Originally published on the CGS blog on December 6, 2008.
I just participated in 2 back-to-back Obama transition team meetings with Eric Schwartz. Eric is in charge of the US/UN transition team and also handles multilateral issues for the National Security Policy team, which is why the transition asked him to meet with us.
The first meeting was with a delegation from the Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping (PEP) and the next was with members of the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court. (WICC is a coordinating group of the Washington based organizations committed to ICC). Citizens for Global Solutions play a lead role in both of these coalitions.
Meetings with transition team members are opportunities to share priorities with the incoming administration. They are “listening” sessions for the transition team members. Eric was a great listener, extremely well versed in the issues we discussed and generous with his time.
Our object was to give the incoming administration pragmatic objectives that could be accomplished during a 4 year term on our issues. While there was a good deal of consensus on these goals between the very high level organizations which participated, I am only sharing these as priorities for Citizens for Global Solutions and will let others speak for themselves.
For the PEP briefing 7 priorities were discussed:
- Pay down nearly $1.6 billion in U.S. arrears to the U.N. and request Congress permanently lift the cap on U.S. dues to U.N. peacekeeping; ensure an adequate Presidential request for FY 2010.
- Balance the inequity between UN Security Council mandates and the resources provided to support those mandates; encourage more active political support on an ongoing basis by the Security Council members.
- Work with DPKO, Security Council members, and major troop contributing countries to ensure U.N. peace operations have adequate resources, training, and mandates to protect civilians from violence, and adhere to basic human rights standards. Increase US peacekeeping participation and leadership by putting more blue helmets on US troops.
- Include conflict prevention and civilian protection as fundamental pillars of U.S. foreign policy in the next National Security Strategy of the United States.
- Voluntarily restrict the use of the United States’ veto in the Security Council in situations involving genocide, major war crimes and major crimes against humanity.
- Support the expansion of the UN Department of Political Affairs to enable it to more effectively respond to emerging crises.
- Stand up the Civilian Response Corps with dedicated staffing and request funding for a Conflict Response Fund – to provide the State Department with a pool of money to draw upon quickly to respond to emergencies.
For the WICC meeting we shared 3 priorities:
- Reinstating the U.S. signature to the ICC treaty (which was “unsigned” by President Bush and John Bolton).
- Constructive U.S. participation in the ICC’s governing body, the Assembly of State Parties in preparation for the ICC’s 2010 Review Conference.
- Expanding, deepening and further formalizing the official channel of U.S. cooperation with the Court so that we can help bring to justice the those responsible for atrocities in Darfur, the Congo, Uganda and other cases the ICC is involved in.
While these are not CGS’s only priorities, they are the ones that we had the most agreement on within these working groups.
Again, Eric was in listening mode and indicated repeatedly that he could not speak for the President-elect. But my takeaway from these meeting is simple – I’m more optimistic now about the Obama administration accomplishing some very positive changes in how the US operates within the U.N. and with other nations. And whatever the outcome on our specific priorities, I’m very confident our issues will be effectively communicated to policy-makers at the highest level — because Eric not only understood the issues as well as anyone around the table, but made clear he appreciated the values that inform our work in these critical areas.
