty well said it all, Arky. I’d only add that he who pays the piper calls the tune and the US hegemon contributes the most to the UN’s funding. Also, mid and small power countries knew perfectly well what permanent UN membership and veto power would do to the UN’s ability to fulfil its function and tried to prevent it happening right at the beginning. They knew what would happen because they’d seen it before with the League of Nations. They tried to form a truly democratic UN, but they failed. No points for guessing which nations refused to allow a democratic UN to form.
The United Nations is presently structured to deal with wars by mustering coalitions of nations amassing a greater force than the warring parties.
On the same global scale, the damaged climate is emerging as a greater threat than any form of war. The UN will need to evolve into something with smiles to persuade and with teeth to coerce, whole nations into decarbonising.
The failure of the UN is simply the failure of pseudo democracy (in its manifold forms) writ large.
Put another way, it could be called the Tragedy of the Commons (the framing of which syllogism one might ponder…) when the participants are of unequal power, intelligence and involvement.
A sorely missed opportunity for Clark to have had her hand on the UN tiller.
The reason the UN Security Council is irrelevant as a means to protect people from state aggression is that it’s most powerful member the US, is a rogue state. Aggression by one state against another is a war crime, however the US, the UK, Israel and Australia and other US vassles have invaded other countries and persecuted their populations in direct contravention of all that the UN stood for. If the member states, especially the powerful ones do not abide by the principles of the UN charter and there is no one to force them, don’t blame the UN.
Sadly there is very little indication that the US will change it’s egregious foreign policies any time soon. Trump doesn’t have a foreign policy, but Paul Ryan and his henchman do, and it’s more of the same.
In spite of it’s limitations the UN does some good in the world and it is better than nothing. It does curb the rogue states’ actions to a small extent as they have to justify themselves in the UN general assembly. Watching how they and their vassals vote is a useful way of assessing their real intentions. Nothing lasts forever and the US hegemony will ultimately fall. It may be bloody and nasty, but institutions like the UN have the potential to pick up the pieces.
Climate change will get the US in the end; their economy and ecology is unsustainable.
On the issue of woman in charge. I couldn’t care less whether the SG has a d..ck or not. Thatcher didn’t have one and look what she did to the working people of Britain. They are still paying for it. Thirty percent of the GDP of the UK is made up of drug money launderers like HSBC. None of that money goes to the ordinary person. With Hilary in the White House with her winner take all philosophy and her hatred of Putin would we be any safer? Hardly.
Theresa May is hardly a pin-up poster person as a woman at the top.
I like Helen, I think she would have made a good SG. But it’s not because she is a woman, it’s because she is a bit of a rat-bag in the political sense and that’s what the UN needs to shake it up and to upset some of the conventional wisdoms and by doing so create some positive change. But anyone who leads the UN is up against the most powerful and wealthy country in human history, a country led by and controlled by a small number of incredibly wealthy, and clever oligarchs who are getting richer and more powerful as every year goes by. Until these bastards are brought down nothing will change.
As long as these people see themselves as leaders of the “indispensible” country all of us dispensable countries will just have to suck it up.