‘With your house on fire, after people, which item of clothing would you save from your house?’ My catch up meetings with the Law Society’s DEI team traditionally start with a brief ice breaker.
‘My English grandfather’s old evening suit,’ I replied. Owning that black tie is not normally the outfit most closely linked to our social mobility and outreach work, I added that (in addition to being a good fit) I liked the fact it was bought in 1955.
It feels to me like a direct link to a world in which international institutions that aimed at peace, justice, equality and prosperity were either newly minted or being formed. (Later in life, Grandad was attached as an adviser to the British delegation to several Food and Agriculture Organization conferences.)
Seven years earlier, my Philippine grandfather, delegate at the 1948 UN General Assembly in Paris, witnessed the unanimous adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ‘A magnificent affirmation of the primacy of human dignity,’ his memoirs recall.
The UD’s adoption happened in the shadow of the Soviet Union’s decision to blockade West Berlin – making, he observed, the adoption ‘all the more moving and significant because it was made in the shadow of a threat to life and all the things that give life on earth meaning and value’.
Two years before the evening suit was purchased, in 1953, the European Convention on Human Rights entered into force. Two years after it came home to my English grandparents’ terraced house in Hornchurch in a suit carrier, the Treaty of Rome 1957 established the European Economic Community, whose members made hard commitments to social justice and equality.
In another two years, the European Court of Human Rights was established, creating a forum for asserting rights when signatory states failed to uphold them.
These developments and others created that ‘rules-based system’ of international law and justice.
And as is widely reported, the interlocking elements of the multilateralist system is under the greatest strain it has known since their creation after the second world war. (If you want a minnow-tastic example of an attack, try ‘thinktank’ Policy Exchange’s effort against the ECHR, published on 20 January.)
The strain was acknowledged on 17 January, at an even to mark the 80th anniversary of the first UN General Assembly at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, location also for this event, organised by the United Nations Association-UK.
It’s worth recalling that the multilateralist system was not conceived of in an easier time. Early UN staff, secretary general Antonio Guterres noted, included many who ‘bore the visible signs of war’, and who felt a ‘duty to serve with a sense of urgency’.
In 1946 delegates, Guterres pointed out, ‘had to pass through a city scarred by war’.
If our answer to environmental crises is not ‘modern diplomacy based on science’, he asked, then really, what are our alternatives?
Or as Colombian Nobel Juan Manuel Santos put it, when we learned lessons ‘at unbearable cost’ in the last century, ‘do we really have to learn those lessons again?’.
The UK government, attorney general Lord Hermer said, gets the point. ‘There is simply no other organisation like the UN. The United Kingdom’s commitment to the UN is as strong today as it was eighty years ago,’ he noted, and centred his remarks on ‘justice’.
‘An aspect of that commitment is demonstrated through our support for the International Court of Justice, by accepting its compulsory jurisdiction,’ he said. ‘The ICJ, as the world’s apex court, demonstrates how international law can help states address the defining challenges of our era, challenging disputes that would have once been settled on the battlefield into a court of law.’
Hermer’s conclusion is also mine: ‘This is not a moment to turn away from multilateralism. In a deeply interconnected world, our security and our prosperity depend on our willingness to work together.’
And if you think a commitment to the international rule of law and supporting institutions look a bit tatty, I wonder what else you have to wear? Like my evening suit, despite its age, I prefer it to the alternatives.
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