The second day of the UNDP Committee, still occupied with topics around conflict zones, started with a very promising announcement: a Working Paper was nearing finishing works. An optimistic might ask: so the lives of people living in conflict zones will from now on improve? It unfortunately does not take long for the optimistic to get disappointed, once again.
Before diving into the content of the Working Paper, one might want to notice that the delegations were noticeably content with the work they had done – those same delegations which on the first day barely even mentioned any conflict zones, or, God forbid, the perpetrators and supporters of those conflicts. Delegates were thanking and echoing each other so happily, that an observer could lose track about the content and gravity of the discussion topic. Now that we know how much delegates shy away from disagreement, we might be allowed to suspect that this satisfaction comes from the lack of controversy that this Working Paper causes.
So what went wrong on the Working Paper? It would take less time to enumerate what went right, so let’s do that. The Working Paper defined a conflict zone fairly well (those endless sessions about definitions might have been worth it!), it recognized the difficulties faced by communities within these conflict zones and it halfway pointed out those who trigger the emergence of these conflict zones.
But what about solutions? The delegates are so caught up on education, that the proposed first operative clause encourages teachers in conflict zones to teach human rights and their meaning. However, it would be rather hard to deploy philosophy teachers in war zones, wouldn’t it? Further, in the whole paper there is a noticeable lack of mentioning cooperation with local authorities, formal or informal. History tells us that no matter how good the intentions, a foreign country cannot help another one without building strong bridges in between.
As stated above, mentioning the negatives of the Working Paper takes longer than needed, so it suffices to say that in general it looks like a document authored by individuals that do not know the people they are representing. What’s more disturbing is the fulfillment felt by the delegates, which unfortunately means that not much will change about the Working Paper.