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Jody Williams, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, spoke to The Irrawaddy on a wide range of issues including the role of the United Nations in Burma, the humanitarian crisis and targeted economic sanctions. She was in Bangkok in late July with US actress and activist Mia Farrow as part of a Nobel Woman’s Initiative Delegation tour of trouble areas in the world.

Jody Williams

Question: You have been very critical of the UN.

Answer: I don’t think the UN likes me a lot, but I recognise a need for something like the UN. However, I think it’s really time to reform the UN. When it cannot respond to crises like the [Burma] cyclone, when it cannot respond to the crisis of dictatorship there for 50 years, when it cannot respond to the crisis in Darfur, I find it ethically impossible to pretend that they’re doing a great job.

I understand the constraints, but let’s talk about reality and let’s not dismiss the voices of the Burmese people themselves. And yes, they get uncomfortable and yes, they don’t like it, but nothing changes unless you raise the level of discomfort.

Even when you want to change, it’s hard. Even when a person chooses to change, it’s hard. A massive institution that has 60 years of bureaucracy and ineptness and self preservation is not going to change unless people like me and people like Mia [Farrow] challenge it in public. At the same time, it is the institution that exists. And when I said that Mia and I were going to go to New York during the General Assembly to raise our voices and to raise issues that we heard about here and work with the women of Burma.

Q: UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari is going to visit Burma soon. What is your message to him?

A: He is just doing his job. My message would be to the UN, to the secretary-general and the Security Council.  Accepting that the Burmese junta has now allowed Gambari to meet with Daw Aung San Su Kyi is a fig leaf, there is no change happening and this is pretty typical of the way the international community deals with conflict.

Something happens, everybody get agitated, they respond and then a dictatorship will give a meaningless response showing flexibility and everybody claps their hands.  When we go to New York, I’m going to request a meeting with the secretary-general, closed door. It doesn’t have to be public, and I’m going to speak very firmly.

Q: What will be your main message to the secretary-general if you meet with him?
A: Exactly all of the things I’ve just said. And I’m going to express my extreme dismay, sadness, anger at saying that the roadmap is a great way forward. The roadmap is the worst way forward. The roadmap is accepting the lies, the fake referendum, the questionable reform of the constitution, excluding people who won the election. I’m going to say that in my view, that is a recipe for disaster. That is not going to bring about sustainable peace, and we don’t support that. That the people of Burma that I have spoken to don’t support that. And while I recognise that his job is to work with the government, how can he justify that?

Q: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked the international community not to politicize the humanitarian issue during the Cyclone Nargis crisis. What’s your view on this?

A: What aren’t we supposed to politicize about a civil war that’s been going on for 50 years? We’re not supposed to politicize the very political issue of theft of international aid from the cyclone survivors? We’re not supposed to politicize that? What are we supposed to do? Clap because it goes into the hands of the junta? His job is to work with governments of the world. Thankfully, it’s not my job.