Some are less equal than others
The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) is an international membership organisation based in The Hague, the Netherlands. Its members are minorities, indigenous peoples, and occupied or unrecognised states.
Some are members because internationally recognised sovereignty does not necessarily mirror reality – Taiwan, Kosovo, Abkhazia, and Somaliland, all exhibit the characteristics of de facto, if not de jure, independence.
Others are members because states neglect the responsibility that comes with sovereignty. States are amongst the principal violators of human rights – those of Tibetans and Uyghurs in China, Ahwazi Arabs in Iran, the Khmer Krom in Vietnam, or ethnic minorities in Burma.
Despite this fact, and although human rights are unambiguously ascribed to all individuals, access to the main international bodies mandated to protect these rights remains a matter of state control. What UNPO members share is therefore also a common exclusion from precisely those international bodies mandated to protect their rights when their states fail them.
This fact was at the centre of criticisms of the old UN High Commission for Human Rights, but remains a concern even as the new Human Rights Council takes shape.
Beyond the high profile human rights bodies, Taiwan was recently yet again refused admittance to the World Health Organisation, with even Taiwanese journalists denied accreditation; and Somaliland cannot access sovereign lending from financial institutions like the IMF or World Bank.
This causes real problems for the people of these territories, denied in effect their access to health care, education, and employment opportunities. Moreover, it causes problems for the world as a whole through increased regional instability and diminished control and cooperation when crisis hits, for example through SARS or Bird Flu.
The many faces of UNPO’s work
UNPO works as an intermediary, enabling its members to attend and address international bodies, such as those of the UN and EU, through UNPO or partner organisations, rather than through the states within which they find themselves.
Accompanying this, UNPO also works with its member organisations to build their capacity to work effectively on the international stage. This includes the promotion of effective strategies for non-violent conflict resolution as well as the democratisation of their own native organisations and communities.
Being part of it all
I work for the Secretariat – the coordinating body of the organisation’s main activities such as conferences, appeals, and lobbying efforts. The Secretariat is small, and so my job is as diverse as the UNPO Membership. This is however the main reason I have now been with the organisation for almost a year, having initially taken only a short-term internship.
I now work closely with member organisations in China, the Caucasus, and Iraq, organising conferences and lobbying or informing parliamentarians on both a national and European level. As a crucial part of UNPO’s work also concerns raising awareness of our members, threatened often more by their relative obscurity than anything else, I also attend and address a large number of conferences on behalf of the organisation as a whole. Our message, that complexity lurks beneath almost every state façade, often provokes interesting discussions with policy makers and diplomats alike, and has for me presented a tremendous learning opportunity.
At times the work is glamorous – during the past few months I have appeared on television screens in Kurdistan, Abkhazia, and Turkey, though in today’s world of celebrity, the word “glamorous” might not quite be apposite. At other times the work is of course quite the opposite. Moving large numbers of stateless individuals, political exiles, and refugees around the world can rapidly turn into the kind of nightmare they would frighten you with in travel-agent college.
Most rewarding has however been working with the leaders of the UNPO membership. These are dissidents and activists working to promote and protect the rights of their native communities, often in the face of regular violence and intimidation. Despite this, they choose also to take time also to promote the rights of other communities facing similar challenges through their UNPO membership.
The main lesson I have is undoubtedly that democracy promotion and human rights dialogue cannot do without the world’s human rights defenders. It is local activists who create the kind of society in which democratic evolution, perhaps even revolution, can take place.
This is also an area in which the international community can undoubtedly and easily do more. We can work harder to protect these individuals; pressuring our trading partners to release prisoners of conscience; urging the media to highlight the work and persecution of political dissidents; and encouraging our companies to facilitate rather than obstruct the work of human rights defenders by rejecting calls for censorship and affording anonymity and identity protection where this is necessary for bloggers and cyber-dissidents alike.
A trip to Abkhazia
I have recently returned from Abkhazia, a de facto independent territory in the Caucasus, considered by the international community as part of Georgia. A brief but violent conflict with Georgia in 1992 and 1993 left Abkhazia heavily damaged, much of its population displaced, and set the stage for rising tensions between those who consider themselves Abkhaz and those who consider themselves Georgian. Since 1993 an embargo has largely prevented the effective reconstruction of Abkhazia, as well as its engagement with its European neighbours across the Black Sea. The people of Abkhazia have instead had to rely on a tenuous relationship with Russia for everything from building materials to medicines.
As part of a delegation of UNPO representatives visiting Abkhazia we met with officials of the democratic Abkhaz parliament, including their President and Foreign Minister, as well as the media and civil society. For me it was the best opportunity yet to observe the way in which members were able to share common experiences, offering new perspectives on frozen conflicts and innovative strategies for their resolution.
From the outside UNPO might appear as a sinister conclave of separatists. I have greatly enjoyed learning how mistaken this cynical perception can be. The academic discussion of self-determination versus sovereignty often maps poorly on to the expressed ambitions of the people of the territories associated with these claims. The primary concern is almost always the creation of society in which fear and suspicion are absent, and in which democracy and the respect for basic freedoms can be taken for granted.
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